Sid Meier's Pirates

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Is it just me that's kicking butt or isn't that
game RIDICULOUSLY easy ?

-Mickmils

 

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It is not easy at higher difficulty level. I couldn't even board enemy
ship at Swashbuckler level before being sunk by canon fire.
Apprentice level though, is a no-brainer.

 

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On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 22:43:30 +0100, "Mils Michael"
<mickmils@tiscali.fr> wrote:

>Is it just me that's kicking butt or isn't that
>game RIDICULOUSLY easy ?

It could be a bit of both, but mostly, the Apprentice level -- you
are forced to start at that for your first game -- is extremely easy.
The only hard part is the dancing bits, and even that isn't too hard.

I think it is refreshing for a game to have a ridiculously easy
entry level. There are some players who just aren't that good -- too
young or reflex-impaired, whatever -- who would get frustrated by the
"easy" levels on many games.

There is also an apparent speed bug which affects some
systems/games. Set the video quality too high, and you'll get slow
motion in combat. Since you are supposed to react fast in real time,
slowing the action down makes the combat easier. This might be a
memory/driver issue too, because I've hit spots in the game where
things got slow, saved, quit, and restarted with everything normal.

This doesn't happen too often, though. If the swordfights seem to
be quite fast, especially against the harder foes (fiancees and the
named "bad guys"), that's normal. Try a fight with a very tiny crew,
and the enemy should be hazardously fast as well (the advantage in
force plays out as a more aggressive enemy duelist).

Kick up the difficulty level, the game does get harder fast.
--
*-__Jeffery Jones__________| *Starfire* |____________________-*
** Muskego WI Access Channel 14/25 <http://www.execpc.com/~jeffsj/mach7/>
*Starfire Design Studio* <http://www.starfiredesign.com/>

 

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In article <csp8m1$orl$1@news.tiscali.fr>,
Mils Michael <mickmils@tiscali.fr> wrote:
>Is it just me that's kicking butt or isn't that
>game RIDICULOUSLY easy ?
>
>-Mickmils

The very first time you play you don't get the option to select difficulty,
and it instead starts on the easiest possible level -- essentially a
tutorial. The wind never changes, you can swordfight blindfolded, etc.

I suspect this is what you're seeing. If so, try restarting on
Swashbuckler...

-Jasper

 

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On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 18:07:53 -0800, Craig Richardson
<crichard-tacoma@worldnet.att.net> wrote:

>On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 18:44:23 -0600, Jeffery S. Jones
><jeffsj@execpc.com> wrote:
>
>> This doesn't happen too often, though. If the swordfights seem to
>>be quite fast, especially against the harder foes (fiancees and the
>>named "bad guys"), that's normal. Try a fight with a very tiny crew,
>>and the enemy should be hazardously fast as well (the advantage in
>>force plays out as a more aggressive enemy duelist).
>
>My last time out in Swashbuckler, I was returning to port with a
>number of ships in tow, and so only had 30-some crew on my flagship.
>So, naturally, I was caught up to by a pirate-hunter with slightly
>over 100... I was inspired to off him rather quickly, but even so, if
>he had chosen a rapier, he likely would have kept me tied up long
>enough for the crew advantage to be decisive.

I do think that the slowdown in frame rate contributes to making the
game seem to easy. At such odds, and against any good dueling
opponent, the fight should be quite hard. The enemy should be good at
blocking, fast or faster than your actions, and your reflexes should
be hard pressed to make the right moves in time.

If the fight doesn't look like a fast-action movie duel (or a real
life one for that matter), then something is wrong with the game
settings. The game gives no warning that the action is slowed down.
I'm guessing that it doesn't drop frames, letting the frame rate drop
also slows everything down. At normal speed, things happen fast.
There isn't time to think, and at the hardest setting the enemy
doesn't give you room to recover from mistakes.

Not taking fencing skill makes it harder too.

The fencing powerup items, though, rapidly make fencing easier. The
same applies to many of the other power-ups, but the swordfights are
central to most of the game action, unlike the others.



>It's an irony of Pirates! that, early on you have tiny crews and no
>fencing power-ups, so taking the three privateer sloops/brigs
>generated when you do a quest for a settlement/Jesuit is a far tougher
>task than, ten years later, successively boarding the entire treasure
>fleet with their galleon escorts...

Yeah, old age hurts your fighting some, but the power-up items make
the fights much easier, and it is also easier to get larger crews and
better ships.

Even so, though, if you can't do the fights well -- and it should be
hard to do well at the hardest difficulty levels -- you will lose crew
fast.

Try a fight with a tiny crew, lose them. See if you can manage to
make it with only one "hit" between winning and losing. Even on the
easier levels, it can be hard to manage that.


I do think that the swordfights can be too easy at times, but maybe
that can be tweaked in a patch. The slow motion "bug" certainly could
be addressed (low memory, memory leak, whatever it is), and some
warning in-game when the frame rate drops couldn't hurt either, for
those whose systems don't run at blazing speeds.

It is possible that the actual AI combat skills need upgrading. I
don't especially mind that Apprentice is dead easy, because that
leaves room for those players who don't do arcade reflex stuff well.
Alternatively, maybe, to reflect that some players do have hot
reflexes, a game option to upgrade just the swordfighting difficulty
could help avoid the "this is too easy" effect.


--
*-__Jeffery Jones__________| *Starfire* |____________________-*
** Muskego WI Access Channel 14/25 <http://www.execpc.com/~jeffsj/mach7/>
*Starfire Design Studio* <http://www.starfiredesign.com/>

 

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On 20 Jan 2005 14:34:46 -0800, inferno2000@my-deja.com wrote:

>It is not easy at higher difficulty level. I couldn't even board enemy
>ship at Swashbuckler level before being sunk by canon fire.
>Apprentice level though, is a no-brainer.

Had a really wierd start on Swashbuckler last night, got the offer
to tag along and sink a few spanish prizes, went and got two ships.
When I got back to Port Royale they opened fire on me and wouldn't let
me in, despite my log telling me the English were happy with me for
taking those two ships.

--
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability
of the human mind to correlate all its contents." - H.P. Lovecraft