Advance Tips

If you haven't read the Basic Tips yet, it's recommended that you read them first. They're key to understanding this section.

Generally it's best to finish off the weaker pirates before attacking the fully rested ones. If you attack the fully rested ones, you'll be giving the exhausted pirates a chance to recover their energy.

Runners make good treasure chest carriers (they are the fastest and recover their energy the quickest). Just move them next to your person who is carrying the treasure chest. Then select the nav with the treasure chest. Then click on the adjacent runner. A popup will ask if you want to transfer the treasure chest.

In general, don't attack a mass of pirates piecemeal (moving one nav a fair distance and immediately attacking one of the pirates with no close navs to help out). They'll chew you apart. Instead move a group of navs up, and then start attacking. That way, the navs who are not attacking can help out if the pirates are gaining up on one nav.

If you are trying to avoid capture move your navs out of clear terrain. The chances of an swordfight ending in a tie is increased by 20% if the swordfight occurs in the bush, beach, edge of woods, palm tree, or level part of ridges. It's increased by 40% in the more difficult terrain such as rivers, swamps, mud, and forest. Likewise, if you just want to wear down a powerful pirate so that he won't move, it's safer to attack him when he is not in the clear.

If you are thinking, pause the game so that the pirates are not moving while you are not. The quickest way to pause the game is by pressing the right mouse button (which brings up the map and pauses the game). The pirates will not move until you unpause the game.

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How to unpause the game:
1) by moving your nav or trying to start a swordfight,
2) clicking the depressed Pause button on the toolbar, or
3) clicking the UnPause Game button on the Commands To dialog.

The combat bar (located to the left of each pirate and nav) gives you the player's current CS (combat strength). The taller the green bar the greater the combat strength. This is the value used to determine his chance of winning swordfights. CS is a combination of the player's swordfighting, confidence, and teamspirit levels MULTIPLIED by their energy percentage.

If you prefer for turbo scroll (dragging the playing field while holding down the right mouse button) to move in the opposite direction go to the Options pull down menu and select the Settings item.

Pressing the spacebar will pause the game and bring up the map. Go to Key and Mouse Commands for other useful shortcuts.

Try turning on the Off Screen Pirate Warning under the Options pull down menu. This will alert you whenever one of your navs sees a pirate moving off the screen.

Note, a person's energy could be at 100 and his green color could still small (short) because his swordfighting skill is so low (runners, diggers, and scouts start out like this).

Get scouts out quickly so you can see where the pirates are going and be warned if they are coming your way.

Know Your Enemy The pirate team will be different each season (not island/expedition). Figure out what the pirate team strengths and weaknesses are and plan according.

The change in mercenaries greatly change the play of the game for JV and varsity

None of the pirate teams cheat.

Sometimes a good strategy is to put some navs by the pirate ship to ambush the pirates coming back with treasure chests. Three of the drawbacks to this strategy are
1) pirates get to keep the rubies from the treasure chests they dig up,
2) pirates get the points for digging up the treasure chest, and
3) you loose precious time waiting for the pirates to bring the treasure chest back to your ambush.

Another possible strategy is to keep some navs back to protect your navs who are carrying treasure chests.

If you have trouble trying to catch a weak pirate retreating before your stronger nav try using a faster nav (either one that is a faster type or one that has more energy than the current nav does).

Check out all of the tool bar buttons at the top of the screen. You'll find very useful commands.

We normally recommend 800 by 600 screen resolution for 14 and 15 inch monitors, 1024 by 768 for 17 inch monitors, and 1280 by 1024 for 19 inch monitors just make sure your monitor can run that resolution with a high enough refresh rate (70 or higher)..

Give meaningful names to your navs. That way, you'll be better able to remember their strengths and weaknesses. To change their name, click on the Nav Player Panel tool bar button to bring up the panel, then click on their name in the upper right hand corner of the panel.

Go to Basic Tips

Go to Expert Tips