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Introduction

Hunter Patch Adams: You treat a disease, you win, you loose. You treat a person, I guarantee you, you'll win, no matter what the outcome.

Blockading is not about the island, the fame, or the glory. It is about Blockading. The best blockaders are the ones that love Blockading. Some view these Blockaders as power hungry bullies because they have so many islands, but the truth is that most of them are doing it out of a love for the game and the amount of energy they put in as a result is what gets them the islands. If you set out for the glory and the victories, then you may win some, lose others. If you play for the fun of the blockade then you will win every time. Don't pursue the fame and glory, improve yourself and develop skills both in puzzles and as a person, then fame and glory will come to you.

Credits

I would like to thank the following people who have contributed to this guide:
Cairna for being an inspirational pirate in how much he has learnt and improved himself through blockading.
Travidar for the format of his Blacksmithing guide influencing this one.

I would also like to thank everyone that has taught me what I know, a special note to: Aurora, Oxygen and Jordan from Bite Me of Hunter for teaching me the game since I showed up on Cobalt, Delmore of Viridian for being my mentor, Kikkit of Hunter, Amatoria of Malachite and Scabard of Viridian for being the nicest pirate I have ever met. I apologise for the names that I have forgotten but there are too many to list.

The game is all about the interaction of people, making people love you and inspiring them to give the best that they can give to maximise your chances for success. You can build a fleet, set up a shop, create a foraging operation but it is the people behind it that drive the cause. This series of articles is all about how to inspire people to help you and how to drive that inspiration to success in Puzzle Pirates.

That is what it is all about, bringing everyone together and playing a game. At the core of any true Blockader is the true love of the game. Treat it as a game, have fun, make others have fun around you and the rest will ultimately fall in to place around it. People don't walk into Blockading and instantly become great, they have fun, they make mistakes in the process and they learn from those mistakes. There is nothing wrong with making a mistake when you are trying to learn to Blockade, if anything it is bad if you don't make a mistake. The thing that separates you from the rest is the way that you endorse the mistakes, continue to have fun and learn from the experience.

Fight the power!

The game will always have a dominating side, no matter who it is. The fun part is to battle the dominating side and to give them credit for being good at the game instead of treating them as tyrants. Being at the top is very difficult and no matter what you do every day someone new is creating an argument against you for whatever tiny thing that they can exploit. These arguments are good for drumming up political support, nothing more than just that [Cairna]. Accept defeat as part of a game instead of part of a conflict.

One Step at a Time

Oscar Wilde: Experience is simply the name we give to our mistakes

Blockading is the most complicated part of the game that incorporates all of the challenges in Puzzle Pirates and many real world challenges. Draw enjoyment from your mistakes and losses, remember that Puzzle Pirates is a game. Don't ignore the small steps, the combination of these steps is what leads you to the top. Learn something from every small mistake that you make and draw confidence from knowing that you have just done something wrong but have learned from it.

Voyages

Voyages are a very strong example of the social puzzle in action. The success of any voyager beyond sloops is not down to their skill at the helm but their charisma in drawing the crowds and keeping people entertained.

Bnav skills

Reasonable bnav skills are an obvious requirement to running good voyages because people love to win. Improving your stat is also important because people will look for it on the notice board and be drawn to someone that seems to be good at bnav.

Hearty Lists and Reputation

Build my Hearty list and reputation
Reputation isn't necessarily the same thing as being a good bnaver. A good leader will reward their jobbers when they do well and protect them when something goes wrong. I am sure that you have had an experience of navigators that attack their crews and accuse them of being bad jobbers and the cause of a loss. Occasionally it may be the fault of the jobbers but it is your job as a leader to encourage them to do better and show them how to do that. There are usually very good jobbers amongst the bad ones that you will alienate by attacking the jobbers and you will soon find that nobody wants to job for you. Make people love your pillages and you will have good jobbers swarming to you. Hearty the good jobbers and build a list of them.

Talk to every person INDIVIDUALLY, not through a mass copy pasted tell. Or at least customize it slightly to each person. If you have a huge list this may not be possible every time but make the effort and people will respect it.
Don't just talk to people when you want them, they will quickly pick up on this.
Return the help, especially for people that have a lot of friends of their own. If you are helpful then people will remember it. Be very vocal in your help and make sure that people know you are there helping on a regular basis.
If your pillage fails, and every so often it will, then be nice to your jobbers. Make them remember even your failures as a nice time, being nice and compensating them if you have the PoE will go a long way to helping your next voyage. It doesn't have to be a large amount, it is the gesture that counts.
Give out bonuses to high reports, especially on larger ships. On a flotilla run for example I will normally get successful spurts so if people still see the money rolling out even when I am doing badly then they will be more likely to come and to stay. Remember to make sure that people know about these bonuses! Shout it out loud and clear what you are doing to get the maximum effect for it all.

It's all about the jobbers

The jobbers are here to have fun. If you want to be successful at voyaging then you need to recognise that you need to appeal to the needs of your jobbers. This will get you the big turnouts and just let you have so much more fun doing your voyages.

Example: I want to have fun and bring back pillaging. Do jobbers want that? No... My initial marketing attempt failed miserably because it was all about me. I was very afraid of trying to brag about how good I am at pillaging because I though people would see it as arrogance. I have found however that when I advertised that I could get over 100k a battle consistently on my war brig and hit over a million total then people were so much more interested because it now appealed to them.

Don't order people onto stations! This should be a last resort. The jobbers is there to have fun on the station that they want. If you let them take the stations that they want then normally it will all even out. Don't dictate unless it is absolutely necessary.

Reward them for doing well instead of punish them for doing badly. Examples: Rewarding high duty reports and surviving the swordfights. If you lose a battle then accept that it was probably your own fault - you may have done a bad job encouraging people in the swordfight, failed the bnav, failed to attract jobbers that were skilled enough... any number of reasons.

A pretty ship

Don't worry if you can't afford a lovely ship but this definitely helps once you have become more successful.

I walk around in rags, barely buy any sorts of personal belongings unless they are really needed, I cringe at the idea of replacing a bludgeon, yet I have been known to spend millions on a ship. A nice and expensive ship works in two ways, firstly it shows that you have a lot of money projecting the idea that you are very successful and are serious about this trip. Secondly if they are very impressed not only will they be very happy but they will go and tell their friends that they have to see this amazing ship, drawing more jobbers to your voyage.

Marketing

People need to know about what is going on. If you are doing something high profile or just your first of something then you are going to need to market it in some way.

Tournaments - Advertise it in a tournament, throw in some PoE and a fun card
Hearty's - Tell them in advance, Again - Personalise it! Show that you are willing to put the effort into talking to them like a person
Forums - You may need something significant for this but if you can turn it into a nice event then forums can be a good marketing tool
Flag Broadcasts - Ask monarchs/Royals nicely to broadcast for you or even just in FO chat for other people

The Voyage

Make sure that the restock cut is low to get a good posting on the board
Put in a fun message for those looking at the application, make sure to include a marketing strategy such as bonuses
Get people to help, nobody ever did a good voyage on their own. It is always a combination of people working together to make it a success.
A friendly XO
Lots of people working together to lure jobbers
A friendly and fun environment

Mastering these things is what will make you great, make other people have fun, enjoy themselves and make a ton of PoE, then sit back and reap the rewards.

Blockade Navigator Skills

Good pvp skills are a very small part of what a blockade navigator is all about.

Listen to the board admiral and follow orders
Waiting patiently to be given a ship instead of jumping up and down like a child for one
Communicating effectively with other navers
Communicating your state to the admiral effecticely - damage, bilge, intentions
Being quiet in the nav channel so other navers are able to communicate
Working towards the goal of the team to get points instead of personal fame and glory - Points over sinks, sinking should only be a means to get points

Politics

Internal Structure

The most successful flags that I have ever been have all been autocratic in nature. One person dominates the political scene and is supported by a small group of Advisors who themselves may have other roles such as Treasurer, Events Organiser, Production, Logistics. The key to this structure is that one person has complete authority meaning that decisions are made fast and without delay, at the same time though the advisors always have input into that persons thinking process so that nobody feels as though they are being left out.

Most people in the flag will have little interest in Blockading, won't have the initiative to do the work required or both. This makes a more distributed system more difficult to implement. What is more common is that one of the royalty members is purely responsible for interaction with the flag, such as the Events Organiser. This person holds the fund raising events to get the flag members involved, and perhaps the member of the flag that is in charge of Production will be in charge of getting people involved there through delegating tasks. The more effectively that things can be delegated the more powerful the internal structure of a flag will be, people will learn and there will always be someone to replace another when one quits. Unfortunately this is very difficult and usually the loss of a key member will heavily damage the flag, some times to the point of its collapse if it is the monarch.

-This section is too dictatorial? Make it more suggestive than telling people things-

Blockading Aimuari

Describe how we blockaded Aimuari and how our approach benefited us in the long run and was a core part of our success on malachite==

Malachite - Power and Failure

Describe why and how you failed at malachite and how stressful and destructive it was to your life. Failures:

Couldn't put yourself in the other persons place
Tried to win
Defended myself relentlessly when I was attacked and lost dear friends in the process

Describe similar situations where you have done well and your blockading experience on other oceans.

Power on Malachite

Why we succeeded on malachite

From glory to ruin on Hunter

Describe why you failed every time you tried to run a flag - trying to be a technical leader and you failed. It was infact swashpario that built the flag and you just lead the technical side. I knew everything about how the game worked but I didn't know how to lead people and because of that I failed every time I tried.

Turning on RM

How the alliance was broken and the nature that it happened which meant that it could never be undone.

Pay Wars

Pay wars are one of the most common topics of the forums. But what are pay wars and why do they happen? Here I give you the view on pay wars.

A pay war is where one side raises pay, typically to make up for a jobber or points deficit, and is met by pay matches by the winning side which sparks a further sequence of pay raises. Your view on a pay war all depends on what you think is "fair" in a blockade. This definition will vary from person to person but here are three common views:

Power Hungry: It is fair as long as I win. Battle Navigator: It is fair as long as both sides have even jobbers. Politician: It is fair as long as any jobber advantage came from political support.

The power hungry view is typically held by the underdog because they lack political support due to their actions and attempt to overcome this by using PoE and pay wars any way that they can.

Battle Navigators typically view the board as the real part of a Blockade and want to win through skill there. Navigators will typically allow other people to raise pay against them to catch up in jobbers and raise when they are behind to create an environment where the blockade is decided by the navigators and land organisation. Politics are used by navigators to ensure that the opponents can't deny them the chance to catch up in jobbers.

A politicians view on pay may be the same as a navigators but others will use pay to hang on to the political advantage that they have built. If they did all the hard work to gain a jobber advantage through being popular then why should they let the other side be on even terms for nothing if they can match pay?

The best thing that you can know about how to approach a pay war, is that there is no best approach to a pay war. They will always happen and there is nothing that you can do about it. Be honorable and try to play fairly but you will never eradicate them.

Alliances, rings and webs

An alliance ring is a group of flags that are all allied to each other. An alliance web is an alliance that stretches many oceans and joins these rings together. The two terms may be used to refer to any of the definition but these are the terms that I will use in this article.

Alliance webs and rings are born of the fact that the most powerful weapons in your arsenal is jobber support and the view that the more allies that you have the more jobber support you can get. Alliances aren't always about pure numbers however, in my experience I find that it is much better to have a few strong loyal allies than many weaker ones.

You get allies by appealing to their needs. This may be helping them to run voyages, events, providing blockade staff or jobbers. It all depends on the flag and what they are most interested in. Supporting an ally is very hard work and there are only so many that you can help so choose them wisely and make sure that they are returning the support you give them.

The Little Man and the Big Man

Politics isn't just about mingling with the top monarchs. It is about everyone. The thing that will get you noticed with a strong potential ally is the following that you can muster. It is true of gathering allies and of getting spots in a Blockade. For example a certain person wouldn't ever give me a spot on their Blockade team for anything important even though I was quite a good navigator. Why? Because my monarch was better than me and was also on his Blockade team, I was in a supporting role in the flag and so 90% of the people that would follow me, were already following my monarch so the number of jobbers that would be gained by giving me a spot on the team would be minimal.

It is crucially important that you can gather such a following because that is what the smart Blockaders will be looking for. Being a good ally isn't just about showing up personally, it is about making sure that all your friends show up and make sure that they know it! Having a lot of flag members that support you won't mean too much unless your allies know that they are there.

The little man today will become the big man tomorrow. Or someone you see just as normal pixels could become a best friend or the love of your life.

Evaluation

It isn't enough to just have a large set of strong allies. You have to be sure that they are delivering on their promises. My flag was given a very distinctive edge because of the ability to track how many people from each flag were jobbing for it in a Blockade. It was able to pinpoint the sources of not only its support, but that of the opposing flag. If someone strayed then someone could respond to that and bring them back into the fold. If an ally wasn't up to scratch then they were dropped, and similarly rewarded with support if they did well.

Supporting your Allies

While you are evaluating the supportiveness of your Allies, they will be doing the same of you.

Old Enemies, New Friends

You never know when alliances may shift or when your settings may change. If I was to rank the allies that supported Barely Dressed on Malachite, most of them were enemies in the past when myself or daquan were playing other oceans. Flags such as Coerced Coexistence and Riddlemakers we fought against. Keeping a professional attitude to the game and having fun left the door open to befriend these people once we left.

Why giants fall

Many flags master everything that is in this article but they still fall for one reason or another. The most common reason for this is that the leaders leave having not taught anyone else how to lead the flag effectively.

Being a leader is very difficult and very tiring demanding lots of time. Eventually leaders eventually get bored of the pressure, the game or have other commitments. Many flags fall because the leaders tried to do everything themselves and never taught others. To stand the test of time a flag must educate its members on how to raise funds and gather support. I can speak from experience that when I was a monarch that I always failed because I never filled the role properly and never understood why. The reason that all my flags failed was because I was a technical person trying to assume the mantle of a monarch. A monarch should be the person directing their followers, helping them and organising them. They should be delegating the work, not trying to take on the world themselves.

Boredom from winning too much.

References

[1] Cairna - http://forums.puzzlepirates.com/community/mvnforum/viewthread?thread=168065

The Social Puzzle and Politics

Contents