Easy ships:
Do not go face-on to your enemies and attack slowly with small ships. Instead, get a small ship and work on getting money. When you are getting a very high income, buy a small killing ship. Attack who you can hate forever. Basically be English and attack the French or the Dutch. When the English like you, find a badly defended ship of the line and take it. Then make them fully happy again and repeat until you have five ship of the lines.
Easy win:
Start by using most of your money on ammunition cannons and get the most amount of sailors. Then, select "Leave Island". Sail and try to find a convoy with two ships. Make sure that they have a close difference of the amount of sailors. Use grape shots to take down the sailors and board the ship. You will win easily. Note: Do not fight with less men.
At the beginning of the game, start it with the cash part to get lots of money. Then upgrade your ship so that it has four points, Send it on a trade course. Make your ship on a course around an entire continent. Then, keep making ships to do it. When you are done you should have six routes and twelve ships going around constantly,
Artifacts location:
All Artifacts will appear and disappear so keep looking every soften: north and south-east Trinidad, south-east Turk island. South-west Margarita, north Martinique, north-east Guadeloupe, north Antigua, south-east Trinidad, east Rotan, north Tampico, north-east Corpus Christi, east Port St Joe, north Fort Caroline, north Charleston, west Santo Domingo, south Cartagena, south Providence, 2 south, south-east/north Turk island, x2 south Port of Spain and last the island to the north east after you got all the Artifacts go to your wife and she will give you the map for it. Hope you like having a steam ship.
Attacking pirate hideouts:
Before you can attack hideouts, you have to find them. Thera are up to 5 hideouts at any one time and about twice as many possible locations. If you wait a while, the hideouts will be revealed automatically. They will appear as black dots on the mini-map. You can find a list of pirates in Chronicle -> List of known pirates.
Locations:
- West of New Orleans
- Between Vera Cruz and Villa Hermosa
- Slightly northeast of Grand Bahama
- Slightly Southeast of Port of Spain
- Slightly south of Havana
- Southeast of Roatan
- Between Guadeloupe and Martinique
- Others
Attacking pirate hideouts is almost the same as attacking a town by sea. To attack a hideout, select a convoy with escort ships and right-click on a hideout. You don't need to check "Attack towns" since you aren't going to dock in the hideout.
If there are any defending pirate convoys, you will have to defeat those. You can't see what types of ships are in them until you start a battle, but you can left-click on a hideout to see how many of them there are. If there are multiple defending convoys, you will have to defeat each one in turn. You don't need to sink any of them--forcing them to retreat is enough.
Unlike military convoys in towns, pirate convoys in hideouts are always repairing and always defending. You can't put them out of commission by doing a small amount of damage and running away.
Pirate convoys can also immediately and fully replace their sailors between battles. After you get through the defending convoys, you have to deal with harbor cannons. Hideouts have up to 10 cannons. You can see how many they have by left-clicking on them.
Harbor cannons in hideouts are usually arranged in patterns resembling triangles or semi-circles. They are more spread out than they are in towns, so they should be easier to deal with. If you retreat from this part of the attack, any cannons that were damaged but not destroyed will be instantly and fully repaired.
If you retreat from the attack on the cannons, you won't lose any ships unless some have already sunk. You don't need to command each ship to retreat, either. Just have your current ship do so and wait a few seconds. Your convoy will appear outside the hideout.
When you're done with the cannons, you will have to win a duel. This duel is the same as any other duel. See the 'Duels' section for more information.
If you lose the duel, your convoy will retreat. The hideout will have 1 cannon and will attempt to construct more.
If you win the duel, the hideout is destroyed. Your relationship with all nations will improve and you will loot some money from the hideout. The amount of money you receive depends on the strength of the pirate. A 10-cannon hideout that's been around for a while might yield a few million gold. A new hideout that has 1 cannon might yield 200K gold.
After some time, another pirate and another hideout will appear somewhere in the Caribbean, but you'll have a few months of peace before that.
If the pirate had any convoys when you destroyed the hideout, you will receive a message informing you that some ships escaped and may set up a new hideout. This doesn't mean much because new hideouts will appear anyway. The only difference is that the pirate will have the same name.
Easy Money:
Every time you go to a town save your game and then go to the inn and play the game with the one armed guy. Bet the highest amount of money you can. Keep loading your game until you win and then save it and move on to the next town. Also if you bet 1000 gold.
Hints on attacking by land:
When you attack by land, your sailors land on the beach and become soldiers. If you want as many soldiers as possible, attack using a convoy with 10 Ships of the Line. Each one holds 200, for a total of 2,000 soldiers. The town will have two sets of gates, each one guarded by approximately half of the town's soldiers. You need to destroy one of them. You don't have to kill any defenders, but your soldiers will usually attack them instead of the gates if they're close by. Note that you need 1 musket or cutlass for every soldier you plan to send in. Also, if your soldiers are killed, you lose their weapons. Immediately after your attack, some of the killed defenders will be replaced.
- Brute force
This is the fast but costly method. If you have a lot more soldiers than the town, you don't need good tactics to win. The default split between swordsmen and musketeers, 50/50, works well here. Select all of your soldiers and double-right-click on the nearest gate. Then fast-forward until you win.
- Ambush
A minor tactic that gives you a small advantage. Hide your soldiers in trees close to a gate. Then double-right-click on a gate or on defenders to rush in and attack.
- Hiding in trees
You can hide your musketeers in trees near a gate. They will be able to attack, but they'll take less damaged when they're attacked by defending musketeers.