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Further Proof of Pirate Tactics

Posted: Sat May 02, 2009 9:48 am
by darthdroid
Generally the goal of piracy is to take everything. That may sound simple, but it is not. Theft is necessary, but a very small part of this game (piracy, not SMR).

This is the theory: If you can control your opponent's cash, then you can control the outcome... no matter how far behind you are. So if you make your goal to get all his cash, at some point, you'll make him static; paralyzed. This is quite effective. This is how you can come back when 8 stocks behind or catch up when he/she has double or even triple your net worth and/or profits.

However, this is not something you can really implement mid-game, it must be set up from day one. This in turn makes it interesting, as usually the opponent is ahead until about mid-game, or later if he/she is pretty good. However, at some point the tables begin to turn and soon you have him/her in your clutches. They notice a steady decrease in their available cash.... all the way to stagnation, and perhaps even negative profits. Most folks quit at this point. I would compare this in martial arts to a choke hold. One can make a mistake and lose a grappling match, but the ultimate win is by slowly constricting around them like a snake and squeezing until they cannot breathe....

Maybe harsh, but this "pirate strategy" is truly an art, it is not easy, and it takes a lot of work in a game to accomplish your goal of controlling their cash down to zero. Bleeding them until they cannot move. You don't see such methodology in most games or wins, usually it's a race to the buyout and I find that kind of dull at this point.

I thought I would demonstrate the value of this with a game I just played. The opponent was a pretty good player, and was indeed ahead for perhaps 7 or 8 minutes.
Now there is also a major subway involved here. The subway involves 3 parallel lines from Wabash to Abeville. Note that this subway is COMPLETELY underground, there is no trace of it other than the terminals. This falls right into pirate strategy.... one behaves like a virus: The opponent doesn't even notice you are there... they just notice a decrease in cash. A 4th line was pulled from Wabash to the nitrates, to steal all the nitrates too. This was the last line installed before opponent went stagnant. He earned 300k the last 7 years-which means about 42k per year, where prior to the piracy, he was earning 800k EVERY year. By the end, his cash stagnated and he could not rise above 4.2M net worth, it hung there for 5 years after the last screenshot was taken. With a little more work, it could have been taken to negative profits and negative net worth.
Also note that the pills piled up in Wabash, I created a subway (3 lines) from Abeville to Wabash and installed (built) a hospital at abeville to sell the pills which he wasn't doing anything with yet.

Take a look at the screen shots....