Thursday, February 27, 2014

Guide on How Scouting Works?

Arr pirates!! We be doing some learning on scouting, going from A to Z just making sure all pirates benefit 100% from full understanding.

So first up, to do scouting in Pirates Tides of Fortune ye need to have at least one Flying Dutchman. This be yer flying units who can go and scout enemy Havens fer ye!


If ye don't have one or the ones ye had died ye can train more of them in the Dutchman's Hangar:


Now before ye raid or blockade an enemy pirate's Haven it be a really good idea that you Scout with your Flying Dutchmen:


Ye can send 1 if ye think there is no defenders. This be a good idea just for checking resource levels fer the Haven's which you regularly Raid. Now if ye wanna get information on some new Haven that ye don't know nothing about then ye might want to send many, like 10 or 20 or 30, because ye be assuming that they have defending Flying Dutchmen there so ye will lose some of yer Dutchmen but ye will get the info.

When ye send the scout it be going to the enemy Haven fer information:



And when it arrives to the enemy there are 3 possibilities:

1) The enemy will have a lot more Flying Dutchmen so yer scouts will die and you get no information.
2) The enemy will have some defense so some of your people will die but you will get information.
3) There is no defense - you lose nothing and get the scouting information.

Here be an example of one of my scouting reports:


Very often ye will see that ye lose Flying Dutchmen so ye have to keep buying more every day if ye want to keep scouting.

Don't fall into the danger of "not scouting" because ye can have a big problem if ye send attack blindly not knowing what there be waiting fer ye.

Ye can buy more Flying Dutchmen in the Dutchman's Hangar - they be especially expensive in the beginning:


Last 2 things to point out:

1) Ye can and should send many scouting missions at the same time, so you quickly collect information of what is going on and the resource levels of all the Havens that you normally like to raid.

2) The Veteran Flying Dutchman has exactly the same stats as the Regular Veteran Flying Dutchman, only it costs much less resources to buy it because it also costs Rubies, so this is fer pirates who put real money into the game. The appearance is also different but the use of them is exactly the same as the regular units.


Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Finding Relics by Scouting

Arrr pirates!! Did ye know that ye can even find nice RELICS from just scouting?? Well have a look at the picture I prepared for ye all below - I sent 15 Flying Dutchmen on a scouting mission totally not expecting anything special and "boom" I see the message "Ye've found a powerful Relic!" so I be like "Oh Yea!" :)

As a matter of fact ye can find relics also when raiding. So when ye do different things there is a chance of finding a Relic and then ye can move it to yer Chamber or ye can SELL it for ~1300 gold, lumber and rum, which is very nice especially in the lower levels.

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Monday, February 24, 2014

Strategy to Grow and Profit Smartly

(Posted/Edited by LAVASH; Thanks to KDH)

Keeping Track of the Enemy


It is a good idea to "set sail" to the "potential enemy" Haven so ye can view it from the inside. Record the captain's level and current experience points in yer logbook. After 3-7 days start goin' back and checkin' on them. Those that do not move in experience points are usually inactive and safe to raid without retaliation.


Noting down the Harbor Level


The other part once ye found it then send a Flyin' Dutchman to scout it right before your raid hits. Take the booty and subtract it from the totals - this will tell ye the harbor protection value. Make a note of this amount so in the future a scout will tell ye how profitable the raid will be. Also keep a scout or a blockade in/on the Haven which can let ye know if others have raided it and when so ye can track their patterns and get there first.


Identifying Yer Regular Targets and Inactive Pirates vs. Active Pirates


There are many inactive Havens level 17-25 that will give ye 3k lumber and 3k gold. I even found a level 9 that nets 2.5k of each and less than 1k of rum. Me find the lower level ones to be less competition from other captains for the resource and ye can raid them all week rather than gettin' say 10k of resource and 40k of rum then waitin' a week fightin' off other cap'ns to keep it.

I prefer inactives to actives...there be more profit. You don't have to worry about them hittin' yer ransom 'cades, lighthouse targets, or returnin' the favor in ye sleep. I have not lost troops raidin' dead havens either. I know some cap'ns see the experience points as a win but I can raid inactive low levels all day long to gain experience without losin' a man.


Good luck findin' the profit sometimes ye have to travel a bit as well.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Understanding Underway Raids

Arrr pirates!! As ye play ye will be raided so it's good to know for that to understand the UNDERWAY RAIDS and use it as much as possible.

When ye be raided ye be getting a small red box on the bottom left of yer game showing that in so much time (see picture example 1 hour and 40 minutes) ye will be hit. Now there are 2 types of these: RAID and BLOCKADE.

During a RAID they be coming, smashing, grabbing stuff and leaving.
During a BLOCKADE they be coming and staying!! (and giving you a chance to smash them and liberate yer Haven)

Now the UNDERWAY tab can help you not only with the time. Unfortunately there is no way of seeing what kind of army is attacking, but here it be showing the army SPEED. In the picture you can see that the speed of the raid that is coming to me Haven is 6.2 mph and this is telling me 2 things:

1) For sure this army be coming with MARAUDERS because they are slow with that kinda speed.

2a) It could be just 1 Marauder.

2b) But since this guy also sent me an angry message saying he is going to destroy me then it is telling me that he sent his entire offense because nobody likes to send the slow Marauders except when you are doing an all out full force attack.

With this information I can choose to stand and defend or just hide away in my Harbor :)




Otherwise, if ye see speed of say 18 mph then ye know this be fast things like fast ships - this one ye should be more careful with. If this be coming from a higher level pirate then he might just want to slap you with a portion of his army - just the fast units - for a quick slap and back home. But ye know this is not all his ships because a lot of ships also have speed of 12 mph.

If this info was useful for ye then please click Google + to say thanks and/or leave comments. Thanks mate!

Friday, February 21, 2014

Stupid Raid Decisions

Arr pirates!! Today I had a very unfortunate, stupid, a few levels higher, pirate who scouted my New Tortuga skin Haven with full ground defenses (="look it's a heavy casher") with 28 Flying Dutchmen and failed miserably:


... and if that was not enough clue for him that there is a large defense force sitting there he decided to launch a blind attack anyways... "look at me, I gotz no brainz"...

so as you can see on the below picture he raided my Haven with a much stronger force but since i had very good defense for my level + the fact that I am a strong casher Haven he lost tons of his offensive power. Sure, he completely destroyed my defense (which by the way i immediately bought back with rubies) but what a stupid decision to blindly raid a heavily defended and super active casher gaining just a couple of thousand of resources and losing a massive amount of yer army.

So the lesson here is - always scout and do intelligent attacks whereby you can gain more than you lose, so that you can grow.

By the way I was online during this attack and i hit away my Flying Dutchmen and my offense but I left my defense there on purpose (could have easily hid it) to smash down his army since i have tons of rubies and i just buy them all back. But this really annoyed me because it was just a waste of rubies, even if i have a lot of them.


Thursday, February 20, 2014

Cost Comparison Grenadier vs Bonnie's Beauties

Arrr pirates!! Here is another cost comparison analysis keeping our brains fresh and sharp for best spending yer hard earned gold coin, lumber and rum.

This time we have the cost comparison of yer Grenadier vs our darling Bonnie's Beauties. Below I be putting 2 pictures. On the top one we see them side by side and we see that the Grenadier is much more powerful as a single unit. He is almost as strong as 20 of our Bonnies. But then we look at the cost as wow, he is seriously more expensive than Bonnie's Beauties - actually by about 70%.

I be also counting that if ye would train 5,000 Bonnies then yer would have a defense power of roughly 95,000 points while for the same cost ye be able to train only 376 Grenadiers which give ye defense power of roughly 56,000 (taking average between their defense high and low figures), so this is a lot less.

But OK ye need only 752 rum for the Grenadiers while 5,000 fer the Bonnies so that's one big positive for the Mercenary man. Otherwise everything is in the favor of our darling Bonnie's Beauties.

I also want to highlight that the Grenadiers are especially good defending versus Mercenaries and Fleet, but ye never know what enemy be sending on you. Bonnies give a more balanced defense, but they be drinking a lot of rum.



Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Understanding Defense Values in Pirates

Arrr pirates!! As with me some of ye are probably wondering what are all those defense values in the statistics of the different units. I picked here the example of the TURTLE SHIP from our beloved Pirates Tides of Fortune because you can see it has 40 defense on all stats except Fleet Defense it has 120.

So how does this defense work? 


For example, if you have on defense only 100 x Turtle Ships and someone attacks you only with 100 x Marauders then the battle calculation is going to use the "Pirate Defense: 40" for the battle result so you will have 100 x 40 = 4000 defense and he will have 100 x 60 = 6000 attack so both sides will lose units but he will be more of the winner.

Now, on the other hand, imagine you have the same defense but he is attacking you with 10 x Frigates then your defense calculation will use the "Fleet Defense: 120" and so instead of 4000 defense you will have 100 x 120 = 12000 defense which is 3 times more!! and so against his 10 Frigates (900 x 10 = 9000) you will be the on the top side!

So I hope that was clear to you. You can actually use that in your advantage when you scout other pirates and see maybe a defense of a certain type of a unit much more than other types then maybe you can use specific offense units to get an advantage.

Note: when things are mixed up this still works, but the game will make a complex calculation of what is defending against what and I don't know the formula, but the logic is working.


Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Pirates Game Speed Can Become Fast

Arrr pirates!! For some people the game might be too slow, but as ye develop ye have more and more things to do so it is possible that, for example, 1 hour or more ye keep on actively playing and doing things. Sometimes a lot of me own time is going on scouting, raiding, blockading and liberating especially when there be an ongoing fight between pirates. Here ye see an example picture of a lot of things happening especially in one direction, so sometimes the game is "slow" but it can also be rather "fast happening" at other times.


Monday, February 17, 2014

Cost Analysis Fortification Level 2

Arrr pirates! We be raiding and killing but also important is to spend our tough to get Rubies with some thinking. So, here we be having an analysis of the costs for Level 2 Fortifications in our Pirates Tides of Fortune construction choices.

Here we be seeing that the Level 2 Wall and the Level 2 Gate be the smarter choice costing only 3.25 Rubies per point of defense. Next up, the most efficient fortification be the Level 2 Cannon and Harpoon costing 3.90 Rubies per point of defense.

Tower, same as in Level 1, be the most expensive. Necessary, but costing too much in Rubies compared to the other choices.

Hope you be enjoying this and benefiting and sharing with ye Shipmates. I will also be doing more analysis to help ye spend yer money wisely.


Saturday, February 15, 2014

50,000 Maximum Limit for Plunder

Arrr pirates!! If ye have a war going on with another pirate ye be wanting to know that there be a 50,000 maximum limit to the amount of resources you can raid and plunder from him or her. If ye are the attacker then probably ye be angry about this because you want to keep on killing and robbing and making damage to yer enemy, but this be the law in Pirates Tides of Fortune.

Remember that one day you will be the one who is attacked and then ye will be thankful for this law.

But generally this I think has very little to do with limiting damage - I think this has a lot more to do that the game owners don't want people to create multiple accounts and keep raiding them for unlimited resources.


What to do during Server Problems?

Arr pirates!! Today is a very stressful day for many pirates as the Pirates Tides of Fortune server is in a really bad shape and a lot of pirates are not able to login and manager their Haven or when they do login they can do few actions and then get kicked out again.

So what should you do in these situations:


1.     First, the obvious, keep trying to login, again and again, you might get lucky and go through. If you do go through (I managed 2 times) the top priority thing you should do is put all your army in your Harbor so they cannot be destroyed!

2.     Don't let greed overtake you. Since a lot of people can't login it might be awesome to raid people since everyone has unspent resources. You might manage to do this, but for me, for example, I got kicked again from the server and my whole offensive army was all alone in my Haven (defense was elsewhere) and this is hugely dangerous as your enemy could obliterate them with ease if he logs in but you don't manage to.

3.     Collect your blockade ransoms as often as you can since you don't know when you can login again.

4.     Don't let anything important in the open. Hide troops, hide the Flying Dutchmen. Keeping your offense safe is more important as they are terrible at defending.

5.     If you really want to raid someone for resources then take out from the Harbor only the offense you need, not more.

6.     Do not insult on the forums. If you feel like complaining do so in a decent language. Insulting has never solved any problem.


Friday, February 14, 2014

Pirate Lassies Looking Good

Arrr pirates!! Ye know our pirate lassies looking really good and go very well with a bottle of Rum! Here below we got our cover page lady with a new red dress. Comparing the 2 - which do ye pirates think is more attractive and which the more scary one for the enemies?

Put yer thoughts in the comments! And don't be using no unproper words! Arrr!! :)


Signs of Casher Credit Card Players to Watch for

Arr pirates!! Most players in games like this are free players and it is of course a bigger challenge for free pirates to fight in the same world as casher / credit card / CCard pirates. To do this one has to be very organized, have good friends and be very active - but ok, that's not what this post is about. Here we be talking about signs with which you can recognize if someone is a casher and perhaps then avoid having a conflict with them (if say you be thinking of raiding for resources).

The Signs of a Casher are:


1.    Expanded Havens. It be costing 500 rubies just for the first expansion from 60x60 to 64x64.

2.    Haven Skin. If he be looking amazing on the Map be careful. It be costing 4000 rubies for the 2 newer skins.

3.    Dread Fleet. If he be having Dread Fleet from yer scouting or if he clear out yer blockades with Dread Fleet - think twice.

4.    Fortifications & Improvements. If he be almost wasting cash / rubies on various things to make his Haven "cosy" or "look nice" then ye know he not feeling super attached to his cash and he be letting it flow if needed, so think again if ye be getting into a fight with him.

Again, I am not saying never fight with a casher, I am saying think smart, don't waste your army. If ye got 2 choices to raid, 1 is a casher and 1 is not, probably a better idea is to avoid the casher.


Economy Overview and Importance in Pirates Tides of Fortune

Arr pirates!! In this here post I be wanting to highlight the importance of your economy. I know, I know, we be pirates and we mostly be thinking of killing and murdering and raiding and, most of all, of drinking lots and lots of Rum, BUT......

...pay extra special attention to yer Economy. The higher your hourly production of Gold, Lumber and Rum the faster you can grow, the faster you can train or re-train new pirates and the more useful ye can be fer ye Brotherhood and Shipmates.

Rum Distilleries 


Ye got more Rum Distilleries than other ones (ye got up to 6), so you can generate A LOT more Rum than Gold or Lumber, but this is because your army be drinking most of the Rum and so actually if ye be playing correctly you will have less Rum production than Gold and Lumber.

Gold Mines


Then ye got the Gold Mines. There be allowed 4 Gold Mines for some Havens and 5 Gold Mines for others. Fer defensive units like Bonnie's Beauties gold production is the most important thing.

Lumber Yards


Ye got up to maximum 4 Lumber Yards on some Havens and 5 on others. For attacking units like Marauders or Buccaneers the lumber production is far more important than anything else.

4/5 and 5/4


So if yer Haven is one of those with 5 Gold and 4 Lumber then ye know yer weakest is the Lumber and you have a natural advantage fer defensive units or can trade and buy lumber. And if yer Haven started with 5 Lumber and 4 Gold slots then its the exact opposite. (Thanks to Captain Chris for the info)


Thursday, February 13, 2014

LAVASH Diary Level 37 and Tips

Arrr pirates!! I gonna post here my Diary fer the record and sharing and also gonna give a few tips that might be beneficial for ye all, which I learned so far.

1.    Don't be intimidated by threats from "big pirates" or "big Brotherhoods". They usually be talking loud, but they be limited in what they can do to you. Also they can't fight the whole world, so they think and pick which battles are more important for them to pay attention to and harassing small and new pirates is not on top of that list.

2.    A little connected to (1), it be very important to upgrade your Harbor. It is what allows you safety and growth even if attacked by hundreds of pirates.

3.    For most people who do not pay cash to play the game be very careful how ye spend your rubies. It be very attractive to revive your dead army, but your rubies are limited so probably a better idea is to save them and keep for something that you can't buy with resources (army you can always train again).

4.    You see below in my Diary I have a bunch of medals. Check the requirements for getting these and accomplish them to be rewarded with lots of things.


Wednesday, February 12, 2014

All About the Royal Cannon

Arrr pirates!! Here I be making ye big expert on the ROYAL CANNON! Me pirates love our cannon - it's so big and smashing!! hahaha! :)

So, apart from being big and bad the Royal Cannon does not actually give any bonus to attack or defense. Ye figure that?! Darn surprising that is!

But apparently the Royal Cannon be sinking some random imaginary ships passing by, letting our pirates go pick up the scraps, and due to this it be giving us a 5% bonus to our gold and lumber production starting from Level 2! And on top of this ye can upgrade the Royal Cannon up to level 6 and be getting a bonus of 25% to yer gold and lumber production!

Level 2: 5%
Level 3: 10%
Level 4: 15%
Level 5: 20%
Level 6: 25%

Now that be something good, but there be also some bad news with that. It be taking a whole day for just one level of upgrade and if ye get raided then the cannon is smashed and although you can repair it for free ye gotta do again all the upgrades. So for those pirates who are super busy with raiding and getting raid better be hoping for more like 5-10% bonus at most.


Haven Guard only for Small Attacks

Arrr pirates!! A small but useful post to tell ye not to put any great hopes on your Haven Guard alone. Aye, it is good fer small hits, but just a couple of pirates already it cannot manage by itself.

Have ye look below ye see 1 Skirmisher was stopped by the Haven Guard / Defenses but 5 Skirmishers were able to best it. 2 of them died - HA-HA! :)

Still the good thing is that the Haven Guard is brought back to life with no cost or hassle, just a couple of hours.


Cost Analysis Fortification Level 1

Arrr pirates! We be raiding and killing but also important is to spend our tough to get Rubies with some thinking. So, here we be having an analysis of the costs for Level 1 Fortifications in our Pirates Tides of Fortune construction choices.

Here we be seeing that the Level 1 Wall be the smarter choice costing only 2.5 Rubies per point of defense. Next up, the most efficient fortification be the Level 1 Gate costing 3.33 Rubies per point of defense.

Tower be the most expensive and what goes on the tower be expensive as well. Good looking, but costing too much in Rubies compared to the other choices.

Hope you be enjoying this and benefiting and sharing with ye Shipmates. I will also be doing the Level 2 and other level analysis in another post.


Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Quick Tips which Prizes give Rewards

Arrr pirates! Here be some tips from captain MacDougal 'bout the Prizes and which give more often rewards.

Here below you see the pictures of the Sea Fort and the Safe Haven - the tip is that these have higher chances of giving rewards than the Caravel and the Black Corsair (also picture below).


And on top of that, the second tip is that the Forts drop prizes more often than Havens. And Cosairs more often than Caravels.


Earnings from Blockades

Arrr pirates!! Yer better be careful not to blockade inactive pirates for too long because the earnings from them keep going down more and more with every turn of the sun!

Here ye see some of my older blockades - these be making me more than 100 gold or lumber per hour and now ye can see there is much less production so I don't use them anymore!

If this happens to yer Haven then ye better look for new sweet targets to blockade!


Heaven Skins in Pirates Tides of Fortune

Arrr pirates!! We be havin' choices for skins fer the Havens in Pirates Tides of Fortune. They be making ours Havens look amazing plus they be giving us more defense bonuses! On the bad side they be costing rubies and lots of them, so not for the poor pirates out there. Yer can find the Haven skins in the Smuggler's Den!

Tortuga and Lighthouse which were added end of September 2013:


Here below the choices and costs of all the current Haven skins and also examples from the game's pirates:



And below the costs and choices:

Lighthouse Rock - 4000 rubies fer +800 defense
New Tortuga - 4000 rubies fer +800 defense
Isle of Ages - 3000 rubies fer +600 defense
Barbary Bay - 3000 rubies fer +600 defense
Kau Yi Island - 1000 rubies fer +200 defense
Mangrove Mooring - 1000 rubies fer +200 defense
Laputa - 1500 rubies fer +300 defense
Kraken's Prize - 1500 rubies fer +300 defense

That's always 5 rubies per defense point!


Sunday, February 9, 2014

Cost Comparison Skirmisher vs Bonnie's Beauties

Arrr pirates! Here we got a comparison of cost of the defensive skeleton-face Skirmishers and our dearest defensive Bonnie's Beauties.

Note also that Bonnie's Beauties are much faster in yer travel, so they have a strong advantage in that as well.

What I tried to do is to come up with a cost per offense or defense point to see which one is more efficient to buy and between these two it seems it is better to buy Bonnie's Beauties.

Note I assumed that Gold and Lumber have the same value, but I took Rum as half because it is rather easy to buy Rum at 2:1 ratio in the market.


Relics from Blackbeard's Cove

Arrr pirates! By capturing Targets such as the Blackbeard's Cove ye can Scour for relics which can give advantages to yer Haven. It can take a long time, ye see mine has 7 hours left (took 24 hours total i think) to get to 100% I hope, because I don't want to waste a day and Scour at a below 100%.

The tough part is ye have to defend the cove all that time, so in this case, since I really want the relic I sent my entire defensive armada with zero defenders left for my Haven. I did get blockaded but luckily only by 1 pirate so that was not a problem.


Once at 100% ye can Scour that relic which will appear in yer Skeleton Cave in yer Ship's Hold bottom right section. It will stay there for a maximum of 48 hours and if ye don't move it to your Chamber of Relics then it will be lost. So move ye relic either to the Chamber or Activate it and enjoy its benefits.

By the way ye can also sell the relic if ye wanna.

How to Liberate a Blockade

Arr pirates!! Some of ye shipmates or a Haven near you might be under a blockade which ye might want to help and liberate.

How to liberate a blockade in Pirates Tides of Fortune:


First up ye probably want to scout the Haven to make sure that the defending army is not strong. Once that is done ye click in the middle, on the Haven itself, to enter it. Then on the top left hand side ye see the pirate that is blockading. Click on that and ye get a menu of different actions to choose from one of which is Liberate.

Once you click Liberate ye will be taken to the Reinforcements window to select the army ye wanna send.


Saturday, February 8, 2014

Large Raid Destroyed due to not Scouting

Arrr pirates! It be very important to scout before you raid otherwise you run the risk of losing all your armada!! If the scouting fails it means that there are defensive Flying Dutchmen. That can mean 2 things:
  1. There is a very weak defense and the Flying Dutchmen posted there are trying to hide the fact that the defense is weak.
  2. A more likely option: there is a strong defense.
Now on the battle picture below you see this not-very-smart pirate who tried to scout my well defended target, failed, and decided to send a large attacking force including offense as well as defense to capture the target I was holding. He lost everything! 

and there is more below the picture...

1. He scouted me and failed:


2. He made a very bad decision to send all his offensive and defensive pirate forces and lost everything:


3. And I was angry that I lost some of my pirates and also at the fact that he so carelessly attacked so I decided to raid his Haven without scouting counting for his level (higher than mine) that he could not have sufficient forces if he lost this major attack and 2 hours later when my raid reached his Haven I knew I was right! 


and that's also my record plunder amount!

So to conclude: do NOT attack, especially a complete stranger, without scouting!!!

Bonus to stats from Discoveries

Arrr pirates! It can be quite expensive to research new Discoveries, but ye know all those little percentages add up. Ye look at that 2% and think "ah, that's nothing" but do it 10 times and you got 20% bonus!


for my next level I be needin' 544 gold 544 lumber and 908 rum; its getting more and more expensive.


Benefits of having Shipmates

Arrr pirates! Some of you be wondering if you should be making friends and having Shipmates in Pirates Tides of Fortune! Arrr!! Here be the good reasons for having Shipmates:

Your shipmates can help you create Dark Corsairs which are a good unit which does not use Rum!!!


They can help you defend your Haven by sending you reinforcements!


Friday, February 7, 2014

Cost Comparison Marauder vs Bonnie's Beauties

Arrr pirates! Here we got a comparison of cost of our vicious offensive Marauders and our dearest defensive Bonnie's Beauties.

What I tried to do is to come up with a cost per offense or defense point to see which one is more efficient to buy and between these two it seems it is better to buy Bonnie's Beauties.

Note I assumed that Gold and Lumber have the same value, but I took Rum as half because it is rather easy to buy Rum at 2:1 ratio in the market.


The Way to Survive in Pirates Tides of Fortune

Hey guys, sometimes in Pirates Tides of Fortune you find yourself in the situation of being constantly attacked and smashed and you don't know what to do. Well I found this post by tennischamp5 which is super useful in this situation and I want to share it with you so that you can also enjoy the game better:

"Quick general tips.


1.) Always Always Always Upgrade your harbor. I can't stress enough how many new players don't and leave their assets free for the taking. At a level 12 Harbor, you're protecting something like 13000 of each resource. Regardless of your level, that's enough to protect anything you have from attacks as long as you check back a few times a day. You shouldn't ever lose resources. Ever.

2.) Never ever ever leave your troops outside your harbor. The only excuse to have troops out in the open is if you're planning on raiding in the next 5 seconds or less. Any longer and you risk someone coming by and killing them. There's a reason there's a secure button on the harbor.

3.) Scout your targets before attacking them. Make sure they don't have anything guarding and you won't lose any troops.

4.) Build your offense/defense up slowly every day and little by little, they'll grow. I've been playing for a month and a half now and my offense is strong enough to take an unclaimed presidio alone (although with heavy losses).

5.) Never do prize battles. Any battle where you lose even one fleet/armada unit is a loss. I don't care if you gain 32k rum and 40 juggernaughts from it. You've lost. Because inevitably, you will attack 40 more times... and lose all 40 juggernaughts, one at a time. The only time to do a prize battle is when you can win without taking ANY losses. It requires commitment and self-restraint, but by following steps 1-3... your offense will get large enough that you don't need to worry about losses against prizes. From then on, you'll fly up in levels. (I can currently take out lv. 14 prizes without losing anything. Patience is a virtue in this game.)

6.) Remember... even if the top five guilds in the game all simultaneously come after you... they can't do a thing to you as long as your harbor is upgraded and your ships are hidden. They'll waste their time, ships, and raids getting nothing time after time.

Too many people see an incoming attack, freak out, and put their defenses out. Then they lose them. Just leave them in, upgrade your harbor or USE the resources before the attack. Enemy gets nothing. Enemy doesn't come back.

When I scout a player and they have a defensive army waiting, I make it a point to slaughter it to the man. I don't care if they have no resources. My offense is large enough that I don't care if you have 20 subs and 50 bonnies.... every last one is going to die without me taking significant losses... except that i'll gain a ton of free experience... and now you're set back a month+ of building.

Same with offense. Your offense gets exponentially more powerful the more troops you have. Why should I fight a prize and take 50% casualties, spend a week rebuilding and repeat? I'd much rather build for a couple weeks, and then start fighting prizes for 0% casualties.

Hope this helps."

So here is a Quick Summary:


1) Focus to upgrade your Harbor not to lose resources to raids.
2) Hide your troops inside your Harbor so they don't die from raids.
3) Scout before attacking.
4)+5) Grow slow, don't take risks.
6) Even if whole world attacks you there is only so much they can do if you did (1).

Targets to Capture

Hey guys, one of the new additions to Pirates Tides of Fortune added in August / September 2013 were the Targets which can be captured and held. These are great as you can even get rubies from them!

As always scout them first with your Flying Dutchmen and grab em. The difference with these is that you can also capture targets of your Shipmates!

To overcome the defenses you first need to smash them with your offensive units, but then to hold the targets you need defensive units!

The Whitmore & Co building is absolutely required in the Haven to capture these.


and here are the Gear Mills also up for grabs when you see them (used for the production of steam units)