Winning conditions for Tradewinds Classics

[Djinn_Kazama]

Hello. Does anyone know if / what the winning conditions are for Tradewinds Classics?
Is it to defeat all infamous pirates? Or accumulate a certain wealth?

Also, can someone tell me if the popup question "..... ask for tribute for Temple/whatever" has any real implications? I once clicked yes, and it took some money from me (hefty sum) but nothing happened. After that I always said no, and still nothing happened.

[kilicool64]

Never finished the game, but from what I remember, you're better off not fighting pirates at all. They will only grow stronger every time you defeat them and don't give you much money either. Just buy yourself some decently sturdy ships, sell all their cannons and retreat from every single battle. As long as you never win against them, the pirates will remain incredibly weak.

[_Mad_Medic_]

If you're still wondering, the win condition for tradwinds classic is to reach the rank of "tai-pan", and to do so you must obtain one billion gold.

How I did it was to play as Gale (the Pirate girl), and rush to being able to trade purely in dream dust as soon as possible, scooping up every ship I could and then later selling the bad ones and holding out for better ones (there seems to be a cap on fleet size), and then throwing the massive profits into the bank to accumulate interest. After a few hours of mindlessly buying thousands of units of dust at one time and smacking down massive pirate fleets (once encountered a fleet made up of no less than 70 junks), I got enough money to "finish" the game, and, actual spoilers ahead, its not much of an ending; just a little congratulations message with the option to keep playing or retire.

As for the tribute popup, I can't give any definitive answer, but it sounds like it can be safely ignored if you so choose.

[kilicool64]

Okay, having played the game a bit more, I can now give you better tips.


The game is won when you have 1.000.000.000 gold.


Like I said in my previous post, don't ever defeat pirates. It's not worth what little gold you get. Defeating pirates makes future encounters increasingly stronger, forcing you to pay lots of gold for repairs. On the other hand, not fighting pirates allows you to sell all your cannons for extra cargo space.


The four starting characters are divided into two groups. Douglas McGowan and Madame Tso are merchants, whereas Petra Gale and Gossamer are pirates. Due to poor game design, pirates have almost nothing but advantages over merchants.


The biggest disadvantage of merchants is that they're occasionally asked to pay tribute to Gossamer. The precise amount of tribute seems to be random, but it generally scales with how rich you are. If you agree to pay, but don't have enough gold, the moneylender will pay the rest for you and add it to your debt.

From my experience, paying tribute makes the game basically unwinnable. You may be able to slowly get richer at first, but once you reach about 250.000.000 gold, the tribute demands will eat up your entire income and you'll never be able to hold onto any more gold for long. Furthermore, if you're ever unlucky enough to get hit with a tribute demand at a point where you don't have nearly enough gold, it will result in a huge debt. Fail to pay it back within the next few months and it will spiral out of control and become completely impossible to ever repay.

Instead, I'd advise ignoring tribute demands altogether. This has three consequences. The least important one is that Gossamer's henchmen will annoy you with further tribute demands almost every single month from now on. Since you can still refuse them, this is of no real significance. What is significant however is that they'll also start robbing your warehouses. Unlike normal warehouse robberies, hiring guards won't prevent these from happening. Finally, you will sometimes get robbed yourself and be forced to pay some of the gold you're currently carrying with yourself.

The only way to avoid warehouse robberies is to simply not use them at all. Instead, you should focus on making your fleet as big as possible (I'm pretty sure the cap is 25 ships) and using it to store all your goods. This will slow your progress down significantly, but it seems to be the only way to win the game as a merchant. As for getting robbed yourself, that doesn't happen very often. And you can lessen the damage by storing gold you don't need in the bank.


Furthermore, pirates always have access to the fifth city, Shangri-La, whereas merchants can only gain access for six months by either defeating ten pirate fleets or spending enough gold at the alehouse. That said, Shangri-La isn't all that useful to anyone other than Gossamer anyway, so this isn't too much of a disadvantage.


Yet another advantage of pirates is that they have an increased chance of buying smuggler ships. These are useful whenever your cargo gets inspected. When that happens, any dream dust you're carrying in regular ships is confiscated and results in a fine. However, dream dust stored in smuggler ships won't be found.


The sole disadvantage of pirates is that their starting ship can only be repaired in Shangri-La. For Petra Gale, this has no importance past the early game. Her starting ship is a two-master, so once she has brigands, it'll no longer be targeted by enemies (they always prioritize your best ships). On the other hand, Gossamer starts with the single best ship in the game, so he will occasionally have to visit Shangri-La to get it repaired.


Finally, there are some more minor differences between the characters aside from their classes. Douglas McGowan starts with a warehouse in Jia-Ching, 3000 gold and a one-master. He gets a discount from the shipyards in Jia-Ching and Edamame, but not Shangri-La. Furthermore, he can't hire mercenaries at the alehouse. Petra Gale starts with a warehouse in Edamame, 3000 gold, a debt of 10000 gold and a smuggler two-master. She doesn't seem to have any special abilities. Madame Tso starts with a warehouse in Jia-Ching, 1000 gold and eight junks. She initially can't go to Edamame because that requires a better ship. I haven't played as her yet, so I don't know if there's anything else to her. Finally, Gossamer starts with neither a warehouse, nor any gold. But he has a smuggler juggernaut, an extremely good ship that can't be bought anywhere.


In a nutshell, merchants make the game both harder and more repetitive, due to their inability to properly use warehouses. Don't play as them unless you want to beat the game with all four characters. Out of the two pirates, Gossamer is arguably slightly better due to his amazing ship.