HomeLAN - How will the player manage to create and nurture his pirate crew?

Bill Spieth - The answer depends on the strategy the player pursues. One player might decide to obtain more pirates by forcing some of his captives to become new pirates. As you might guess, this produces inferior pirates. But for some strategies in which it doesn't hurt to lose a crew in battle, this works fine. My own goals require that I push my pirates to higher levels, so I tend to obtain more pirates from ships that I plunder. These guys are always trained sailors and won't be as likely to die on their first mission.

I nurture my pirates with plenty of high-class food, gambling, wenches and grog. I also send them to school to become more skilled. But a player who is not encouraging his pirates to advance through the levels can spend a lot less effort here. With those strategies, pirates are expendable. Since the low level pirates have fewer demands, in some ways it is easier to keep things running if you have very few of the higher level pirates.