The Treasure Fleet Campaign Mission

[hopitalbomber]

I can't figure out how to beat this mission. I have two frigates and one brigatine, and I keep sending them out on the Northern Cuban Coast cruising around. However, they still haven't found the treasure fleet. Do I need to build more ships or what?

[TJ]

When you start the scenanio it should have the Spanish trade route in the Northern Cuban Coast. It is just a matter of cruising to build up your hoard to the required amount. Nothing else special about this mission. If you cruise enough, the local Spanish traffic should end up as Teeming. For my game, I had a Frigate, a Brigantine and 3 Schooners. I may have been cruising more with 5 ships. You could try adding two more ships to your fleet whether they are Schooners or a Brig or two.

[Jebus]

My second cruise with the two starting ships, I lost both of them.  I looked at the map right afterwards, and the Spanish forces were already teeming.  I had all of maybe 4 pirates and the 2 captains left, and not enough captives to spare to man a large ship, so now I'm working on trying to get enough of gold from my entertainment and my Smuggler's Cove to beat this mission, but I'm not sure if I'll be successful.  At least I started the mission with 19000 gold, so I won't have to worry about that.

[TJ]

You can always cruise other areas. There is nothing saying you have to attack the treasure fleet.

[Charlemagne]

Yes, that's right. The trade route IS the treasure fleet, and its a real challenge to survive in that area with small ships. There are tough naval escorts (etc.)

Probably try other areas until you are strong enough to take it on. It ends up being a brute force episode I think, though of course the smuggler's cove with France can help.

[Jebus]

I ended up beating it using the above method, with some minimal cruising using a snow and a brig in Northern Hispaniola.  The fact that I captured 6 or so wealthy captives on my first cruise with each ship definetely helped, since I didn't ransom them until they were worth 1300 or more a piece.  I think my final score was 16244 with a silver medal, and a hoard of 10296.

[baccus17]

Are captives given to you on this episode?

I just tried it for the first time, and was expecting France to dump some working captives on me.  Didn't happen before I was beheaded.  

As a general starting strategy for this mission, are y'all  building the Black Market to get at least cutlasses on your ships, or going through the make-your-own routine?

-baccus

[Jebus]

When I played this mission, I built a black market, so I could start cruising as soon as possible (and cause I think I started with some insane amount of money).  There's currently a thread on the scripting board that talks about how the script is messed up for this, and you don't get captives.  One of the other posters edited the .txt file, so that now it does give you captives.  You can download the updated version from that thread.

(The thread can be found at http://dynamic3.gamespy.com/~tropico/cafe/index.php?board=21;action=display;threadid=6997)

[CafeDave]

I just finished this one last night, squeaking by with a bronze in the very last month.  

It is a tough one with no captives coming in.  My strategy was to build the black market and supply cutlasses only for the first frigate only.  I used the schooner for raiding and kidnapping only at this point.

My first cruise with the frigate was amazingly successful, with $10,800 gold, 22 wealthy, 1 skilled and 10 recruits!  The next two were similar, but on the fourth, she sank.  

I was getting  low on money and captives at this point, so I tried a cruise with the schooner and she immediately sank too.  Luckily I did have a shipyard, but only one shipwright in process of building another frigate so it took a long time to get going.  My advice is to kidnap 3 right away so you can build faster.

I went through several brigs and built another snow just for raiding but did send it on one cruise near the end and it was very successful too.  In the last few months, in desperation, I set all my ships to miserly and got lucky with three good cruises and lots of wealthy captives, so ransoming them put me over the top with a hoard of 11,717 and score of 22,676.

So the bottom line is to keep cruising and raiding and be sure to have a good ship or boatyard building ships constantly.  You will need at least a couple of good sawmills going to do this too.  It's a matter of luck and brute force as Charlemagne says.

[Charlemagne]

I think, all things considered, I'm going to go ahead and correct the script for this episode (in the patch) and give you some captive deliveries. Seems like we shouldn't rely so much on luck, and I agree that this episode in paritcular (as is) does rely on lots of luck.

[El Cpitaine]

On this mission I avoid the N Cuba coast until I have a large enough fleet (3 friigates, but maybe 2 would do) to handle the navy. Then I hit 'em and hit 'em hard.

Each month I'm hitting another quadrant, there is a chance of naval ships moving out of North Cuba and more commercial ships moving in.