History VideoGame / SidMeiersPirates

'''''Sid Meier's Pirates!''''' can refer to any of three related games. The original game was released in 1987; an UpdatedRerelease called ''Pirates! Gold'' came out in 1993; and a new re-release (reverting to the original title) was released in 2004. The basic premise of the games is the same: You start out as a new {{Privateer}} captain in the Caribbean Sea with a Letter of Marque issued to you by one of four nations (England, France, Spain, or the Netherlands). The game is a WideOpenSandbox, allowing you to take a wide variety of actions: Go the traditional pirate route and attack other vessels for [[PirateBooty loot and plunder]], [[TheCasanova romance]] [[LoveInterests governors' beautiful daughters]], search for other pirates' buried treasure using {{Treasure Map}}s, clear the high seas of all rivals who would stand in your way, or even [[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything go the boring]] [[AnEntrepreneurIsYou "peaceful trader" route]]. One notable feature of the game is that the protagonist can never actually ''die''; defeat in combat (or failure in other regards) generally leads to being either thrown into a CardboardPrison or marooned / cast away on a desert island, both of which you can eventually escape from. Also, [[NoStatAtrophy unlike many other games]], age ''does'' affect your character; his fencing and dancing skills decline noticeably with age.

* ObviousBeta: The 2004 version shipped with several intended features not available.
** As originally intended, you would have needed to build up your relationship with the Indians and the Jesuits before they would help you, but instead, they just trust you completely all the time. There are items that are described as improving your relations with Indians or Jesuits, but what they actually do is reduce the time you have to wait after the Indians or Jesuits have given you a mission before they can give you a new one. This means the in-game descriptions of said items are [[GuideDangIt quite misleading]], and have led many players to believe that they do nothing at all.
** Artillery is nowhere to be found in the game, despite being shown in the game's built-in wiki. Mind you, if it wasn't omitted, it would have made the land battles ''much'' more difficult, as they supposedly had a staggering ''eight'' square range[[note]]for context, ''twice'' as far as the player's own Buccaneers[[/note]] and incredible damage power. A later patch removed the wiki entry.
** The manual mentions that the Indians will sometimes help you in land battles, but this never happens in-game. They only show up on the side of your AI-controlled colonial enemies or as Montalban's henchmen.

* BattleThralls: More than one type in this game. Sometimes after your boarding party takes over a ship, some of the surviving enemy crew are [[JustForPun impressed]] and ask to join you. Also, when engaged in ship-to-ship combat your cannon fire will often send members of the enemy crew overboard. (If you use grape shot, this happens particularly frequently.) They'll float there, clinging to a piece of wreckage, and if you sail "over" them you automatically fish them out. They then become part of ''your'' crew, and can actually help in the same ongoing battle.

** The manual mentions that the Indians will sometimes help you in land battles, but this never happens in-game. They only show up on the side of your AI-controlled colonial enemies.

* AdaptationalWimp: The Barque in the 2004 version. In the older versions it was a formidable vessel, being nearly as maneuverable and fast as the Sloop and Pinnace, yet still big enough to pack enough men and guns to fight it out with bigger ships or the odd fort (the classic "outgun anything it can't outmaneuver, and outmaneuver anything it can't outgun"). In the remake, it is relegated to a pure trading vessel with seriously nerfed abilities, while Sloops, Brigs, and Frigates succeed it as the preferred ships of most players. Barque-type ships can, however, prove a useful vessel to carry trade good plunder, as long as they're kept out of combat.

* BadassDecay: Occurs InUniverse. Even with the power-up items and guarding your health, your character will eventually become more and more feeble, reacting later in minigames. Averted with all other characters, who stay just as powerful as ever, regardless of how much time passes. In fact, if you put off confronting Montalban too long, you will be unable to defeat him because he moves too fast and you simply move too slow. This is particularly true at Adventurer difficulty level and up.

** The Baron de Pointis expedition in ''Pirates! Gold''. Playing it gives you the strongest fleet imaginable, with one sloop, five frigates, and ''1200'' men! With this much overwhelming power on your side, you can attack any target on the map and [[CurbStompBattle come out victorious]]. Unfortunately, you'll find that you'll never be able to actually plunder enough gold to keep a crew that big happy, which means desertions on a massive scale are inevitable and your voyage is doomed to be a short one.

** Escort a fleet of immigrants or a new governor to a port, boosting the town's size and wealth. Then promptly sack it. Alternately, after you agree to escort the ship, turn on it and attack it.

* BonusBoss: The cities of Panama and Gran Granada qualify as this. They are on the Pacific Ocean and inland Central America respectively, meaning you have to disembark and march over land through the jungle to reach them, and that you can't send pirates or natives to soften their reasonably strong defenses before attacking. However they're both initially flush with gold to plunder (though they do tend to decline over time), and if you install a governor from your preferred country, they'll never be ousted by an invasion force (since one simply can't spawn there).

* UglySpouseSentence: Each governor's daughter has an attractiveness rating. The plainer ones are less picky when beginning a RomanceSidequest, provide inferior quest rewards, and are worth fewer [[ScoringPoints points towards your final score]].

* CameraScrew: Your opponent's moves in swordfighting are occasionally obscured by action happening in the foreground, particularly other dueling crewmembers, or a crewmember falling from above. Since swordfighting in the game depends entirely upon watching your opponent's move and reacting accordingly, this can be enough to rapidly turn a fight sour.

'''''Sid Meier's Pirates!''''' can refer to any of three related games. The original game was released in 1987; an UpdatedRerelease called ''Pirates! Gold'' came out in 1993; and a new re-release (reverting to the original title) was released in 2004. The basic premise of the games is the same: You start out as a new {{Privateer}} captain in the [[WelcomeToTheCaribbeanMon Caribbean Sea]] with a Letter of Marque issued to you by one of four nations (England, France, Spain, or the Netherlands). The game is a WideOpenSandbox, allowing you to take a wide variety of actions: Go the traditional pirate route and attack other vessels for [[PirateBooty loot and plunder]], [[TheCasanova romance]] [[LoveInterests governors' beautiful daughters]], search for other pirates' buried treasure using {{Treasure Map}}s, clear the high seas of all rivals who would stand in your way, or even [[ThePiratesWhoDontDoAnything go the boring]] [[AnEntrepreneurIsYou "peaceful trader" route]]. One notable feature of the game is that the protagonist can never actually ''die''; defeat in combat (or failure in other regards) generally leads to being either thrown into a CardboardPrison or marooned / cast away on a desert island, both of which you can eventually escape from. Also, [[NoStatAtrophy unlike many other games]], age ''does'' affect your character; his fencing and dancing skills decline noticeably with age.

%%* WelcomeToTheCaribbeanMon

* BuxomIsBetter: The Governor's Daughters have three levels of beauty: "[[{{Gonk}} rather plain]]", "attractive" and "[[MsFanservice beautiful]]". The "beautiful" daughters have the largest breasts. (Or at least [[OfCorsetsSexy the tightest corsets.)]] This is true even in the older games; the best girls to marry are the ones with the biggest boobs (and the most exposed cleavage).

* MadeOfIron:
** Ships manned by the BigBad or TheDragon never sink; their hull damage will never go beyond 99% (ships normally sink when hull damage reaches 100%) nor will their crew ever drop to zero no matter how long they are pounded. This can be exploited, however, by pelting them with as much fire as you like to make the ensuing mandatory swordfight against the villain on board that much easier.
** In a more literal sense, one of the upgrades available for purchase in the 2004 version is Iron Scantlings, which help brace your ship's hull more strongly than wood, and thus makes your ship better resist hull damage under cannon fire.

* {{Gainaxing}}: The beautiful governors' daughters have a bit of a "bounce" to them.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Larger ships in general, but especially War Galleons and Flag Galleons. Yes, you get more guns, more crew, and more cargo space, but that comes at the cost of speed, the OneStatToRuleThemAll of the game. A well-manned and properly piloted Sloop or Sloop of War can take out anything up to a Ship of the Line through attrition, and that doesn't even consider the many potential benefits you can get for sword fighting, which can let you win a fight despite your crew being badly outnumbered. It gets ''[[UpToEleven worse]]'' on Swashbuckler difficulty, where your enemies get such high bonuses to speed and turning speed that your War Galleon becomes a sitting duck against anything save other galleons and merchant ships.

** Crew morale in the older games. Whenever they become unhappy, going into towns is a ''very'' bad idea because they'll use that opportunity to desert. Which would be a pretty manageable thing by itself, except deserters take a portion of the gold with them, which will only [[UpToEleven further anger]] the remaining crew, leading to even ''more'' desertions and gold shortages. If you can't improve morale quickly enough, the crew will eventually mutiny, and all that foiling that does is cause even ''more'' men to desert you. More often than not, it's nigh impossible to make a bitter crew happy again, and it's usually at that point where you have to bite the bullet and divide the plunder.

** In land-based battles in the 2004 version, you get your own protagonistic EliteMooks in the form of Pirate Officers, which are a single unit of substantially stronger melee-combat Pirates with a PaletteSwap to include [[NiceHat nicer hats]].

* NiceHat: In the 2004 version, part of the dress uniform for Admirals and above. Lower-ranked characters may obtain a hat that nets them more invitations to grand balls, and therefore more romance opportunities.

* GlassCannon: The Buccaneer unit for your land battle army. It has superior range for musket fire than the enemy ranged units, but is basically defenseless against melee attackers. Use them for supporting fire to soften up enemy units before the melee-range Pirates (and Officers) move in for the kill.

* InfinityMinusOneSword: The Large Frigate. Not as good as Ship of the Line, but there's at least one guaranteed specimen of it under the command of Henry Morgan.
* InfinityPlusOneSword: The Ship of the Line in the 2004 version. It has the largest gun capacity, the largest crew capacity, and the largest cargo hold. However it only spawns in very specific circumstances, and even then it's difficult to capture one.

* MasterOfNone: The Brig class in the 2004 version, especially the Brig of War. Despite being the game's quintessential JackOfAllStats, Brigs-type vessels are not nearly as popular as they should be. This is because players tend to fall into two different camps on tactics: "ram them quickly and start a sword fight" or "pound them into splinters with your guns before boarding." The former prefer Royal Sloops -- or for the truly elite or crazed, [[FragileSpeedster Indian War Canoes]]) -- while the latter go for the almighty [[InfinityPlusOneSword Ship of the Line]] (or the slightly less almighty but easier to obtain [[InfinityMinusOneSword Large Frigate]]), leaving the Brig of War without a particular niche.

* TheCavalierYears

** Averted in one very specific case: if you sink or capture a nation's most powerful type of warship (Flag Galleon, Ship of the Line), the nation will ''never'' promote you unless you get the Jesuits to intervene on your behalf. This can be problematic with the Spanish, since Marquis Montalban sails in a ''Spanish'' Flag Galleon...

** If you deal enough damage to an enemy ship, typically by destroying its sails, than the enemy captain will surrender the moment you sail close to his ship. The game will then cut to a scene of the enemy captain kneeling in front of you and handing you his sword.

*** To drive the point home, you ''cannot'' sink a ship belonging to any of these three, regardless of how many times you score a massive hit with all your cannons at close range -- you ''have'' to board it and fence the villain personally. In fact, you can use Grape-Shot to whittle their crew down to just one man (presumably, the villain himself), and it will never drop below that. Mercifully, this approach does not kill [[DamselInDistress the captive]] who Mendoza has on board.

* MadeOfIron: Ships manned by the BigBad or TheDragon never sink; their hull damage will never go beyond 99% (ships normally sink when hull damage reaches 100%) nor will their crew ever drop to zero no matter how long they are pounded. This can be exploited, however, by pelting them with as much fire as you like to make the ensuing mandatory swordfight against the villain on board that much easier.

** If you rescue all your family members, then joyous family gatherings will highlight your remaining years.
** If you only rescue some of your family members, then your joy is tempered with sadness as you live out your remaining years.
** If you don't rescue any of your family members, the omission [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone haunts you for the rest of your life]].

* ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules: The basis of Spanish Trade Laws; the wealthier Spanish ports will simply refuse to trade with you ''at all'', while the less well off ones can't afford to be picky and will trade with you. Can be averted once you start getting a few promotions with them, which will open the wealthy ones to trade so long as you don't ''really'' piss them off.

** "Chuban!" is used both when picking a fight with a pushy guardsman officer imposing himself on a barmaid and also as a swordfight taunt

* JokerImmunity: The older versions had a variety of evil Spaniards to chase down, but the 2004 version recycles Montalban, Raymondo, and Mendoza, giving them this status.
** To drive the point home, you ''cannot'' sink a ship belonging to any of these three, regardless of how many times you score a massive hit with all your cannons at close range -- you ''have'' to board it and fence the villain personally. In fact, you can use Grape-Shot to whittle their crew down to just one man (presumably, the villain himself), and it will never drop below that. Mercifully, this approach does not kill the captive who Mendoza has on board.
** Downplayed in the iPad version of the game -- you can sink Raymondo's ship with a well-placed broadside. You get nothing from him and have to track him down from scratch.

*** Military ships, especially escorts, pirates hunters, and raiders, will be much harder to induce them into striking their colors; they could potentially have their rigging completely destroyed, and their colors still aren't struck. If you haplessly wander into their broadside arcs, they'll still try to shoot you.

* DefeatMeansFriendship: [[spoiler:After you win the final battle with Montalban, he will acknowledge the wrongs he did to your family, and then hand over a ''ton'' of gold (we're talking ''100 grand'') plus any specialists you're missing in exchange for his life. As a final acknowledgement of your superiority, he also becomes your personal cabin boy -- though, sadly, you never get to see any cutscenes of Montalban serving you in this way.]]

* ArtificialBrilliance: If you start greatly weakening a faction's overall presence in the Caribbean, they ''will'' start launching a number of naval invasion fleets to recapture their colonies. Enemy ships also react differently based on what they are. Trade ships surrender very quickly, especially if badly outnumbered or outgunned. Smugglers will ''always'' try to run away, and since they're often sailing in Sloops or Pinnaces they've got a good chance of escaping. Pirates, warships with invasion forces aboard, and Raymondo or Mendoza will try to ram to bring you to grips, but if you've got a large enough crew they'll try a few broadsides with grapeshot to tip the odds in their favor. Pirate hunters, however, will try to wipe out your sails with chain shot and beat you with grape shot before moving in for the kill, making them one of the more frustrating opponents to fight. Big, powerful warships -- especially Spanish treasure ships -- will try to destroy you with massed broadside fire. Military ships, especially escorts, pirates hunters, and raiders, will be much harder to induce them into striking their colors; they could potentially have their rigging completely destroyed, and their colors still aren't struck. If you haplessly wander into their broadside arcs, they'll still try to shoot you.

** Military payroll ships boost military strength across the entire faction's ports by a small but noticeable amount. [[note]]They're also highly lucrative targets because they generally carry all their wealth purely in gold, rather than cargo that takes up space and needs to be sold for money.[[/note]]
** An invasion fleet will decrease the strength of the port it was launched from, and its attack will have a variable outcome on its target city (reduce the garrison, population, or wealth, switch its nationality, or some combination).
** Grain transport and regular trade ships will boost population when they arrive at their target port.
** Raider vessels are sent from one nation against the cities of another nation when the two are at war.

* GrievousBottleyHarm: In bars you will sometimes see a captain who is harrassing the barmaid. You have the option of fighting him in a duel. If you win the duel, you end up pushing him back to where the barmaid is standing, who breaks a bottle [[TapOnTheHead over the guy's head]], knocking him out ending the fight.

** Can be frustrating if you want to capture a port that takes up the whole of a small island; in most cases, you can land your crew on the beach near the town and walk towards it to get the option to attack, but if there's basically no island to land on, you have to frustrate the nation or port in question enough that they will not let you dock first.

** Artillery is nowhere to be found in the game, despite being shown in the game's built-in wiki. Mind you, if it wasn't omitted, it would have made the land battles ''much'' more difficult, as they supposedly had a staggering EIGHT square range and incredible damage power. A later patch removed the wiki entry.