Corsairs Gold (2013) & Corsairs: Conquest at Sea (1999) & Corsairs: the New
Conquerors (1999)
Walkthrough/FAQ
An comprehensive general gameplay guide and England Campaign Missions
walkthrough
GoblinRavisher
v0.1
Motivation of this FAQ
---
Note: taking the following with a grain of salt is strongly recommended.
Every game deserves a fair trial and proper investigation, no matter what you
think about it. Otherwise you are likely to have two groups of people about it:
the misinformed and the devout dislikers or worshipers.
Coming from the GOG user review experience, the devout worshiper kind in
particular is super familiar to the author. The very reason this guide exists,
is because the game sucks like an industrial-grade vacuum cleaner.
It was a crashing bugs galore even at the time of its release and features
sanity-sappingly repetitive single-track soundtrack.
There is not a single reason besides pure masochism to pick Corsairs over vastly
superior Port Royale (2003) or, if you like sailing Eurasian seas, Partician
games.
Corsairs is only good for developing mental pain tolerance and resistance to
psychic violence. You'll be dismissing every attempt at damaging your mood with
"that's nothing in comparison to Corsairs" after just a couple weeks of playing
the game. It does not work if you disable the music, cheat or try to offset the
mind-rape factor of the game in any way. Just you trying to keep hold of your
fleeting sanity and this game. OH YEAH.
If you are looking for a fun game, SKIP. No, it does not matter how cheap you
got it. It simply is not a tool for good time. That does not have to mean it is
useless, only narrow-minded and unimaginative people would think like that.
Misery is its own type of satisfaction and a much better character-builder than
the effortless pleasantness. Your time is still wasted on the game, so do not
get proud. Whatever you get out of it, can never be socially shared, though it
is all yours to keep until the end of your days.
No, it was not worth it to compile the guide. The game is endlessly vapid and
the single-track music tortuously repetitive. All the content in the game is
there right from the beginning -- it never develops into anything beyond a joke.
The only recommendation that can be given
--+
How to Get the Game to Work Even in Windows 7/8/10
---
Most importantly: YES, you can make this game run even in Win 10. NO, it most
likely won't run without crashing out of the box. The publisher supplying the
distribution clearly did not care about the game to properly pre-configure it.
It shows. Please, for your own sanity, follow at least some of these
instructions.
Here are the main instructions, though it might still require some non-sensical
messing around to get it working.
1. Install the game outside Program Files directory. C:\games\Corsairs Gold is
fine. Otherwise it will crash after name select.
2. Use compatibility modes Windows 95 or Windows 98/ME . The game was made
before Win XP in 1999, so it is not XP compatible. This setting most likely does
not reduce any bugginess. It is simply proper.
3. Start the game from corsairs.exe , not from the aplay.exe launcher. E.g. GOG
defaults to starting the launcher. That one has a high likelihood of crashing
right after the name select screens. It probably ignores the compatibility mode
settings when it launches (more technically: forks) corsairs.exe process. You
have been warned.
An extra note: yes, the game is laggier than it used to be. That is because
older Windows systems poorly emulate the old-and-obsoleted graphical interfaces.
Virtualized systems are likely to have similar or even worse issues. You need to
get the old-and-buggy Win9x OS to eliminate that issue.
Just bear with it. After all, you should play Port Royale or Partrician games if
you wanted to be pampered with polish. In short, the lagginess further enhances
the pain factor for the ungodly depraved, forsaken freaks like the author. :D
Depending on the configurations and how messed up the game settings happen to
be, it could run like anything between "crashes after name select" - "crashes
randomly in game when square selecting" - "no crashes at all even after hours of
play" ON THE SAME SYSTEM.
Even the running directory location can ruin it. The game depends on having
unrestricted disk-writing access, which Win10 makes into a major issue by
defaulting to the no-access AKA read-only access. 9 times out of 10, if your
game crashes in Windows 10, it is almost always because of denied disk-writing,
even in non-system directories. ALWAYS REMOVE THE READ-ONLY PROPERTY OF YOUR
WINDOWS 10 GAME DIRECTORIES AND FILES.
The same issue with different symptoms happens with another game called
Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves, and probably many, many others. F-ING learn to
fix it yourselves because Microsoft, the creator of Windows 10, has zero
interest in doing it for you. That is the traditional Microsoft way. "F the
customer -- now give us our money, you damn pirate!"
--+
Controls [*CONTROLS]
---
Mouse
left-mouse-button AKA LMB - action (go there, fire at this target, etc.)
Double LMB - board the targeted ship
right-'' AKA RMB - deselect ships, focus on a location
-
Keyboard
+, - -- increase, reduce game speed
ยง - collect all money of all selected ships onto the currently focused one
0--9 - select the saved group
ALT + 0--9 - select and focus the group
CTRL + 0--9 - save the current selection group
SHIFT + 0--9 - add the current selection to the group
A - select all ships
B, SHIFT + B - cycle through all ships forward, backward [VERY USEFUL]
C - focus on Corsair's ship
D - activate/deactivate the high detail level (?)
ENTER - "center the camera onto the zone concerned by the last voice heard"
ESC - open the game menu (load/save game, quit, etc.) OR return to the previous
menu
F4 - create a new quicksave entry
F8 - fire a port/left broadside
F9 - fire a starboard/right broadside
F10 - toggle bubble information
H - activate/deactivate auto-response mode for the selected ships
I - show/hide crew counts of ships
L - lock camera focus onto the selected ship
M - activate/deactivate the visibility of cities on minimap
PAUSE - pauses the game (you cannot do anything during a pause)
S - create a quicksave
SHIFT + S - create a new quicksave entry
CTRL + S - pause
SPACE - fire both broadsides (sure, go ahead and waste a full broadside if not
more LOL)
T, SHIFT + T - cycle through trading posts forward, backward [VERY USEFUL]
TAB - show/hide the message window
W - fire a port/left broadside
X - fire a starboard/right broadside
Y - toggle bubble info
--+
Spies -- DO NOT USE THEM
A MASSIVE GAME-BREAKING BUG WARNING! If you fill all of the spy slots with
spies, the whole principality might become undockable i.e. practically deleted.
Do not buy all the spies. The mechanic is buggy. Buying a couple merchant spies
for intelligence can become useful.
General Tactics and Strategies: Units, Boarding Fight Tactics and Trapping Enemy
Ships and More
---
All units besides the governor seem to have roughly the same amount of hit
points. Governor has a much more than anyone else and will win even against your
high-damage corsair unless you somehow manage to weaken it it beforehand.
The gun-armed units fire as soon as any unit comes in range, so do not waste
time trying to target specific targets for shooting (unless the CPU extremely
improbably charges in with a officer units first). Just let them waste a couple
sailors from range and focus on the sword fight positioning. Guns = free damage.
That is all. All guns do about the same damage. Much like everything else, it
comes down to quantity over quality.
What you do in fights is to form line or circle formations around any entry
points. This is done so that you can fight 2-4 on 1 on every enemy unit, even
the weakest sailors. This is because the unit counts and overpowering dominates
the damage calculations. This is how it goes:
Two sailors engage in a sword fight. Left alone, the fight will last a long
time as they both defend well against one other's attacks. You do not want this.
Now another sailor of yours joins the sword fights. The new one has no threat
of taking damage, so he is free damage. Most importantly, the damage on the
enemy sailor increases steeply at this point. If you add a third sailor of
yours, the enemy sailor will not last long while your dude takes very little
damage. I.e. you basically traded little for killing that one dude.
Repeating this double-double-team arrangement a dozen or so times will tilt the
power scales against your favor. It is a great tactic especially because the
enemy almost always blindly charges into your trap pockets and even queues up
its sailors to enter those death traps. They will come to your ship to die
eagerly. If they don't, just reload the last save and try again.
Never count on the crew AI. It is terrible, outright command disregarding at
times and needs baby-sitting to not be led in enemies' death traps.
(Good AI would max out the pain factor. The game would also become unwinnable.
The gameplay relies on you cheesing the CPU. They are so super well micro'd that
you would not win even in constant 10% speed.)
The amounts of crew each sides get in fights reflect the relative amounts of
crew you have. To further cheese the AI, manage big ships with tons of crew.
With enough participating crew, the relative amount of the enemy will be as low
as 5, with which the enemy will surrender after about 10 seconds into the fight
and you get a free port or a ship. Being a fleet of bullies is the best way to
play the game. Once you can steal even the big ships with just crowding it with
yours, CPU players are doomed.
SAVE BEFORE DOING ANYTHING RISKY IF YOU DO NOT LIKE LOSING YOUR GAINS. Corsairs
is absolutely ruthless to newbies and still a savage rapist towards veteran
players. The key feature to for mitigating the damage from grave mistakes is
saving often and managing 7 save slots (do not save to the 8th slot or you will
have to deal with the laggy save menu page-flip animation).
Good places to save:
1. Before attempting to capture a port/ship
2. Right after successfully capturing a port/ship
3. Mission start
4. Right after completing a mission objectives. There are timed i.e.
limited-time objectives in the game that make you fail the mission or at least
make completing it much more harder if left unattended.
In practice, you will be saving upwards 30 times per mission, i.e. about once
every 5 to 10 minutes. Consider a map with dozens of ships to capture and a
dozen or more enemy ports. You will be saving a ton. If not, you will be
replaying the same damn mission extra 10 hours or so at worst. Most working
people do not have time like that to spend. Then again, they should be playing
something GOOD instead with their limited time, e.g. Port Royale, Patrician or,
hell, Planetside 2. You do not play Corsairs because it is good rather than for
the sick satisfaction you get from being F'd in the A hardcore by an old piece
of software. In that case, you probably do not want to save at all. Let's call
it Iron Man mode. Totally original, do not steal. Mahvel Commics, drop the gun,
no, no, NO--
Boarding Battle Units AKA Crew: [*LAND UNITS]
Governor / Pirate Corsair/Captains
+ Tons of health
+ At least four shots
+ High damage
o Always gang up on this b***h. Let him fire on you. His sword and the
entourage of sailors are the only realistic threat about him.
o The game makes killing this dude explicitly demanding, so return the
unfairness favor by ganging up on it, 6-to-1, with the Corsair stabbing to the
sides if you can.
o Pirate Corsair is a buffed-up version of Governor, with two specialities: his
crew never surrenders (you have to kill them all) and he is so tough that even
if you crew-up on him, he is likely to take out three or so sailors of yours
before he is done, no matter what you do.
o Everything in the boarding battles are a cakewalk EXCEPT Governors and Pirate
Corsair/Captain. You can avoid confronting the gov if you lower his sailor count
to 5 before he attacks, causing the port to surrender.
o Your Corsair does not stand a chance alone against this unit. You will get
outdamaged at least 2-to-1, guaranteed. You need tons of sailors for this one.
Not all Corsairs are equal.
Corsair (Player)
+ Has a "six-barreled gun" i.e. can shoot six times during boarding battles
before running out of ammo.
+ Slightly increased health over sailors
+ High damage
+ Slowly regenerates a limited amount health (very unique, will run out or it
triggers only once, do not count on it for a full heal)
o Is best used to join existing fights. This optimal-use idea also applies to
Governors, Officers and Captains AKA leader units.
o Can take out ship captains with support with ease, though soloing a governor
or a pirate captain is always a suicide mission.
Captain
+ Just like Corsair except with only four (4) gun shots
+ Has some slow health regeneration
o A stand-in for Corsair when Mr. Big himself is not participating
o An average pirate captain is already strong enough to kill your corsair
1-on-1. Bait it into targeting other units before releasing your blood-thirsty
Corsair at it.
Officer
+ A two-barreled gun
+ Slightly increased health
o Use for joining Sailor's fights. You get one per every 8 or so sailors. Do
not sacrifice these to prevent the crew morale from going down. (That is what
the game told me. Might or might not matter.)
o Pirate officers are a significant threat. These guys do not suck.
Sailors
+ Your main fighting force and ideal fight initiators.
o Good for forming meatwalls to obstruct enemy from picking
non-double-doub...--double-teamable fighting positions.
o Pirates are much tougher with much more damage and get no penalties from
being outnumbered.
Boarding / Land battle tactics
The first thing you should do in every single boarding battle is:
1. Rapidly tap - to lower your game speed down to -14
2. Move your units to the middle part on the opposite side from the gangplanks
/ boarding bridges.
3. Put your corsair next to the opening of one of the planks. (They will not
come if you block it entirely.)
4. Group up your officers i.e. shooters for later use against enemy officers
(non-pirates) or the captain (pirates).
5. The strategy is different against pirates. While the other enemies group up
before boarding your ship, pirates go full aggro from the start and sometimes
the captain comes first (the best case scenario). Be more ambushing and
defensive against guaranteed-to-come-stupidly pirates and more aggressive
against the rest. You can use your corsair to absorb some shots as he usually
can take it. Though do not go full gunfighter against enemy leaders as they may
have enough firepower to kill you single-handedly, while you get try to escape
but get blocked by your own, boneheadededly stupid crew. Once the pirate leader
is gone, focus shots on the officers.
Try not to waste your sailors pointlessly. Otherwise you need to painstakingly
re-recruit these dudes for every single ship of yours separately as the losses
tend to be quite distributed. The less you lose, the less time you need to
sacrifice afterwards for navigating the port menus to up your sailor amounts.
Hence the supreme practicality of the auto-subjugating superiority in numbers.
As you can see, pirates are super tough compared to other enemy parties because
of superior unit strength. This is probably because pirates are mostly plot
tools in campaigns, so they are responsible for most of the challenge in the
game. Also, they are pretty much the protagonist party of the story that drives
everything. For comparison, the national powers just there to hold ports and
build ships for the player i.e. a de facto (pirate) privateer to take over.
Also, the whole idea of sailor counts dominating the game mechanics underlines
the importance of sailing pirates in comparison to the post-holding national
interests. Corsairs is all about pirates. That is why they are tough. A lot of
campaign content outright hinges on that fact and most of it that does not
feature pirates is just weak and useless. In short, YARR!
A cheap tactic: put your captain/corsair alone on a thin gangplank. That will
guarantee him a 1-on-1 with enemy sailors and officers, most of who it can
easily kill very fast while taking minuscule damage and regenerating. In
general, your main guy is most devastating when used against single sailors. He
will absolutely ravage them. Use this to your advantage to minimize losses. The
health the guy temporarily loses has no bearing on the losses, much unlike the
sailorcide it can inflict to its enemy.
SAVE YOUR GUN SHOTS FOR THE OFFICERS. They are the #1 threat to your sailors.
Taking them out is even more important than taking out the leader as they deal
significant damage to your sailors, your corsair and effectively your chances of
winning. Killing the leader is usually not that useful unless you are in a about
10-vs-10 situation, where killing the dude would cause an instant surrender.
Most importantly, your corsair can only safely 1-on-1 enemy sailors. Officers
and up cause huge bonus damage to him. What you want is to get the officers out
of the picture and to keep massacring enemy sailors with scummy tactics until
the enemy submits or runs out of dudes (pirates do not know when to quit).
Notice how your units have two attack animations: defensive, side-to-side
slashing and a damage-dealing stab. For example, sailors mostly use the slash
and do very limited damage unless they are ganging up hardcore on some poor
enemy. Officers are significantly more stab-happy. Your corsair stabs almost
exclusively, about 3/4 of the time. This is significant because he can
single-handedly kill an enemy sailor in three hits. Now you know why using
defense-prone sailors as a cover is a great way to use your corsair and officers
against much stronger foes such as the leader or even pirate officers.
The most significant benefit of high reputation
Cheaper ships. That is it. Based on available data, maximum reputation reduces
the ship prices by about 50%. The reduction seems seems quite linear, e.g. 50%
reputation -> 25 % reduction i.e. 75 % price. Other goods could be affected too,
though they do not matter as privateering others' ships is the best to get money
and ships. The game favors an aggressive, ruthless playstyle that practically
obsoletes the whole concept of buying stuff instead just taking it from others,
effectively eliminating any significance of its own reputation system.
Titles include Landlubbber, Ship mate, Sailor (?), Captain, Old sea dog,
Commander, Commander-in-chief, Sea lord.
How to board ships like a boss:
Wait for the enemy to attack something. If you charge in, the enemy will
perfectly micro away and all you will get is ship damage. Just wait them to
attack something, set gamespeed to the max i.e. 190% and charge in on their
immobile asses.
The attack timer works in real time regardless of the game speed, so using max
speed is greatly advicable during them. One tactic is to hang out near your port
and wait them to come to you. You can use game saves to first indicate which
ports the CPU is targetting and then go set up an ambush a little away from it
(so that the enemy will not get rerouted) and then practically claim the enemy
ships with your bigger fleet.
Always board ships. No reason to buy ships when you can cheaply just take them
from NPCs. This game favors the chaotic evil playstyle to the extreme extent,
coupled with the completely useless and easy-to-abuse CPU AI in boarding scenes.
Cannons? F cannons. To preserve the ship value, set the balls to damage crew.
Always board attack i.e. double-left-click when you can. There is sense in
damaging your own future goods, after all.
ALWAYS ACCEPT SURRENDER. There is an insane, explicit benefit in doing so: the
surrendered sailors BECOME YOURS. You do not have to basically kill your own
future men if you simply amass enough boarding crew mass to push the enemy ship
into insta-surrender surrender (usually about five or six (5-6) as the relative
crew count at the start of the battle). You do not have to send your ships to a
port for stockpiling more sailors if you can make the enemy surrender. It is
most practical to surrender-conquer a lot of ships in one go so that you can
finish your conquering business entirely at once.
Most importantly, DO NOT DOUBLE-CLICK STRAIGHT TO THE TO-BE-BOARDED SHIP unless
you have a vastly faster vessel. Otherwise you will end up chasing it for
nothing if not destroyed by it when it micros your ship to death. Instead of
failing like a scrub, DO THIS:
1. Keep moving near the ship until you are next to it.
2. Now double-left-click to board it. That's it. (The enemy will not have time
to do evasive maneuvers and your chances of reaching it for boarding are very
high.)
Corsair on a big ship makes enemies surrender at double the normal crew count.
E.g. with a smallish Shooner or a Pinnace, a non-pirate enemy will surrender at
6, with or without the captain. With a big one like Frigate, the count is 12.
This makes it more likely for enemies to autosurrender to you. In practice, you
only need to out-crew-total 4-to-1 to guarantee surrender i.e. a free, fully
crewed and undamaged ship. On a smaller ship, it seems to be 6 or 8 to 1
instead.
The best ship for catching the boardable ships? Cutter. Not only is it with the
best crew-capacity-per-price in the game, it is very agile and can out-corner
even a frigate. You want to have at least one of these in you
Corsairs Cargo Trading for Beginners: [*TRADING]
It is F'd up the A. (The favorite expression of the author.) Take everything
you know about trading cargo and economics and distrust it. I.e. "this should
work in these games, but how about Corsairs?" For example, there are goods that
you cannot make money on, e.g. copper. They are there just to be beginner's
traps and to pad out the limited goods inventory.
CARGO TONNAGE IS A SEPARATE FOR EACH GOODS. You can have max 250 silk and 250
jewels on a Flute if you want. (Do not expect making sense from Corsairs.
Otherwise you are not gonna land long around these seas.)
You can safely only trade with your own county's ports or near neutral
"Merchants" ports also known as principalities coloured white. BTW, if you ever
need to sell your ships, those Merchants / principalities can allegedly buy them
when you moor at those ports. Just take the ship gold out beforehand because it
is lost money otherwise.
Freshly boarded ships often have stuff in them. Most likely you will want to
get rid of it fast with the "ALL" option of the selling port tab. You probably
need the extra gold to resupply and repair the ship. Trying to max the value of
the goods by painstakingly traveling to the high-demand ports is not worth it in
general. Just dump the goods to the nearest port and be done with it.
Like stated before, the default trade good is grain, expensive goods with
significant price differences are your main focus and the other low-value goods
are mostly insta-sells.
The main focus of Corsairs is on battles, ultimately port-capturing instead of
trading, so prepare accordingly. Regularly put aside a portion of your earnings
to build more ships and upping your fleet crew count. That is what you should
focus on. Otherwise the game will be overly difficult even on easy.
Maintain at most seven (7) save games (to not have to deal with the page flip
thing). You can delete old saves even while the game is running if you
accidentally make the eight (8.) save slot. Just delete some old saves or move
them to an archive sub-directory to keep it the save book one-paged.
Miscelaneous notes: [*MISC]
There is an overflow bug with the price paid for traded-in goods at ports,
which can cause you to get almost nothing from your high-value cargo. Always
check that the sale values are about right before confirming the sale with the
tresure chest button.
Best merch ships? Flutes. They have 250 cargo and cost less than 20k.
What to trade? High-cost items (e.g. jewelry and silk) until the price
difference or the supply disappears and then go ham on grain for
much-less-but-not-zero gain.
Use the "Cities" menu to figure out the biggest money differences. You should
buy a fleet of Flutes to capitalize on the massive grain supply and demand. When
one Flute profits 4k per grain shipment and the ship costs about 16, you can
practically double your fleet after like a five back-and-forts. It will also
slightly help you with building your critical crew base to instantly subjugate
even big enemy ships.
You do not need the big ships per se, because the financially vastly superior
CPU opponents are better at getting them. What you should focus instead is
maxing your fleet crew count. Then you can just take those big ship along with
their massive gold counts. Many big ships come with over 100k gold, with which
you can resupply your entire fleet many times. If you try to play the game
without such scumming up, expect to get fucked. It will be you who gets
overpowered.
Usually, once you have collective crew of at least 150, you can start boarding
ships to easily expand your fleet. That is idea because 1) you get the ship
gold, often enough to build more big ships and 2) the enemy loses a ship, a loss
it can not easily recover from. Once you have 200 or 300 collective crew, you
can start conquering enemy ports, awarding you plenty of treasury.
General map control strategies [*STRAT]
How you should generally play is: trade the high-value items until they or the
profit margin run out and then build a ton of small ships such as Flute that you
can also use for trading grain to gather profits for building more even more of
them.
One cheap strategy is to sell all of your initial cargo and build a ton of
ships to capture the ports of the enemies (and even neutral merchants) that has
not had time to build up fleets (for being too occupied with trading.) You can
try that out if you want. Early game unupgraded ports are very easy to conquer.
In late game, every port tends to have a full fort and a defense army that
requires significant care. (Read: reloading saves when you get F'd up.)
Conquer one enemy nationality at a time. Having all of the nationalities flood
your ports at once might not stay manageable for long. If you do manage that,
the end game will turn much easier with the other nations having almost no
opposing ships left. Sometimes they declare a war on you on their own, so that
might happen anyway. All you can really do is to build ships with full crews to
be ready. Keep in mind that the CPU is always aggressive. To be fair, it is
aggressive to a fail and often attacks even vastly superior fleets, practically
giving you ships. Just take that yes for an answer.
Game speed management for optimal boarding and port conquering [*SPEED
*CONQUERING]
IMPORTANT GAMEPLAY DYNAMICS:
1) Once you board a ship or a port, a REAL TIME timer starts. Real time is
real life time i.e. one second lasts for 1.0 seconds. AKA the clock time. (The
point is that most of the game works based on the game speed. The boarding
timers is an important exception to that. This means you can manipulate the game
speed to maximize the amount of ships that get to participate to your boardings
AND to slow down the game once you have enough port attack force to minimize the
amount of fortress' cannonballs it shell out at your invading ships.
2) The boarding and port assault timers are 8 and 20 seconds, respectively.
The 8 is too short in practice without maxing the game speed and 20 is plenty.
(Damn rhymes.)
3) When you attack ships or your ships are attacked, quickly tap + to up the
game speed and send your forces to the boarding/boarded ship to participate.
4) When you have already amassed enough ships to conquer a port (the crew
power indicator should show at least 50-50), you can minimize the damage from a
potential port fortress by tapping - to minimize the game speed, effectively
slowing down the rate the fort spits cannonballs at your ships. Combine this
strat with the fast Frigate ships and you will be taking ports for close-to-zero
any ship damage.
5) When you plan boardings or port invasions, set the game speed to min AKA
10%. Keyboard controls: + increases and - decreases it in-game. (Note that even
10% is a bit fast during major action, so do not equate it to pause (PAUSE),
during which you cannot do anything. Corsairs is not a turn-based game and
playing it as such is not likely to end well. Your mileage may differ, though.
To avoid problems, eliminate all interruption sources such as enemy ports in the
way, before you commit to any big operations.)
In short, Corsairs is very video-gamey in its time-lording-intensive gameplay.
Time is both irrelarelative and relative at the same time in this game.
(Einstein, eat your field theory out.) You will do best if you drop any
expectations of realism with it and let yourself break the rules of time and
space without a second thought.
--+
Ships [*SHIPS *VESSELS *BOATS]
---
(The official manual lists the ships in a completely randomized order. Here is a
more practical list, sorted in ascending order based on the supremely important
crew capacity.)
Xebec / "Chebec"
+ 15 crew
+ 6 cannons
+ 10 tonnage
+ 6.2 knots
o I swear these things can barely survive a single broadside.
Lugger (?) / "Lougre"
+ 20 crew
+ 8 cannons
+ 25 tonnage
+ 6.5 knots
o Surely you know what luggers are traditionally used for. FISHING. 'Nuff said.
Flute
+ 30 crew
+ 10 cannons
+ 250 tonnage
+ 5.5 knots
o A cheap ship for trading. Marginally useful in boarding and a big liability in
port assaults. It is the slowest ship, so it is easy pickings for the for
cannons.
Cutter / "Cotre"
+ 30 crew
+ 14 cannons
+ 30 tonnage
+ 6.3 knots
o As a small ship and with the best crew-to-price ratio, this one is the
ultimate privateer i.e. boarding ship in the game. The problem with vastly
faster ships such as Frigate is the fact that the enemy AI utilized frequent
cornering to keep you from getting close as your ship freezes whenever it needs
to adjust directions. Small ships such as Cutter have almost zero adjusting
delay, making random enemy ships extremely vulnerable for this little love boat.
Also, costs only about 13k at most and gets even cheaper with the 50% reduction.
Pinnace / "Pinasse" (in the manual, the same word in French)
+ 60 crew
+ 20 cannons
+ 300 tonnage
+ 6 knots
o So slow and slow to turn. You will be waiting all day for these guys.
Caravelle
+ 80 crew
+ 30 cannons
+ 500 tonnage
+ 6.5 knots
o A slightly fatter Pinnace.
Shooner / "Goelette"
+ 100 crew
+ 30 cannons
+ 150 tonnage
+ 8.5 knots
o A Frigate substitute. A bit flimsy.
Brigantin
+ 150 crew
+ 40 cannons
+ 175 tonnage
+ 9 knots
o A Frigate substitute. For some reason, vastly better than Shooner at reaching
the boardable ships. The ship model must have better collision detection or
something like that.
Galiote
+ 175 crew
+ 36 cannons
+ 150 tonnage
+ 6 knots
o Very rare. The enemy does not build a lot of these. Probably because the stats
are terrible: the speed of a slow ship with a mediocre capacity. Makes a good
case for a scrapped-on-sight policy. Just remember to give the money away to
another ship before selling as that value is not added to the sale price and is
effectively lost.
Frigate / "Fregate"
+ 200 crew
+ 50 cannons
+ 175 tonnage
+ 9.5 knots
o The best ship for boarding enemy ships and thus eliminating your competition.
Also, useful for port capturing. The most practical end game ship.
Corvette
+ 400 crew
+ 74 cannons
+ 100 tonnage
+ 6.3 knots
o A mini-galleon. Boardings go much smoother with these guys.
Galleon / "Galion"
+ 600 crew
+ 120 cannons
+ 100 tonnage
+ 6.5 knots
o Very slow and expensive, though can alone capture most ports. Use the ones you
have or can capture, do not buy it. Even one of these can add a ton of crew
power to boardings and port assaults.
--+
What Is Up with the GOG's Corsairs Gold Campaign and Adventure Modes (AKA Let's
Laugh at the People Who Bought This Game on GOG)
A long story short, the publisher sent a broken game master and fans found ways
to fix it. The End. Remember to add Microids (French) and its owner-publisher
Anuman (French) onto your hate list. :)
In short, if you go to MobyGames' Corsairs Gold screenshot page, you can see a
Main Menu screencap with the modes "New Campaign" and "Adventure Mode" on it.
However, if you look at the same menu with non-modded GOG Corsairs Gold version
(I have no other versions), it only has a portmanteau i.e. a fusion-phrase of
the two: "New Adventure." I have no idea what it is.
The original Adventure Mode was supposed to be a sandbox mode without strict
quests to take and it would end only if the player conquered everything
The original New Campaign was a set of strict missions to accomplish and the
overall goal was something about maxing out the reputation bar as much as you
could for some mysterious purpose. It is supposed to have side quests, though I
have not seen any if the thing about Blackbeard's treasure does not count. It
seemed more like a short Extra Gold quest.
New Adventure mode sounds like the old campaign, though I have not seen any side
quests or references to a goal to increase reputation. The reputation mostly
affects how good rates the port traders offer the player. As the game is more
about amassing a fleet of ships, especially "Fast War Ships" (speed > 8.0 knots
i.e. Goelette [8.5], Brigantin [9.0] and Frigate [9.5]) for boarding-capturing
even more ships, the trading benefits are not very significant.
The main deal is that this is supposed to be a guide that answers questions. You
know, the 'Q' in FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Frankly, I have no idea what
the hell I am playing. Is this Adventure or Campaign or BOTH combined? One thing
is clear: this is about Missions of the England side.
Here is the true nutroll:
Considering that there are New Adventure Missions for Spain and Holland, the
two new navy powers added by relevantly named "The New Conquerors" expansion.
There was no Adventure Mode before that expansion added it in November 1999. The
original game was known as Corsairs: Conquest at Sea (released in 1999-04-30).
Based on the facts that the new countries were given their own campaigns AND
that New Adventure is all about mandatory missions and mission failed screens if
you fail, this mode is clearly the old New Campaign mode.
The key question remains: what happened to the original Adventure Mode? The
Corsairs Gold manual mentions it, though what it says f**ks everything stated
above up by claiming, that it IS New Adventure. Though its description of it is
not what you see or get in the game. Quote:
"In this mode, several mission areas will be offered for you to choose from.
Unlike the campaign mode you will only have one objective to meet, it's up to
you to use all the means at your disposal to achieve it. "
In reality, you get to choose NOTHING. Starting the mode fresh, you can only
access Mission 1. If you beat that, the next one and so forth. That is not
choosing in literate English. Yeah, sure, you can alternatively choose to NOT
play the the mission. That is all. Try to not get crazy with all the freedom of
choice you have right there.
"Only one objective?" I remember there being about four objectives i.e. tasks
involved with completing that one.
"All the means at your disposal": no. In Mission 1, there were two timed
objectives and if you were not close enough to the objective zone when the
objective kicked in, you are guaranteed to fail the mission (reaching San Juan
in time to intercept Santa Maria AND being at Barbados in time to do the same to
a Spanish fleet).
My guess? Someone poured some cola onto the computer hard drive storing the
manual text master file and the team had to quickly make another one bulls**ting
their way through with nonsensical filler text.
For the funzies, here is the quote for the New Campaign mode that is absent from
the menu:
"When you start up a new mission, a page describes to you the mission and the
context in which you find yourself.
During the mission, different objectives said to be “primary” will be given
to you. If you accomplish these objectives, the mission will be successfully
completed.
There are missions said to be “secondary”. These are requests made to your
Corsair to solve a problem in exchange for which you will obtain a premium. You
have no obligation whatsoever to carry them out. When you accomplish an
objective this directly influences your reputation. The objectives do not appear
on your screen. To read them, you have 2 buttons at your disposal."
Down to the buttons, this matches with the actual New Adventure gameplay.
I can sum up this with one sentence: New Adventure is New Campaign and the
genuine New Campaign is nowhere to be seen -- how F'd is my Corsairs Gold
installation? :)
Do you want to know something really funny? There is a GOG forum thread about
this specific thing. Here is what a staffer commented on:
[START QUOTE 57]
"Hey guys,
There seems to be an issue with a master we received from the publisher. Rest
assured that we are looking into this and should have it resolved as soon as
possible.
Sorry about this and thanks for your patience in this matter :)"
There you go. The answer is the publisher royally F'd up. But wait! That comment
was from 2013. It is 2019 now. Here are some more quotes:
2014: "We haven't forgotten this issue and we are still working on it :)"
2015: "I asked support and they replied:
"Unfortunately current owner of Corsairs Gold still didn't provide us with
updated master files."
Seems like there's nothing GOG can do."
2016 #1: "I have informations aout the "Adventure Mode" from Gog!
This is the E-Mail:
'Hello,
Unfortunately that is correct, and we are currently unable to provide update
with Adventure Mode. Unfortunately Adventure Mode is not compatible with modern
operating systems, and our product team wasn't able to fix it. I'm sorry for
inconvenience.
Regards,
Dr Cat
Customer Support Representative
GOG.com"
i is to bad that they can not fix it."
The best solution without downloading random files:
-
2016 #2: "For now, I give up for a clean way to get the adventure mode back.
But there is a dirty way. As a reminder, the adventure mode consists in 5 opened
missions where the only goal is to detroy all the enemies. These missions are
number 31 to 35. Furthermore, a new adventure always loads mission 01.
The trick here is then to replace mission 01 by mission 31, 32, 33, 34 or 35 to
fool the game.
Setting up files and folders (It takes a long time but you only have to do it
once) :
1. In folder \data\missions, make a copy of MIS31 subfolder. I've chosen to
rename it MIS01_31.
2. In \data\missions\MIS01_31, rename all MIS31*.*, VIS31*.* and INT31*.* files
respectively MIS01*.*, VIS01*.* and INT01*.*.
3. In folder \PRM\MISSIONS, make a copy of MIS31 subfolder. I've chosen to
rename it MIS01_31 too.
4. In \PRM\MISSIONS\MIS01_31, rename all MIS31*.* and VIS31*.* respectively
MIS01*.* and VIS01*.*
5. Do the same for missions 32 to 35. I then have 5 new folders in
\data\missions and \PRM\MISSIONS named MIS01_31 to MIS01_35.
Now to play mission 31 for example :
1. Rename folders \data\missions\MIS01 and \PRM\MISSIONS\MIS01. I've chosen to
rename both MIS01_BACK.
2. In \data\missions and \PRM\MISSIONS, rename the fake MIS01_31 folders to
MIS01.
3. Load game and select NEW ADVENTURE then BLUE/FRANCE.
4. When mission is over, remember to restore the original MIS01 folders in
\data\missions and \PRM\MISSIONS (rename both MIS01 folders to MIS01_31 and both
MIS01_BACK folders to MIS01).
Keep in mind that each opened mission is bound to a color/nation and you'll get
an error if you choose a wrong one. Then to play :
- mission 31, you have to choose BLUE/FRANCE.
- mission 32, you have to choose ORANGE/HOLLAND.
- mission 33, you have to choose RED/ENGLAND.
- mission 34, you have to choose YELLOW/SPAIN.
- mission 35, you have to choose YELLOW/SPAIN.
Not very elegant but kind of effective."
[END QUOTE 57]
-
As original work, here is a Windows-compatible batch script that creates
semi-ready duplicate directories for you to rename whenever you feel like
playing the 5 Adventure Missions. Just rename MIS01 -> MIS01_BACKUP and and the
other four (02 to 05) in both DATA/MISSIONS and PRM/MISSIONS directories. ONLY
THEN, rename the duplicate directories MIS01_1 -> MIS01 (the whole 01 to 05
deal) in the two directories. Then change the whole thing back when you want to
play the directories. The script only creates duplicate directories and edits
their file names, so it has zero damage potential on your existing installation.
(To be honest, the adventure mode is the exact same deal as the campaign with
the same maps. It is simply the same maps with a locked country selection and
slightly different scenarios. Not worth it.)
Copy the following text to a text file, save it as "create_duplicates.bat" in
your Corsairs directory housing the .exe files and then run it. You are welcome.
Producing that script was neither easy nor fun. You should have a new
directories such as DATA/MISSIONS/MIS01_1 once you have run it once. Please do
not run it more than once. That scenario has not been tested.
[BATCH SCRIPT STARTS]
@SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion
@echo off
@ xcopy /s /i /y data\missions\mis31 data\missions\MIS01_1
@ xcopy /s /i /y data\missions\mis32 data\missions\MIS02_2
@ xcopy /s /i /y data\missions\mis33 data\missions\MIS03_3
@ xcopy /s /i /y data\missions\mis34 data\missions\MIS04_4
@ xcopy /s /i /y data\missions\mis35 data\missions\MIS05_5
@set foo=31
@set fee=01
@set fuu=
@set fyy=
@set fii=
@for /r data\missions\MIS01_1 %%x in (*31*) do @(set fuu=%%x & set fii=%%x &
call set fuu=%%fuu:%foo%=%fee%%% & set fyy=!fuu! & move "%%x" "!fuu!" )
@set foo=32
@set fee=02
@ for /r data\missions\MIS02_2 %%x in (*32*) do @(set fuu=%%x & set fii=%%x &
call set fuu=%%fuu:%foo%=%fee%%% & set fyy=!fuu! & move "%%x" "!fuu!")
@set foo=33
@set fee=03
@ for /r data\missions\MIS03_3 %%x in (*33*) do @(set fuu=%%x & set fii=%%x &
call set fuu=%%fuu:%foo%=%fee%%% & set fyy=!fuu! & move "%%x" "!fuu!")
@set foo=34
@set fee=04
@ for /r data\missions\MIS04_4 %%x in (*34*) do @(set fuu=%%x & set fii=%%x &
call set fuu=%%fuu:%foo%=%fee%%% & set fyy=!fuu! & move "%%x" "!fuu!")
@set foo=35
@set fee=05
@ for /r data\missions\MIS05_5 %%x in (*35*) do @(set fuu=%%x & set fii=%%x &
call set fuu=%%fuu:%foo%=%fee%%% & set fyy=!fuu! & move "%%x" "!fuu!")
@ xcopy /s /i /y prm\missions\mis31 prm\missions\MIS01_1
@ xcopy /s /i /y prm\missions\mis32 prm\missions\MIS02_2
@ xcopy /s /i /y prm\missions\mis33 prm\missions\MIS03_3
@ xcopy /s /i /y prm\missions\mis34 prm\missions\MIS04_4
@ xcopy /s /i /y prm\missions\mis35 prm\missions\MIS05_5
@set foo=31
@set fee=01
@set fuu=
@set fyy=
@set fii=
@for /r prm\missions\MIS01_1 %%x in (*31*) do @(set fuu=%%x & set fii=%%x & call
set fuu=%%fuu:%foo%=%fee%%% & set fyy=!fuu! & move "%%x" "!fuu!" )
@set foo=32
@set fee=02
@ for /r prm\missions\MIS02_2 %%x in (*32*) do @(set fuu=%%x & set fii=%%x &
call set fuu=%%fuu:%foo%=%fee%%% & set fyy=!fuu! & move "%%x" "!fuu!")
@set foo=33
@set fee=03
@ for /r prm\missions\MIS03_3 %%x in (*33*) do @(set fuu=%%x & set fii=%%x &
call set fuu=%%fuu:%foo%=%fee%%% & set fyy=!fuu! & move "%%x" "!fuu!")
@set foo=34
@set fee=04
@ for /r prm\missions\MIS04_4 %%x in (*34*) do @(set fuu=%%x & set fii=%%x &
call set fuu=%%fuu:%foo%=%fee%%% & set fyy=!fuu! & move "%%x" "!fuu!")
@set foo=35
@set fee=05
@ for /r prm\missions\MIS05_5 %%x in (*35*) do @(set fuu=%%x & set fii=%%x &
call set fuu=%%fuu:%foo%=%fee%%% & set fyy=!fuu! & move "%%x" "!fuu!")
@ endlocal
[BATCH SCRIPT ENDS]
-
A long story short, the publisher sent a broken game master and fans found ways
to fix it. The End. Remember to add Microids (French) and its owner-publisher
Anuman (French) onto your hate list. :)
(BTW, the local Dutch of today prefer the name 'Netherlands' for their country.
'Holland' is mostly the highly-populated, northern part of the country and some
provinces are named after it, e.g. North and South Holland. There are plenty of
Dutch provinces without the word Holland in their names, e.g. Limburg, Utrecht
and Zeeland. The rule of thumb: it is all Netherlands, though it is not all
Holland.)
(Extra note #2: the GOG corsairs.exe has the executable title of "CORSAIRS POUR
LA FORTUNE ET POUR LE ROY." The last word is cut from (allegedly -- not a fluent
French fry) (le) royaume. That is French for "Corsairs: For the Wealth and the
Kingom." This title is set during run-time. The executable itself has no
description besides the Windows default "corsairs.exe" . No, the game will not
run any better with the "native" French language selection. The only difference
is different fonts.)
Cheats in the game:
NONE. Even GameWinners dot com Wayback Machine 'd database did not have an
entry for this game. The developers never released the codes and they are
nowhere to be found. Get Cheat Engine, that works with every game. You can
memory-edit millions of gold for yourself if you want. Just remember that
standard 4-byte values can only take numbers up to 16.7 million, so do not go
beyond 16 mil if you can. You can experiment with insane hull durability and
crew values if you can. After all, pirates do it all the time, so the game has
no credible excuse against the practice.
--+
New Campaign ("New Adventure" in the broken GOG master) England Missions
Walkthrough [*MISSION *WALKTHROUGH]
---
Mission 0: Preparing the game to run without crashing
1. Set following compatibility modes AND _add admin rights to all of them_:
corsairs.exe - Win 98/ME
aplay.exe - Win 98/ME (the best feature: it does not play the opening movies,
saving you bootup time)
Launcher.exe - Win XP whatever (does not work with anything earlier, very
strange for a Nov 1999 release, the first confirmed WinXP beta build leaks date
back to Feb 2000)
With these settings, the game stops being buggy and crashing in-game. (I blame
the instability on the ninjas that inhabit the newer Windows versions.)
You can find these .exe files by going to the Corsairs directory and selecting
properties of those two executables from the right-click menu. Run the game from
corsairs.exe for best results. If the game is inside a Program Files directory,
copy it out of there or it will NEVER run, a courtesy feature of Microsoft
Corporation. (Once you have put both executables to WIN98/ME mode and enabled
admin rights, the game should launch even from GOG or equivalent launcher. This
setup is tested to work even in the most F'd-up Windows version aka Win10. If
you cannot get it working, either your hardware drivers or the system software
is FUBAR and there is nothing to do until you fix that first.)
2. In the laggy menus, first choose "Navigate" to get to the SECOND GAME MENU.
(Game dev gods must have been drunk from playing too much Quake and Duke Nukem
3D in 1998 and 1999.) Select Options and slide the difficulty down to "Easy."
(It is a lie. In reality, the easy-normal-hard difficulties are better renamed
as sadistic-nutcracker-execution. You are welcome.) If the sliders glitch out,
just go back and return to re-align them. Mentally prepare for more glitchy
parts to come.
3. Get back to Main Menu and select New Adventure. (It starts the "New Campaign"
mode. The publisher F'd it up the A to be like that.)
4. Select your country (No one likes an extra rude French fry. Fish-'n'-chips
all the way.) and your name. (A pro tip: avoid spaces in names and names longer
than 8 characters. Make it super easy for this game to process.) Type in "SPUD"
as your name and select "ENGLAND" nationality. (This guide might not be as
helpful if you pick something else.) If you followed the instructions in 1, your
game might not crash with a short delay when you hit the 'OK' button. MIGHT. If
you get a book page with "Mission 1" on it, consider yourself a chosen one. (Or
not completely retarded.) Click on another "OK" and you should experience a
suspiciously long loading screen even on top-of-the-line PC.
(F Macs & their owners. They can suck a long WINE emulation c**k for being
stupid enough to buy this bottom-of-the-barrel game instead of Port Royale. Then
again, they paid over 2000 USD for an under-powered, grossly overpriced
proprietary-locked limited-use piece of hardware. Buying an old game is nothing
in comparison to their past sins of financially suicidal behavior.)
Once the game loads, quickly slow the game down by tapping - a couple dozen
times until the game speed is at the minimum 10%. Then press Esc to bring up the
menu and save your game. (Maintaining multiple saves is recommended. By the way,
the speed controls are - and + keys and the full range is 10 - 190 %.)
-+
England Mission 1
Mission progression:
Arrive to Barbuda
-> Capture a Spanish port
-> Super quickly go to San Juan (a Merchant settlement near the top-left corner
of the map) and board an arriving Frigate named "Santa Maria"
-> Get a ton of ships at Barbados to ambush and board half a dozen arriving
Spanish vessels
1. English Corsair starts with a Pinnace w/ a crew capacity of 60. (Only the
Spanish one gets something different: three ships i.e. 100+30+20 crewers.) Go to
Barbuda. (It is your national capital w/ the best dry dock for building ships
and stuff. The governor is calling you as a part of the mission. You should not
let the enemy to capture this port if you can. Other ones you can always take
back and even use to bait enemy assaults. The enemies mostly attack non-defended
ports, though the AI is very chaotic and seemingly random at times.
You can view your mission messages with TAB. You can up your game speed a bit</pre><pre id="faqspan-2">
when you are just traveling. Just remember to set the speed back to 10% AKA min
whenever you arrive to ports. If you do not game time optimize like that, you
are extremely likely to get trounced fast by the perfectly micro'ing AI
opponents. Otherwise you will learn from the experience. *Thinks of endless
nights of being constantly raped and the screams for help echoing throughout the
vacant, cold halls.* The only thing truly fast and easy in the game is losing at
it by default.
Some brief control instructions. Corsairs features the antiquated
left-mouse-click-for-action system, with right-click being reserved for
canceling and focusing on things. You should set your first ship as Group 1 by
selecting it and pressing CTRL + 1 . After that, you can easily re-select it by
pressing '1' instead of spending ten seconds searching for it and clunkily,
needlessly re-orienting your map in the process. In short, click on the ship.
Press CTRL + 1, then look up Barbuda from the minimap [one of the red dots on
it], pressing 1 to make sure it is selected and left-clicking on Barbuda
harbor.)
2. In Barbuda, ignore the mission for quite while now. (This a guide that uses
the late-game, high-security wussy approach focusing on amassing overpowering
crew totals.) Sell your useless cargo i.e. Coffee, Copper and Spices. Now, buy a
full load of Jewelry to be sold St. Kitts. Keep buying-and-selling and buying
some Flutes and later Pinnaces to up your trading capacity and the crew count.
Keep making saves every 10 minutes or so to learn and utilize the knowledge what
part the enemy is going to attack to get there in time to take over a free ship.
Here is how you should sell:
Grain - Buy (Barbuda), sell (Anquilla) [a plentyful racket, very low profits,
tons of work for very little]
Jewelry - Buy (Barbuda or Aquila), sell (St. Kitts) [runs out but produces high
profits fast in the early game]
Silk - Buy (Barbuda and St. Kitts), sell (Anquilla) [moderate stocks, the supply
renews surprisingly fast]
(Be careful when commanding ships from Anquilla to St. Kitts, you cannot just
order them to go there. The default shipping path goes next to the French port
St. Martin and your ships will get bombarded if not destroyed. You cannot afford
that. Instead order them to go a significantly right from St. Martin and when
they are past St. Martin's reach, order them to St. Kitts.)
(Your best bet to make money is capturing other ships. You cannot reliably do
that until they start attacking you. So build up resources for ship building
while you wait for that so that you can board the attackers and take their
massive ship gold and decent ships.)
3. Once you have figured out your efficient trading routines and used the
profits to build half a dozen ships, capture some enemy ships by boarding them.
To wait them to attack you or to ambush them randomly, the choice is yours. The
waiting option causes less massive retaliating with a full fleet attacking your
ports.
4. Now you have some serious fleet, you should create some buffer zone by
capturing nearby enemy ports. (That often works to attract even more ships to
board and take over when they come to defend their posts.) Proceed to capture
St. Martin as required by your mission. Keep in mind that you cannot let that
port get retaken or you will fail the mission. (The mission failed screen will
lead to a high chance of the game crashing, an extra reason avoid it like
plague.)
5. Next you are required to capture a Spanish port. The catch: once you do it, a
timed sequence will start. You need to be in time at a far location of San Juan
to board a 200 crew Frigate named Santa Maria. It will have an escorting ship or
two. So if you are forced to capture a very distant Spanish port, you need to
have a second fleet already close to San Juan to have ships to board Santa Maria
a bit before it arrives at San Juan. (It is not easy. Feel free to do
preparations, e.g capturing all ports near San Juan.)
6. Once you are done intercepting Santa Maria, build some strength if you have
to by NOT docking at St. Martin. To safely return from SJ, take a South rate
around the island to avoid the remaining escorts. Spain will start attacking
that port after a while, so have a couple ships around while you build more and
fix the old ones.
Once you are done with your fleet (It should have over a dozen ships by now with
multiple Frigates), go secure Barbados port area while your Corsair (or the one
who has the quest item from Santa Maria) waits around St. Kitts. Once the fleet
fully at Barbados, bring the item-carrying ship to St. Martin.
Deal with the approaching Spanish ships carrying quest items. Once they are all
dealt with i.e. boarded, you will get the abrupt "Mission Completed!" screen and
get dumped back to the menu with Mission 2 being offered. Take it, wait it to
load and save the game so that you can continue from this mission later.
-+
England Mission 2
1. You need to escort the NPC ship a bit. Do not worry about trading as the
boarded ships have over 100k worth of goods EACH. Expect two French ships
towards south-west and at least one Spanish ship on the way to Matthew Town. As
long as you keep your boarding losses minimal by ganging up the few straggling
enemy sailors and choke-pointing, you will do fine. (BTW, every time the NPC
ships docks to a port "to collect taxes, it full-repairs itself. Local
tax-payers must be PISSED.)
2. Once you have gone escorting the ship to Gonave and are returning to the last
stop i.e. the starting point Crook Island, a Spanish ship probably appears as if
to ask you to board. Add it to your collection. After the NPC docks, you get the
task to invading port Guantanamo. (Yes, that one with the prisons. This time the
prison overlord is the Dutch.) Expand its Britishness. Bring the interrogation
report to Crook Island.
3. You are tasked to capture Tortuga pirate base. Take it and bring the
"manuscript" to Crook Island. After waiting a short while: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
-+
England Mission 3
1. Set your course to Luzo. Your goal is to board some spied ships coming from
the left i.e. west. Luzo is located down-middle. Get to the coastal route the
spies are going to cross and board them once you get close. Once you have taken
over the two Flutes and a Pinnace, go to Luzo to resupply sailors. DO NOT SELL
ANY CARGO BESIDES COFFEE.
2. There are white-party AKA neutral ships messing with you until you "recruit"
them. ADD THEM TO YOUR COLLECTION. (Fittingly, your current mission is to create
a fleet.) Any enemy ships you come across, even Merchants, take their stuff. You
could not trade anything in peace anyway with them around cannon-balling you. So
take them as you see them. There are pirates too, so it is a five-course meal
for your Corsair and your future Commonwealth masters. GO NUTS! (You will have a
dozen or so ships in no time. You want to your initial, combat-obsolete Flute
ships as fast as you can to avoid constantly having to repair them.
3. Next you should invade a port (Cristobal) by going right/East following the
coast line. Take it. TRADE IN EVERYTHING -- that city is in a grave need for
stuff, so you will make a killing by doing so. I.e. repair money for the rest of
the mission. Proceed further into left/east and keep taking over any ships and
ports you come across. Christobal is a great first destination for your
newly-acquired vessels to empty their cargo and resupply.
4. When you have at least 500 collective crew in you navy (take ships from
others you have the capacity), go to Kingston to fetch the broad. Save your game
and go back to Luzon and have all of your ships there to take the invasion. Your
success relies on your ability to cheese the pirate forces' AI in boarding
battles. (A pro tip: wait the pirates to come deep enough into your ship so that
you can surround them. If they are stupid enough to use the grappling hooks, go
surround the landing area for some "fair fighting." Whenever there is not a wall
of pirate sailors in between, try to first focus on the pirate captain. He for
some reason absolutely own ) Hopefully the micromanagement gods are on your
sides and you can take them all on with minimal losses. "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!"
-+
England Mission 4
1. (Ignore the "as fast as possible" quest text -- there is not a single timed
objective in this mission. Take your time. This is one of the best-designed
missions in the game. The word 'fast' is only applicable in the sense that it is
short and fast over if you even try to finish it.)
Do your usual buy-low-sell-high to get so repair money. Nicholls Town is the
povertyville of this map that pays a lot for anything and you should dump tons
of goods there to make some cashouli. Be ready to board some enemy ships. (You
do not need a massive fleet for this map. Just enough for capturing a couple
towns and pirate outposts.)
2. Once you have "recruited" the local wandering ships, go capture ports
Guantanamo and Cap Haitien. As soon as as you have the two, quickly move your
fleet near Guantanamo. The enemies will start flooding the area, mostly pirates,
French and Spain. (Pirates have some serious shooner hardware and the French
tend to have Brigands and a rare Frigate.)
3. When done accepting the ship donations from foreign powers, go to the island
where Kingston is located. Almost next to it to the right/East is Harbour
Anthony pirate base that you need to take out. Next you need to move your fleet
to Nassau i.e. a hidden pirate base right/East from Povertyvill-- *cough*
Nicholls Town. (It is a tiny island.) TAKE IT OVER. Quest items will be placed
on random ships on your fleet and you need to bring those ships to Miami.
4. Get one of your ships to Clarence Town and move that ship to Fort Pierce. END
OF MISSION
(By the way, if you conquer the Tortuga-something pirate base near Cap Haitien,
the chief sth of Caribbean will message his approval. There are other optional
pirate bases, though there is little benefit in messing with them. One of them
is in the bottom left corner of the map.)
-+
England Mission 5
1. You start with a slow warship corvette with 400 crew. This map is very short.
All you need to do in this mission is to wait for the pirates to arrive near
your fort,
2. take their and now-hostile merchants' boats [the only difficult part] near
the water area around the port,
3. use those boats loaded to the brim with sailors to accompany the NPC ship
Pearl at Blackbeard's hideout Ocracoke,
4. join the invasion once the NPC initiates it and
5. take the your fleet's quest item ships to Belhaven to finish the mission.
(You can trade so silk, sugarcane [I call it 'grain', no way communities chow
down thousands of tons of sugar that fast] and coffee to pass time. Your best
bet very early is to capture some merchant ships. It is difficult as they are
very evasive. Use the edging-closer strat before issuing the board command to
greatly increase your chances of boarding. Capturing even a single pirate ship
will trigger an objective, so try to avoid that as long as you can.
Pirates have corvettes too AND there are no other ports besides the one your
start next to. Note that that port AKA Belhaven is maxed out, drydock and fort
and all, letting you build even galleons and frigates from the start. Without
significant starting money i.e. you start with 33k, you still need board ships
to have a fleet before dying of old age. The principality do not have enough
manpower to resupply your lost sailors, they maybe have 100 reserve. For
comparison, Belhaven has 50k sailors to hire. The obvious game design intent
here is to force you to stay near the starting point by making it your only
significant source of supplies and ship repairs.
The NPC ship Pearl will be summoned when you board your first pirate ship. The
ship is massive and can fend off enemies very impressively. Also, you need to
keep your ship damage and crew losses low outside the vicinity of Belhaven as
the principalities that dominate the map do not have enough supplies in general.
Hence the importance of cleaning up your starting area of ships before you
proceed. If pearl gets critically damaged, it will depart to Belhaven for
repairs and resupplying. This might make your game last a little longer.)
-+
England Mission 6
1. Take your two ships and move them right/east until you see Mtwara port and
attack it. (Your initial crew total is enough.) Then go back to Mwamba Bay /
"Mamba Bay" where you started.
2. Now you need to start collecting the trash of the sea i.e. enemy vessels for
your collection. Do this the rest of the mission. The rule of thumb is that
every time you go somewhere, fighting is involved either by wandering enemy
vessels, pirates mooring at the target zone or outright enemies coming out of
nowhere to attack your fleet. Recruit anyone that comes across on your travels.
3. Once you have some fast warships and some random trash (damn pinnaces, so
slow) from around Mtwara, continue move your fleet to Mozambique. Then go
assault a pirate base Moma (down/south from Mozambique). Bring the quest item (a
person) to Antseranana and wait quite a while outside the port.
4. Eventually you get the task to intercept a French fleet going to Moroni. Once
you board the big ship with the quest item, you are tasked to bring the item to
Mtwara. (It says "bring the item to the nearest port", though the mission never
ends if you do not bring it to that specific port.)
-+
England Mission 7
1. First you need to capture Mogadiscio. To make sure the NPC ship joins you in
the invasion, BOTH take initiative and draw the cannon-balling to yourself AND
max the game speed when invading to increase the time and the chances of the NPC
to do so. (Utilize load-saving -- this part is very broken. Know that if the NPC
takes even a little fortress firing, it will return to a friendly province for
repairs, FUBAR'ing your hopes of successful capture. The worst luck is to have
enemy ships join to resist the invasion.)
2. Next you are tasked to capture a spied French corsair on a frigate. Rather
than pursuing him, it is advisable to suffocate the growing Spanish threat while
you still can and NOW is the chance to do so. Do the same to the French (that is
task 3 of the mission, i.e. the last one) Otherwise they will trash your fleets
and ports on the other side of the map while you are busy microing.
Systematically conquer everything on the map i.e. go full sandbox Adventure Mode
on the map. There is no quick-and-easy way this time. (If you try to rush
things, the enemies will keep being aggressive, recapturing ports and generally
F'ing your S up the A. Go full terminator on everyone. You need to crush the
enemies to stop them from constantly messing with you.)
3. If you already have not, capture the French corsair by boarding its ship,
bring it to Mogadiscio and reduce the French port count to zero to finish the
mission.
-+
England Mission 8
1. Your first task is to escort this galleon that clearly does not not need
protection, so instead focus on grabbing ships for yourself for later use. Your
first real task is to capture a port named Djibouti on the extreme left/west.
2. Avoid the ports up/north by going down/south enough around them. Make sure
port Surak is captured so that you can see the ships going by it during the
later phase. Now, collect all the enemy ships you can and put them with full
crew. The idea is to build a blocked choke point at the narrow, winding part
just a little left/west of Surak with your massive fleet. Once most of your
fleet is at the choke-point, bring your quest-item-carriers to Abadan (?) to
trigger the next AKA onslaught phase.
3. About a dozen waves of extremely tiny ships will try to come through the
choke-point. End them. (It will take surprisingly long time.) After an awkward
delay of nothing happening for a while, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
-+
England Mission 9
1. Sail around a bit around your starting area trading stuff. (Labuhanbatu is
the Town Powerty around the area.) Once you come across a couple hostile ships
and recruit them with the usual might-makes-right-ing, you can get to the main
theme of the mission: foreclosing the French ports for zero gold to yourself. In
short, go capture Belawan.
2. Next, to save a massive amounts of time, go around the left side of the
landmass and capture Telukdalem.
3. Go back to Labuhanbatu and start capturing every single boat (you can leave
the merchs as spied explorers) and port you see going through the straits
through to the other side. (There are a ton of annoying ships usually hanging
around these parts and you do not want to leave them be. E.g. a ton of French
frigates.) Make your way to the port Tanjunpinang (referred to in the quest text
as "TanjunGold Coinsinang").
4. Now, optionally you can go to Binjai to do an optional side quest (from the
governor of Singapore) for no gain i.e. some gold and some challenge. Basically
you need to capture pirate base Binjai (located directly up/north from Mempawah)
and immediately rush back to Tanjunpinang to take on a swarm of pirate ships
seeking revenge. Regardless you should capture all French ports except Mempawah,
then capture Mempawah and again immediately rush to TanjunGo-- Tanjunpinang to
take on the French swarm. Once the fleet is re-owned and optionally pawned, the
mission should end. Otherwise, you get to painstakingly re-capture all of the
ports French took from you now because you did not have the foresight to capture
their remaining ports beforehand. Eventually, you will get 'MISSION
ACCOMPLISHED!'
-+
England Mission 10
1. You are tasked to capture Bitadton. Capture a couple extra frigates or more
and proceed to take the port.
2. This is the most important part of the mission: amassing a massive fleet.
After enough time passes, the pirates will appear with tons of big ships and you
need to be ready for that by having tons of them yourself.
3. Once Holland is lost, your new port Bitadton is the next target. Hang around
that one and let them come to you, chasing is not an option. You will get
attacked by a couple frigates (+50% crew strength boost, no less, damn cheaters,
300 on a frigate and 900 on a galleon) and then, a galleon with a quest item on
it. Sic the entire fleet at it. (In the boarding phase, you will see that the
pirate captain is a custom graphics one that looks like a woman.)
4. Take the ship carrying the quest item to Bongabong. (You can put the rest of
the fleet around it for protection, though it is completely optional as no one
will attack you.) After waiting a bit, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
-+
England Mission 11
1. You have only one goal: conquer all French and Spanish ports. It is a
semi-timed objective, so you benefit from being fast with it. (There are not
many ports, though the initial two shooners are plenty for taking out most ports
and later there will be ships on the way for some fleet building.) This can be
done in a clockwise manner. Here is a practical sequence:
1. Betano
2. Baun
3. Denpasar
4. Ambuntentimur
5. Banjarmasin (tons of soldiers)
6. Kelolokan
7. Manado
8. Halmarhaeha (the ships refuse to go there, heavy-duty move-shepharding
required)
9. Wamsasi
10. Bonelipu
11. Wotu
2. Recapture the few ports that got flipped by wandering ships and you are
complete. (The faster you operate, the less recapturing you will end up having
to do.)
-+
England Mission 12
1. Boldly go to COOKTOWN (yes, everything is spelled with capital letters on the
map for some reason) to take on the intentionally underfitted garrison. (You
should get 1:1 troops, at least on Easy.)
2. Capture some small pirate and French ships that you come across in the south
to quickly grow your total crew capacity. Proceed to IRON RANGE i.e. a bit
up-left/nortwest. (That port is so close to the left edge of the screen its name
does not show. Most likely it is the one causing the capitalized port titles.)
3. You are tasked with waiting. Go a little bit south, outside the port forts
cannon range. Once the town turns French, take it back. Now you are tasked with
removing all of the French ports. Do that. (Keep in mind that now Dutch ports
are hostile towards you. Stay away from their ports unless you like wasting your
time. It is recommended that you take a deep-sea route towards Tagula and... put
the French fries into the oven.)
4. Take the port and go down/sout of your fort to wait for Frenchies trying to
retake their big port or some random Spanish ship. (You will get something like
a galiot.) Repossess them, leave a couple of your worst ships to hang around the
port and proceed to take KIRAKIRA with your slightly downsized fleet.
Afterwards, take your quest item carrier (most likely your corsair) to finish
the mission and the campaign. (The rest of the French fleet will try to assault
KIRAKIRA now. You are not obliged to do anything about it.)
You will hear a voice saying "mission accomplished" in the most pedantic,
British voice tone you can imagine. The written letter tells that your corsair
has been granted a retirement for its long naval career. (Either way, you get
dumped into the main menu afterwards. BTW, 'retirement' is a common euphemism
for 'murder.' What ever happened to the corsair at COOKTOWN, will remain a
British state secret forever. With that in mind, it makes sense that you were
hastily dumped back into the menu, similarly to failing a mission from your
corsair dying. OR THE GAME F-ING SUCKS, END OF STORY.)
-+
Appendix AKA Extra Stuff A: French Campaign mission 1
1. Start New Adventure, pick France and okay everything.
2. Get to Saint Eustatius.
3. Buy expensive low-valued stuff that is high-priced in Saint Martin and go
there, selling the cargo. Now go half a screen-height south of the port. Once
the three scripted-to-attack English ships come and finally start trying to
conquer the port, attack them. (Together with the port and the ship forces, you
are surprisingly equally matched number-wise despite in contrary to the ship
stats of your Pinnace w/ 60 men and port vs. the invading ships with over 200
crew.
4. Choke-hole the entry point to the port and scummily lay waste to the enemy
forces.
5. Now you you have four ships plus one from defending St. Martin from the
English fleet. That extra Brigantin makes a big difference. You can get another
one if you build a drydock for about 30k for Saint Eustatius. Now you can go
invade ports with high success changes. Start with St. Kitts that is threatening
your trade routes anyway. You can optionally go south east to challenge a
galleon for the purposes of repossessing it.
6. (The next thing is to do some escort missions and piraticiding.) Go to San
Juan and you get tasked to protect a couple of merchant ships. They board any
pirate ships that the game spawns in their way. You are ultimately asked to
return to San Juan and to terminate a pirate land base. Then the mission ends.
Woohoo, go you.
[I accidentally played the backup Corsairs directory when trying to play
Adventure Mode and ended up playing the normal French campaign. Adventure
Mission 1 is French.]
---
((( I cannot believe it is finally over. I cannot stand that repetitive music,
ultimately unforgiving trial-and-error gameplay and repetitiveness no longer.
Just creating that directory replication & renaming script took two whole days
of trial-and-error experimenting. So far, this piece o' crapo has taken over two
weeks of dedicated work and incountable brain cells out of me.. NO MORE! Man, I
wish I had just played free-to-play Planeside 2 for that time. Of course I
wanted to be that special idiot that put a guide of something that did not have
one. The info blackout of this game is so bad that no one knows the cheat codes.
One site is SELLING TRAINERS for Corsairs Gold GOG edition. The game got eaten
by time. That is no surprise considering the makers did not even bother to
publish the cheat codes. Anyone claiming it does not have any, has no clue about
how essential they are when testing the game mechanics. For the one last time,
Corsairs is going to F your brain up the A if you play it. )))
---
PP: goblinravisher at gmail dot com
