Sid Meier's Pirates!

[Imperialus]

my only quibble with it is that it is too easy. I've beaten it on swashbuckler with a perfect score. Dancing is the toughest part of the game to learn but you'll soon learn that there are a couple of fairly simple combinations and once you learn to recognize them you'll be getting nothing but flourishes. Fencing is a bit more challanging. If you outnumber the enemy take a cutlass and dodge their attacks while poking them with thrusts. If you have to take them out quickly use a longsword and follow up with the same attack they just made.

As far as ships go the best 3 are Royal Sloops, Brigs of War and Ships of the Line. A ship of the line is great fun, nothing like opening up with a broadside of 40 cannons Unfortunatly the only way to get one is to get the British good and angry with you and the brits tend to be the best country to ally with.

You want a real fun challange set it in 1620, take a mail carrier and play on swashbuckler. I still haven't beaten it like that yet

 

[dpdx]

Indeed, Pirates! rocks.

I'd add one caveat: if you play a long game, break it up into pieces, save out, quit, restart, and load back up. I played a five hour game, and by the end, I was lagging so hard (on a 3.4 Ghz P4 with 1GB RAM and 120GB of HD, and ATI Radeon X800SE) that I got hammered in fencing 'til I was left with nothing. There might be a memory leak that Firaxis needs to patch.

Sailing East is a drag - so's sneaking out of town.

Favorite parts are ship to ship, but especially city seiges. City seige is like a mini-chess game, and even if you're down 2 to 1 in soldiers, you can generally pick off the melee units with riflemen.