Go to a door in any part of the game and press [Action]. Your character will knock on the door, then you can run away.
Easy money
Go to any of the loan sharks and ask for any amount of money. You can go to the box in his office and drop your money in it. Then, go up to him again and ask for more money. Continue to do this until you have the desired amount. Even though he says that he has ways of getting his money back, he never comes after you.
Easy Ship Takeovers
Since you are at war with France, you are going to attack some French ships. But not any french ships, only those that are battling pirate ships, because any other time when you encounter french ships they attack you. But this time they will be your allies, against the pirates, so find a battle where you are totally out numbered by the pirates and quickly defeat them. Now after the battle the french ships will not attack you, they will sail on their way. Get in close to those french ships and fire your kibles at their sails, do it to each ship, but do not fire anything else or the ships will instantly attack you. Now with their sails destroyed they cannot manuver very well, when you begin your attack, you can pick them off or flee if you must. Next select the ship you want to take over, get in real close and fire the grape shot at point blank rage. You will kill off some of the crew, and will instantly board their ship for a take over. Now when you have your new ship the other french ships "if there are anymore" will attack you. But since you took out the sails, the battle will
be easy, so sink them or run away to repair. You can do this with other nations, but once you do this you will be at war with them, which just adds to your problems early in the game.
Get New Ships
Before editing a game file always make a backup copy of that file. Go to the directory of the following file: "character_init" (Mostly it is in the following path: C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Pirates of the Caribbean\PROGRAM\Characters\English). It must be the one in "English" not in "Characters". Open the file, and go to the following line: "ch.Ship.Type = SHIP_LUGGER_ENGLAND;". Replace "LUGGER_ENGLAND"ch.Ship.Type = SHIP_LUGGER_ENGLAND with the following to get new ships.
If you run into a group of baddies you think you cannot beat then run away and go past the last point where the game loads and they won't follow you.
Stack captain scores
You can add more than one person, other than the Captain, onto your other three ships. All of their scores will stack with that ship's captain's score. There are two different ways to do this. The first method is at the "Open Sea" screen (where you can see all of your ships), get close to another one of your ships and a swap cargo icon will appear. Go into the swap cargo menu. There is an option to switch captains. Under this option, there is a screen that has four slots. One of them is the captain of that ship. Click on one of the other three slots, then assign passengers to each one. When you do this, they dissapear from your passenger list. You will need to get more party members at the tavern if you want to fill up all your ships. Do not sell the ship with the other three crewmembers still on it. You will lose anyone that is still on board. The second method is to capture a ship and do it when you assign a captain to the captured ship.