Patrizierforum

Very nice piece of work.

Now, several questions present themselves.

1. What was the number of ships in the convoy?
2. What was the armament status?
3. Were all the ships fully crewed?
4. I presume A, B, and C are American tribes. Were multiple stops necessary because of unsold goods?
5. Bagaluth once wrote that if a captain were better in fighting than sailing, that he would try to engage. What was the fighting skill of the captain?

I note that my previous statements about honey and the Med trade (written elsewhere, mostly on TSR) are confirmed; honey has the highest return on investment overall, by percentage. Net return for invested amount was 40% on the honey trade, and 34% on furs. For a beginning trader, honey to the Med is the best export path to become rich. Pitch is better than iron goods, as well. For contest purposes, building apiaries which provide 30 workers/120 population and require no additional materials are the best approach at first. It is the simplest supply chain to manage as well. Furs are the second export good that should be concentrated upon, also an excellent return but a higher initial investment is required and in the early game that is more difficult to manage.

In fact, my usual path is trading in scarce goods about the Hanse, and a rapid Med exploration with initial focus on building up export trade. Whatever I produce, I want to sell. Next is purchase of wine in the Med, with export to America. I usually only get into iron goods production in excess of needs later on, for addition to the America trade.

Next, I have written on this board as well as elsewhere (TSR) about the virtues of snaikkas and crayers over holks and cogs. In fact, I usually only keep a small fleet of holks for the escort/fugitive/sought pirate missions to capture additional holks for sale at auction, and never build any. If you compare the profit per day on the America trip of crayers, you see the advantage that speed brings: higher profits, and a much higher overall return on investments. The data is limited, but there is about a 1/3 chance of a damaging encounter, and I doubt it matters with crayers versus holks.

One item we had looked at in Patrician 2 was the relative speeds of empty and full ships. One writer claimed the most effective strategy was to sail 2/3 cargo capacity. There may be merit in sailing full one direction and empty upon return, comparing repair costs, crew and captain salaries, and quickness of return on investment.

Single ships, or large convoys? Singles are more prone to the pirate factor for total loss I think.

In Patrician 2, the loss rate was pretty high for crayers. I got many a message from the South Seas of a lost ship. P3, it is not so bad. Storms seem just a set percentage, random probability. I am still not too sure that pirates aren't the same, less a convoy safety factor. I still get pirate encounters even on empty ships with nothing aboard to steal.

Bagaluth used to say that the ideal was a thirty ship holk convoy with twenty captains aboard. What has the German board's experience been?

For all external convois I use minimal Personal maximal wepons on Orlog. For Transport to America only Holks

average per convoi 1400. For explring some 45 Coggs where used. For captains the worsest I actually had because there is no differece between good and bad captains in the outback.

Incidently, that is a good use for those little snaikkas you capture at level two and are otherwise not very worthwhile. Develop them to level three, load them up with cannon, and just use a bigger ship as convoy leader. If you attach several little ships to the fleet, they are well capable of defense. In multiplayer, some had a rather nasty little surprise thinking the fleet was poorly defended. They travel at the same speed as holks, and do fine as cog escorts too.

Speed is still important. I don't mind holks for the near Med, for hauling back 1000 or 2000 wine where you do it once a month and speed isn't important, or bulk shipments of pitch. But for furs, and valuable cargo where transit time and greater distance is important then there is clear evidence of the superiority of crayers.

Is 60% the best figure? I never sat down and did all the experimentation. There has to be a balance between repair and crew/captain costs (which are directly affected by time in use) and profit from sales. Empty is fastest but in the red for the net, full is highest profit from total sales but is affected more by higher repair costs and you cannot compound wealth as quickly. It is a problem with three variables, and I don't know the optimum . It has to be somewhat under full capacity. On a related note, I think that sending unextended ships on expedition generate more net profit on high priced goods, enough so from the extra amount sold to offset the increased damage and rate of repair. For a high value cargo like furs to the Med, a leader, adequate defense, and (60%?) loaded level one crayers might give the optimum between gross profit and compounding of profits.

On the crayer issue, don't forget either that they are repaired and back in use quicker. This adds to the bottom line, since your investment in ships isn't standing idle as long.

Ah, dear Bizpro, we are always so taken with the fumbling way you wipe the drool from your chin!

Do you mean to say you have most of your convoys just sitting in repair docks with full crews? Tsk, tsk, what a waste. Here is a tip: The captain of course does cut a few days off the trip if he is familiar with the route, and normally he can be kept on the ship. But since I usually have a series of ships in drydock, coming due at varying times, I just transfer the crew to the first ship convoy that is ready, and then repair the now crewless ships. Now, I know you used to be a fine sailin' man, and liked to spend all that down time carousing with the tavern wenches in all them there foreign ports, but in this game I sure don't want to be paying my sailors to do the same!

Snaikkas aren't good convoy leaders. But they do fine in other roles. Think of them as "destroyers" and let them accompany your convoys about the Hanse. They won't slow down those bulky holk barges you favor. On a side note, if you don't need all the speed about the Hanse (and clearly you don't think you do or you would be running a fleet of crayers!), check the construction time of one of the 700 last holks versus three 250 last snaikkas. Now check the repair costs, and length of time in repair. Yes, you need fifteen crew to sail the snaikkas versus twelve for the holks which is slightly more per load (last), but factor in the repair price difference and time out of commission and you may discover for yourself the superiority of snaikkas over holks in the Hanse.

Holks are big and flashy. Biggest isn't always best.

We had a contest once upon a time, to see who could automate the Hanse the longest. Game submitted, then fast forwarded until population fell. The solution was having crayers as convoy leaders in the supply chains. They performed best in attacks on the convoys on automatic fighting.

Repair time of a convoy isn't determined by the averages, but by the time it takes to repair the most damaged ship. So, if a leader is badly hit, transferring the ships to a different convoy is better. A 98% holk doesn't take as long as a 90% snaikka I think.

You indicated that you needed shipping space early on, and took out the AI because you needed their space. Check the construction times. I can float more cargo space faster with snaikkas.

Sure you could build 60 ships. If you have the cash, and if you have raided the towns you will have plenty. You can begin pitch in the current contest in Danzig and get snaikkas under construction everywhere. 24 towns, 3 snaikkas each, would work fine. I am curious about your building cogs though. When I nab a few holks, often starting Cascade style, that is sufficient. A holk/crayer pair for the patrols, one for the avenge missions, and another four pairs for newly spawned pirates and tavern missions is sufficient for me. Seven of this type of convoy is enough for manual control.

Pirates, unmolested, get pretty strong. Fleets of four and five holks, cogs and crayers in a mix occur. Whatever, it was an interesting little test. You would have hated another one of our contests, where no piracy at all and no capture of pirates was permitted. Snaikkas were the key in that game. I happily sank pirate holks with them. We had to build all our own ships, and crayers and cogs weren't quick enough in construction. Our old contests usually had us looking at the economic problems of the game in different ways. One, we had to daytrade in just the one town (we began with no ships) and you can make money that way without any ships. One was for the fastest buildup of a city population, two style categories, clean and dirty. Some of the solutions were very interesting, and in the interest of the current competition, I won't further elaborate here since I am thinking about applying it. Fitting twenty five thousand in the first city wall wasn't all that easy, and we didn't know about the "Turkish" construction methods. One of our players managed to do that, and we all learned a great deal. It wasn't me that did it; my solution involved the pitch export to the Med trade, and I came in first in the clean category but built the second wall. There are aspects of the game that are different, and if you play the same style every game you don't pick up on them. We (Quis, I and Robber Baron) developed the Arbitrage in one of our contests, and later Ugh! learned it from us and then of course the German boards. Levon developed his first version of the Golden Nugget in one as well. In some we had to learn the best ways to use the roads. As just one example, did you know that you can "hide" some iron goods and furs in a shipment of beer, and pay the lower premium for insurance still? And you would probably be amazed at just what extent a snaikka can function in the Med trade.

Perhaps that is one thing I can help contribute to this board. If a contest is always the same thing, then we don't learn different things. I know I have already learned a great deal from you and from this board, and I am very happy with it. I very much enjoy learning, and a group always will outpeform the individual in knowledge.