Most profitable Era? Has anyone reached 3600 crew member?

[76561197973400036]

The game has so much to offer and a long gameplay, but a true 100% is extremely hard. Main objective is getting Montalban, rescue your family and secondary are infamous pirates and lost cities to help with the main one. But if you play long enough, those are easier than dancing(I'm not kidding)
As a hardcore player i never played less than swashbuckler, i also didn't take fencing skill in a long time. I have super reflexes anyway and never lost a fair fencing match. I've defeat Montalban on a first try many times, most impressive feat that sound impossible, I've defeated 250 rapier Montalban with 50 man and also rapier, i was shocked. I used smallest pinnacle with small crew member to preserve crew morale, and I can win anyone anyway by boarding, except Montalban which i avoid him and shoot him untill he is left with 1 crew. Well he caught me accidentally, thought i was done obviously, i miraculously won.
I've started with dutch and turned every ransacked every city, I've danced with every daughter and defeated every Mendoza. One thing i cannot do is, achieving 3600 crew members with 8 ship of the lines and 3 600 000g to preserve crew morality, even for fun, that seems like hardest thing to do in the game. I've mostly played 1680s which i myself consider hardest to achieve such thing, the forts are heavy and give not much gold, treasure ships as well. I got to 700k gold and that's it, all that's left are land combating even wealthiest cities for 5-10k gold that have usually over 400 man. It would take forever to reach such gold.
1660 seems to be easiest, but In later stages, it's not much different.
1600 said to be hardest, seemed easy for me, only because of good fencing, but very low amount of ports means not much gold.

For those who don't know 1 crew member needs 1k each to forever be non mutinous (3k to be happy)

Anyone has any tips on how to do this 'challenge' without taking 2 months of real time ransacking towns

[SteveAPDS]

I had no idea people still played this game, and I have no idea how to pull off what you want to do other than lower difficulty. But I just wanted to give you respect for never going below swashbuckler. I always pick medicine and work the dancing to get as many items as I can early. I've also conquered and switched all towns to the Dutch, and then switched them to the Spanish after. I will try my hand at what you're asking, and let you know if I can come close.

[dollars202]

Well from what i remember treasure maps might be a way to do it. I got like 100k gold several times from treasure maps, but that was probably on lower difficulty.

[SteveAPDS]

Yes, but there are only 9 pirate treasure maps. Even with the 4 lost city maps they don't come close to what is being proposed. Also, moral is lost the longer you don't divide the plunder. I think that is the hardest factor to deal with.