This guide will take you step by step through the English campaign in Port Royal 4. The English campaign is a step in a different direction from the required Spanish campaign which you must have completed in order to unlock this one. If you have yet to complete the Spanish campaign you can follow my guide Spanish Campaign Walkthrough for help with defeating the first campaign.

As you will have defeated the Spanish campaign to unlock and play this one I will take some liberties that you will know the basics on how to set up trade routes, buy ships, hire captains, take part in battles etc. If you need help with any of those things there are other guides available.

The English campaign begins on January 1, 1589 and continues through December 31, 1599. If you fail to complete any objectives by their due date you will lose the campaign and have to start over from the beginning or a save game.

During this campaign you will be fighting in wartime a lot thus the merchant having no fighting bonus but a ship purchase penalty is less appealing than the other classes. However, once war breaks out the merchant class will be able to continue to trade with hostile countries while the other classes will not have that ability.

Trading with a hostile nation does have disadvantages such as being attacked but not being able to trade with Spain due to war is a major disadvantage. Spain controls 29 of the 60 towns in the scenario and that is a huge chunk of ports you can still trade with if you pick Merchant.

As a Merchant you won't have to worry about trade licenses, every class can trade freely with England but they only have 16 ports to start the game other classes will have to pay to trade elsewhere.

There will be lots of fighting during this scenario and unlike the Spanish campaign you will be buying some top of the line ships and the Merchant class pays double fame for those ships.

This is a good choice for class during this campaign, the bonus discount for "Letters of Marque" will only apply once as there is only one declaration of war during the English campaign.

Starting with a bonus of 5 fame does help early on in the campaign and will be a theme of the campaigns it is a huge and always useful bonus which makes Buccaneer a very strong class.

The penalty for piracy can be completely avoided by not attacking ships from nations your not at war with. If you want to be an active pirate just pick another class. You will be at war with Spain for most of the campaign just buy your discounted "Letters of Marque" and go hunt Spanish ships they own half the map and are easy to find.

The obvious choice if you want to be an actual pirate but piracy won't help you complete the campaign. You would be better off not being an active pirate but to each their own. Starting with a pirate Barque is nice to have a ship with guns but there is ample time to build up a fleet before the war starts so not all that necessary. If you want to go pirate and micro manage your ship to avoid military you can do so. As a pirate you also start with a random captain though if they are any good is subject to luck you can start over again and again until you get a captain you like.

Crew cost 50% less is easily one of the best perks of being a pirate. If you plan to have lots of military vessels with lots of crew (and you will in this scenario) this is a discount that keeps on giving on a large warship convoy you can save anywhere up to 7,000 gold or more per day that savings adds up quick.

In the English scenario there is far fewer trade or business building required tasks to complete the campaign. That being said there are still some and you will pay extra to build if your a pirate.

Gaining experience faster is a nice perk for your captains, you will need some experienced captains to defeat this scenario so this is helpful however, there is a mission requirement you can use to boost your captains levels I was able to do this with several low level captains to boost them up. You can train the selected captain more than once but I am not sure if the limit is a captain that is such a high level or train "X" times before that task completes and you can't use it anymore. Either way you will be able to power level one or more captains easily in this scenario.

Being able to order ships you have defeated in battle will present some interesting opportunities in the English campaign such as being able to build Spanish warships that would otherwise be unavailable. It's a neat perk that can be useful.

Having a 20% penalty for boarding is huge in my book, it is my preferred way to fight so a penalty here is not one I look for. It can be offset by captain skill but I would rather that skill just be a bonus rather than negate a penalty.

As with all the campaigns each class is a viable option with some having a bonus or penalty that will make them harder for the campaign but you should easily be able to complete the campaign with any of the classes.

Merchant The bonus to trade is always a welcome one and being able to trade with Spain even after the war starts is very useful since they own half the map you will feel that fame penalty and you will have to buy a few ships using fame that you can't negate the penalty by simply capturing ships.

Buccaneer One of the strongest starting classes due to the bonus fame points. You won't benefit from the "Letters of Marque" bonus in this scenario and can easily avoid the piracy penalty.

Pirate The discount for crew is huge but being viewed as a pirate could be a problem especially if you actively engage in piracy against the countries other than Spain. Any pirate attack will result in loss of fame. The fame is required for the campaign so I see no reason to go full pirate here. Pick pirate, play as a privateer when the war starts get a discount on crew leave actual pirate attacks for free play sandbox mode.

Adventurer The bonus experience for captains can be negated by a required task during the campaign that lets you power level one or more captains. Buying ships you have defeated gives access to some cool ships but the penalty to boarding makes capturing ships much harder.

The English campaign begins on January 1, 1589 the English colonies occupy sixteen towns. You will start in the town of Port-Au-Prince which is centrally located on the map. You are appointed as the administrator of this town which means you are in full control of what buildings and businesses are placed you can even buy out businesses that are owned by the AI and once you own them move them around in the town.

When you start the game you are given 100,000 gold, one convoy which has three ships. To start the game you are given these objectives.
All of these tasks are designed to get you into building a trade empire. One of the main focus of the game is on trade and it will be a big focus on every campaign.

You will need to set up several trade routes among at least five towns to complete these tasks. When the game starts there is peace among the nations and you can use this time to build your trade empire. You will want to use this time to go above and beyond these requirements as you will be spending lots of gold on warships and crews later so the stronger you build your trade routes now the easier the game will be later.

The second set of tasks in the English campaign continues to build up your trade empire and continue making gold for your later fleet expenses.
To complete these tasks you will be building up Port-Au-Prince by adding eight total businesses and adding residential area so you can build a shipyard in your starting city.

While you can complete these tasks relatively quickly I would recommend you spend a little extra time to build your trade routes. There will be a war with Spain soon so you want to take some time to set up trade routes. If your a merchant class you can freely setup trade with both France and Netherlands colonies. This will help you cover the cost that is soon to come.

After the first couple tasks are used to setup your trade routes and make some gold the third task is to setup your fleet so you can fight. You will need to have hired a captain at this point so you can use military vessels in your convoys.

The tasks for this objective are.

You will need to own two military frigate type ships to complete this task keep an eye out for the viceroy giving you free ships during this campaign as that happens multiple times. You will need to build at least one strong fleet for this campaign if not several convoys of military ships. Once you complete these tasks war with Spain will begin so I would take some time to get your finances in order and have solid trade routes and a decent captain (or more than one) that you will be able to use in the fighting ahead.

Depending on the class you picked you will find some advantages and disadvantages. The Merchant class will provide you the easiest route to setup trade routes with France and Netherlands and more money means more ships. If you are a pirate your discount on crew is about to save you a bunch of gold. The bonus experience from Adventurers will be helpful to get your captains leveled up quickly. The bonus fame for Buccaneers will have helped get you some bonus concessions for extra captains or discounts on ships that will soon be useful.

You will want to find at least one captain with a group of skills useful to battle. There will be a lot of fights during this campaign and one of the best skills in my opinion is "Carpenter" without it you will be making many trips back to port to do repairs. The skills "Gunner" and "Close combat fighter" are the most useful and if you can get a captain with all three of those skills you will be set. If your captain is lacking one of those skills you will need to adjust your strategy by repairing more often or altering your tactics to complete battles.

Capturing enemy ships is vastly superior to sinking them for this reason I would recommend close combat skills on your captain and boarding ships to capture them. From there you can exchange any of your damaged ships with less damaged ones of the enemy to save on repairs. You can also choose to sell the captured ships back to the enemy for gold to help cover the costs of your crew.

Spain and England are now officially at war. If you have only played the campaigns and picked the English campaign as your second choice this is the first time you have experienced a war.

Spain is now your enemy and along with them goes half the map. If your of the merchant class you will be able to trade with Spain even though your at war. Spain will however start raiding your merchant convoys and taking your goods. Now is a good time to consider changing up your trade routes. Spanish military convoys can be found all over the map so no waters are completely safe for your merchants but if you can avoid most of the Gulf of Mexico and areas south of Cuba you will be spared much of their wrath.

If your not a merchant class you will no longer be able to trade with Spain so be sure to change your trade routes.

Your going to be spending a lot more money on crew for your military convoys. If your not taking them out to sea don't keep the crew on them, there is no cost to hire crew just pay for them on your boats, You can save some coin if your sitting in harbor because you don't need them or if you have several days worth of repairs to do before you head back to sea. Send your crew a shore, save on their upkeep cost and just bring them back on board when you plan to head out.

After you complete these tasks the Spanish will take over Port Royal, you will lose access to it and any ships you had available in the harbor be sure to move them before you lose them.

The new tasks for this objective are:

This is the step where you get to get your feet wet in Port Royal 4 wartime activity. For these tasks you will need to plunder 5 Spanish trade convoys. Generally speaking just look for the ship convoys from Spain that have no bars above their ships indicating they have no military strength. Every convoy has up to four bars that represent that convoy's military strength. While there are some merchant convoys that run with military ships it's easier to pick off the ones with no cannons. When you attack the convoys that have no way to fight back you can just "plunder" them by taking some of their goods. You will need to repeat this step at minimum five times sometimes you get more than others. If a convoy is docked at a port wait for them to leave or attack before they get docked. Attacking a docked convoy will generally result in you getting no loot.

You should have picked up a letter of marque before you set off to attack otherwise you will have to attack as a pirate. You don't want to do that, there is a war and if you attack as a pirate you lose fame while attacking with a letter of marque will gain you fame.

This set of tasks is where ship maintenance costs and crew cost really starts picking up. If you didn't spend much time building out your trade convoys you should really consider investing either in some businesses or adding convoys to trade routes.

The next set of tasks are:

Now you need to have three convoys with a minimum of 80 cannons. (I went with more cannons I suppose it's possible the Spanish military ships scale but it seemed to me they were pretty powerful from the get go. If you try to win battles using only frigates your in for some trouble. The Spanish military is aggressive and they will come at you with war galleons, regular galleons and a mix of other ships, expect many of their convoys to be using six command points or more.

Also make sure your captains are decent as hiring captains without fighting skills will make it much harder to complete the campaign. Keep completing the missions especially the easier ones to get the tactics.

During these objectives we are going to take back Port Royal. To begin the siege of a town just attack it like you would any convoy. A battle timer will appear and start counting down, there is no actual combat associated with the siege it's just time. However, while your waiting for your convoy to seize Port Royal a number of Spanish military convoys will come attack you. You will have to fight them off, if they win your siege is broken and you will have to try again.

The best way to do this is begin the siege of the town using one of your convoys and set the other two up a little further out to sea from the port. Use the other two convoys to intercept the Spanish military while your other fleet continues the siege unimpeded.

Keep in mind tactics you receive as part of missions can be used by any captain of appropriate level but your limited to a max of 2 uses and the skill gets consumed upon use so don't waste them if you don't need to. The tactics available are locked behind your captain's level so if your not seeing tactics you picked up your captain may not be high enough level to use it.

These are the skills and levels required to use them, you collect them by completing missions and once used they are consumed until you collect another one. You can only have up to two uses of each of these skills.

Any Captain can use the "Repair" skill once you have collected it from a mission reward.
At level 2 your captain can uses these skills once you collect them from missions.

• Ready to Board
  
• Combat Sails

At level 4 your captain unlocks the use of these skills once you collect them from missions.

• Pushing
  
• Escape

At level 6 your captain unlocks the use of this skill once you collect it from missions.

• Surrounded

After completing the last set of tasks we were able to take Port Royal back for England. The next set of tasks revolve around rebuilding the port and strengthening your military by adding a large shipyard.

Once these tasks are done you will have another port which you can order ships from. If your using boarding tactics and seizing Spanish ships you won't need them as much but if your sinking ships and therefore losing some of your own having another port to replace them is helpful.

Before you can begin to complete these tasks you will likely need to raise the satisfaction level in Port Royal. To do this just deliver the goods they are in short supply. As you just completed the siege of the town you will find they are out of many products so getting them to like you and be happy just means delivering some necessities, fruits, vegetables, grain, beer etc. Depending on how your trade routes are setup they can take care of this automatically, if you happened to have plundered any Spanish merchants while you were taking over the town you can put their goods to use here.

To complete the 250 employees task you will be building some businesses, it doesn't really matter what you build as the English viceroy is not looking for large deliveries of colonial goods. If your building lots of ships (as opposed to capturing them) keep in mind ships require a fair bit of wood, cloth, ropes and metalware products. Some of these can be supplied in Port Royal.

Congratulations, Port Royal has been recaptured and the citizens like you again not to mention their shiny new shipyard. You now have three cities, Port-au-Prince, Santo Domingo and Port Royal in which you can build ships, and it's time to roll out the big guns.

The Ship of the Line is a pretty awesome ship, if you have not already done so spend some of those concessions at the viceroy and get a discount on building them. This was one of my favorite ships and in the hands of a captain how is a skilled gunner they are devastating.

Combing a ship of the line, a war galleon, a military frigate, and a frigate is a deadly combination granting you access to these tactics every battle with cooldowns. (Note these tactics are based on types of vessels in the convoy not captains)

• Outmaneuvered
  
• Burring Arrows
  
• Reload
  
• Lure

Outmaneuvered This tactic is available when you have either a war galleon or a pirate galleon in your convoy. It allows you to move an enemy vessel one hex in any open direction.

Burning Arrows This tactic is available on Military frigates and allows you to make one enemy vessel skip one turn.

Reload This tactic is available on frigates and allows you to reload your guns and take another shot on both sides or do a boarding attack of an enemy vessel.

Lure This tactic is available on ships of the line and draws all enemies within two hexes toward your vessel, its great for opening spaces for other ships or getting to ships you couldn't get to otherwise.

This is a bit of a unique task. It allows you to take a captain to an instructor's star location and train them granting them +3 levels. An interesting note is you can do this more than once I actually took three different captains there to get +3 levels each and it let me do some of the captains again before the task finally disappeared. I am not certain if the task stays for a certain number of uses or until one captain reaches a level threshold. I was able to get three different captains to level 10 or higher with this task. (Note: this task takes renders the Adventurer bonus experience trait fairly useless for this campaign).

As the hint states you can do this with your newly built three ships of the line but I would generally say you shouldn't do that. A balanced fleet provides more flexibility with tactics and ships of the line require two command points each. I generally find two large ships and four smaller ones more effective than three large and two smalls. Keep in mind no captain can have more than eight command points. If you don't have enough command points for your vessels you won't be able to leave the docks. (Note: you can actually have more command points in use while out to sea if you capture enemy ships).

For a convoy makeup I suggest the following:

• Ship of the Line
  
• War Galleon
  
• Galleon
  
• Military Frigate
  
• Frigate
  
• Galleon or Corvette (I lean toward Galleon for more firepower Corvette Smoke is very useful).

One of my favorite battle openers:
Often times I would move up to a group of two enemies then use the "Outmaneuvered" skill to split them so you can move right between them and attack each enemy on the left and right side. Generally for this I would use a war galleon or a ship of the line and cannister shot to decimate the crew of two ships on my opening turn. Depending on ship arrangement it can be worth it to use "Reload" here and blast some more ships. Then try to move to a spot where I could use "Burning Arrows" on the enemies largest ship or one that had the most guns or crew to lock it down for a turn.

The war is now in full swing and it's time to take the fight to Spain. We are going to make good use of our power leveled captains and our new ships of the line to take Cuba from the Spanish. Hopefully you used the instructor to your advantage on some good captains.

Nothing too special about these tasks we are just going to repeat what happened at Port Royal three more times. It takes a little while to siege any of these towns and every time you do so expect some visitors from the Spanish navy to try to break your siege. The Spanish fleet is going to bring the big guns as well expect multiple fleets sporting two war galleons and between two and four regular galleons with frigates mixed in for fun. In my experiences every convoy they sent to break the siege was an eight command point heavy fleet of ships.

At this point you will find the "Carpentry" skill and tactic of boarding enemy vessels very useful. You can use these abilities and tactics to repair your ships after battle and swap out damaged ships for enemy ships that are less damaged. (Note: The carpentry repair happens after you get a chance to swap out ships so it's possible to come out of a huge battle with very little damage if you have the carpentry skills maxed out on your captain).

You have at least three good captains and three strong military convoys to work with at this point. You have three towns to target. Your best bet is not to split up your forces. Use one convoy to assault the town and the other two convoys to intercept the Spanish welcome party that will be on the way after you start the siege.

Once you have successfully siege a town don't forget to change the town to "Annex" if you don't change it or accidently choose to "Spare" or "Plunder" the town you will have to siege the town all over again to get credit for the tasks.

You have take over all of Cuba, your the talk of the town and everybody knows your name. Including the Spanish and they want to introduce you to Davy Jones. Oh and they are really angry that you took Cuba from them so they are going to come get what belongs to them. Your task is to stop them from doing so.

The task for this objective are:
You likely had to defeat six or more military convoys to take Cuba what's a few more defending it.

These convoys will all be about the same as the ones you faced when you were conquering Cuba for England. Expect lots of War Galleons and Galleons, excellent for fleet replacement surgery if your doing the boarding method of combat. There is nothing special for this task it will happen automatically otherwise you will have lost as Spain will send three convoys to siege Havana.

While you may get the opportunity to intercept all the Spanish fleets don't do it, let at least one of the convoys begin the siege of Havana so you can get credit for preventing the siege.

Otherwise nothing special to see here, just sink some Spanish military convoys. (Or board them and capture them so you can swap out your damaged ships for newly captured Spanish ones).

You have defended Cuba, defeated the Spanish. There is no more war you have brought peace to the world and you have finally got some respect from the viceroy of England. Remember when he was treating you like a worthless nobody well now your the one who captured Cuba for England and sent the Spanish packing. After you smashed about a dozen military convoys in your escapades in Port Royal, Nueva Filipinas, Evangelista, and Havana the Spanish have decided enough is enough and settle for peace while they still have some of their fleet left. Now that the war is over England has a sailor unemployment problem and guess who can fix that. If you thought the viceroy then your wrong cause he just passes all the tasks he doesn't want to you so your going to fix the problems of England and here is how your going to do it:

Your businesses should already have a good few workers applied to this count, as you can see in this screen shot I already had 1420 from the second I got this task. Depending on how much building you have done thus far you may have more or less it's possible to instant complete this task. If you need more workers just build some production buildings somewhere. I suggest the three towns you just annexed as your the administrator there. While resources are somewhat random you may have unlocked access to a resource you were short on before you annexed the towns. For me Havana unlocked a supply of meat and coal production that I could easily use elsewhere.

This is an easy task but you will potentially have to make some changes to complete it depending on your class.

If playing as a merchant It's possible you already have trade routes setup to Spanish towns I still had some that I just left running during the war. Any trade convoy that buys from a Spanish town lowers the number of commodities sold to Spanish towns. This means it's very possible to go negative, at one point I was -1100 out of 1500 so I had to actually sell over 2600 commodities to get the task complete. To do this I had to change all my trade routes involving Spanish towns to only sell commodities. After the task is complete you can change things up to buy from Spanish towns if you want.

If your any class but merchant As most of the campaign there has been war with Spain and you couldn't trade with them you will have to set up new trade routes to sell commodities to Spain. This generally doesn't take long even if you have to setup trade routes. Remember your selling to them not buying from them or you will have the same problem as above. Use your three or more ship yards to buy a few small fast ships if you don't have any available and take cargo to Spanish towns and sell those goods. After the task is complete you can change things up to buy from Spanish towns if you want.

Well you did your part, created a bunch of jobs, built some production facilities, delivered colonial goods to England, liberated Port Royal, concurred Cuba and maybe even kept your military convoy crew employed and on your ships.

If you did then they will be useful to you as apparently the viceroy didn't build his share of 1900 jobs and some of those unemployed sailors decided it was the pirates life for them. Now it's time to go hunting pirates.

If you go to the viceroy and click on the pirate tab he will now have the whereabouts of two new pirates that you have to hunt down. The details will tell you where they were last spotted. Just take your military convoy and head to their last known locations and try to find them. If you find them don't attack right away just follow them so you can find their hideout. Once you have found their hideout start a siege of their hideout. During that process you will be attacked by the pirate who owns the hideout. Defeating the pirate will lead to you destroying their hideout and getting credit for defeating a pirate convoy.

Well that didn't last long. After you defeat the first pirate hideout and convoy war will break out again. This time everyone goes to war. For me England went to war with France while Spain and the Netherlands were fighting. You can get a letter of marque and go kill some more fleets if you want, I just ignored it and continued pirate hunting.

You can follow the same steps for the second pirate as you did for the first. Keep checking the viceroy for the pirates last known location, sail there with your military convoy and find him, again if you run into him don't attack but if he attacks you should just kill him. This will cause a slight delay but shortly after you defeat him you will be told that the hideout has been found. If you already destroyed him once you will get to do it all over again while you siege the pirate hideout.

After you have defeated both pirate convoys and hideouts you will have completed all tasks for the English campaign. Congratulations to you now on to the other campaigns.

Take your time building your trade empire
The start of the England campaign is very similar to the Spanish campaign. Your goal is to setup some trade routes and build up your cities and businesses. From the start of the campaign your basically given three years until the war with Spain must start. Chances are you will take considerably less time than that but keep in mind once you complete objective three you will be at war with Spain.

During this opening time don't rush get some trade routes setup and start making money early. You will need a lot of gold to cover the expenses of large ship upkeeps and crew costs later on. If your not the merchant class you will lose all access to Spanish colonies for trade for most of the campaign so it might be worth it to ignore those and not even buy trade licenses in those towns though you will have to sell to them later in the game and trade licenses will be much more expensive then.

Use early concessions to unlock captains early
Unlike the Spanish campaign there is not a lot of specific things you need to produce to complete tasks. As such your free to spend your fame on captains which you will need later. You will eventually need at least three captains commanding your military convoys. I would not hesitate to unlock five captains but don't take just anyone. Remember at minimum three of them are going to command large military convoys Try to get captains that have Carpentry, Close Combat, Gunner. The fourth skill is of less consequence but Movement or Dodge is a good one. Also look for captains with high max level, you need their max at nine stars or higher to be really useful.

The Netherlands are your friends
For most of the campaign you will be at war with Spain and very late game with France. If your any class other than merchant investing in trade with the Netherlands is the way to go so you never lose access to your trade routes.

Only pay the crew if you need them
The cost of crew expenses is huge in Port Royal 4. It is possible to spend thousands of gold per day on crew expenses. Take advantage of the pirate class bonus to save on crew cost but also make sure if your not using your crew send them ashore. If your military fleet is docked unload the crew, there is no cost to buy a crew only for keeping them onboard. Send them a shore if your not actively out fighting or if you have some big repairs to make. Just be sure to load them back on your convoy before you leave port.

Diversify your convoys
The tips may lead you to loading up with the same ship types in your convoys try to avoid this. Having a mix of ships will provide you with a wide range of tactics that you can use every battle to your advantage. More tactics equals more options and paths to victory.

Visiting the Instructor
This is a bit of a unique task. It allows you to take a captain to an instructor's star location and train them granting them +3 levels. An interesting note is you can do this more than once I actually took three different captains there to get +3 levels each and it let me do some of the captains again before the task finally disappeared. I am not certain if the task stays for a certain number of uses or until one captain reaches a level threshold. I was able to get three different captains to level 10 or higher with this task. (Note: this task takes renders the Adventurer bonus experience trait fairly useless for this campaign).

Tips for Annex of towns
You have at least three good captains and three strong military convoys to work with at this point. Your best bet is not to split up your forces. Use one convoy to assault the town and the other two convoys to intercept the Spanish welcome party that will be on the way after you start the siege.

Once you have successfully siege a town don't forget to change the town to "Annex" if you don't change it or accidently choose to "Spare" or "Plunder" the town you will have to siege the town all over again to get credit for the tasks.