Has anyone had any luck defeating (or better yet - capturing) the pirate fluyt lurking near Jamaica on turn 1 as Great Britain.

The pirates have a fleet of 1 Fluyt, 1 Brig and 1 Sloop. I can must a fleet of 1 admirals fifth rate, 1 sixth rate, 1 brig and 3 x sloops. The admiral is multi starred.

If I autocomplete, the battle goes OK, victory with usually 1 sloop lost and some damage.

However if I play the battle, I get my ass handed to me everytime. The brig and the slop usually go away pretty quickly, especially after a burst of grape shot from the fifth or sixth rate.

The Fluyt however is a monster. Boarding with the fifth rate is usually a disaster. Trying to leave the fifth and sixth rate in line astern and let them attack is not much better. Grape shot is deadly on the smaller pirates, but has distinctly less effect on the Fluyt.

Formations seem to suck - they keep crashing into each other!!! This wouldnt have happened in Nelsons Navy!!

Any hints or tips for defeating or capturing the mighty fluyt would be appreciated. If I can capture it, it can be dispatched to the trade theatres post haste!

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That thing tried to take down a lone Fluyt I had in a Dutch game. That was one hell of a brawl I had with it to kill it.

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Sink the pirate brig and sloop asap then get upwind of the fluyt with your ships and use chain shot on it from max range, running upwind when the fluyt tries to broadside you.

Takes a while and it's a bit fiddly but you should end up with it dismasted and surrendered.

Rather than sending it off to trade it can be more useful in the American theatre as a fourth rate substitute.

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try turning off volumetric effects in the graphics section; (or in other words naval combat is seriously bugged)

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Ironanvil1 has the safe way to do it. The faster way to do it is to try to separate the fluyt from the brigs/sloops. Then sink the smaller ships as fast as possible. Then use round shot and try to win the battle normally. Once you win, click on continue battle instead of end battle. Then change to chain shot/grape shot and use them. The fluyt will just be routing at that point on and you can capture it without it fighting back.

You can either board it or just use grape shot enough to reduce their men to such a low amount that they automatically surrender.

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Agreed, they are tough and sexy. When I play as dutch, I crank them out for SOLs, untill I get to build 2nd and 3rd rates.

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On turn 1, there is a small Dutch squadron in the Caribbean near your ships by Antigua. Park your fleet close to the dutch (within your intercept circle on the map). The pirates will go for the Dutch fleet; your fleet will go into the battle as reinforcements for the Dutch.

The pirates usually smash the Dutch, but not before losing all their ships besides the Fluyt, which, by the time your ships are within range, it should be considerably damaged (in the yellow or possibly orange). From there on it is a simple matter to capture the fluyt. Remember, grapeshot only really works as a raking shot.

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Grape is useful once you've used round shot to open up the hull sides

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That's a cool observation.

I've never had much success in making ships surrender. Either they sink or sink me in the process of pumping htem full of chain.

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Yeah, I learnt that lesson the hard way.

I er... managed to lose my first 4th rate trying to board a Fluyt whose top deck had been cleared completely with grape shot.
It still had 80+ guys below manning the rather more cannon than I realised & I'd failed to do any notable damage to the hull sides so the grape shot I was spewing from the 4th rate was just bouncing off

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