Uncharted Waters New Horizons

You are correct, I did a similar thing a long time ago. The scurvy that causes death is the main reason to have a larger ship. It is amazing how fast the crew can die.

Actually, 70 days is enough to get the maximum experience for ship captains and the first mate. They get double the normal experience. Everyone else would need 100 days for the maximum experience. At level 18 you need 9720 experience to level up from then on, before that it is less experience of course.

The experience you get is the number of days sailing squared. Again the ship captains and the first mate will double that, so 70 days sailing will give you: 70*70=4900 for regular mates, bookkeeper, and chief navigator and 4900*2=9800 for ship captains and the first mate. Sailing for 70 days and then 30 days is not the same as sailing for 100 days, for experience.

Sailing 100 days will give you 100*100=10,000 experience and the extra experience doesn't matter because the ship captains and first mate will still only get about 10,000 exp. Using the numbers above for 70 days and calculating the experience for regular mates, etc, for the 30 days is 30*30=900. Combining the two gives you 4900+900=5800 instead of the 10,000 for the regular mates, etc., although the ship captains and first mate would benefit from the stop because they would now get 11,600 experience total.

You need to be approaching world domination to see the strange things like a fleet with a couple of barges and the rest as balsa (or some such tiny ship). Nearly all of the ports need to be allied with your country, which is done by investing. You also need to have nearly all of them at 1000 economy and industry.

If you check at the Guild in any port and pay 100 for country info regarding your country, one of the things the guild master tells you is the "profit" level of your country. That number needs to be nearing the maximum, and I don't know the exact profit you need for the fleets to be different. The maximum possible profit is 42,202 if I remember correctly. It is 42,000 plus one fourth of the economy of your home port. I think you start seeing the changes before 42,000 and I'm pretty sure it has to be above 30,000, but I don't know how much above 30,000.

It sounds like your Ali game is very close to that, so try that one. I still think that most of the time the strange fleets are the ones that you have defeated previously.

I have a Joao game close to 30,000 profit, but I'm probably going to finish that by completing the map and then the game. I'll watch to see if there are any changes if the profit increases.

I would guess that they had to consider some of these things, and they certainly make the game more interesting.

Yeah, I'm still playing after what...17 years. 😮