Comprehensive Guide to Land Battles

INTRODUCTION
	Whether you wish to vanquish the evil Marquis de la Montalban, cleanse the Caribbean of the cancerous Spanish, or become the most notorious pirate of all time, you will need to capture a city or two. This guide will outline the various factors, strategies, and benefits involved with land battles.

INITIATING A LAND BATTLE
	Land battles can be initiated in any of these scenarios;
		1. The player walks into a city.
		2. The player sails into a city whose faction has a bounty on their head.
		3. Entering Montalban's hideout.
	Land battles cannot be initiated with towns, pirate havens, indian villages, and jesuit missions. Additionally, you cannot engage in a land battle with a city that has significantly more soldiers than you have pirates. Finally, if the city has less than 100 soldiers, you will instead engage the captain of the guard in a swordfight instead of the land battle.

ENEMY STRENGTH
	The strength of the enemy is entirely based on the number of soldiers that the city has. The exact number is shown when initiating a land battle, and is unique to every city.  The size of the gun battery in front of the city can also give a rough estimate as follows;
		No battery: 40-100 soldiers
		Single battery: 120-200 soldiers
		Double battery: 200-350(?) soldiers
		Triple battery: 350(?)-600(?) soldiers
		Quadruple battery: 600+(?) soldiers
	This value can be modified in a number of ways;
		1. Lowered by pillaging the city
		2. Lowered by having pirates raid the city
		3. Raised by having a "Transporting Troops" or "Transporting Immigrants"(?) ship enter the city

BASICS
	Land battles are a turn-based strategy event which shares many gameplay features with the Sid Meier's Civilization series of games. The player controls several units with different strengths and weaknesses, with the goal of taking out all of the enemy AI's units, or reaching the city gates with any of your units.
	Once you initiate a land battle, you are brought to a new screen displaying the uninhabited land that surrounds the city. You are given three starting locations for your units. Usually, there is one on the left, centre, and right side of the field.

TILES
	Each land battle field is composed of X randomly selected tiles. The order of these tiles is different every battle, but there will always be a path to the city's gates. There are three types of tiles; normal, rocky, and forest. 
	- Normal tiles have no special attributes. 
	- Rocky tiles cannot be moved to by any friendly or enemy unit.
	- Forest tiles have a number of unique attributes depending on the unit that is attacking or standing in the tile, and these will be outlined in the UNITS section.

CONTROLS
	Land battles involve three menus which can be accessed by holding down SHIFT, holding down CTRL, or holding down neither. 
	- The default menu allows you to move the selected unit to an adjacent tile, or attack from long range if the unit can see an enemy and has muskets as a weapon. 
	- The SHIFT menu allows you to select the next unit (this can also be done by left-clicking the desired unit), skipping the selected unit's turn. zooming in on the field, toggling a grid overlay on the field, centring the camera on the selected unit, changing a musket unit's target if more than one is availalbe, and retreat from the battle.
	- The CTRL menu allows you to change the direction that the selected unit is facing. (see the TACTICS section for more details)

ENDING A LAND BATTLE
	A land battle can be ended in one of four ways;
		1. All enemy units are defeated (win)
		2. One of your units reaches the city gates tile (win)
		3. All of your units are defeated (loss)
		4. The "retreat" button is pressed (loss)

GAMEPLAY
	Once you have initiated the land battle and have chosen your start location, the battle is played similarly to a turn-based strategy game. Each side will take turns moving their units and attacking each other, with the player going first,  until one of the end conditions is met.
	Each unit has a certain amount of health represented by the number of people in the unit and the condition of the flag flying above it. Once the unit's health gets too low, it will be defeated and leave the field.
	Each friendly unit can move up to two tiles in normal terrain, or one tile in forest terrain. No friendly or enemy units can move onto rocky terrain tiles.
	Each unit has up to two attack styles; melee and ranged. Melee units can only attack by walking into a tile that is occupied by an enemy unit. Ranged units can use melee attacks and have the option of attacking from long range. Melee attacks will always end in either one of the sides defeating the other, or both sides defeating each other at the same time. Ranged attacks remove a percentage of the target's total health, and the unit will retreat if their total health drops too low. Ranged attacks can only be executed on targets that are close enough (~4 tiles) to the ranged unit. Ranged units are not able to shoot through multiple forest tiles.

ATTACK/DEFENCE POWER
	The winner of a melee attack is determined by a number of variables;
	- Attack power (1-8): This is the attacking unit's base power. Unique to every type of unit, never changes.
	- Defence power (1-5): This is the defending unit's base power. Unique to every type of unit, never changes.
	- Morale (0-3): If Unit A was attacked and damaged previously, Unit B gets a bonus equal to the number of times Unit A was attacked. 0 if both units were attacked the same number of times.
	- Height (0-2): The height difference of the tiles that both units are on. Whoever has the high ground gets a bonus depending on how high it is relative to the other unit's location. 0 if both units are on the same height.
	- Cover (x1/2): If the unit is standing on a forest tile and is hit by a ranged attack, the attack does half the normal damage.
	- Forest (x1/3): If the Cavalry unit is fighting on a forest tile, its power is a third of the normal amount.
	- Flank attack (x2): If the defending unit is facing away from the attacking unit when it is attacked, the attacking unit's power is doubled.
	- Ambush (x2): If the attacking unit moves into an occupied tile, but could not see the enemy unit there, the enemy's defence power is doubled.

UNIT TYPES
	There are three different units available to the player, and five different units available to the enemy. The quantity of pirates/soldiers determines the types and quantities of units that are involved in the land battle. Each unit has an attack power, defence power, fighting stylve, and special attributes. These eight units are;

~Officers~
Attack: 5
Defence: 5
Style: Melee
Special Attributes: None.
Notes: Friendly only. Maximum of 1.

~Pirates~
Attack: 4
Defence: 3
Style: Melee
Special Attributes: None.
Notes: Friendly only. You will have approximately the same amount of these as buccaneers.

~Buccaneers~
Attack: 1
Defence: 1
Style: Ranged
Special Attributes: None.
Notes: Friendly only. You will have approximately the same amount of these as pirates. 

~Infantry~
Attack: 4
Defence: 2
Style: Ranged
Special Attributes: None
Notes: Enemy only.

~Guards~
Attack: 4
Defence: 3
Style: Ranged
Special Attributes: None
Notes: Enemy only.

~Cavalry~
Attack: 8
Defence: 4
Style: Melee
Special Attributes: +1 movement in normal terrain, x1/3 power in forest terrain
Notes: Enemy only. Only used when the enemy has 100+ more soldiers than you.

~Scouts~
Attack: 4
Defence: 3
Style: Melee
Special Attributes: No movement penalty in forest terrain.
Notes: Enemy only.

~Archers~
Attack: 2
Defence: 2
Style: Ranged
Special Attributes: No movement penalty in forest terrain.
Notes: Enemy only.

REWARDS
	If you are successful in defeating all enemy units or reaching the city's gates, you will be rewarded with a large sum of gold! The amount of gold plundered depends on the current wealth of the city. This is shown on the world map by the number of coins beside a city's name, the city's prefix (Wealthy, Prosperous, Poor), the condition of the city's flag on the overworld, and the music that plays when visiting the city. This value can be modified in a number of ways;
		1. Lowered by pillaging the city
		2. Lowered by having pirates raid the city.
		3. Raised by having indians raid the city.
		3. Raised by having a "Transporting Sugarcane", "Transporting New Governor", or "Military Payroll" ship enter the city.
	Apart from gold, you will also receive favour from any faction that was at war with the city's faction, and lose favour with those at peace with it.
	If you ransack a city while having ~30-40% more crew than their soldier count, you have the option to change that city's faction. Changing the faction to one that was at war with the old faction is a great way to get promoted quickly.

OTHER NOTES
	- Marquis de la Montalban will only use scouts and archers to defend his hideout.

STRATEGIES
	Taking on the larger cities with a 200-300 pirate disadvantage is possible with the right tactics and a bit of luck. Here are some of the tactics I've used to help with this endeavor;
- Retreat and retry if the terrain is bad or if you are losing (hopefully you quick-saved beforehand). This is faster than waiting to get killed off by the enemy.
- Flank as much as possible! If you have significantly more power than the enemy, you will not lose any health and will be able to attack again.
- Try to use pirates and buccaneers as tanks over the officers, as they are weaker and more numerous.
- Be sure to stand in forest tiles as much as possible. This allows your units to endure significantly more ranged attacks. Also, when the enemy has cavalry, it will lose against your pirates and officers.
- Don't forget about the city gates! Often, it is faster to move there instead of hunting down the two or three enemy units that are trying to flank you. The city will still lose the same amount of soldiers and gold. This is also the best way to win when you have a unit disadvantage. move most of your units to one side, and send a pirate + buccaneer around the other side.
- Avoid attacking Pirate raiders and Indian war canoes, as they will reduce the soldier count of a city and make it easier to capture.
- Attack any "Invasion Force", "Transporting troops", and "Transporting immigrants" ships. These will increase the number of soldiers in their destination city.

Guide - Beautiful Wife

With a short run time and significantly less RNG involved, the Beautiful Wife category is a great start for new runners, if you can manage the dancing minigame.

~Steps to Marriage~
0. Character Choices: Adventurer, Wit and Charm, 1640, Spain
1. Reach Colonel rank
2. Dance 1
3. Ruby ring
4. Defeat fiancé
5. Dance 2
6. Fight Mendoza
7. Marriage

~Character Choices~
 - Adventurer difficulty. This is currently the lowest accepted difficulty, and lower difficulty levels make swordfighting and sailing easier.
 - Wit and Charm. This allows you to dance with beautiful daughters at a lower rank, and helps you with the dancing minigame. This will save quite a bit of time grinding out promotion levels.
 - 1640 Spain: This gives us the Mail Runner as our starting ship. It is the strongest ship of the fastest class of ship in the game, and we don't need the extra crew space that bigger ships offer. 1600 Spain, 1620 Spain, and 1640 France starts us with a pinnace, which is slightly weaker but just as fast.

~Colonel Rank~
Your starting city and the surrounding settlements will play a big part in determining the best strategy for reaching colonel rank fast. If you are surrounded by only Spanish cities, you can focus on pirate or indian ships. If you have other nations nearby, you should ask the bartenders and try to find one that has a beautiful daughter before attacking ships from a specific nation. In addition, you want to find a city with a beautiful daughter that is close to another Spanish city (or multiple). This will help save time later on.

Once you've found your future wife, you can focus on grinding promotion levels for that nation. The fastest way to do so is by taking out notorious pirates or helping with transport missions. If none are nearby, you'll need to capture ~10 regular enemy ships for colonel rank. Look for indian villages and pirates havens, as they typically spawn multiple ships after you agree to help them.

While you are capturing ships and earning promotions, be sure to talk to the mysterious stranger every chance you can until he offers to sell you a ruby ring. If you're low on gold, keep a few of your captured ships to sell instead of sinking them.

~Dancing~
Once you reach colonel rank, you will be asked for a dance. This minigame involves watching your partner's hand movements and reacting with the correct dance move. If you miss too many moves, the daughter will ditch you on the dance floor and you will not progress the marriage questline. 

The best way to succeed in this minigame is to memorize which hand movement corresponds to which button. I would also recommend pressing the numpad keys on your keyboard instead of clicking the on-screen buttons. Practice makes perfect! If you're still having trouble identifying the hand movements, check out the existing runs for this category.

~Ruby Ring~
After the first dance, your future wife will express her desire for a "flashing" ruby ring. These can only be purchased from the mysterious traveler in the back of the tavern. If you haven't got one already, be sure to have ~2000 gold, and then keep leaving and entering the city until you can buy one.

~Jealous Fiancé~
At your next meeting with the beautiful daughter after giving her the ring, she will mention that her jealous fiancé has challenged you to a duel. Leave and re-enter the city, and then offer to "deal with him quickly". The duel is a fairly easy and straightforward swordfight at this difficulty level. On swashbuckler difficulty, this guy can be even tougher than Montalban, depending on how old you are.

After defeating him, you are asked for another dance. The same tips and tricks for the first dance apply here. After completing the dance, leave the city and quick-save right before entering it again.

~Colonel Mendoza~
Upon returning to the governor, he will inform you that his daughter has been kidnapped by the evil Colonel Mendoza. He will spawn in a random Spanish city, akin to Baron Raymondo and Marquis Montalban. If he did not spawn near you, quick-load and talk to the governor again until he does.

Once he's nearby, simply engage him in battle, crash into him to start a swordfight, and defeat him to rescue your soon-to-be wife. Sail back to the city and return her to the governor.

~Marriage~
Return to the city one last time. Ask for the daughter's hand in marriage and watch the cutscene. Timer stops when the city menu appears after the cutscene. If you accidentally skipped the cutscene, don't worry! I will add the appropriate amount of time to the final time.

Good luck!

Rank Guide

Hi everyone, hope you’re doing well. I’ve been researching how the rank system works in this game, and I thought I would share my findings.

**Rank Calculation Process**

Here is how the rank calculations work in this game. Whenever you talk to a governor, the following rank calculation is used to determine if you rank up:

nationHappyPoints + cityHappyPoints >= rankThresholdValue

If the combined value of your nationHappyPoints and cityHappyPoints is greater or equal to the threshold value for ranking up for the rank you are trying to get, then you will be promoted.

Now, I’ll explain what nationHappyPoints and cityHappyPoints are.

nationHappyPoints is your current happy point level for the nation that the governor belongs to. Each nation keeps track of how happy they are with you at any given time using happy points. If you help a nation out by fighting their enemies and furthering their political interests, your happy point level for that nation will go up. On the other hand, if you attack a nation, your happy point level with them will go down. You have a separate happy point level for each nation: Spain, France, England, and the Dutch.

cityHappyPoints is your current happy point level for the specific city that the governor belongs to. Each city in the game has a separate happy point level, and you can increase or decrease this level by doing actions that specifically help that city. For example, escorting seedlings or a new governor to a city will increase your cityHappyPoint level, while repeatedly shooting at the city with your cannons will decrease your cityHappyPoint level. So if you want to rank up as fast as possible, it’s a good idea to check in with governors in cities that you’ve helped out a lot.

The rank thresholds for each rank are described in the table below. Surprisingly, it looks like the thresholds are the same on every difficulty level.

**Rank Thresholds**

One important thing to note is that the rank calculation expression described above only applies for ranks after you reach captain (the first rank). The captain promotion check is very simple, if you have 3 or more nationHappyPoints, you will rank up to captain. If you have less than 3 nationHappyPoints, you won’t get to the captain rank.

Now that we’ve clarified that point, we can look at the thresholds you need to achieve each rank. Here's a table describing it (sorry for the formatting, speedrun.com doesn't seem to support tables :( ).

Rank | happyPoint Threshold (cumulative) | Additional Points Needed Since Last Rankup

Captain | 3* | N/A

Major | 6 | 3

Colonel | 11 | 5

Admiral | 16 | 5

Baron | 23 | 7

Count | 30 | 7

Marquis | 39 | 9

Duke | 48 | 9

*(Must have >= 3 nationHappyPoints)

**Happy Point Conversion**

We’ve now covered how the game checks to see if you are eligible to rank up, but we still need to talk about what happens after you rank up. Once you are promoted, the game will take the excess amount of points you have and convert them into acres on your estate (50 acres per extra point). 

These excess points will NOT CARRY OVER. So if you want to rank up as fast as possible, you should stick as close to the promotion point threshold values as possible, because going over the thresholds will just lead to wasted points.

This whole process is kind of complicated lol, so let's look at an example of how this works:

You are currently rank 4 (Admiral) and talk to the governor with 22 nationHappyPoints and 3 cityHappyPoints. This gives a combined nationPoints + happyPoints value of 25.

The threshold for rank 5 (Baron) is 23, and since you have 25 total points, you rank up to Baron.

Next, since you have 2 extra points (25 - 23 = 2), those 2 points are converted to acres and you will receive 100 acres.

Since the two extra points don’t carry over, the game subtracts the 2 extra points from your nationHappyPoints score. So after promoting, your new nationHappyPoints value is 20 (22 - 2 = 20).

The game will always subtract the amount of extra points from your nationHappyPoints score, not your cityHappyPoints score.

**Gaining and Losing Happy Points**

So now that we know how the system works, how do we actually gain happy points? Here is a list of all of the ways I have found to gain (and lose) happy points. 

The 1st column shows the action that will gain/lose points. The 2nd column is how many nationHappyPoints you will gain/lose from the nations affected by the action. The 3rd column is how many cityHappyPoints you will cain/lose from the city affected by the action.

Note that there are a *lot* of ways to gain and lose happy points in the game, and the conditions surrounding point gains can sometimes be difficult to discern. So while I’ve tried to make this table as accurate as possible, I have almost certainly have missed some things. Please let me know if you found any omissions or inaccuracies and I will update the table.


Action | nationHappyPoints | cityHappyPoints

Deliver Ultimatum | +1 | 0

Deliver Peace Proposal | +1 (both nations) | 0

Defeat Named Pirate | +3 (all) | 0

Defeat Generic Ship** | +1 or +2 (enemies) -1 or -2 (allies)* | 0

Ultimatum Lost at Sea | -1 | 0

Peace Proposal Lost at Sea | -1 | 0

Priest Proposing Amnesty Vanishes | -1 | 0

Governor Fails to Arrive | -3 | -1

Sack City | +2 (enemies) -2 through -6 (sacked nation) | 0

Install New Governor via Sacking | +2 | +2

Promoted at City | 0 | +1

Danced Successfully | 0 | +1 

Give Necklace/Ring to Daughter | 0 | +1

Beat Fiance at Sword Fight | 0 | +1

Rescue Daughter from Mendoza | 0 | +1

Bribe Governor | 0 | +1

Pirate Amnesty | 0 | =1 (set to 1)

Install New Governor via Ship Escort | +1 | +2

Defeat Wanted Criminal at Tavern | +2 | +2

Escort Seedlings to City | +1 | +1

Escort Immigrants to City | +1 | +1

Spend Time in Prison | 0 | -1 (per prison cycle spent)

Shoot Cannon at City | 0 | -1*** 

After Installing New Governor via Sacking City | 0 | =1 if your current cityHappyPoints <= 0

Attack Inbound Traffic to City**** | 0 | -1

Attack Outbound Traffic from City | 0 |-1 (if allied to city)

Sink Ship via Cannons | +1 (all hostile nations) -1 (all allied nations)* | 0

Attack Ship, Then Run Away Without Damaging It | 0 | 0

Attack Ship, Damage It, Then Run Away |+1 (all hostile nations) -1 (all allied nations)* | 0

Defeat Enemy Governor in Ship | +3 (hostile nations) -3 (governor's nation)* | -1

Seedling Lost | 0 | 0

Defeat Indians Attacking a City (first ship attacked) |+2 (nation it's attacking) (total) +1 (others) | 0

Defeat Indians Attacking a City (subsequent ships attacked) | +1 (all) | 0

Defeat Pirates Attacking a City |+2 (nation it's attacking) +1 (others) | 0

Refusing to Dance With Daughter | 0 | 0

Military Troops/Payroll Vanishes | 0 | 0

Attacking Traffic Near a City |0 | -1?*****

Troops Arrive at City | 0 | 0

Divide Plunder | positive values: no effect negative values: will fluctuate some it seems |

0 (but will tend to stabilize towards 0 based on monthly reversion to mean logic)




* You don’t suffer the negative happy point penalty here while playing on Apprentice

** (Whether you gain/lose 1 or 2 points depends on the ship you are attacking. I think whether it's 1 or 2 is reflected in the log via the happy/very happy language, so try using that to check. Also sometimes the nation who you're fighting against just don't get mad at you for some unknown reason that I haven't figured out yet)

*** (Around ~30% chance per shot, occurs when you press button to shoot and not when cannonball lands)

**** (Seems to only subtract if you attack the ship near its destination)

***** (It seems like attacking traffic that's just nearby a city can make them mad at you. I haven't been able to fully analyze how this works though)



One more thing to add is that your nationHappyPoints can never fall below 0, while your cityHappyPoints can drop below 0.



**Difficulty Level**

Surprisingly, it looks like the rank up process works the same for every difficulty level except for Apprentice. I would’ve thought that it would be harder and more time-consuming to rank up on Swashbuckler than on Journeyman, but I haven’t found any differences at all between these two ranks (excepting for the fact that combat will be more difficult on the higher difficulties of course).

The only differences when playing on Apprentice seem to be that nations don’t get mad at you for certain things that they would normally penalize you for. For example, capturing a Spanish ship would normally cause you to lose 1-2 nationHappyPoints for Spain depending on the ship type. But on Apprentice, you don’t lose any nationHappyPoints for this. However, apart from this minor difference, the Apprentice difficulty seems to work the same as the other ones. I’ve also tried to capture the differences with Apprentice on the chart above.

**cityHappyPoints Mean Reversion Mechanic**

Another thing to note is that at the end of every month, the game will select 3 cities at random. It will then move your cityHappyPoint value for each selected city 1 point closer to 0. The same city can be selected multiple times. This is a bit confusing, so I’ll explain it with an example.

Example: At the end of January, the game selects Tortuga, Florida Keys, and Tortuga at random. Your current Tortuga cityHappyPoints is 4, and your current Florida Keys cityHappyPoints is -1.

The game will reduce your Tortuga cityHappyPoints from 4 -> 2 and it will increase your Florida Keys cityHappyPoints from -1 -> 0.

It looks like this mechanism is intended to represent that each city’s opinion of you will slowly revert to the mean over time.

**Unfriendly Cities**

Some cities also just plain don’t like you for some reason. The following cities will reset your cityHappyPoints at the end of every single month to the specified values if you ever go above these thresholds:

Reset to -1 at end of every month if over -1 points: Havana, Panama, San Juan

Reset to 0 at end of every month if over 0 points: Santiago, Nombre De Dios, Puerto Bello, Vera Cruz, Cartagena, Gran Granada

Example: On January 31, you have a cityHappyPoints value of 3 in Santiago and 2 in Havana. Once the calendar reaches February 1, your cityHappyPoints for Santiago will drop to 0, and your cityHappyPoints for Havana will drop to -1.

The real question is: why are these cities so unfriendly :( 

This truly is one of the great mysteries of Sid Meier’s Pirates. Also… there is a bright spot here.

**Cumana, the Best City of All Time**

Cumana is apparently the most amazing city ever. At the end of every month, if you have a negative (or 0) cityHappyPoints score with Cumana, it will get reset to 1!!! No matter how mad you make Cumana, they will always forgive you. Hooray for Cumana!

**Strategic Thoughts**

So, how can this information actually be used to help speedrun? Originally, I was looking into this to try to reroute the Marriage% category. I thought if I could find a fast way to rank to Colonel, I could save time at the beginning of the run. 

I tried a couple things, but unfortunately I wasn’t really able to come up with a better route than the current setup. So please take a look at this data and let me know if I missed something :) 

Another way this information could be used is to optimize the 126 fame route. I haven’t run this category yet, but I think this could potentially be helpful there to minimize the amount of time grinding ranks. It’s also just kind of neat to know how this all works in general. The rank mechanics are actually a lot more intricate than I would’ve thought lol.

**How I Found This Information**

I dug through the x86 assembly code using the free version of IDA, which is a decompiler. You have to decompile the executable to look at the assembly, and since the steam version of the game has a jumbled executable file, it seems that you can’t decompile that. I was able to find a copy of the .exe online, and I used that for the decompilation.

Note that I own the game, and the .exe I found isn’t a complete version of the game, as it doesn’t contain the other game assets. So you need to combine the .exe with the other game files to get it to run. Please don’t be a pirate in the real world and support the devs :)

Also, let me know if you are interested in seeing my version of the .i64 assembly file that I’ve started commenting/naming functions on, and I can see if I can get that to you.

**Fun Trivia**

I found out some cool things while researching this that I didn’t know before. Some neat bits of trivia that got cut from the final game:

- Disease was originally going to be a mechanic in the game, and Indian villages could send you healers to help treat the plagues for afflicted cities.
- There were missions where you escort holy relics to cities.
- There’s dialogue indicating that cities could be destroyed and turned into settlements. That would’ve been interesting!
- You could protect Indian villages from attack in order to gain influence with them.
- There’s a hidden dev menu that lets you try out the different minigames from the main menu. It’s really cool! You can’t access it normally though, you have to modify the game’s code in order to actually use this menu. I’ll try to make a video showcasing it at some point.

**Conclusion**

Anyways, I hope you find this guide interesting and/or useful. Have a good day :) 

Small Timesaving Strategies

This is an ongoing collection of strategies for saving small amounts of time in your runs. Once you're getting close to record times, learning these techniques may be enough to get you that world record!

If there are any tips that I missed, let me know and I'll add them!


~General~

Faster Loading Times: I find that the loading times for cutscenes are significantly longer when they are loading for the first time in a play session. Before starting your runs, do a practice run where you try to trigger as many cutscenes as you can. They will load faster on subsequent runs.

Skipping Cutscenes/Animations: Nearly every cutscene and most NPC interaction animations can be skipped by left-clicking anywhere on the screen. The only cutscenes that should NOT be skipped are the marriage and Montalban victory cutscenes when running the Beautiful Wife and any% categories. Here's some of the animations/cutscenes that can be skipped this way:
	- Intro bartender/captain animations
	- Sailing to the new world cutscene
	- All governor/daughter interaction animations
	- All tavern interaction animations
	- Pre- and post-swordfight cutscenes
	- Finding lost relative/lost city/buried treasure cutscene
	- Jailed/marooned cutscene
	- Marriage cutscene (Categories other than Beautiful Wife)

Faster Timeskipping: After dividing the plunder or being marooned or jailed, multiple dates will be shown to indicate the passage of time. These can appear faster by left-clicking instead for waiting for them to appear.


~Special Items~

The items listed below are the only ones worth picking up to save time.

Balanced Swords: Increases your attacking speed. Speeds up every swordfight by a bit, and on higher difficulties, this will allow you to attack without blocking first on most fights.

Pistols: Gives you a free attack at the start of every swordfight. Speeds up every swordfight by 1-2 seconds.

Armor: Gives you a chance you automatically block a thrust attack. Can save time if you miss the parry, and allows you to attack more aggressively.

Fencing Shirts: Increases your defending speed. Not as important as the swords and pistols, but it can save you some significant time if you would have missed the block otherwise.

Jewelry: Given to the governor's daughter for a reward and to progress the marriage storyline. Essential for 126 Fame and Beautiful Wife categories, but useless otherwise.

Medicine: Reduces the speed at which your age hurts your swordfighting/dancing skills. Very helpful for 126 Fame and other long runs, but useless otherwise.

Musical Instruments: Reduces the speed at which your crew's morale decreases. These give you a few more months to earn enough gold to keep your crew permanently happy, but are useless on the shorter run categories.

Rutters: These will show the location of small settlements in areas that you haven't been to. Helpful in the 126 Fame category when trying to find buried treasure, lost cities, or relatives, but useless otherwise.


~Swordfighting~

Adventurer Aggression: On higher difficulties, it is basically required to block before attacking, due to how fast the enemies can block and attack. On adventurer difficulty, however, you can usually get away with attacking right after you see the enemy start their attack.

Final Thrust: There are instances where both a thrust or a chop/slash will be enough to win the swordfight. In normal circumstances, using the thrust attack will be slightly faster than using a chop/slash. However, it may not be the case depending on what attack the enemy is doing and what the enemy's lightning-quick move is.

Lightning-Quick Moves: Every notorious pirate, evil Spaniard, or wanted criminal you fight will have one attacking or defending move that they can do much faster than normal. Strangely, your character will copy that ability, allowing you to also perform that move incredibly fast. You can occasionally discover this by talking to the tavern's barmaid, but more often than not you will discover it while fighting them. If they have a lightning-quick block, avoid using the corresponding attack. If they have a lightning quick chop or slash, use only that attack for the fight. Even on harder difficulties, you may not need to block and can go straight for the quick attack, unless they do the same.

Counterattacks: Occasionally when performing the correct block, your character will instead do a fancy dodge, followed by a counterattack. Unfortunately, this counterattack only does 1 damage (the same as a thrust), so it often ends up prolonging the swordfight. I'm not sure what causes these counterattacks to occur, but they are seemingly random. The only way I know of to avoid these is to attack first instead of blocking. On higher difficulties with no items, you are basically required to block, so it will be impossible to completely avoid triggering these counterattacks.


~Sailing~

Points of Sailing: Every ship class has an optimal sailing orientation relative to the wind direction. This information can be found in the Pirate-O-Pedia. Try to orient your ship in this optimal direction as much as you can (without sailing in the wrong direction).

Reeled/Full Sails: You can choose to sail with either full sails or reeled sails. You should always be sailing with full sails, unless you are using a large galleon or frigate and are trying to sail or turn into the wind. In most playthroughs, you will want a pinnace-class ship, which should always be at full sails.

Stormchasing: Sailing near the edge of storm clouds can give you a big speed boost for a short time. However, sailing too close will damage your ship.

Social Distancing: Sailing near ships will slow you down as they shout out their name and destination. If you notice a ship in the distance, try to avoid getting close to maintain your speed.

Sailing Eastward: The wind will almost always be blowing westward, making eastward sailing difficult. On longer runs, try to minimize the amount of east-west sailing, and make the most out of each westward trip.

Yhabby

noloyolo

Sid Meier's Pirates! (2004)

Stedehounder

CheesusBurgers

1600 - Merchants and Smugglers

1620 - The New Colonists

1640 - War For Profit

1660 - The Buccaneer Heroes

1680 - Pirates' Sunset

After getting feedback for the latest news post, I've decided to implement all the changes listed. So, to reiterate:

1. The "126 Fame" category now requires you to finish the career track
2. I've added milliseconds to the game. You can now submit your times with milliseconds (use https://somewes.co

Name	Autor
Comprehensive Guide to Land Battles	Yhabby 4 years ago
Guide - Beautiful Wife	Yhabby 4 years ago
Rank Guide	noloyolo 1 year ago
Small Timesaving Strategies	Yhabby 4 years ago