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[Surfsuds]

Keeping my fingers crossed that a triple post is OK.

I've discovered if you sail a frigate (capacity, 350 tons) without cannons or ammunition, no one can catch you and you can carry substantially more cargo. A corvette can keep pace but won't catch you. It will dog you for a while and turn away. Always have 200 soldiers with 200 small arms because you can be boarded if you have to battle in a storm, rare. You'll take sail damage in storms which will slow your speed, so keep everything in good repair.

Sailing a stripped frigate is good for shuttling cargo to earn gold. It's excellent for visiting many ports which raises ''nobility.'' As you travel uninterrupted by battles, it's easier to help countrymen and stranded passengers which I think boosts both your ''loyalty and nobility.'' When those are taken care of, arm your frigate to the teeth and go hunting for pirates and enemies to raise your ''daring.'' A fully armed frigate is a formidable war ship.

Originally Posted by Dragonfly007

I have the cd version (german) and I cant buy the charts of asian.
So I have found a bug in the Charts.txt. With the "ü" or "ä" words in this file are something wrong.

So I renamed the "ü" to "ue" and "ö" to "oe" and now all fine! (if I start a new game!)

If you have a savegame, you can edit the .sav file with a hex editor and now you can play your savegame with the new asian charts!

Sorry, for my bad english. Hope, this helps! ;-)


Regards

haha cool,

good to know
my first time i played this game is 15 years ago, and i had trouble because of missing charts of asia. i managed to sail there by hand... which was lot of time sink...
i reinstalled today to play another round... its such a great game!

i found some useful tips in this thread to run the game in dosbox, and i read something about missing soundfiles.
i dont know exactly which are the soundfiles, so i uploded the whole folder.
http://www.file-upload.net/download-...6/hst.rar.html

choose the little download button on the right

[DarthHelmet86]

So this is a copy of the game with all the sound files? At 72mb we might be able to host it on the site.

sorry i made a little mistake. i uploded the installation folder just for the soundfiles.
if its necessary i can upload the whole content of the cd. its the same size and you can choose the gamespeech when installing.

Originally Posted by moosig1

sorry i made a little mistake. i uploded the installation folder just for the soundfiles.
if its necessary i can upload the whole content of the cd. its the same size and you can choose the gamespeech when installing.

Can you create an ISO file of the CD and upload it ?

Originally Posted by Byglet

Can you create an ISO file of the CD and upload it ?

Nerver mind my last post. I do not see that you upload installation files. Thx

Notes from my several playthroughs:

-If the game is too fast and you’re running it with dosbox, make a batch file and put “ –p” after the , .exe. It’s not perfect, but it makes the game playable. There are additional techniques to get the speed perfect, but that’s good enough for me.

- Trading prices tend to be pretty stable. There are some events which vary regions and ports, but in general the profitable routes stay the same.

- One you’ve got enough money to fill your hold, focus on absolute rather than percentage profit. Buying for 30 and selling for 60 is a 2x profit, but you’ll make better money buying for 150 and selling for 200 if your capped in terms of cargo space.

- Arms and Opium are the most expensive goods, and are the easiest to find big profit margins on.

- Two highly profitable, safe routes: arms/liquor from Liverpool to Bordeaux and Arms/Tobacco/Cotton from New York/Boston to Charleston

- Even more profitable, but more of a late game route is opium from china to India. I like to find the current most expensive opium port every time I sail back from china. Goods like arms and ivory can be brought to China for additional profit. A fully loaded fourth rate can make around $100000 profit per round trip in good circumstances.

-At the start of the game I like to hold of buying charts for places I’m not prepared to sail to. If you don’t have the chart, the ports don’t show up in your trading log. This makes it easier to plan early game trading routes in Europe and find the best ports to buy and sell without having to mentally filter out ports on the other side of the world.

- If you’re in the habit of fighting rather than running away, leaving some space to loot defeated ships is a good way to make money, but if you’re making more than 100 gold per ton in profit or so, there’s no point.

- The only ships I use are the Fluyt, the frigate and the fourth rate. The fluyt to start is good enough until you get your first rank. With full sails the frigate can outrun anything (corvettes will give up) and give you a minor cargo upgrade and more crew for safety. The fourth rate has the most crew and is almost impossible to defeat in a boarding battle. The 600 sized cargo is enough to buy out most goods at almost any port. The corvette is too small to make a trading profit, the merchant is so slow it can’t run away and the cargo size of the east Indianman is mostly wasted compared to the fourth rate.

-Treasure seems to be seeded into random ports at game start and never moves. I suspect 4 total. When you buy one, a new one is spawned somewhere else. You can only see it if there’s space on your ship (I think the ship has 2 spots, and you have to deposit the treasure in an estate to free them) and you’ve got enough money. You can always go back to the port later if you don’t buy the treasure right away. I prefer the way certain treasures look, so I tend to figure out what’s out there before I buy any. If you just want to win, buy any treasure as soon as you see it as treasure can be frustrating if they are all in hostile ports or areas of the world you haven’t been to at all.

-Estates are available in your home port if you have enough money. You don’t have to buy the small or medium estate: the largest estate you can afford will be for sale. I usually buy the smaller ones because skipping them seems like an exploit, and I prefer the way they look. Small is around 300000, medium around 500000 and large around 700000.

-If you don’t have any cannons or ammo, ships will board rather than firing. If you keep a fast ship with a full crew, you should be able to come out on top of any encounter and run away if your crew is getting low. I consider the no cannons strategy a bit of an exploit since the AI doesn’t take advantage of you and you get extra cargo space, but I don’t enjoy the cannon battles so I like it.

- Hire mostly soldiers, but keep some sailors. For some reason when I hire all soldiers, as the game progresses my ship seems to slow down and I my fruit all rots even over very short distances. Having some sailors seems to eliminate this effect.

-I like to save often, so I don’t tend to carry wood or cloth. If you want to play iron man though, you’ll want some for repairs on long voyages. I usually just buy more fruit than I think I’ll need and limp my way into port with damaged sales if I hit a storm.

-The most likely way to lose, at least for me, is hitting a storm, running low on fruit, then finding out the port I’ve limped my way to has turned hostile while I was at see. Sometimes several countries go hostile all at once, and there’s no friendly port anywhere remotely close. It’s tough to eliminate this risk, but in general the more supplies you carry and the shorter the routes you plan the better off you’ll be. Parts of the world with home nation or neutral ports are safer for this reason.

- I suspect it’s a bug from dosbox, but I find that over time if I don’t reboot the game the cargo of defeated ships gets bigger and bigger, as if the cargo of the new ship is being added to the cargo of the previous ship. It’s a bit of an exploit and maybe doesn’t occur for other people, but after a dozen victories or so each ship has hundreds of tons of stuff.

-If you’re low on crew, the Mediterranean is a pretty good safe haven. There are fewer pirates there and enemy ships than most other locations, and there are lots of big neutral ports where you can recruit crewmembers. Back and forth from Genoa to Livorno is a quick way to recruit.

-The English are the easiest nation, with awesome arms ports in Europe and north America and solid holdings in the far east. I find the Spanish the hardest because their colonies aren’t very profitable. In the end the nations aren’t all that different though, it’s just a matter of who you will never be at war with.

-Typically I make my money first, then sail around the world attempting to rank up without having to worry about trading. Gives me flexibility to take passengers wherever they want to go. Try and sail into every port possible to find the treasures. The best time to make such a voyage is when your nation is at peace with as many countries as possible. Don’t voyage to the far east if you are at war with the Portuguese and the English.

-Daring is not required to level up, but it helps with the averages. I run away from most fights, but if I’ve got extra cargo space and a full crew, I’ll head straight for the other ship and board them.

-If you’re having trouble getting loyalty, try and sail into a lot of friendly ports held by foreign powers. Prisoners and spies are the main ways of getting loyalty, and you won’t find them in your nation’s ports nor in neutral ports. Spies always want to go to your home port, so Europe is the best place to pick them up. Loyalty is the most erratic stat, and so I make increasing it my top priority. It’s frustrating sailing around the world looking for the last few loyalty points when you’ve got more than enough of everything else.

-When you pick up spies or prisoners, be aware there is a chance of ambush when you exit the port. You’ll be caught with sails down and sometimes multiple hostile ships at close range. If you’re really low on crew, consider not taking these passengers or at least save before hand.

-You can also get loyalty by firing on the ships of enemy nations. This seems to be 1 loyalty per ship, and only works if you actually discharge cannons at them.

-Honor is generally pretty easy to get, just carry lots of passengers around. Passengers who don’t pay give more. Earning a profit in a year seems to give honor at the start of the next year.

-Nobility is mainly a function of how many ports you’ve visited. Just buy all the charts and sail around the world hitting every port along the way. Treasure may also increase this when you buy it, but I wouldn't bother holding off buying treasure until you rank up just for this reason. Nobility should only be an issue if you're at war with lots of countries.

Contrary to what I said above, I now believe treasures do not spawn throughout the game. At the start 6 treasures are put in 6 cities and those are the only 6 treasures you can ever buy. They never move and are always available if you have room on your ship.

[Oskatat]

I used to love the cannon battles. First chain shot to scuttle the enemy, then grape shot to clear some of the opposition. After your daring gets high enough, enemy ships will surrender after the first shot, regardless if it actually hit.

there seemed to be one problem though... I think I got a reputation for seeking danger and this made most of the passengers refuse to travel on my ship.

When I first played this game (I was a bit younger) I tended to go for the heaviest, longest range cannons. And those ARE important when using chainshot to slow down an enemy to escape or catch up for boarding. However, when an enemy gets closeby and starts using his light but fast reload cannons to sweep your decks with chainshot, you'll definately want to be able to do the same. A 50/50 is usually easiest due to the way you can divide the cannons up when giving a firing order.

Contrary to the previous poster, I never use the fourth rate. I've had it a few too many times that I got attacked by pirate after pirate, then enemy nations, with frigates mostly. When those appear you have only 1 choice: fight. If they appear often enough they will slowly cut away your crew and small arms. If this starts at the west coast of africa, and you can't repair and get some crew in cape hope, you can and will lose - eventually. The african ports and the first few after the eastern coast usually don't have more than 4 or 5 crew members, if that at all, and their repair skills are bad at best.

That's why I usually go for the east indiaman. I do without planks but bring some back-up sails in case of accidents. What about the cargo? well, it's still plenty big to carry huge profits Also, I'm a dmn good shot with those cannons. I really don't need 24 or more cannons or demi cannons to do decisive damage to enemy sails. I usually keep a few more lighter cannons for a couple of point blank shots of grapeshot when attacking merchantman or fourthrate, but the AI rarely carries a full crew, or even close to full crew unless they're pirates or warships. The main benefit, when you don't want to fight, you can run.

Cutting down on cannons means you can cut down on ammo. Just because you CAN carry more cannons doesn't mean you should. It really creates some space. If you plan on fighting local pirates for a bit, you might want more cannons. If your main goal is trading, just get enough to destroy some sails and run, or get a few extra for grapeshot If you feel like boarding the occasional merchantman.

Last benefit: it really speeds up those long distance travels

edit:
color me stupid, I probably mixed up the ships and agreed with you