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Actually, I didn't even take the tavern missions for money, either. No avenging anyone, no escorting. Just a few travellers, and the occasional treasure hunt. I sank only the spawned pirate crayers, since my ships mostly could outrun them. I left the spawned cogs and holks alone. Too easy, if captured.

Not many widows anywhere in my game.

The Hanse is doing pretty well, too. Wool is short, so I got wine, which I wanted for the first city in any event. Luebek cannot meet the need. Timber and fish round out the list.

Thinking about a real challenge, I would probably go along with an earlier suggestion here, and use a map of sixteen cities, scattered all over the map. That would allow for 10 new cities to be built. No offices except for the new cities and your starting office. Set trading and the Prince, pirates to hardest of all, and build your hometown to a maximum population. Allow auctions of ships; no captures at all.

That would take some good gaming, real skill. Not for the newbies. Biggest population of your office towns, by a set date, wins.

This current game, you can sell iron goods for 500. Not much difficulty in generating money. That is why I took additional handicaps, to make it more interesting. And did the Danzig move.

Zitat

Original von Baltic Trader
This current game, you can sell iron goods for 500. Not much difficulty in generating money. That is why I took additional handicaps, to make it more interesting.

Yepp.
We had a little bit brainstorming about a contest with low difficult-level, interesting also for Newbees, contradictory to the 40-Cities-Contest.
My mention was bonuspoints for lower numbers of offices.

Zitat

Original von Baltic Trader
No offices except for the new cities and your starting office.

I played the contest with six cities, but i had no fun.
In the 2nd try (now) i play with an office only in Lübeck and my new city stavanger. It's more difficult, because Lübeck has only IG, fish and bricks as effective produktion. Collecting salt, hemp, ore, wood, beer... from whole Hanse is necessary. Growing shouldn't be very quick, need help from AI.

Larsson
p.s.: sorry bad english

Your English is fine, Larsson.

I am running four cities, plus Windau. I will add Novgorod sometime before the game is done as my river town, and a secondary source of beer. Luebeck and Danzig are the primary cities so far. Malmo is my pig iron supplier, and I have just begun wool there to avoid wine as the next town selection. Rostock I just use for three more brickyards, but it will be the main grain and hemp producer before the game is done (just waiting on Windau for timber exports for salt and pottery there).

Davylad, I took out two pirates in eight days, both as Alderman missions. Then I began Windau. You need to take that time off of the 42 days. So, I will be Alderman in September 1301; should have first city recognition by summer. Meanwhile, I am up to the end of January 1301. I'd like to move back to Luebeck for the February 3 election, but the wall in Danzig is lagging badly. Luebeck's wall is coming along nicely, as is the wall in Windau, past the first gate now.

Zitat

Originally posted by Baltic Trader
Davylad, I took out two pirates in eight days, both as Alderman missions. Then I began Windau. You need to take that time off of the 42 days. So, I will be Alderman in September 1301; should have first city recognition by summer. Meanwhile, I am up to the end of January 1301. I'd like to move back to Luebeck for the February 3 election, but the wall in Danzig is lagging badly. Luebeck's wall is coming along nicely, as is the wall in Windau, past the first gate now.

Actually, I miscalculated. I thought Danzig elections was on the 23rd.

You had 45 days not 42. You took 8 days to secure Alderman leaving 37.

I founded Memel on the 3.2 but despite the wall being built way before it wasn't recognised until 4.8. I had tracked the "notorious pirate" to be for 2 weeks with 3 attack ships just so I knew I could spot him and attack the moment Memel was established. I took him on the 4.8 but didn't recieve regognition for it until the 6.8 .

I founded Harlingden on the 6th and had laid construction by the evening of the same day. So in reality I don't think that could have been done any sooner but I still lost 2 days.

So you have 37 +2 days = 39. You should come in a month ahead. It'd all be down to your great start though if you do.

I'm still tinkering with the build. Having bricks saves me a little time but not much.

Zitat

Original von Baltic Trader
Thinking about a real challenge, I would probably go along with an earlier suggestion here, and use a map of sixteen cities, scattered all over the map. That would allow for 10 new cities to be built. No offices except for the new cities and your starting office.

Hm, Bizpro had the idea with an map without cloth. Shipbuilding wasn't possible. I played this map (short time) with hardest difficult but only few weeks later as usual i had a ship for Med. and enough cloth for many ships.
Still a nice idea for a map.

And there is a nice idea again and so i made a map with 16 cities. London, Brugge, Bergen and Novgorod are offices, 12 cities are Hansecities. Unfortunately seems no town to suit for a central-city. Also unfortunately there is only one normal (ineffective) timberproduction in Cologne (Köln) and only one normal Brick in Thorn.
The map seems to run, had only played a few minutes. No idea how the map in long play is (probs with captains or elderman-elektion could be possible...)

Larsson

The timber shortage will generate perhaps too many goods short. No pitch, no cattle/leather, no salt, no beer, no ceramics, no iron goods. Secondarily, no furs, no fish, no train oil.

Send me a game with that map (German games work in the English version, but the opposite isn't true). Set it up for hardest settings, Patrician + level. As long as we cannot capture any ships, it has promise.

Interesting.

Davylad?

I like it. This game is a trading game and all too many tricks make the trading element redundant.

This map shows great promise but I would add that you should be able to earn more points from population in the hanse where you DO NOT have trading offices.

This way you would have to sell construction goods to none controlled towns and keep them supplied as well.

Interesting challenge and a good test of trading skills.

Zitat

timber shortage will generate perhaps too many goods short. No pitch, no cattle/leather, no salt, no beer, no ceramics, no iron goods. Secondarily, no furs, no fish, no train oil.

My forecast is, that all products will be short. Some effects wil be moderated by imports. The first months it will work, but thereafter the clever distribution of the goods will be necessary. All cities have only 4/5 productions (+imports) and no complete produktion chains.

Zitat

Set it up for hardest settings, Patrician + level. As long as we cannot capture any ships, it has promise.

- What is patrician + level ? Patrician is the maximum grade of difficulty. No more raise in setup-menu is possible.
- The one ineffective timber-production is not enough to supply the need and you want waste the rare timber for ships ?
Or mean you no capturing of white ships ?
What's with missions from tavern or free pirates ?
Distribution without ships is a quite hard challange.

Zitat

...but I would add that you should be able to earn more points from population in the hanse where you DO NOT have trading offices.

The Hanse with only the starting office and the offices that you can establish from Elderman-missions was the cause for the map.
I play the actual (2009) contest in this way, but i have great problems to generate useful productions in the new cities.

Zitat

Send me a game with that map (German games work in the English version, but the opposite isn't true).

English saves works also in german version. But remember: the card is not tested, some trouble can occur.
-------------------------------------------
Any special wishes ?
Hometown position: central (Lubeck) or away (Bergen, Nowgorod), with useful productions or somewhat ?
Captain in Hometown?
Election dates ?
Tavern-missions ?


Larsson
Sorry bad english

Wool and cloth should be okay, so too hemp, honey, grain, wine and ore.

Patrician+ is all the settings set to the hardest possible. The Landlord is more prone to attack, the pirates full crews. You can set one option to normal, and still be at Patrician difficulty.

Yes, I want to prohibit captures of pirates, either in tavern missions, or in the spawned non-adalbert pirates. No white ship captures either. It is possible, I think. But for compromise, we could start with 3 or 4 snaikkas (captured in a pregame with the save then sent out.)

The English modified maps, if loaded into the German language game, have problems Larsson. The game doesn't load the city names. Patrol missions are a little difficult that way ... So are blockades. The same problem happens to a lesser degree in the American version with German language loaded games. Edinburgh messages have no city in the mail notice, ever. Patrol missions are never paid a bonus for interception of pirate ships either.

Lubeck would be fine, I think. Honey, pitch, iron goods, normal grain and hemp sound okay? Davylad? Nothing else is necessary.

Zitat

Originally posted by Baltic Trader
Wool and cloth should be okay, so too hemp, honey, grain, wine and ore.
Patrician+ is all the settings set to the hardest possible. The Landlord is more prone to attack, the pirates full crews. You can set one option to normal, and still be at Patrician difficulty.

No Problem with this - still thinking on what the cause and effects are though.

Zitat

Originally posted by Baltic TraderYes, I want to prohibit captures of pirates, either in tavern missions, or in the spawned non-adalbert pirates. No white ship captures either. It is possible, I think. But for compromise, we could start with 3 or 4 snaikkas (captured in a pregame with the save then sent out.)

Struggling with this a little. If you want to test trading skills then you have to allow ships to allow that trade. Put too many restrictions on and all you end up with is a massive building phase of shipping in the begginning and forget the hanse. You have to move all that timber to sites around the hanse just to produce the basics. You NEED ships.

Maybe have a limit to number of ships you can have per town owned and a condition to reach before accepting the aldermans to build a new town. Not sure just thinking out loud.

Zitat

Originally posted by Baltic Trader Lubeck would be fine, I think. Honey, pitch, iron goods, normal grain and hemp sound okay? Davylad? Nothing else is necessary.

Still a little confused by how many towns you will control both in the beginning and in the end?

Zitat

Originally posted by Larsson
-------------------------------------------
Any special wishes ?
Hometown position: central (Lubeck) or away (Bergen, Nowgorod), with useful productions or somewhat ?
Captain in Hometown?
Election dates ?
Tavern-missions ?

Novgorod would be interesting. Then its based around the 3 rivers. Producing beer and no grain or timber. Snaikka, crayer map too.

Captain not neccessary, no arbitrage, no captures, no pirating so not needed immediately.

Election dates we need to think about. Few ships, no means to build them and a long construction lag due to timber shortage should mean advancement very difficult in terms of CV.

Still an option to jump town and mayor somewhere else to catch the election for alderman would be nice. Even if its to see if it can be done.

Tavern missions without captures are pretty redundant for me as I don't get properly paid for them the oh so valuable ships would be trading not escorting. The thing is I think BT is after what you can build not what you can take and there are just too many ways to gather ships. Just taking spawned pirate cogs in the Luebeck contest I gathered around 110 cogs in just over 18 months in a clean game. At 50k cost and no time to build them the game is just throwing money at you.

No captures whatsoever. Tavern missions for money if you want but every ship sunk.

Maybe allow 1 nest to be taken then there is a challenge of how many ships you can capture?

Zitat

Original von Larsson
...there is only one normal (ineffective) timberproduction in Cologne (Köln) and only one normal Brick in Thorn.
Larsson

Sorry my fault. The only one timber is in Thorn, the only one brick in Cologne.
However. All cities have nearly no timber, no iron goods and fewer bricks as usual (and also no weapon-productions). Ships building or capturing will be very hard.

Perhaps we can allow the capturing of snaikkas from pirate-hunt missions from tavern. Or only crayers from free pirates (should be circa 6-8 ships).

@BT
Have you received the mail with the save ?
@Davylad
Your mail-adress ? (via PN)

Larsson

Got it; it runs fine.

I was able to get good, profitable trades running quickly (for Patrician settings, that is). It would make a very fair game, challenging. Building is difficult, but not impossible at all. I had a trade running in iron goods in the first month. PMs coming.

Still confused by how many trading offices you can have.

Are you saying you have luebeck and Alderman mission towns or can you establish anywhere?

Got the save. Love the concept but need an answer to this before progressing with it.

Ships building shouldn't be that hard considering the length of time to build but it is a sacrifice so a lot of forward planning needed.

Lubeck, and the Alderman mission towns. No other offices.

I had a newbuild snaikka launched by early October, or a crayer by mid October, just experimenting. The start is a bit slow, but it mushrooms quickly. Mostly a matter of managing supply chains and scarcity.

So, no acquisitions of ships by violence (covers marriage, etc). No arbitrage. No tricks not in the spirit of the game. No attacks on cities.

Should be fun.

Zitat

Originally posted by Baltic Trader
So, no acquisitions of ships by violence (covers marriage, etc).

So you can loan and then impound?

With only one office with a moneylender until new towns are constructed, that is certainly reasonable. It would take quite a while to accumulate ships, slower than if you were to devote the cash to construction. The numbers are not excessive, either, if confined to one office. Later on with the new cities, it won't gimmick the game either.

The Patrol assignments, Avenge-My-Brother, Escort/Fugitive along with the naturally spawned pirates generate more ships than the combined shipyards of the Hanse could possibly build in the same amount of time. That is quite excessive. Ships were expensive, precious, and quite hard to come by.

Smuggling should be fair game, too. So should giving a ship to pirates, if you are so minded.

What is violance on marriage ?
And what is violance on repayed credits ?

I think this should be allowed (to get some new ships).

Larsson

Zitat

Originally posted by Baltic TraderSmuggling should be fair game, too. So should giving a ship to pirates, if you are so minded.

Don't agree with the ship to pirates. It opens up tricks and is violent and could lead to indictment so shouldn't be allowed.

With smuggling not sure about for a variety of reasons but dove is dove and this is indictable.

No Indictable actions
All ships encountered sunk.
Build, dowry and impounds only source of ships.

Simple and easy to implement and check but extremely difficult to master.

Zitat

Originally posted by Larsson
What is violance on marriage ?
And what is violance on repayed credits ?

I think this should be allowed (to get some new ships).

Larsson

Violence is fighting and physical combat. So, to attack any ship and seize it by force is a violent act. Sinking a pirate ship, while violent, doesn't result in you owning another ship.

Marriage, hopefully, isn't violent (although I guess it can be!) and the ship is not acquired by force. Neither is a seizure through a defaulted loan at the moneylender. So, building, dowry, and impounds are fine. Auctioning an older ship should be fine, too, including any seized in an impound, if one is so minded.

@Davylad, okay, no privateers, no commissioned pirates in your employ.

Other criminal acts though ... hiding goods, smuggling, using a burglar, are nonviolent, involve minimal amounts of reward, and probably should be left to the conscience of the individual. Just like impounds through usury, or bribing a councillor to get out of an indecent acts or heresy accusation. After all, it does build reputation, even on the bad side.

Larsson, what do you think?