As I said, it doesn't matter how many men you have in your crew when you divide the gold. It's only for your own disadvantage to let them go.

1) It doesn't seem to cost as much money as they would recieve during the cash-in.
2) Once they're gone, I continue plundering. The fools who left get no share at all of what I gain after they leave.

That's not a very good idea, because a mutiny will also cost you money - the rebelling people will take part of your gold with them. Killing them off in battle is a standard measure According to manual, that shouldn't help, either, though, because the gold is split according to rank. The captain (you) gets something like 50% of the gold, regardless of the overall size of the crew.

Edited by Mr Creosote at 15:26 on December, 21st 2004

That's a slight exaggeration, but not by much. I can never do very much before the bastards start getting ticked and leaving.

Of course, that works to my advantage when I actually do want to cash in. I just let my current crew mutiny/leave when I leave a town + kill them off in battles, while making certain not to hire on any more crew till I'm down to about 5 pirates. Then I go cash in and only have to split the cash 6 ways.

Eh? That never happened to me. Just don't hire too many men from taverns as those tend to be unhappier than the ones you get from other crews.

I was a huge fan of pirates gold on sega genesis/megadrive, but wished that A) there was more to it and B) either there were more encounters with ships, it took less time to cross the sea, or you had more time before your crew got pissed off. As it was, you could sack one city and two ships before you had to cash in and start building your fleet all over again.

When its price has dropped below 5¤, I'll start considering to consider buying it

There will be the day, maybe in a few years, when you see a budget-version of it and you will think I'll now give it a chance. And again a few years later you will post this here in a subordinate clause...

You can try all you want, I still won't play it, because I'm prejudiced

I finally played the new "Pirates!"-game!

Well, it's quite the same as the c64-game, but with a few improvements and add-ons. For example, you can now see all ships on the oceans and every ship seems to have an own entity. Better said, the carribean world is now really living and interacting with yourself in it.

In general, the game is exactly made the kind I hoped for. Preserved most of the old and enhancing it with todays possibilties, instead of making an Pirates-RTS-RPG...

Four thinks that I kept in my mind:
1. The map is now really huge, with a lot more of small pirate-groves and smaller settlements and indian villages...
2. The attack of a city is now some sort of a round based (not too complex, but being confident) mini-game.
3. To get a governours daugther you'll have to to some funny dancing-mini game...
4. There are a lot more of (optional) statistics, for example there's a pirate-top-10 including several factors and of course you can challenge them all at will.

Since I'm not so good at writing game-reviews I suggest, you ask things about the game you're interested in and I'll answer them in detail then.

At least I have to say that I'm (surprisingly) satisfied with the game and don't regret that I bought it immediatelly.

edit:
This review I found says a lot about it

Edited by dregenRocks at 02:04 on December, 13th 2004

Uaah!!!
The word Analysis remembers me of what I have still to do for my study...

Awaiting your analysis

I noticed good comments on that game on other forums.

Also, it seems like you can only be one character, and he looks silly. Another strike against it

That's the question which make me so excited.

The feature-list http://www.atari.com/pirates/pirates/features.php isn't very informative.

I expect the same with a few new options, but I can tell you surely in a few days.

Are there going to be any changes compared to the original Pirates and Pirates Gold (besides graphics)?

You can't say that, since this screenshot is scaled below the original fullscreen-size on a monitor, so the quality of the fonts can't be judged by that.

And in-games there's everything in motion, which will (hopefully) make it different, too.

3D in this situation can be fine, if done correctly.

This is obviously not. The labels are colored such that the things they are over make them difficult to read. Sure, you always know what it says, but it is distracting.

So what?
Looks very nice.

There has to be a lot of work behind this.
I think you just don't like it, because it uses 3D.

See attachment. I rest my case.