Difficulty Levels

[Mr. Grinch]

I'm a Pirates veteran so when I started playing the game a fwhile back I skipped apprentice and started with Journeyman to learn the game. I found it rediculously easy and decided to advance to Adventurer which was admitedly more of a challenge, then moved on to Rogue which kept me occupied for a while, then I decided to try Swashbuckler expecting much harder duels, much harder dances, ship battles etc and find that the enemies havn't gotten any harder (as far as I can tell) but my characters seem to get stupider, and my ships slower. I'm seeing huge lumbering war galleons turn into the wind and still and outrun and outmanuver my undamaged, fully manned, barques and sloops, all of thier shots hit (usually crippling me) while most if not all of mine miss completly. It took me five real full minutes to sail from Nevis to Antuiga in an undamaged pinnance, albiet against the wind, but still...I mean I like my games to be hard, and I don't think games should always be fair and balanced, but this is just rediculous, I just feel like the difficulty level handicaps you so baddly it is no longer fun to play.

I only had this problem with the Swashbuckler level, is it possibly a technical problem? I can go back to rogue level for now, but find it a little easy at this point.

 

[rupertlittlebea]

sail across the wind in a pinnace, not into or with.

Sailing your own ship is most realistic in Swash.
(Their ships get a cheat advantage, but at Swash your sailing is more life-like.)

Fencing and dancing are both harder at Swash. (Not much, but enough if you get lazy, you get hammered.)

Eating broadsides is more likely at Swash because you need to understand how to sail.

With a fast and agile ship, you can avoid 99.5% of all incoming shot.

Aging is the same at all the difficulty levels, you just feel the difference more at Swash, because that little penalty will more likely push you over the edge into blithering idiot. (At least it does to me.) In short you have a smaller error margin.

If you want a real challenge, try Swash, skill as anything other than fencing or Wit . . . for your first battle, try to board a Treasure Ship.

 

[bingen]

IMO Pirates is way too easy. Swashbuckler is about as hard as Emperor in Civ3.