Best Defense is Give No Resources

Arr pirates!! Have ye had the problem of a stronger pirate attacking you and wonder what ye can do about it? Well anyone can be a pain in the Rum barrel no matter how strong an opponent it is.

First of all, the reason for this post, is the main and best defense against anyone, especially a stronger attacker is to give them nothing. Hide all the troops, use all the resources on buildings, discoveries and training or send them over to Brotherhood members or Shipmates or, if it comes to that, throw them away completely (send to nearest inactive haven) - everything is better than to give anything to the pirate raiding ye.

Ye see below an example from my own Haven where I put out the Dark Corsairs together with my static "free" defense and actually got 2 out of the 300 Juggernauts destroyed while he got practically nothing. A couple of such attacks and they will stop very quickly because nobody wants to waste their raid attempts and, moreover, nobody be wanting to lose their expensive units for nothing.

Other than this ye can always be a major annoyance if ye liberate the blockades of yer enemy. This is extra annoying because he would have to re-blockade them, but, more than that, he might lose those blockades completely if either allied or enemy Brotherhood members blockade them before he manages to re-block.

Emergency Raiding with Defensive Units

Arr pirates!! Have ye ever seen a very sweet target but all yer army is out raiding and pillaging somewhere and ye just don't have the troops to raid this juicy nice Haven that ye found? Well, there are 2 choices ye can make from this:

1) Ye can sit and wait for yer offensive troops to come back to yer Haven so that ye can send them out to this new target.
But remember the longer you wait the more chance some other pirate will raid and take all those resources.

2) Take a risk and send yer DEFENSIVE pirates to quickly grab those resources!
But here also, remember that this be super risky undertaking and ye should do this when y'ar relatively sure that there be no defense out there.
How can ye be sure?
Well, if it is a target ye raided many times before and there is a good history - is one indicator. If the target be close to yer Haven so that ye get in and out quick with yer army is another indication.
But nobody can give ye a 100% guarantee - this is a risky action which best be taken with a barrel of Rum emptied all by yer-self.

Check below picture for an example me scouted a sweet target with ~19k resources and sent a whole heap of defensive units and grabbed a very nice chunk of gold and lumber and Rum. All my Haven celebrated into the morning, at least half of that Rum was drunk :)

Learn the Pattern of Yer Enemy

Arr pirates!! Ye got to work hard in thinking about the patterns of yer enemy! Yes, me know how hard this can be when y'arr down the bottom of a barrel of Rum but ye got to sober up sometimes fer the good of yer Haven and study and remember the patterns of attack of yer enemy!

What do I mean ye say? Well here I show ye an example of what strategy me be speaking of:

I had an enemy Haven captain sending me insults and threats and long story short it was clear we not gonna be drinking no Rum together so I started taking notes on me enemy and what I realized is:

1) He be sending a raid on me often being fake - with just 1 pirate.

2) He be treasuring his blockades a lot (so here I did a massive good job and liberating as many Havens as I saw he blockaded)

and last, but not at all the least ( 3 ) He be scouting me Haven with a large number of Flying Dutchmen (around 100) as well as the Dread Fleet unit called Airship which be giving a scouting boost of +400 fer 20 supporting Flying Dutchmen and the sort.

So regarding that last point I prepared my fleet of ~200 Flying Dutchmen and while his raid was coming to me Haven I put them out waiting fer his scouting army. I decided to wait even until the last moment until his raid arrives and then hide in the Harbor and, again, immediately after the raid, put them out again as me could not know when they be arriving, but based on his pattern they had to be coming at some point! And me observation of me enemy paid off in a fantastic way as ye can see on the picture below - obliteration of his entire scouting fleet as well as the Dread Unit Airship!

Inactive Haven Wakes up Suddenly

Arr pirates!! Ye gotta be ready and strong to receive absolutely unexpected bad news anytime when playing Pirates Tides of Fortune! Why ye say I be saying such a thing? Well, ye see on the below picture what a terrible loss I had attacking this Haven - this Haven was completely inactive and me army raided it a number of times in the past and there be never any defense there. I was 100% sure there be no defense and just 1 time I sent out a raid on it without scouting as I had good history raiding without any trouble with this Haven and BAM! - all of a sudden he be waking up and putting out all the defense he probably had hidden away in the Harbor exactly on the day when I did not scout - bad luck!

But can happen with anyone anytime - so be ready for accidents and be ready fer rebuilding what ye lost!

High Levels Send Million+ Raids

Arr pirates!! Have ye ever been wondering what kind of offensive power the higher level players have? Well I am here to show ye that with an example! Here be a level 61 player from one of the top Brotherhoods sending a raid on me Haven. We have no quarrel, this was just a random raid he sent one time without scouting or anything, but it be interesting for me to look and see the sort of an army that such high level players have and raid with. And as I show ye on the below picture he be raiding with 1 million + offense points, again, no scouting was done. I also know that some of the most top people easily can send 3 million offense points on a raid. So if ye be struggling with few thousands to begin with ye can know that in the future ye be dealing in millions!

Army Caught Upon Returning Home

Arr pirates!! Sometimes we got to talk about sad things as well. Here me lost 1000+ of me dear army unfortunately and I be sharing with ye me grief but also giving ye tips!

Ye see THE most dangerous thing in Pirates Tides of Fortune is having yer army caught when ye be not online to manage things. This applies to both offense and defense. It even matters not how much ye got, if yer enemy organizes an attack and ye be not online then ye can't ask yer Brotherhood or Shipmates fer help because ye be not there!

This way ye can lose a lot, ye can lose yer offense, ye can lose yer defense. There be 2 ways to prevent this. 1 way be the easiest - hide yer army in the Harbor, but this way ye can say "bye bye" to yer 25% resource production from yer cannon and ye be not able to have lots of resources sitting outside. 2nd way is to be full force out in the open and aggressively punish anyone who looks at ye. This 2nd way is not fer all pirates - it be fer the most organized strong ones.

But even if we be pirates, we be humans and here ye see I was not online to hide this raid returning home and a random enemy got lucky in destroying them, which be very sad for me on that day. So have a look at the picture below and say in the comments if this happen to ye as well.

Try Keep Rum Production Near Zero

Arr pirates!! As pirates I bet ye know all there is about Rum! Well ye don't! :)
Rum production is actually a very good indicator which shows ye if y'arr doing good or not. Ye see if yer Rum production is for example +3000 then this means ye got room for 3000 more pirates!! That's huge! What that tells ye is that y'arr not managing yer Haven well. The only time this is not yer fault (or maybe it is) is when the enemy attacks and destroys yer army then this is how ye see all those Havens with no gold or lumber and 50,000+ Rum. It means they don't have an army.

So back to what I want to teach ye and this is that ye got to try and keep yer Rum production near zero! Actually, if y'arr doing really good then ye probably have a little bit negative Rum production.

And by the way all of the above is while you are constantly building and upgrading yer Rum distilleries!!

So what's the logic ye say?

The logic or the purpose is to have yer Haven absolutely full of pirates / army up to the maximum limit. Have no barrel of Rum wasted at all! Otherwise ye be too fat for yer size. However, if ye keep on training troops and upgrading yer Rum distilleries and have a Rum production near to zero then ye be very strong for yer size and less people will want to fight with ye!

And don't be afraid to be having negative Rum production either. 100 negative means ye just gotta have 2,400 Rum extra to pay fer the day, which is super easy. Feel free to have 20,000+ Rum on ye and go all the negative ye want - Rum is the easiest resource to plunder and if ye be in a good Brotherhood people be giving ye Rum fer free as much as ye want.