Sid Meier's new "Pirates" game is insidious

[Forward Observer]

I just picked up Sid Meier's new "Pirates" game this week, and so far I am totally impressed. I got the DVD version and it installed without a hitch. Also on the DVD version is a video interview and "making of" movie amd concept art plus the complete original "Pirates" game that Sid put out years ago.

Also included is something you don't se much now-a-days---a really nice 150 page ring bound instruction manual.

I am now officially hooked on this damn game, and I can't remember when I have spent this much time straight, sitting glued to the PC since maybe-- RedBaron 3D or the Total War games.

I played all day Thursday, only taking meals and bathroom breaks. When I finally went to bed it was 4 AM Friday morning. Friday, I got back up at about 9 AM and played until 2 AM this morning.

I got up at 9 AM today and could not wait to get back into pillaging and plundering the Spanish Main. I decided to finally take a real break and come here to post---besides, my back and butt are hurting from setting at the PC so long.

For me this game is so much fun on so many levels, I can hardly begin to describe it. Everything is fun, but I guess I like the sea battles best. It is an absolute shame they didn't implement multiplayer for this aspect of the game. It's a bit simplistic, but still chalenging at the same time.

While not as graphically realistic looking, the open endedness and depth of gameplay of Pirates makes Akella's Pirates of the Caribbean suck big time in comparison. Heck, I'll admit it, except for the sea battles, PTOC pretty much just plain sucked on its on.

The little ships are just beautiful. They are scaled perfectly and seem quite right for the period depicted. The cannon fire is done with a slight slow motion effect, so you get to see your cannon balls, chain, or grape shot slowly arc through the air and then get to enjoy all of the destruction when you score a hit.

I just never get tired of watching the damage animations for the sea battles------tumbling masts, splintering wood, and deck explosions, which in turn cause crates, debris, and little sailors to go flying through the air and into the drink.

The sounds effects are perfect, and you can even hear the little sailors screaming.

All of the music is extremely well done, and it's good enough that you don't get tired of it after listening to it for hours on end. It's mostly origina, they did throw in a few melodies from some familiar sea shanties like "blow the man down" and "Farewell ye Spanish ladies".

There's even a little Carabbean steel drum music, which of course isn't period, but it works.

The whole game has a stylized Disney animated feature quality about it, but believe me it looks great, and it works well for the subject matter.
In fact that may be a good description of the game--it's like being in an animated Disney pirate movie--just no hanging, rotting in a gibbit, or scurvey

There are so many sub--games. Trading, collecting useful items, collecting pieces of treasure maps, searching for the treasure, searching for famous pirates (defeating them is the best way to acquire better pirate ships), following quests, searching for family members ( if you want to follow the loose story line), reading a map, navigating, learning to use the wind, sword fighting, sneaking through unfriendly towns, and lastly dancing. I suck at the dancing---it's actually one of the harder things to do in the game (or maybe it's just me}, but when you make your dancing partner happy, she instigates new quests and gives you new inventory items.

I almost forgot about the land battles---they are quite fun, but do require at little tactical thought. The pirates only get 3 units types--pirates, buccaneers, and officers, while the town defenders get infantry, cavalry, archers, Indian scouts, and artillery. Your units are in little groups of 30 or 40 men and the battles are turn based.--Its very much like chess==only animated with killing--it took me a while to get used to it, but after a couple of tries I finally took and ransacked Havana last night.

If your forces vastly out number the town---you will simply duel the captain of the guard, just like you do the captain of a ship after you board. The duels are quite fun, and somehow they have managed to seamlessly integrate your dueling moves with fully animated segues from one point of the duel to the next. Believe me the duels would do Errol Flynn proud.

One big hint if you try this game--do not play on the easy level other than to maybe get familiar with the controls.

The beginning difficulty level is just too easy and will make things seem shallow and repetitive. Believe me they are not if you start out with at least the middle of the 5 different difficulty levels.

You also have a choice of 5 different starting periods, which span the 100 years or so that is considered to be the classical age of piracy.

I have been playing only one of these start dates for almost 40 hours now, and I'm maybe only a little over 2/3rds finished. I think I just turned 50 in the game, but I have a magic Indian potion that is supposed to extend my life, so who knows how long I'll go before I have to retire to my island estate.

I also have not encountered one bug, lock-up, or glitch in game. The game just screams total polish.

Sid Meier--you insidious b*stard--I hate you!

Cheers

[Kraxis]

So is the Fast Galleon still the best pirate vessel? Or has it been scaled down to a more proper level?

What kind of ships are there?

What are the three types of pirates in land battles? Cavalry? infantry? Well I suppose infantry, but still, what is the difference between them?

Are you still on a quest to find familymembers and can you marry the governors daugher and then plunder the city afterwards (hehe I use to do that, what can be worse than to steal his daughter and then plunder his city)?

The good old Treasure Fleet and Silver Train are still in right? And you can follow in the wake of the Treasure Fleet and pick up fat galleons right (I managed to bag a 37,000 gold galleon once off northern Cuba)?

This definately sounds like a good investment for an old buccaneer like me. Yarrr!

Now Sid only needs to recreate Colonization, then I'm happy.

[Kraellin]

i always enjoy your reviews, f.o., especially when you enjoy whatever it is :)

i dont have the game yet, and was a bit dismayed that everything in every preview basically just said, this is the same old Pirates. every feature is exactly the same. almost all those items in the present game match up with the features in the old game.

however, after reading your review, i may have to re-evaluate. it seems they did keep true to the original game, but added enhancements to each aspect, and not just in the graphics and music. and one can never discount the end user's marathons as a testament to the game :) so, perhaps i will pick this up.

K.

[Forward Observer]

In the interviews with Sid, he pretty much said he wasn't going to fix what wasn't broke, but using today's PC technology bring everything up to date while maintaining the spirit of the original gameplay.

He did remove a navigation feature called sun sighting and ship versus land battles. Now you have either ship to ship combat, or you can land your ship a stretch of beach up from a port and attack by land.

If you win you get to sack the town, and even put a new governor in place on some, but not all. One neat thing here is that you can enlist the aid of local Indain tribes or local pirate clans to also attack a port.

Even if they fail, the battle will have the effect changing the port's economy from population reduction and best of all---reducing the number of soldiers protecting the port

That's how I managed to ramsack the city of Havana. They had 400 soldiers to my crew of 220. I got the closest pirate port to attack. They lost, but Havana's forces were cut in half from the battle, so I marched right in with superiour numbers, defeated the remaing soldiers, and sacked the town.

You only have 3 types of pirate land units---Officers and pirates which are both melee, and buccaneers which are ranged units with muskets.

The colonial units have infantry, town guards, cavalry, archers, artillery, and Indian scouts. Taking the high ground and fighting in the woods seems to be the best tactics for the pirates.

You can also marry a governor's daughter, but first you have to make her swoon with a perfect dance routine. Then you have to court her and duel another suitor.

I have only managed to get through 3 dances with out totallly messing up.
This only got me some clues to some fugitives with prices on their heads. You have to do it perfectly with lots of fancy twirls to make the daughter swoon. When this happens you get the girl plus clues to find lost cities.

As far as the best ships for piracy, that depends. Sloops and Brigs are quick and maneuverable, but their cargo space is limited. Of course you can have several in your fleet and even include large mechantman along for cargo capacitiy.

You only fight with one ship on your side at a time although you may be matched up to two enemies in a sea battle--usually a trade Galleon and her escort.

You can usually pull this off with a bargue, a brig, or a sloop because of their speed and maneuverability, but the the absolute best in my opinion is a frigate.

It's fast, sturdy, and packs a punch with 32 to 40 guns, according to size. I think I got mine when I finally defeated Henry Morgan in the game.

There are 10 historical pirates that you have to track down and defeat in the game--including Captain Kidd and of course---Blackbeard. You also collect pieces of maps to their buried treasures hidden all around the West Indies. Altough not true to the period they did throw in the pirate Jean Lafitte.

As I said earlier the little ships are beautifully modeled and appear to be scaled right---plus they all look correct for the periods coverd.

Here are the models included:

Barque
Brig
Brig of war
Brigantine
Coastal Barque
East Indiaman
Fast Galleon
Flag Galleon
Fluyt
Frigate
Indian canoe
Large fluyte
Large Frigate
Large Merchantman
Mail Runner
Merchantman
Ocean Barque
Pinnace
Royal Galleon
Royal Sloop
Ship of the Line
Sloop
Sloop of War
Trade Galleon
Treasure Galleon
War Galleon
West Indiaman

Hope that answeres some of your questions.

Cheers

[Bob the Insane]

arr me hearties....

Pirates don't land on UK shores unitl next Friday and I will be acquiring a copy...

Could this be the only game where is it appropriate to get a pirated copy???

Just joking...

[Kraxis]

Ah yes the Frigate, but doesn't it only come in late? I alwayd preferred to play early.

Buw WOW that is a lot of ships... Ship of the Line, GAH! Wouldn't want to fight one of those or is it just an even more unmaneuverable version of the war galleon? And Treasure Galleon, YEAH! Can't guess what such a ship transports hehe...

[Forward Observer]

Ah yes the Frigate, but doesn't it only come in late? I alwayd preferred to play early.

Buw WOW that is a lot of ships... Ship of the Line, GAH! Wouldn't want to fight one of those or is it just an even more unmaneuverable version of the war galleon? And Treasure Galleon, YEAH! Can't guess what such a ship transports hehe...

Yes, I was probably 20 years into my career before I managed to capture a 32 gun frigate.

While privateers working for a national power may have had some large ships--in real life pirates usually used small fast ships like sloops or brigantines, and they usually only picked on undefended merchantmen--avoiding contact with real disciplined naval vessels at all costs.

Of course most pirates were cruel and barbarious villains who lived very short lives and met very unglorious ends. Henry Morgan being one of the exceptions to this rule. A game depicting true pirate life would probably not be much fun, so "PIrates" obviously treats the subject with a romanticized eye while maintaining some historical accuracy.

I never played the original "Pirates" game and only have two other pirate games to compare this one to. Akella's original "Sea Dogs" was a wonderul pirate game, and even though it was not a dynamic world as Sid's game is, the naval combat of it was great.

Akella promised an updated sequel with both multiplayer and a truly dynamic game world. They failed miserably when they released the game unfinished and renamed as Pirates of the Caribbean because they snagged a movie tie in with Disney. While the graphics and sea physics were wonderful, the gameplay was buggy and basically sucked bigtime.

Akella is supposedly working on a new pirate game called Captain Blood, but after being burned by both PTOC and their other piece of buggy naval crap==Age of Sail 2, I will really be hesitant before I purchase anything else they develop.

Cheers

[Nelson]

I played all day Thursday, only taking meals and bathroom breaks. When I finally went to bed it was 4 AM Friday morning.

I hope you sent the steward down to the galley for some turkey!

I'm glad you like Pirates! so much, FO. It is one of only a handful of games that I ever played from sunset to sunrise and my computer game playing days go back to Star Trek on a mainframe in the 70s!

Now, if someone would only re-make Red Baron 3D and Panzer Commander, I would be a happy camper.

Me too. We need a good WWI flight sim and a WWII tank sim in the worst way. I would add Task Force 1942 to the list.

[Kraellin]

ah, Nelson.... i had no idea! Trek on mainframes! my first foyer into the realm of computer gaming.... also on mainframes in the early 70's :) now, did you ever play the one in which you played as an alien race in a space ship? you played against about 3 or 4 AI players, all of different races and all having different ship capabilities. i normally played the one in which you had 'torpedoes' and you had to calculate the firing vectors in your head in simulated 3d. drive me nuts a few times :)

sorry, that was off-topic. we now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

K.

[Kraxis]

Ah yes Sloops were possibly one of the most fun ships. But in old Pirates! it simply didn't have the punch to take on Galleons, and it would be ruined from a single broadside. So at least that has been remembered. But it is sad to find out you can cram 100 men onto one, as that was also a factor to keep in mind.

[nokhor]

i remember capturing war galleons with a pinnace? in the original pirates. it was extremely difficult. if you got broadsided once, you were done. you had to board it from behind and then you'd be heavily outnumbered and had to defeat the enemy captain quickly or your troops would all be killed. that was the most nerve wracking part of that game.

[Spino]

i remember capturing war galleons with a pinnace? in the original pirates. it was extremely difficult. if you got broadsided once, you were done. you had to board it from behind and then you'd be heavily outnumbered and had to defeat the enemy captain quickly or your troops would all be killed. that was the most nerve wracking part of that game.

Well nothing has changed in the new Pirates! It's still nerve wracking if you board a large vessel and your crew is seriously outnumbered. You have to be virtually flawless in your duel with the enemy captain so as to outpace your crew losses. The only difference is that in the new Pirates! the Triple Hammock ship upgrade allows smaller vessels to carry much larger crews, thus improving their odds in ship boarding actions.

FYI, when battling a ship belonging to another pirate or villain do NOT think that the white flag means you win and hostilities are over. I learned this the hard way when I pummeled Baron Raymondo's galleon into submission. As I drew my ship along side to take it as a prize I got the enemy captain surrenders screen followed by a custom pirate/villain impending duel animation. Basically regardless of whether you beat them in battle you still have to cross blades with pirates and villains in order to defeat them. However, the duels with pirates & villains following a successful sea battle seem to be easier than usual, at least that has been my experience. So once a pirate or villain vessel raises the white flag be sure to keep pounding them with grapeshot to knock their crew numbers down to a more manageable levels.

On another note I'm not sure what happens if you hit a villain's powder magazine during combat thus blasting his vessel into oblivion or simply damage its hull to the point where the ship breaks up and sinks. Do you still get a confession from the villain and a piece of the map that leads to a lost relative?

[Nelson]

ah, Nelson.... i had no idea! Trek on mainframes! my first foyer into the realm of computer gaming.... also on mainframes in the early 70's :) now, did you ever play the one in which you played as an alien race in a space ship? you played against about 3 or 4 AI players, all of different races and all having different ship capabilities. i normally played the one in which you had 'torpedoes' and you had to calculate the firing vectors in your head in simulated 3d. drive me nuts a few times :)

sorry, that was off-topic. we now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

K.

Krae, we have definitely flashed our Old Fart Club membership cards for all to see! Were you a programmer? Back in ’75 I started out writing COBOL in a shop with CDC and Burroughs mainframes. One day after Star Trek came up in a conversation with a CE, he says to me, “Let me show you this game.” So a friend and I went off with him to learn more about this underground extravaganza.

You could play with other people and/or the AI. The player was the Enterprise, an E in the center of the screen. When your shields were up, you looked like this (E). That was the extent of the graphics. Kingons were Ks, Romulans were Rs and torpedoes were Ts. Yeah, the vector had to be computed in your head! Stars were * of course. All in beautiful monochrome green. It was written in ALGOL. I learned ALGOL just so I could modify the game to include M5 robot ships to help me out. I could give the M5s simple orders and they would fight my enemies. It was geeky but life was good in the soft glow of late night coding, testing, pizza eating and Klingon bashing. Little did I know that in just 9 years I would own my own C64!

Go get ‘em, M5! The @ was an explosion!


* . * (K@ *. T T (M) *

* *
* (E) *

And just so I'm topical, I bought Pirates! for my wife to give me for Christmas. Every man needs toys for Christmas. $40 on sale at Best Buys.

[Nelson]

sorry to be slightly OT-ish, but Nelson and Forward Observer, if by "Panzer Commander" you were referring to SSI's Panzer General, then there kinda is a kind of remake.

Bloodrast, the Panzer Commander FO and I refer to is a first person WWII tank sim published about 6 years ago, IIRC, also by SSI. It looked great and was fun to play but was limited by the omission of infantry and a truly dynamic campaign (the lack of which has been the bane of many a sim). The graphics were very good though.

[Kraellin]

nelson,

well, i've got ya beat by about two years :) somewhere after '71, but before '74, a friend showed me that we could sneak into the local and very new computer department of the local community college. they had a computer lab, with terminals set up around the room and on desks. they also had a few trs 80's on one side. the terminals, of course, were hooked to the mainframe(s).

we spent many an hour in there and finally came to find out that we didnt have to sneak around at all. they actually welcomed 'outsiders' as a promotional thing to try to get folks interested and signed up. i never took any classes, but i did buy a couple of the basic books for the trs 80's and learned to write my first code in BASIC. naturally, my first lines of code were of the entrance, in first person, to a cave (or castle, since it was all drawn line by line in straight lines only :) man, that thing was slow :)

and yes, good old Trek!

. . . . . . . . (8 by 8 grid or, one sector)
. . . . . . . .
. . *. . . . . (*'s were stars)
. . . . . . . .
. . . . . E. . (yeah, E or X was the Enterprise)
. . . . T. . .(T was indeed torpedo)
. . K. . . . . (yup, K was for Klingons)
. . . . . . . .

you also had phasers, but in the early versions there was no representation for this. you simply got a text message of a hit or miss. i believe we had shields, but they werent represented graphically either, as i recall. but another text thing kept track of it.

the overall game had the 8 x 8 grid for the sector, but the overall game was 8 x 8 sectors. you were given the mission to move through the sectors and find a known quantity of klingons and destroy them. you had a limited amount of turns/time to do this. the overall map was a simple display of:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
a . . . . . 1 . .
b . . . 2 . . . .
c 1 . . . . . . .
d . . . . . 4 . .
e . . . 3 . . . .
f . 1 . . . . . .
g . . . . . . 2 .
h . 2 . . 1 . . .

so, you could warp to sector 1a or 5b or 3c, and so on. the numbers in those sectors represented the number of klingons in each. but, they moved each turn, or at least could move each turn. you never knew. and yes, your display was that ugly white on green :)

the game was just about as simple as you can get with a computer game, but i was entranced. that was just too cool :) a year or two later i hooked up with a guy who worked on mainframes, repairing and maintaining. we decided we could make a business of this and what if we linked up computers in 'arcades' and let folks play this sort of thing.....and, and, what if we hooked up with someone like 'Playboy' and introduced this 'network' to all the playboy mansions so that folks could play anyone else in any other playboy mansion! hehe...my creative processes were going full tilt.

alas, my friend only had a passing interest in all this, and i, sadly, wasnt trained and knowledgable enough, nor did i have enough captial, to start this up by myself. and, inevitably, others finally made the creative leaps to all those things i had envisioned earlier :) i was WAY ahead of the pack on this one.

i could also give you a clue as to where computers and computer gaming are going, but that would spoil the surprise :) trust me, there's some cool stuff eventually going to be produced. this industry is still in its infancy, somewhere around the crawling stage. there's lots more to come. things like multi dimensional logic...oh wait, you're not quite ready for that yet ;)

K.

oh yeah.... i like Pirates. ;)

[Blodrast]

Bloodrast, the Panzer Commander FO and I refer to is a first person WWII tank sim published about 6 years ago, IIRC, also by SSI. It looked great and was fun to play but was limited by the omission of infantry and a truly dynamic campaign (the lack of which has been the bane of many a sim). The graphics were very good though.

oh, I see. My mistake then. Damn, how come I missed this one ? :)