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I remember having a hard time figuring out what I needed to do for those "hide these goods among yours for x days" quests given by "a man of honour" that turned out to be smuggling missions. I kept reloading back and forth but I always got busted the very instant the smuggler placed his wares into my warehouse with which I probably set a world record for shortest criminal career in video gaming history.
With these missions it turned out you need at least a 3:1 ratio of your own legal goods to the smuggler's wares not to get caught but the game doesn't tell you that. It just says you need more legal goods than illegal ones, which I always had, just not at a 3:1 ratio. :)
But there are many other nuances like this. For example you can get accused and fined just for talking to a pirate/burglar/weapons dealer/arsonist in a tavern. You don't even have to accept their offers or buy anything from them, simply talking to them can get you into trouble. Talking to a smuggler on the other hand is completely legal (go figure!) and can only get you charged if you accept their proposal. Although that's probably because smugglers come from the siderooms so you can't really avoid talking to them.
Then there's praying and bathing which may seem like purposeless activities (in-game that is) only meant to enhance immersion, but in truth, not praying and bathing frequently enough can also get you charged for various reasons. E.g. for not praying you might get charges of heresy such as the Flat Earth Society accusing you of "claiming that the world is round" while not bathing can get you fined for umm... being a threat to public hygiene I guess. :)
Engaging in piracy is also rather tricky. When you attack another ship or convoy, you have to make sure there are no witnesses (or that they don't get away alive), meaning no other ships/convoys in the vicinity which could have seen your misdeed. That usually means you have to place 2-3 ships on a scout duty around the area where you plan to ambush your targets so that you can make sure they're alone and not followed by other ships that could report your pirate activities.
If you resort to hiring a pirate from a tavern instead, he might bring in some nice profit but if he ever gets caught, the resulting fine will eclipse all your ill-gotten gains so the best approach is to eventually go and hunt him down with one of your own convoys and make sure he takes your dirty secret to the watery grave. ;)
And these are just the quirks and hurdles I can recall off the top of my head so don't be discouraged, it's not just you! I guess Pat III wanted to remain a business sim first and foremost and not become a GTA: Hansa so while it does give you the choice, the lawless life requires quite bit more caution and perseverance than in other games. :)
Oh and I have done this to a lot of the towns and its very helpful at boosting ranks to become patrician.
I can barely handle the auto-trade feature currently so i may just stick to a legal life for right now.
also, how rare are captians? I need another one and i cant find one anywhere.
After a while they tend to get stuck in river towns or faraway places that nobody ever visits (e.g. Novgorod) so those would be good spots to start looking. :)
Oh no! Not a 600,000 gold fine! How can my monopoly possibly afford that!?
It's important to understand the economy. The best way to stimulate the economy is to trade many goods, especially food, so that populations in each town remain stable. If you focus too much on construction and production goods then the town may grow in population beyond their ability to feed the population, and this can lead to a temporary up turn in demands. If the town later starves, and people leave, then their demands for goods diminish. If you now produce more to meet the demand you may find that with the sudden drop in demand your goods begin to stockpile. This can be a bad bad thing. You may be forced sometimes to sell goods at a loss, and with $500,000 in stockpiled goods you can take a huge hit. It could be even worse if you are forced to throttle the output from your production facilities.
With throttling the output your production costs per good rise considering you still pay taxes on those facilities, but produce less. You won't make as much profit, and may be forced to sell at a higher price. Competitors might be selling at a lower price, and your ability to move those goods is now reduced again. This can lead to a terrible affect; You're unable to move the goods because of the decrease in demand, and you're unable to move the goods because of your increase is asking price. Now you're forced to sell or destroy a production facililty, or two, to reduce your tax expenditures.
Flooding the market with too many goods can have the same affect.
Ya for sure you can use whatever useful info I dish out.
To get cannons you need to buy lots of weapons from the dealer. You need to make sure the town has a constant supply of Leather, Pig Iron, Iron Goods, Wood, and I believe Pitch or he won't be able to produce cannons. The more you buy the better the weapons, and the faster he produces. Same goes for ships. The ship build quality improves after you've contracted the construction of many of them.
Pirates; You can attack them with your ships. The best way I find to kill them is to use one or two crayers. You kite them. You get them to chase you, and you use the crayer's speed and agility to your advantage. You steer towards them and fire, and then quickly steer away before they get a chance to fire back. If you use too many ships the pirates might turn to run away, and then they have the advantage. If you try to catch up to them they pull the same stunt you want to pull on them. They'll shoot at you before you get close enough to make your turn and fire at them.
Fighting a pirate camp is a whole other ball game. Sometimes they'll have 20-30 ships waiting for you, and yes, you fight them all at once.
The dirtiest thing I think I've done in game is to steal all the towns money when I became Mayor.
I think it was like 2 million, and I got a fine for embezzling for like 1.2 million. $800,000 wasn't bad. Would have liked to have kept the entire 2 million.
The stupid other Mayors were ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ though. They wouldn't expand the walls, and none of them would freaking build any muskets or anything. I had to go around trading with illegal arms dealers, and paying fines. I wanted my damn money back that I had to invest. All the damn wells, and roads and everything I did for them. They didn't vote me in again, but I was happy my damn facilities were finally behind walls.