Let's begin with the secret stuff!

1) Crew can remain without mutiny on your side, or without divide plunder, with one small trick. Besides having a cook, a quartermaster and the items to make them happy on long voyages (concertina etc), there is a secret. Amass so much gold as to each sailor, 1,000 gold amounts to. You can then keep going at adventuring without incidents/mishaps. Especially later with lost cities (each one yields 50.000), this is piece of cake! If you exceed the number and they get angry, just go to war against a town or something, or fight a strong warship (to have their ranks thinned by cannon barrage).

2) Find the health enhancing items as early as possible. They don't work AFTER you aged quite a bit. Also, if you try hard, you can keep pirating for a long time, since you can't die, only the speed reaction during minigames is affected by old age, lol...

3) To have an easy time getting promotions with EVERY faction, bash the pirate leaders quickly, destroy any pirate raider ship on sight and everyone is pleased; or bash the hapless indians (i wouldn't advice that, though, since they have quick boats and usually escape). Also after you find relatives, Jesuits send refugees to towns; or settlements/villages send sugar cane, or new governor, to town. Making sure those arrive successfully (by better outrunning the enemies and not fight, cause they can be other nationality vessels and not always pirates) at their destination, gets you promotion, without hatred from opposing factions.

4) Confront the spanish quest villains at open sea, if possible. Spanish ports they stop in get angry, otherwise.

5) The Jesuit relics and Indian occult artifacts are useless. Game was released early, before they finalized missions for Jesuits and Indians, so those relics do NOTHING at all!

And the common things.

1) Better capture ship, not sink.

2) Avoid broadsides, so as you don't damage your own ship and the one you hijack is in good condition, ergo sells better. Run straight at them for the swordfight with enemy captain (choose skill in fencing, obviously)!

3) Dance a lot. Many expensive items can be given to you for free, this way! There is also an item which helps you dance better!

4) You don't need to buy all pieces of treasure map. As long as the bottom right page exists (the one who says "in the vicinity of _____) and in the partial picture a recognizable landmark exists (like a town or reef), plus the X, then you are good to go. Many times i found a treasure with only the bottom right, 1/4 of the entire map! Same goes for relatives, too!

5) Jesuits tell you Raymondo's location for free! Don't pay up the tavern idiot! Also, before talking to Abbott, save game and retry, until he spawns near you, so you can catch him up quick (without spending food, months at see or your own age/health up, needlessly)! Same goes with Montalban; before saving the relative, save game and retry, until he spawns near the place you found the relative (needs spanish port, though)! And Montalban is best dealt with Cutlass (evade first, then retaliate). Don't you ever try fighting Montalban without most, if not all, of these items; Swords, Pistols, Cuirass, Fencing Shirt, or at a very advanced age, because he becomes impossible to ever beat. Don't lay siege to his base with less than 200 men!

And an easy bonus on how to get Ship of the Line (THE, tm)! Only from French and English (i have never seen Dutch having one during countless plays and the most regular one to see is an English one)! Start in "War for Profit" era. Ideally as a Dutch captain, spawning north, next to the french and english settlements. Repeatedly steal ships, MANY ships, from the closest other nationality port. After you get a bounty of at least 30.000, sometimes, a "New Warship" spawns that goes from the enemy town you pummeled, towards another town allied to it of the same nationality. Be quick to attack it, because it isn't by default hostile against you and it goes on its trip quick, only to disappear forever in the other place to which it is being headed to. Keep that save at all costs. Upgrade it fully and there you go.

just wanted to add two things:

although ship battles can be fun, the best option is to head straight for the opponent's ship and capture it - just hack away at the attack keys in the swordfight (if necessary increase the keyboard speed in the Windows control panel!)
with that you can also go pirate-hunting straight away - for example, in a recent game I bumped into the silver train after about two minutes into a new game - so I took galleon after galleon (until the last one when the game realised that my crew was only 20 while the opponent had around 180 - so although I nearly won the the sword fight (I got up to the last animation before you win), the game suddenly realised the discrepancy in crew size and I still lost (keep in mind that captured ships also require a crew of course)

another thing you might like to keep in mind is wind direction - it is not very clever to press battle when you are closer to a beach than your opponent and the wind blows on land! - try to have your opponent's ship(s) downwind when you start a battle - it helps a lot

Alsho go eashy on the rum! Makesh you tipsy. hic!

What rum? Game has no rum in it!? Only sugar cane (from which rum is made) loaded boats from settlements to towns, as a secondary mission!

Sorry, your post was so orderly followed by patricklibuda's matter of fact addendum that I could not resist a silly joke. Good tips! I have not played this game in ten years so should not comment on them anymore.

Ah and here i was hoping you would reveal a secret or an easter egg... Indians and Jesuits are NOT the ONLY things left outside of final version, sigh... It was another species of traded goods, too (rumored it being RUM, too!!!), that ultimately didn't make it to game release... Gimme some rum, mate, i was expecting the rum you promised, now don't be a cheapskate, pour us some rum, Rum, RUM, Yarrrr!

A pirate game without rum Questionmark Exclamationmark Exclamationmark Exclamationmark

Now I have bought, installed and played this again and one thing it HAS is: Cheese! Plenty cheesy...

Game centers heavily upon dancing and fencing.

It doesn't "center" on dancing, dancing is just one of the longer mini-games. You can skip it, unless you're trying to do a "perfect run". I generally only bother once in awhile. Fencing is essential, though.

Never skip dancing. It is too long and too common, I agree. But you get so many good items from it, especially early on. It would take years of pirating to amass the money to buy the items and require dozens of extra returns to port (which also costs time) to try and get the items you need.

Also I feel like there are a lot of people who play on easy difficulty and give out bad tips. You cannot just poke really fast and win at combat on the hardest difficulty. Just do it the right way, wait til he attacks, dodge, hit back. I prefer the cutlass because it lets me react quickly and is still fast enough to hit them before they recover 99% of the time if I hit back with a poke.

I personally do use cannons on ships to try and reduce their crew counts before I board. As you gain reputation with a faction you will eventually get full repairs for free. You can skip repairing and instead just sell it for full price, even if it is horribly damaged. Just so long as it has enough sails to get to port in a reasonable time.

And I personally find nothing wrong with splitting up the loot occasionally. On the hardest level, running around with a bummed out crew that is deserting at every port, slowing down your ship, making combat harder and causing you to have to scuttle ships because you don't have enough crew to man them is a hassle that costs you money in the long run. Not to mention it is risky, because if one combat goes south you could stranded or jailed and possibly lose your ship, crew, money, and a year off your life. Obviously not a concern if you save scum, but if you don't it very much matters.

Another tip is always try to engage ships that are hostile to you from upwind. That way they have to sail slowly at you, barely able to turn to fire, while you sail away and take pot shots at them, run away, turn the other way take another shot. You can even slow them down by hitting sails, then eliminate most of their crew so they just hand over the ship without a fight or any crew loss.

I agree, it can give you good stuff, sometimes. There are also other ways of acquiring that stuff. If you have to be an absolute completionist, and cannot live without your collection being completely full as soon as possible, then yes, dancing will make it quicker. If I'm trying to 100% the game, (which is only sometimes), I do more of it. But otherwise, you're in no major trouble for skipping it.

Apprentice is just "tutorial mode" anyways. Indeed, the highest difficulty is very different. Swordfighting the Marquee is a nightmare!

Marquis is the main guy, right? Agreed. That is the only part of the game that I still fear. He's always fast, always uses a rapier, and you have no crew to back you up, and he has no crew to weaken him with.

Get all the combat items, swords, armour, guns, everything you can, and visit him while you are in your prime. And don't panic!

That's the best advice for fighting him.

From what I've read, the missing trade good that was left out of the final release was tobacco.