Careful don’t lose more than ye gain

Arr pirates!! Now we be talking 'bout Targets - their benefits and dangers. Naturally, there be benefits to gaining resources of all sorts (gold, lumber, rubies, gears, rum) from Targets and that be the reason why many pirates be wanting a piece of them. Especially the Ruby Targets.

But I want to tell ye - Careful! Don't ye lose much more than ye gain!

Ye see, we be getting also quests to capture and collect resources from Targets. That's 'cause the game be smart - they be creating situations for pirates to fight one another. Ye see on the picture an example of such a quest with a nice reward of 6 Man O' War vessels - but at what cost? Ye gotta hold the Target for 1 hour before ye can claim resources and that be difficult. If ye put only 1 Bonnie then other captains will capture it. Ye can try messaging and asking everyone not to capture, but let's face it, ye can't message them all and not everyone is "nice".

And if ye put up a huge defense making sure nobody captures then ye run the risk of someone sending a blind attack for example with 1000 Marauders as it happened to me recently and, in that case, even if ye win, ye be losing a lot of units costing ye much more than the reward from the Target.

So, be careful, try not to get into the situation where ye lose a lot more units for the sake of few.

Scout a lot to Find Raid Targets

Arr pirates!! I be emphasizing again to ye the importance of scouting! Scout a lot to find really good targets fer raiding. Anyone after level ~15 can be good, also look that they be not part of a Brotherhood at all or the BH they in be very weak.

And there be no such thing as too little, here be 30 of me Flying Dutchmen going off in one direction:
How many Flying Dutchmen do you send? Put in the comments.

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.

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)