Episode 10 - Tortuga

Start Date: Jan. 1686

End Date: End of Dec. 1699
Resources: Treasury: Hoard size from episode 9 + 720, hoard 80, 20 lumber, 50 sea
rations, 1 brigantine
Goals: Achieve a personal hoard of 10,000 gold and a treasury of 20,000 gold. Use
any available means except to plunder French ships.
Bronze: Complete within 14 years (end Dec. 1699).
Silver: Complete within 12 years (end Dec. 1697).
Gold: Complete within 10 years (end Dec. 1695).

Notes:
As befits the pirate island of Tortuga, your island starts well-equipped for pirates, with 2
smuggler's dives, 2 wench houses, an animal pit and gambling den. There is also an iron mine
next to a gallows! You will need lots of lumber in this episode to build and replace ships for
cruising, so your first priority is to get the lumber industry rolling. Build a construction tent to the
right of the sawmill and a timber camp to the left. Extend the road from the dock up the hill and
build a second sawmill next to the iron mine and a timber camp across the road. Now unpause
the game.

As in episode 9, you will also get a message offering 5000 gold from the French in initial funding.
Use it! First make sure you set your pirate cave to stash maximum and then enact the Emergency
Funding edict. Alternatively, if your treasury is small, you may want to keep the pirate cave on
minimum to add more to the treasury at the start. Now use your ship to raid for captives and
kidnap a shipwright as soon as possible. Raid some more and kidnap a skilled cook for your sea
ration factory. Make sure you set the sea ration hiring priority to medium or high so the cook will
go there as soon as she lands. When your lumber starts coming in, build two more corn farms up
the road from the existing farms. Now wait for your lumber to build up to 30 and build a shipyard
to the left of the sawmill by the beach.

Now build a black market, a blast furnace and a brewery. It is a good idea for this longer scenario
to build up your iron industry as a backup to the black market for weapons and also to allow you
to sell weapons at a smuggler's cove for more cash. When the shipyard is complete, build a snow
for raiding, kidnapping and exploring. A snow is great for this because it's small crew are able to
board faster and go out more often. Recruit a captain for your snow when it is ready. When the
black market is completed, make sure you have two workers there to keep prices down and then
equip your brigantine with cutlasses. Set your ship's plunder shares to Selfish, do a Quicksave
and send her out for a cruise. My first cruise on my second time through the campaign was on
May 11, 1687.

Next build a dock for a third ship, a blacksmithy and a graveyard. Kidnap a skilled farmer. Build a
fourth dock, a second iron mine and a second chuck tent. Build a road past the palace and build
a tobacco farm or two in the dark green areas for tobacco. Extend the road past your second
sawmill and build a banana and papaya farm. You can also build a sugarcane farm or two on the
southeast side of the island. Make sure you kidnap a tobacconist and distiller and build a cigar
factory, distillery and bakery to use all these commodities

By this time, your ship will likely have sunk several times and you've done a few reloads to
recover your game. What's happening?!? A lone ship on the waters is a dangerous proposition in
any territory and this one seems to have more troubles than most. It's time to learn how to
combine your forces and send ships out together for more protection. See the tips section below
for how to do this.

Once you get some successful cruises under your belt, remember to move your cruise locations
around so they do not get too dangerous. Also, use your snow to do some exploring at least once
or twice in a new region to get the knowledge of an area up. This increases the chance that a
cruise will make a discovery. You may want to build some gunnery or swordsmanship or other
pirate schools to increase their skills in any low areas.

Since this is a longer episode than most up to now, you will have to concentrate on some mid-
game tactics to ensure survival. Keep an eye on pirate happiness and allow for a longer shore
leave as this drops. Make sure you have enough entertainment buildings for them all and keep
them staffed. Watch your lumber production and if timber camps are getting too far from the
trees, fire the workers (but don't destroy the camps until their stock is depleted to zero) and build
new camps near the forest areas. It may even be necessary to build new sawmills nearer to the
timber camps if your lumber production slows to a crawl. Make sure you have enough chuck tents
to keep your captives from starving as their numbers increase. Keep building fear and order
structures on the outskirts or high traffic areas to keep them from escaping.

As you near the end, watch your pirate cave hoard compared to the treasury. Once you are over
the 10,000 gold needed for the hoard, you may need to set stashing to a lower setting to stash
less and build up the treasury instead. But do not do this too soon, as you have a full ten years to
achieve gold. If it is too early and your treasury is getting close to 20,000, start spending more
gold on pirate education, raising skeletons and passing pirate happiness edicts. If your treasury
needs a boost near the end, make sure you ransom off all your wealthy captives. My gold on this
campaign came in May 1694 with a hoard of 19,512 and a total score of 33,985.

Tips:
Using fleets of ships:Sending ships out together is a great way to increase the success of cruises
and prevent having your ships sunk right away. You can start with the snow and brigantine
together if you want, but a better match is to combine a fast schooner to pursue the enemy ships
with a brigantine to add firepower. Or if you can afford it, build a frigate to bring on the big guns
and combine it with the brigantine for moderate speed. But first you have to know how to send
them out together. There is no automatic function for this (yet), but it is not that hard to do. Watch
your ships to see when the captain is fairly satisfied or has returned to the ship. Sound the
boarding call on the ship with the most pirates first, especially if most are ashore. Then when a
few are on board (as indicated by their coloured clothing), sound the boarding call for the smaller
ship. If the ships are the same size, you can judge by how many are on board each for when to
call the pirates up for duty. When the first ship leaves the dock, check the other one and if most
pirates are there, click the green arrow to send it out immediately. If just a few stragglers are
almost there, you can afford to wait a few days, but not too long. If the captain is still ashore, you
are out of luck, which is why it is important to wait until the captains are on board or well-satisfied.
The sight of 2 or 3 ships sailing off side by side brings joy to the heart of any bloodthirsty pirate.

Episode 11 - The Treasure Fleet

Start Date: Jan. 1692

End Date: end Dec. 1700
Resources: Treasury=hoard size from episode 10 + 720, hoard 80, 20 lumber, 70 sea
rations, 1 schooner, 1 frigate
Goals: Achieve a hoard of 10,000 gold by end of 1700.
Bronze: Complete within 9 years.
Silver: Complete within 6 years, 10 months (Nov. 1, 1698).
Gold: Complete within 5 years, 5 months (Jun. 15, 1697).

Notes:
As for episode 10, this episode is made for big-time cruising, but with an even tougher target
in the Spanish treasure fleet. Note that there is nothing special about the Spanish fleet other
than the military danger, it is just normal cruising to maximize your hoard size as before. You
don't even have to cruise in a specific area, just wherever you can get the most plunder.
You can also get emergency funding from your patron nation, France, in this episode, though
you will hardly need it based on your treasury of at least 10,000. But if you like, pass the
edict at the start, or wait until later if your cash is low and you need a boost. Remember to
set your pirate cave to stash maximum first to get the most benefit of the edict to your hoard.
France will also send you captive workers, but only if you have the patch 1.2 installed, which
fixed the script for a bug. For the most part, these captives will keep your economy going, but
you will still need to do a few raids.

You have two choices of what to do with your initial 20 lumber; either build a second sawmill
as I usually recommend or build a black market to equip your ship and get cruising faster. I
tried it both ways and due to the short time span for the gold medal, recommend starting with
the black market. Start with a couple of construction tents, a timber camp or two and a black
market. As soon as the market is ready, equip your frigate and start cruising. Be sure to
quick save in case you lose it. Use the schooner to kidnap a skilled farmer, shipwright, skilled
cook, skilled server and possibly a skilled lumberjack or two. As your lumber builds up, build
a second sawmill and more timber camps if needed. Then build a couple of sugarcane and
tobacco farms to get your farm production going. Build 2 or 3 more corn farms to keep your
rations factory supplied. Build a shipyard as soon as possible after this and then a graveyard
and maybe a third sawmill to pour on the lumber production. You will want a few ships
cruising to get the most plunder or replace your losses.

Speaking of cruising, I recommend moving your cruising region around as in previous

episodes, to avoid the dangers of a high risk region when your opponent's military ships are
called in. Usually I switch when the risk factor goes over 3 cannons or the enemy presence is
shown as Fairly Heavy or higher. For the record, the levels are:

1. None
2. Scant
3. Very Light
4. Fairly Light
5. Moderate
6. Fairly Heavy
7. Very Heavy
8. Plentiful
9. Teeming

Also, be sure to send fleets of ships out together as detailed in episode 10 to increase your
chances for plunder and survival.

Build another chuck tent or two to keep your captives fed, then another dock and a brewery.
Build some basic entertainment buildings near the dock such as an animal pit, wench house
and smuggler's dive or tavern. Kidnap a distiller and tobacconist and build a distillery, cigar
factory, banana and papaya farms and a bakery to supply your entertainment buildings.
There is no time for a weapons industry or smuggler's cove in this episode, so just
concentrate on entertainment to keep your pirates' satisfaction up. Build as many
entertainment buildings as you can and pass some happiness edicts since you have lots of
money. I got gold as early as April 1696 and score of 18,975 with this strategy.

Tips:
Coffeebean's strategy: This tip is courtesy of Coffeebean at the Blue Parrot Inn forum and
just shows that there are many ways to win:

Here's my tips for episode 11 - The Treasure Fleet - I didn't build a boatyard or a shipyard. I
just used the Frigate for cruising and only cruised the starting area. I did save before each
cruise though and reloaded if I lost the ship. I did give my fighting pirates as many parrots as
I could as I captured a skilled parrot trainer. You have masses of spending money on this
one so I bought loads of skilled workers, allowed 8 wealthy captives to stay from early on to
build up their ransoms and built all the entertainment buildings and a Pirate Cove. With
skilled miners and blacksmiths you can sell excess cutlasses and muskets. I also raised
loads of skellies and set free excess unskilled captives - didn't want them eating my corn.
Skull cave was on max and frigate was on miserly, I donated money to anyone who was
getting low so they could spend it in my entertainment buildings. I got gold with very happy
pirates 67%.

Maximizing your hoard: One way to maximize your hoard and boost it over the 10,000 mark
as much as possible is to keep a lot of wealthy captives around as 'Bean did and wait until
the time is nearly up or you are close to the goal and then ransom them all at once to give
you a win. This can be a bit tricky if you have a ship come in with a lot of plunder that puts
you over 10,000 before you do the ransom, so be careful.

Getting more pirates: If you use my strategy and build more ships, you may have a hard time
getting more recruits even if you set your plunder share higher than miserly or selfish. If you
have a graveyard, you can pressgang your haulers to be pirates and replace them with
skeleton haulers, and you will get more work out of them to boot.

Back to Top

Episode 12 - The Jolly Roger

Start Date: Jan. 1699

End Date: End of Dec. 1707
Resources: Treasury: Hoard size from episode 11 + 720, hoard 80, 20 lumber, 70 sea
rations, 1 frigate
Goals: Recruit at least 50 pirates for the island and achieve a pirate happiness rating of
just under 2/3 (over 62.5% to be exact). Also achieve a personal hoard of at
least 5,000 gold.
Bronze: Complete within 9 years (end Dec. 1707).
Silver: Complete within 6 years, 6.9 months (July 25, 1705).
Gold: Complete within 5 years, 5.5 months (July 14, 1794).

Notes: This episode starts off with another offer for a spy to help you out (if you have the
tutorial turned on). Pass the Spy on Settlement edict and three areas will be revealed for
cruising with trade routes and/or settlements. These are all you really need to cruise in,
besides your home region.

One challenging feature of this episode is the widely separated docks with the lagoon
between. This will make building an entertainment district more difficult since you will either
need to build two separate areas or the pirates will have a long way to walk. Another option
is to destroy the northern most dock and build another on the southeast shore and keep your
district on the south side.

Since you only have one ship to start off, a priority for this episode is to kidnap a shipwright
and build a shipyard and more ships. First build a couple of construction tents, a couple of
timber camps and a second sawmill beside the first sawmill. Then build a shipyard at the end
of the road by the sawmill. Build a black market, blast furnace, corn farm or two, blacksmithy
and a graveyard. Build a schooner to help with raiding and kidnapping tasks and also be able
to cruise. Build another dock to allow more ships and start your entertainment district with a
smuggler's dive, animal pit, wench house and tavern.

Meanwhile, you will need to do lots of raiding for captives since you have no patrons in this
episode. In my first year, Charlotte's Favorite performed 8 missions, 4 to kidnap and 4 to raid.
Once you have a second ship, you can begin cruising with your frigate. Make sure to set your
pirate cove to stash maximum and your ship's plunder shares to Selfish or higher to enrich
your pirates but still build up your hoard. Build another brigantine or two to increase your
cruising ability.

Once you have a skilled farmer, either by kidnapping or cruising, build a banana and papaya
farm and a couple of tobacco and sugarcane farms. Build more entertainment buildings and
a brewery, cigar factory and distillery to supply them. Also zone off a district to the northwest
and build some pirate housing plots to increase your pirate's happiness.

Keep up your cruising until your hoard reaches 5,000 and then concentrate on increasing
pirate happiness. Make sure you have enough of all the entertainment buildings and a good
supply of the extra luxury items. Pass free beer, free rum and pirate festival edicts to give
them a boost. If time is running out, try press-ganging some captives to be pirates, since
these pirates start out with high happiness ratings and will increase your overall happiness
rating. Before you know it, your happiness should be high enough to win and you will be
awarded the gold!

Tips:
Pirate Happiness: Since one of the goals for this episode is pirate happiness, this is a good
time to look at some of the ways to improve the satisfaction level of your pirates. The
quickest way to check pirate satisfaction is of course the pirate satisfaction page of the
logbook. The eight factors that affect satisfaction are shown on a graph where you can check
for any that are especially low. Click the button before a need to turn its graph off or on. The
chart also shows average satisfaction at the top and highest and lowest at the bottom.
Concentrate on the lowest one first by building appropriate entertainment buildings and
supplies or providing defense and anarchy structures. For example, I noticed that Drinking
satisfaction was very low and realized I had forgotten to build a brewery. Some needs are
more difficult to meet such as stashing, which requires a lot of pirate housing plots, which are
difficult to find room for.

Another way to find what your pirates need is to check the opposite page to the satisfaction
chart for Overall Happiness. Click on a dissatisfied pirate to open his or here character
overview and see what needs are low. You should especially do this if you get the message
that one or more of your pirates have become disgruntled or enraged. Remember that
building emanation can have a large effect, especially later in the game, so watch your
defense and anarchy auras and keep away order as much as possible.

Building Service Quality: Another factor that plays a big part in pirate satisfaction is the
service quality of your entertainment buildings. Service quality is affected by several things:
class of building (low or high), type of activity, rank setting, pirate rank, worker skill level and
bonus commodities like cigars and pastries. There is a complicated algorithm that figures out
how all these affect a pirate being served, but you can see the minimum and maximum
service quality by looking at the island log for each satisfaction need and the buildings that
cater to it. The minimum level is based on lowest skill level of workers and no bonus
commodities. The highest is based on highest skill level and all possible commodities. There
is also an adjustment factor that takes into account the rank of the pirate compared to the
rank level set for the building. For each level above or below the building setting range, 10%
is deducted from service quality. This is why it is important to watch the average rank of your
pirates and change settings or build more buildings as needed to provide the best match.
 Episode 13 - A New War

Start Date: Jan. 1704

End Date: end Dec. 1716
Resources: Treasury=hoard size from episode 12 + 450, hoard 50, 20 lumber, 70 sea
rations, 1 frigate
Achieve harmonious relations with at least one great power, build up your fleet
Goals: to at least four frigates or galleons and build a hoard of 5,000 gold by end of
1716.
Bronze: Complete within 13 years (end Dec. 1716).
Silver: Complete within 9 years, 7 months (Aug. 1, 1713).
Gold: Complete within 7 years, 10.6 months (Nov. 15, 1711).

Notes:
Make sure you use the patched version from patch 1.2 for this
episode, which gives the proper length of time, 13 years. Obviously,
this one is not for those pirate kings plagued with triscadecaphobia!
This episode starts off with an offer from English spy Daniel
Smythe-Weathersby, to feed you information on France and Spain
trade routes and settlements. Of course, this information is
invaluable, so pass the Spy on Settlement edict as soon as possible.
However, the information is not given right away, but in bits and
pieces over a period of time. Note that you also need to have the
tutorial turned on to see the messages, until someone fixes the
scripts to use normal messages.

One of the goals is to achieve harmonious relations with one power,

so you will want to start cultivating this relationship early on. Check
your starting location to see which nation has a settlement there.
You will most likely want to choose another power than that one to
make peace with so you can raid the settlement. Also, the briefing
gives a clue about England having the largest merchant fleet, so you
will not want to make peace with England. You may also want to wait
until the first one or two spy reports come in to see which routes are
available and where. Once you have chosen a power, pass the make
peace and prohibit victims edicts to prevent attacking them.

Another goal is to build up your fleet to at least four frigates or

galleons. These ships require a lot of lumber, so your first building
should be a second sawmill with your starting amount of 20 lumber.
Extend the road past the iron deposit and build it there along with a
timber camp or two as well as a camp near the sea rations factory.
Fire other workers as needed to get these facilities fully staffed
early. Build 2 or 3 more corn farms to supply your rations factory
and a second chuck tent near your sawmills. By now you should
have kidnapped a shipwright so you can build a shipyard to the
 northwest of your palace or else the southwest side of the big
island. Build a third sawmill soon after to get the lumber rolling in.

Don't forget your third goal, to build your hoard to 5,000 gold. Set
your hoard to stash maximum or a lot and set your entertainment
buildings to middling rates to get some gold coming in now.
However, you may want to put this off until you have at least one
more ship and you can start cruising without running short of cash
to stock your ship.

You have no patron nation in this episode and captives are hard to
come by, so your lone ship will be busy for the first year just raiding
and kidnapping. Once your shipyard is nearly ready, build another
dock and build a schooner or snow just for raiding. Recruit a captain
for this ship (see tips below) and build a black market to supply the
frigate for cruising. You will be running short of money by this point,
so be sure to manage it carefully so you have enough to start
cruising.

This episode has the difficulty settings cranked up for captive

satisfaction, so you will notice that it is much more difficult to keep
them resigned and prevent escapes. My first escape took place in
July 1705. Be sure to build some fear and order structures or decor,
especially in outlying areas like the corn farms on the smaller island
and your sawmills and timber camps. Also, watch out for captive
rebellions and be sure to keep guards in your palace at all times,
even if you have to pressgang captives, to keep from losing your
head.

At the same time, start building more entertainment buildings for

your pirates. Don't go too overboard yet though (har, har) since you
need to save up 125 lumber for your second frigate. You will likely
need to cruise for enough cash to build a frigate (1000 gold) and of
course to keep your hoard building. A second sea ration factory on
the smaller island is also a good idea to keep your ships supplied.

Your spy will flee near the end of the second year, but you still have
the option of interrogating him for more information on England if
you build an interrogation chamber. This costs an extra 500 gold,
but is worth it if you want to attack the English merchant routes. You
will also find that the nation you are not at peace with will be getting
very unhappy with you. If you have had captives escape, there is a
good chance that they will discover your island location and start
planning an invasion. I had an invasion from France in my first game
and from Spain in my second. It is really quite a fun thing to watch,
but unfortunately means you lose the game. You will have to act
quickly to improve relations once your island is discovered to
prevent this from happening. You can try passing peace and
prohibit victims edicts for this nation as well, though this will cut off
your income from them. If an invasion is imminent, you have a
choice of either betraying your pirates or freeing captives of that
nation to improve relations. Both of these can be very painful, but
the alternative is worse. You can also try building a fort or two to
repel an invasion and hope for the best but this is dicey. The best
option is to try to boost relations with your first peaceful nation and
make them your patron, if your relations are already close to
harmonious. Remember, you can get a big boost in relations by
passing the free captives edict even if you have no captives of that
nationality.

Once your hoard is over 5,000 gold, make sure you are working
towards having four frigates or galleons and give your pirates more
shore time to build up their happiness. Once you have four frigates,
free some captives of your peaceful nation if your relations are not
already harmonious and victory will be yours! Overall, this is a very
challenging and fun episode worth playing again and choosing a
different great power to be friendly with or trying to achieve better
relations without an invasion.

Tips:
Recruiting Captains: The captains you recruit for your ships can
have a large effect on the plunder you gain and the morale of your
pirates. Be sure to click on the captain's name in the recruit captain
edict menu to check the cyclopedia information before committing
your hard-earned gold. Check their leadership, courage and
notoriety ratings as well as skill ratings in the skills that are
important to you. Leadership adds to your pirate's courage to keep
fighting in a battle and notoriety reduces the courage of the
opposing ship's crew. Courage affects whether your ship will flee or
pursue when encountering another ship, so a captain with low
courage may get low plunder. The seamanship skill is another
important one that affects how many ships you will encounter and
how effective your ship will be at boarding another ship. However,
this also depends on the seamanship of your crew, so the captain's
rating may have minimal effect. If you combine the leadership,
courage and notoriety ratings, the best captains are Edward Teach,
Henry Morgan and Laurens de Graff, with a total of 17.
Back to Top

Episode 14 - Pirate Defense

Start Date: Jan. 1710

End Date: End of Dec. 1719
Resources: Treasury: Hoard size from episode 13 + 450, hoard 50, 20 lumber, 70 sea
rations, 1 frigate
Goals: Build up the island so it offers near the maximum possible defense for pirates
OR declare a great power as patron. Also achieve a personal hoard of at least
10,000 gold.
Bronze: Complete within 10 years (end Dec. 1719).
Silver: Complete within 8 years, 2.6 months (Mar. 15, 1718).
Gold: Complete within 6 years, 10.1 months (Oct. 3, 1716).

Notes:
This episode gives you an option for which victory goals you want
to choose, either pirate defense or a great power as patron. If you're
going for the gold or even for the highest hoard size, I recommend
the defense route since you do not rule out one power to prey on.
Also, the "Free All Captives" edict is disabled for this episode so
you cannot use that to boost your relations. But the "Betray Pirates"
edict is still available so you could use that at the very end of a
game but this would decrease your score and still take time to build
relations even if you pass peace and prohibit victims edicts at the
start. So, for this guide, I am assuming you are going it alone and
building up your defences.

The briefing states that you need near the maximum possible
defense rating, which you would think is close to 100%. However,
from the event scripting, the requirement is only 87% or higher,
which is very reasonable to achieve. For a list of buildings and
structures that affect defense, press P to open the pirate
satisfaction page and click on the text for defense on the chart
legend to open the defense satisfaction page on the right. This page
also gives your current defense rating at the top so you will want to
check it often. Buildings that boost defense ratings are the normal
ones on the defense menu plus the palace, black market, weapons
industries, docks and shipyards and all pirate schools. So you can
see it should be easy to achieve a good defense rating with all these
options available.

The two biggest challenges of this episode are acute shortages of

captives and sea rations. To counteract the captives problem, you
will have to build a second ship early on, preferably a small one that
can go out often on raiding missions and also to explore for other
 settlements to raid. To counteract rations shortages, you will need
to build at least one more sea ration factory closer to the corn farms
available north of your palace. Also try to get skeleton haulers to
your factories as soon as possible.

With that in mind, these are your building priorities: second sawmill,
shipyard, more corn farms, second dock, second sea ration factory,
black market, graveyard. After these, build more entertainment
buildings as well as fear structures to keep captives in line and
defense structures towards your goal of high defense. Actually,
these two items are good strategy in any game. Keep an eye on the
orange and silver happiness/resignation bars at the left to see where
your attention is needed most. Also check the defense page often to
know what your rating is. You should also get your weapons
industry up and running to help the defense rating.

The secondary goal of 10,000 gold in your hoard is no small

challenge either. Make sure to set your pirate cave to Stash
Maximum at the beginning and also to set your entertainment to at
least middling rates to rake in the profits. Get cruising early with the
black market and try to explore around your home region for more
settlements and trade routes. To win gold, you will need lots of
successful cruises, so get two or three ships to cruise with besides
your initial frigate. The docks and shipyard also help your defense
rating.

As the deadline for gold approaches in October 1716, keep building

defense related structures and cruising for plunder. If all goes well,
you should have a decent defense rating by then. As your hoard
approaches 10,000, pause and ransom off your wealthy captives
near the deadline and the gold should be yours. My gold win for my
second campaign came on my second full attempt in June 1716
(after first losing my head in a rebellion and losing the island to a
Spanish invasion). My hoard was 11,294 and a score of 17,798.

Tips:
On skeleton haulers: With a critical shortage of captives in this
episode, your best friends will be these indefatigable skeleton
haulers. Be sure to build a graveyard early on and raise lots of
skeletons as your cash grows from cruising. They will free up your
live captives to work in other jobs.