Own two pirate shools and four pirate vessels by the time Captain Morgan arrives.
Bronze:
Complete within 10 years.
Silver:
Complete within 5 years, 9 months.
Gold:
Complete within 4 years, 8 months.
Notes: This episode introduces the concept of pirate schools and the interrogation edict. Knowing the end date hinges on building an interrogation chamber and using
the Interrogate edict to find out when Henry Morgan is scheduled to return. You can go ahead and do it if you want but as you can see above, he is scheduled to arrive in April, 1677, so you
have exactly 10 years total to win this episode. That will cost you a few gold pieces. Again, you have a choice of what type of win you want to achieve, a maximum hoard or a gold medal. This time
you have lots of time for the gold and can control when the game ends so you should be able to get both!
You start off with a fully equipped island this time, including 3 docks, 1 brigantine, 1 sloop, black market, smuggler's dive, sea ration factory, gallows, observatory and 3 watch towers, as
well as the usual starting buildings! So this is a quick one to get going. Start by building a timber camp next to the sawmill and a second one by the bunkhouses. Fire some male workers to become lumberjacks.
Set your pirate cave to stash maximum. Kidnap a shipwright when the sloop has enough rations, then raid for captives. Buy cutlasses and rations to stock up your brigantine, set the crew distribution to Miserly, do a quicksave and
set sail for your first cruise. Note that Southern Hispaniola is quite lucrative to cruise in, but you should also explore some of the other nearby
regions for trade routes and settlements. In the meantime, build a second sawmill and then a shipyard once you have 30 lumber built up. Build a dock and
a graveyard for any pirate casualties. Build 2 or 3 more corn farms for sea rations and then
some entertainment buildings and a brewery. Build an interrogation chamber at some point if you want to add fear or want to see the message about Captain Morgan for yourself. Note that you do NOT need a pirate
interrogator for the Interrogate edict to be enabled but you do need to have the tutorial (Smitty) turned on to see the interrogation message.
Once your fourth dock is complete, put off building any new structures long enough to accumulate enough lumber for another brigantine if you can afford it, otherwise
build a smaller ship. Recruit a captain and start cruising with that ship also. Be careful about sending your ships to a region with more than 3 cannon
danger level or more than moderate great power presence. Sometimes for large rewards, you need to take larger risks, but if you explore other areas, you should
find some less dangerous ones that prove profitable too. Just be sure to quicksave and be ready to build more ships if you do take a chance.
By this stage of the game, you should be ready to build your first pirate school. These cost 40 lumber and 600 gold so
you do need some steady plunder coming in, but that should be no problem by this point. Build a swordsmanship school first and send any pirates that have low
swordsmanship for an education. See below for tips on checking pirate skills. Hold off on your second school until August or September 1671 and then
build it so it will be complete before the end of November 1671, the deadline for gold. If you have done everything right, you should have a hoard
of around 10,000 gold or more and a gold medal to boot!
Tips: Monitoring a cruise: Sometimes it is interesting to monitor a cruise to see how it is progressing. To do this, go to the strategy map and click on the ship you want
to monitor. You can then see the ship display at the bottom and watch the rations go down and the skill levels of the crew go up and hopefully see cannons added as other ships are taken. You can't do anything
here to affect the outcome, but the sea rations are a good indicator of how much longer the ship will be at sea, while the cannon count can tell how successful the cruise was.
Checking pirate skills: Once you have a pirate school, you will want to check the skills of your pirates to choose who to send to school.
Usually you will start your education on ships with a lower average skill in the type of skill they are using, such as swordsmanship if the ship is using
Board 'Em orders. These average skills can be found in the top left of the ship information panel under the ship name. But you will also want to check
individual pirate skills or you will be wasting money on educating pirates that are already skilled.
It can be quite tedious to check each pirate on a ship by going back and forth from the ship information panel to the pirate information panel.
I have found that one good way to do this is to first click on any pirate on a ship and click the skills tab (fourth from left). Then open the log book and
click on Cruise Information and select the ship you want to look at. Now click each pirate in turn and note the skill level in whatever education you want
to use on him/her. Note the sequence of the pirate in the crew so you can later come back and educate them. You can also note skills that are low for
planning which school to build next. Look at other ships while you are there to evaluate them also.
Next, go to the edicts menu and the Individual Attention section. Click on Educate Pirate (top right) and enact the
edict. Now click on the ship you looked at before and choose the noted pirates with skill needs.
Another method if you can afford it is to first enact
the education edict and then go to the pirate demographics page and click on the skill you want such as gunnery. Now control-click on the lowest rated pirates
for that skill. Usually I just do the pirates assigned to a crew and not the landlubbers, but if you have lots of money, you can do them all since landlubbers eventually head out to sea as you lose pirates or build more ships.
Own at least two frigates and accumulate a hoard of at least 2000 gold.
Bronze:
Complete by end of Dec. 1682.
Silver:
Complete within 6 years, 10 months.
Gold:
Complete within 5 years, 5.7 months.
Notes: Your first priority in this episode is to get your shipbuilding industry going. Do the usual startup procedures, i.e. build a timber
camp by the sawmill, another by the stockade, build two construction tents and build two more corn farms towards your pirate cave. Unpause and kidnap a shipwright as soon as your
sloop has enough rations, then raid for more captives. Sea rations will be slow in coming at first so may slow down your raiding and getting your brigantine
going. Build a second sawmill when you have 20 lumber and then a black market. Supply your brigantine when the black market is complete and you should be
cruising by early 1675. Before cruising, set your pirate cave to Stash Maximum, but this time set your ship's plunder shares to Generous to attract more recruits to man your frigates.
Or make sure you have lots of captives and pressgang them. When you have enough pirates, set it down to Miserly to keep your hoard up.
Another consideration for early in the game is whether or not to make peace with one of the great powers or to be independent. The advantage of
making peace is that if you achieve harmonious relations and make them your patron, France cannot attack. On the other hand, you will not be able to attack
their ships, so will lose out on some plunder. I recommend staying independent for reasons that will become obvious when you reach the next episode.
When you have 30 lumber, build your shipyard. Make sure you do not build the smaller boatyard or you will not be able to build frigates. Also build
a third dock to be ready for your ship and possibly a third sawmill to keep lumber output up. You will need 125 lumber per frigate, so it will take some time
to accumulate. Build a graveyard, brewery and a few cheap entertainment buildings before you seriously start stockpiling lumber and then hold off building
until you have enough lumber for a frigate. Also consider kidnapping a second or even third shipwright to speed up frigate production, but this is not
really necessary since you don't want to win too early and reduce your hoard size.
Recruit a captain when your frigate is built and equip it with blades from the black market. Build a fourth dock to be ready for your second frigate.
In the meantime, cruise for plunder and remember to move your cruising location around to avoid excess danger. If you lose a ship and don't have a saved game to reload,
you will have to replace it and possibly cut into your frigate production. You should have no problem reaching a hoard size of 2000.
Make sure you start your second frigate in time to be completed by mid-October, 1679 to win gold. A frigate can take 9-10 months to build with only one shipwright. My win came in Jan. 1978.
Tips: On Skilled Workers: Skilled workers can significantly speed up production of precious commodities like lumber, sea rations, iron ore and pig iron.
If you need a lot like you do in this episode, make sure you kidnap some early on. Also, make sure your skilled workers go where you want by setting the
hiring priority at the desired building higher than that of other buildings for that type of worker and the new skilled worker will go there first. One
exception I think is that if there are empty buildings, they will still go there first, but you can always fire them or block out those slots to chase them
where you want.
