Another good review. 

Age of Booty's combat is simple by design - not to dumb down the game, but to allow players to focus on making strategic decisions.  If you haven't given the game a try yet, check out this review to see just how balanced and deep Age of Booty's strategy is. 

 These guys get it.

What, you don't believe me?  Don't take my word for it then ... take theirs!

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We have covered a several Tips and Tricks to help you compete a little better when playing Age of Booty online.  Some of these ideas have been complicated; this one isn’t.  This is simple and intuitive, but you may not have realized it, so let’s take a moment and discuss whether you want to “Go Down with the Ship.”

For argument sake, let’s assume your in a battle, you might not win, and the idea of escape crosses your mind.  Do you flee now, or fight to the end and see who gets lucky?  The answer to that question might be “What do your resources tell you to do?”   So let’s look at the resource tracking in Age of Booty.

This graphic below shows the resource counter.  If you don’t start with upgrades, or if you spent them all, this is what you will see; a bunch of zero’s and some sketch looking icons on the left and right that track your requirements for Town and Ship upgrades.  It shows symbols for Gold, Wood, and Rum. Notice that you have zero resources, and there are no dials active showing those resources being generated.

To execute this Tip you need to know how the interface works.  Once you get a sense of the timing involved with gaining resources, you can anticipate when the next Ship or Town upgrade is going to occur. 

You can then move your Ship, or Pointer (that sword in the first picture, with blue “X” underneath), ahead of time to where you will be upgrading your Ship or Town.  When the upgrade is available, your ready, and bam!  You pick an upgrade quickly without delay.

Now compare that previous resource counter graphic to the below graphic taken mid-gameplay.  Can you see the dials?

You can clearly see that you have dials moving on Wood and Rum, and you have the total resource count of 1 Gold, 2 Wood, and 3 Rum.  This means you have 2 Wood needed for either a Town or a Ship upgrade (tree sketch is colored on left and right side).  But you have only 1 Gold, and 3 Rum, which can’t buy you anything right now.  You need 3 more Gold to upgrade a captured Town, but there is no dial, so that means you are not generating that resource.  You may be able to find and get Gold, but it will not be generating over time.  However, the 3 Rum is looking promising, the dial generating, and it’s about 3/4th of the way around to generate 1 more Rum.

The dials show how much time it will take until your towns generate another Wood or Rum.  Given the position of the moving dials (the Rum approaching 9 o’clock) it is safe to say that you will be able to upgrade your ship soon. When that Rum dial gets to the 12 o’clock position, and you have 4 Rum, it would be best if you were ready for it. 

You need to send your ship back to your Pirate Lair for an upgrade.  That could be a long journey, so head back and get that critical upgrade now, before more time passes.   If too much time passes, not only are you delaying improving your pirate ship, but you then give the enemy team a longer window to use a Pilfer Curse that could steal up to 2 of your needed Wood or Rum resources.

Now there are times when anticipating your upgrade is important during a battle.  In the below graphic you can see two forces (a Town and a Ship) battling it out.  [By the way - That green glow is from the Ghost Ship curse wearing off.  Captain Smack was trying to be sneaky.] 

Yet, the question remains: What do you do?  Do you retreat and sail back to your pirate Lair, or risk getting sunk and instantly transported back to your pirate Lair?  

If you notice the resource counter has 5’s across the board.  In this situation, no matter what happens (win or lose), you will still be able to upgrade your ship.  In this case, you might as well go down with the ship (take the battle to the end) without any fear. The consequences for the Town are all bad, but for you … it’s all good.

If your ship sinks, you will loose one resource randomly, and still be able to upgrade your new ship the second you respawn at your Pirate Lair. 

If you win the battle and capture the Town, you won’t lose any resources, and can even upgrade the Town, and upgrade your pirate Ship when you sail back to your Lair. A win-win situation, with very little downside.

So the tip here is hopefully pretty clear:

If you know how many resources you have and need for an upgrade, you can choose to go down with the ship with a smile.

If, on the other hand, loosing a ship in battle (and a random resource) would be detrimental to your upgrades, then you might want to flee.

Therefore, you should anticipate your upgrades so you can decide if  “going down with the ship” is a good or bad thing. 

And remember when you say “Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine” ... use pirate speak.  That will really drive them nuts.

This trick for Age of Booty is indeed tricky to execute.

This is a really dangerous tactic, since it relies on one very important fact and one very important assumption.  The fact is the town you are fighting over is a 1 cannon town, and the assumption is that you can defeat the enemy ship trying to conquer it by interrupting its capture.  I find this trick often involves a bit of luck.  But if you have a good feel for how the battle is going, and how to time the attack, you might give it a shot.

First of all this trick is a complete waste of time if the enemy team is near winning the game.  If they need 1 or 2 more towns to win, you should think hard about using this trick.  If for any reason your plan fails you will be giving up a town to the enemy, and possibly giving up the game.

Take for example the above pictured town.  When you first captured it the health bar was automatically set at ½ health and started to regenerate towards full.  But after taking some damage from fights you can’t see any health, and the next cannon shot destroys it (i.e., becomes Neutral – not captured).

Since the town has only one cannon, and has not been upgraded, you might consider it disposable to some extent.  [The only benefit being the usual bonus to your score, and repairing your damaged ships.  These are still important factors to consider.]  But since the ship in the picture is at full health, this town might benefit from this trick.

This town does need to regenerate health, but that could take a long time, especially if it’s nearly all gone.  Upgraded towns cost gold and wood, and don’t immediately increase the baseline health (although it does increase the maximum health).  On the other hand, a one cannon town is free anytime you capture a town.  You will not be loosing gold or wood if a one cannon town is lost, retaken, lost, and retaken again.  And that is where the Trick gets tricky.

If you see a situation where the town could be attacked by a very weak enemy ship, something you can easily sink when the town becomes contested, then let the enemy try to capture the town.  Let it be attacked.  And stay near while the attack is happening.  Once the town has been defeated, sail over to make sure it is not captured, and interrupt the capture of the town as the “capture” percentage count is happening.

When you show up during capture the town percentage stops and it becomes contested.  The town will not heal either side.  Capture and control goes to the last ship left floating.  So now you just have to win the battle. 

 
If you can, sink that weak enemy, and you can recapture the town yourself, the trick will have worked.  The health of the town will again be set instantly at ½ health.

The only real advantage to this trick is time (you do not have to wait around for the town’s health to regenerate back to ½ way).  But you had better be sure about timing your attack and interrupting the town being captured, because if you show up late it will become part of the enemies controlled towns.

A fun counter to this trick is to occasionally use a Ghost Ship Curse Card, and anytime a player seems a bit overconfident, surprise him with a coordinated attack by invisible ships.  If the player thought he could retake the town easily, he will be quickly proved wrong.

The best counter is not to take the bait. If you see an enemy town is nearly destroyed, but enemy team has a powerful ship nearby that would defeat you in battle, you should consider just leaving the town alone.  Don’t do the enemy a favor by letting them recapture a weakened town. 

Finally, an important exception to all of this depends on if the enemy upgrades the town at all.  Always destroy weakened towns that have purchased defenses!   It takes time to build up those resources and now you can easily destroy them.  It will take only a few cannon shots to tear it all down.

Again, this is a trick, so good luck.

Less than a week after launch and we've unlocked an additional game mode.  We've seen enough activity in the matchmaking system.  Lobby wait times are looking good.  It's time to reward the community with something a little different.

Battle Royale sets 4 teams of 2 players each against each other.  Players will also see some maps in the Battle Royale playlist that weren't availalbe in the other two game modes.