Pirates of the Caribbean: Master of the Seas

Unfortunately, the previous analysis is a best case scenario that may work when you pick up a few new crewmembers. If I pick up 100 crewmembers, that would translate into 28,400 gems! I think the gem fairies would be worn out before I could collect that many gems!

My fallback strategy is to get as strong of a crew as possible with just coins. While it is a lot less potent than gems, it is probably more doable. Using just coins, I will get an attack amount of 600 and a defensive amount of 250 for 511k coins computed as follows:

Cannons - 160k coins - Sniper Cannon - 200 attack points
Weapons - 65k coins - Gunpowder Barrel - 100 attack points
Ship's Tackle - 99k coins - Genoa Sail - 300 attack points
Amulets - 88k coins - Lucky Dice - 100 defense points
Ship's Tackle - 99k coins - Carvel Planking - 150 defense points

Then, as gems become available, I use them to replace the coin items. In my analysis, I computed the bang for the gems based on the increase in ability over the highest coin item. Using this method, the most bang for the gems worked out as follows:

Cannons - 90 gems - Titanus Blaster - 800 attack point increase - 8.89 points per gem
Weapons - 69 gems - Atlantic Repeater - 560 attack point increase - 8.12 points per gem
Ship's Tackle - No attack point increase
Amulets - 70 gems - Nana's Drachma - 400 defense point increase - 5.71 points per gem
Ship's Tackle - 55 gems - Ship's Log - 250 defense point increase - 4.55 points per gem

Whew!
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Please add ShiptoShore and LastPirateStanding to your Crew.

It's too bad that the attack items dramatically outweigh the defensive items. I have to work hard to keep my defense above a 2:1 ratio.
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AteMate - H0F4B7

I just buy planking. With gifts my attack keeps going up. Even just buying defenses I have a 9 to 5 ratio of attack to defense.

TinySue

I think you are on the mark with your analysis that using gems to buy crew is a waste of gems. It's not that hard to pick up new crew.

If you have 20 crewmembers and 140 gems and you decide to use the gems to purchase additional attack or defense, the maximum attack you could wind up with is 13,120. The maximum defense is 5,800 points. If you instead use the 140 gems to purchase new crew, the maximum attack is 24,000 and defense is 10,000.

If you convince 20 additional crew to join (bringing your total to 40) and use the 140 gems to purchase attack or defense, the maximum attack would be 25,120 and the maximum defense would be 10,800.

This doesn't seem like a big difference but consider if you are deciding between 200 new crew and 1400 gems. The difference becomes quite a bit larger. With 140 gems, you are limited in the mix of items you can purchase. With 1400, the list becomes much more varied.
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Please add ShiptoShore and LastPirateStanding to your Crew.