Pirates! Mod Scenario

[Dogbeard]

Avast, ye landlubber! Take the helm as the English, French, Dutch, Spanish or even the dreaded Pirates and conquer the Caribbean. Inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates!, this mod challenges you to dominate the high seas and pillage the wealth of your rivals.

* Play as Henry Morgan, Charles II of England, Louis XIV of France, Johan de Witt of the United Netherlands or Philip IV of Spain

* Command ships from the Pirates! game, loot Spanish Treasure Galleons and capture enemy warships

* Research new techs such as Letters of Marque and Rum

* Acquire new promotions such as Carpenter and Chain Shot

* Build new structures, such as the Tavern or the Pirates' Black Market

* Discover buried treasure

Can you best your rivals and amass a fortune, or will you end up at the bottom of Davy Jones' Locker?

Pirates! Scenario

Hope you enjoy it. Happy New Year!

 

[pacesplace]

I love this scenario! The well-thought out-ness is evident.

One thing, though. As Charles II, I had very little production in any of my cities except for Port Royale. St. Kitts, Antigua, and their neighbors were taking tens of turns to build units or buildings, and their population was limited, so slavery didn't help much. I was still able to amass a good sized army and navy to destroy the French, who presumably had the same problem. Is there a better way to gain production out of these cities than using great people?

 

[Blake4000]

Could you please provide screen shots.

 

[Thorn]

This is a great scenario. I agree with the post above that production is VERY slow (as the English at least). But I realize that might be intentional. I also think that there are some balance issues with the scenario. It seems that the Spanish are a little too powerful while the Dutch are too weak.
I loved the Ghost ships. I also liked the treasure idea. You might consider adding more treasure and making it harder to find.
The game also seemed to end way too soon. I was really starting to get into the scenario when Spain won in 1702. Also, it seemed way to quick to go through the tech tree.
Just some thoughts. Thanks for a fun scenario!!!

 

[LaCiencia]

I downloaded and installed as per instructions in the readme.

I tried to select Spanish first but the game crashed.

I selected Henry Morgan and the game started. After a few turns, I didn't count but less than 10 that for sure, the game crashed again.

I can't feedback anymore as no error displayed.

The scenario looks great and accurate, is a pitty that I have these frustrating crashes. Any ideas?

 

[Thorn]

After playing a few times, I've noticed that the Spanish ALWAYS seem to win around 1702. Something happens around 1680 and they explode score-wise. The game ends with 60+ turns to go. You might need to tweak the way the Spanish obtain gold to make the scenario a little more balanced.
This is an addictive scenario that could be made into a true classic with a patch or two.

 

[Dogbeard]

Thanks for the feedback. Glad that in general you've liked it so far.

The low production on many of the small island colonies (St. Kitts, Nevis, Nassau, etc.) is intentional -- they are small colonies after all. They augment the larger colonies (Port Royale, Barbados, etc.).

The Spanish hold most of the major production-producing cities, which means you need to conquer them stay competetive and keep the Spanish from running away with the game. For the Pirates and the English, Cuba is a good target (Santiago, Puerto Principe and Havana), as is Hispaniola (Santo Domingo). For the Dutch, South America is best (Coro, Caracas, etc.).

Since the goal is to acquire the most gold, the Spanish again have the advantage. But there are two ways to overcome this. First and most important is to dominate the seas and stop those Spanish Treasure Galleons from escaping (this gets you 5000 gold each and denies the Spanish the same). You should also take every opportunity to pillage Spanish lands, paying particular attention to towns and sugar plantations (taking a big Spanish city or two isn't a bad idea either).

When I get a chance, I'll ramp the difficulty down a bit (above Noble, it is a really tough scenario).

LaCiencia, I have no idea why the scenario should crash on you. If you aren't using the latest patch, that could be the reason. Otherwise, I'd recommend simpy redownloading and reinstalling the scenario.

Lastly, a few screenshots:

 

[Pax Canadiana]

After playing a few times, I've noticed that the Spanish ALWAYS seem to win around 1702. Something happens around 1680 and they explode score-wise. The game ends with 60+ turns to go. You might need to tweak the way the Spanish obtain gold to make the scenario a little more balanced.
This is an addictive scenario that could be made into a true classic with a patch or two.

I've noticed this as well. Spain needs to be weakened because it is nearly impossible to catch up. It has dozens of cities with large populations while the other powers have only a handful with low productions. It takes forever to create units (even with slavery).

I suggest weakening every Spanish city with the exception of a few. Other than this problem the scenario is great and fun to play. But I'd like to win at least once!

 

[Dogbeard]

Version 1.1. Just a few tweaks to make Spain less dominant:

Pirates! Scenario Ver. 1.1

* Spain no longer runs away with the game after 1700 (though it'll still win if left unchallenged)

* Techs cost a bit more to research

* Pirate AI is slightly more aggressive

And Happy New Year All!

 

[looper]

great scenario, liked the details and the goverment type for pirates. I played the v.1 a bit. as pirates, noble level (afraid of defeat, judging from other posts). there were a lot of ungarded cities around me, and for guarded cities, the AI wont get out of the garrison if there is only 1 or 2 units in the city. so that made my life much easier, I used the only general, upgraded 2 foot units to their teeth and took cuba and florida one city by one city. and some brits and french colonies around my headquarter, too. made peace with everyone, and developed tech all the way, treaded with Brits and Dutch. currently buying units and boats for the final death match campaign towards spain. spain's military is 3-5 times of mine, british seond, me third. Brits are friendly towards me, nothing to worry there. plan is to attack the most productive cities first, which is located in 2-3 clusters of peninsulars. so I really need to crank up 3 dozens of ships and 3 dozens of foot units. this will be fun. 70 turns left, spain has 22000 points. I think I have enought time to beat spain. AI is always bad at war.

also loved it is a standard map, I really dont like anyting larger than standard map, dont know how people every have time and energy and whatever to play huge maps, anyway:

I like the balence so far, if I play higher level, it must be hard to get to this stage, which is about right.

there is no courthouse that I can build as pirates, is that intentional?

I like the added unit promotion details, awesome.

scoring is weird, I can jump from 900 to 50 annd then back to 950 in 2 tuns...

All in all, good scenario, fun to play, (especially as pirates, dont everyone want to be pirates?)

cheers!

Loop

 

[rapiduser]

it´s a very good Mod

I have uploaded this to Rapidshare

http://rapidshare.com/files/10048361/Pirates_.zip

 

[Thorn]

As a side note, playing this Mod made me finally decide to buy Pirates!. It was only $18.99 at Amazon. So far, I like it. The graphics are very good. I can see how it can become repetative though.

 

[AndyTerry]

I always loved pirates stories when I was a little boy
Now downloading, will try it tomorrow!

 

[Ambreville]

Can you best your rivals and amass a fortune, or will you end up at the bottom of Davy Jones' Locker?

Pirates! Scenario

Hi there. I clicked on the link above and I get a file invalid error msg. What the heck? Is there something wrong with the link??

 

[AndyTerry]

Hi there. I clicked on the link above and I get a file invalid error msg. What the heck? Is there something wrong with the link??

Try link in post #9

 

[Ambreville]

Try link in post #9

Found it. Thanks. The link in post #1 needs to be updated. Surely others will run into the same pitfall as the game starts catching more attention.

 

[Dogbeard]

Sorry. Fixed the link. Cheers and Yo-ho!

 

[Ambreville]

Download & installation ran flawlessly. I noticed no glitches or anything "annoying" during the game. All in all, the scenario is fun and runs very smoothly! The only problem -- which unfortunately ruins the game -- is the balance issue!

Even with the updated version, I ran into the same problem as Thorn. I did nothing else but attack the Spanish from Day One -- plundering land, taking cities, sinking/capturing their ships, etc. By late 1600's, Spain had lost all of its Caribbean colonies, from San Juan to (all of) Florida. I was running well ahead in points around then, with Spain in third position. In the early 1700's, Spain just skyrockets and there is very little that can be done. By then, Spain has frigates and ships of the line, and it becomes increasingly difficult to challenge their control of the seas. With no other options left, I just gave up the game. The economics of Spain's huge territories to start with eventually leads Spain to almost invariably win.

I'm not the kind of gamer playing with a calculator to devise the best course of action to win "scientifically". That would negate the nature of this "fun/action-based" scenario. From where I stand, there is no way to win this scenario, unless you play Spain (almost guaranteed everyone will want to play the pirates). If this balance issue isn't really fixed, there isn't any point playing the scenario. That's too bad, because it is otherwise fun and very well designed!

 

[Ambreville]

And of course...

I'll take back some of my comments. I'll admit you CAN win this scenario when playing the pirates, however, this assertion does come with a major caveat. Around 1700, for some reason Spain just takes off like a rocket. If you don't win with 100,000 pts, it looks like Spain will get there very quickly.

Spain did have a Goden Age at that point. It ended when I won, but I'm not sure whether it ended because I won, or because it reached its last turn. If the latter is incorrect, then that Golden Age could have lasted far longer (??), in which case the Spanish skyrocketing could have been sustained. Not too sure about that...

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Here's how I did it...

Spoiler :

Naval: You need, of course, to nail every single Spanish Treasure Ship right from the beginning. I got 15 of them, plus another 29 galleons. This means developing Sloops of War ASAP. All I did was holding the two main passageways for the Spanish ships, near the Bahamas and Tortuga. My ships never really ventured anywhere else outside these two main areas.

Land: Forget about conquering too much stuff. I started out by grabbing the French possessions south of Tortuga, and Santo Domingo a few turns later. Cuba came much later. That's it for land wars. The rest of the land combat was essentially plundering Florida (and of course Cuba before I could take its cities). France accepted peace early on when I asked for it, so no problem there.

Economy: Since victory points seem totally based upon gold, ye gots ta keep yer wits about yer money! Massive armies and wars are foolishly expensive. My pirates were good at sea but better yet as bankers! I traded that tech from the Brits early on. Pirate cities have to build groceries, markets, and banks to keep up in this game.

With 0% allocated to Science (I had all my techs), and about 50% allocated to Prestige, I was just pumping gold at a rate of 350/turn. In comparison, England was raking up twice as much per turn!

I wanted to upload a couple of images, but I don't know how to do that. I don't have my own web site. In particular I had a shot of the Stats page showing how quickly Spain was racking up victory points in the last few turns. During most of the game, I had Spain dead-last in the scores. Suddenly, in the last three or four turns, Spain went from 1,500 pts to 30,000 pts! No idea what the heck was going on. But the conclusion is, if you don't hit 100,000 pts quickly, Spain will likely skyrocket past that in just a few turns, circa 1700-1705. And that's with about 40 game turns still left to go. So, it is possible to win, but the game is really balanced on razor's edge...

One good point, though, I do appreciate a scenario that is designed on a standard map format. It's a pleasure not to have to wait 5-10mn for the AI top complete its turn. So all of you with memory-challenged computers, this scenario is for you!

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Figured it out... Here's that shot:

Spoiler :

Oops... Sorry for the huge size!

 

[useless]

does this work with warlords?