Uncharted Waters New Horizons

Glad we're back online again - I don't visit here often but it's really nice to see this site up for those of us who love this game. 🙂

I know my nick is Catalina, but I usually play Ali (must be my Hungarian/Turk background). What about everybody else?

Hee hee, yes... Piracy does have it's good points... :laugh:

I tried to do that one time a long time ago, but weird things start to happen as you get the vast majority of ports over to your side. I can't remember exactly what though...

I also seem to remember Italy having an especially difficult time getting ANY ports at all, let alone most of them 🙂

i love to play as Otto because it's so easy to just start the game and destroy people

My favourite character is Ernst, because one of my best friends since I was 13 (I'm 21 now) is Dutch, and since meeting him and learning of the Netherlands, I've been fascinated by their culture throughout the ages - particularly the 1500's. =P

I also like the sheer freedom Ernst's scenario gives me. I don't mind not having Teks until the late-game - I can do whatever in whatever ship - it doesn't really matter too much. A full fleet of Venetians will take down the most hardcore AI battle fleets without a problem, I've found.

And in answer to the question of how close has anyone gotten to allying all non-capital ports... I've gotten all 100 of them before! The key (if you're Ernst) is to take England down to nothing (not very hard at all to do - their battle fleets are generally crap and taking their allied ports means they'll only get worse) early on, and then sit between Seville and Lisbon, swinging down to intercept any merchant fleets that happen by. Your merchants are then pretty much free to go out and make big claims early in the game, which means that all YOU have to do is take the Baltic Sea and then wander around buffing up your allied ports a bit here and there. Investing them up to 1k/1k makes them very hard for the poor AIs to take.

The Portuguese tend to be the biggest problem in Ernst games for two reasons: 1.) If you're a merchant, royal favours have a nasty tendency to be treaties with Portugal, which means your enmity with them has to be low or 4/5 of your gold (including Marco Polo accounts!) gets confiscated. The other reason is that most of your time, following the sink-your-enemies route, you'll be near Ceuta, which means ships leaving Lisbon can (and WILL!) slip past you. And of course Sekeira.

There are two other methods of taking over the world, which can be summarised as: 1.) Trade between your allied ports without a tax-free permit a -lot-. Until you're very rich. That 20% adds up, and your kingdom will actually grow rich because of you, oddly enough. And then there's 2.) Use the infamous Six-Month Money Making Machine and just sail around the world investing 10 ingots in every port you find, repeatedly.

It's actually not that hard.