Too many regions

[NiceGuy]

I have all dlc and started a new game. I just got engineers. Right now the game whant me to play 5 regions at the same time, old world, new world, Cap Travelny, land of lions and the Arctic.
While the ai can do this, I can not. I play only the old and the new world right now.
I did not yet finish the expeditions for Arctic and land of lions but I just unlocked Cap Travelny.
Obviously the ai also occupies the other regions as soon as I get the expedition even if I do not finish it.
How do you people manage this...😱🫣

[Chaosium]

I never play with the AI competitors, they don't bring anything interesting nor missable and hog islands unnecessarily since they cheat resources, so there's no point having them around to stress you out

[ismaiden666]

You are not required to play through all the regions that the game offers you to discover, and you do not need to play through all of them at the same time. I don't remember which regions are mandatory to finish the main campaign. I set my game to have low difficulty NPCs and they always ask me for permission to conquer new islands and I don't allow it until I have conquered some main ones that I know will be useful throughout the game. When the game offers me an expedition to conquer a new region, I just put the expedition on hold or discover the region as soon as possible but do not do the tasks there while there is work in the main regions. Note that this is my way of playing on low difficulty. When you have NPCs on high difficulty who conquer without your permission, you obviously need to speed up your gameplay to conquer the best islands or attack them later to get them back.

[Primigenia]

The easy AI characters will always wait for you in the different regions, it means that until you discover the new maps they will never get there

[Crai-Crai]

To succeed in all 5 maps with 2-star and 3-star AI enabled, you need to be one of these players who can bang out 100 actions per minute on their keyboard shortcuts. I'm not one of those. I put the game on the slowest setting, stick to a couple easy AI, and focus on a couple maps. I used to have all 5 maps enabled for a while and I didn't do too badly, but it wasn't fun, so I turned them off. Too much stress for me. The crazy-fast players might enjoy it, so the developers made it for them, I guess.

[cubby]

I also had this experience when I got all the DLC at once and turned it all on. Here's what I learned in my play through. The game at least gives you the two biggest islands (Manola and Crown Falls) as part of the quests and I think that offsets the ability of the AI to grab more of the islands than the player can. I got kinda screwed in Enbessa and the AI got all the islands except the one you get from the quest. But you can still do what you need with that island to get to Scholars. And, I just recently did the quest for the Arctic and got there without competition at all. I saved up a bunch of influence and was able to immediately settle every island as soon as the region was unlocked.

[NiceGuy]

I play with 3 ki players where only one asks me when she wants to conquer a new island. I like to have at least a bit of a challenge with the ki so I can also use the military part of the game 😎
But I would wish to be able to determine when we all start to conquer a new region. I thought this would be possible by simply not doing the expedition. But I realized when I finally did the new world expedition (after having it available for some time) the tougher ai players already had taken several islands while I just arrived.

[Crai-Crai]

I learned from one of Taka's videos that the AI (at least in single-player) will not start colonizing the Arctic until after you build your first airship in the New World. So I put off building my airships until I was ready to do the arctic expedition and then grabbed all the islands as quickly as I could. But I hate playing the Arctic so I just took the islands so the AI couldn't.

Also, I don't really like Enbesa or scholars much, so I only go there to sell over-priced watches to the king there. And I can do that without a settlement.

[ElPrezCBF]

Originally posted by Crai-Crai:

I learned from one of Taka's videos that the AI (at least in single-player) will not start colonizing the Arctic until after you build your first airship in the New World. So I put off building my airships until I was ready to do the arctic expedition and then grabbed all the islands as quickly as I could.

I don't like playing with AIs because they don't play by the same rules but from what I heard, 2-star AIs or higher can colonize other regions even before you get there. The Arctic is the only exception if you do what you mentioned.

[Extertsökkeldsdönnermïnatör]

Once you get Battle Cruisers, build few and equip them with 3x Attack Range buffers (I go with 2 vice-admirals from pirates + epic scope) and a pirate flags. Then move them close to islands you want for yourself and enable pirate mode. You can take over islands this way even if you are not at war. You lose about -30 favor from AI, but you can easily remove them as a threat to either forcing them into tiny island where they cannot support an economy and they are stuck in rebuilding loops, or just kill them all together. You can also regain favors pretty fast by cease fire agreements (it does not stop you from using pirate mode against them again), and quests.

[Maya-Neko]

I don't really do everything at the same time, but rather look at what should be my next step and then concentrate on that in whatever region i need to do it.

That said, 95 % of the stuff that allows you to progress through the most important stuff (ie the citizens of the old world/cape trelawney) simply happens in the old and new world.

Cape Trelawney is nice, especially for Crown Falls and not having any pirates as well as the AI being less active here, but the trips between Crown Falls and the New World can take longer as well, which can be annoying sometimes.

As for Enbesa, i just do it, when i feel like it. It has some fun mechanics, but once you've unlocked the research institute and scholars, there's not that much to do anymore, unless your scholars want something from over there.

And the passage is relatively redundant, as the only real reason to build it is to get access to gas for some power plants that don't need railroad connections, but besides the backside of crown falls there's not really that much of a need for that if you ask me, especially if you've already oil power plants running everywhere anywere.

[scaramunja]

I agree with you. 5 regions is too many.

My current play through im playing withe the expanded old world mod which gives you and all the AI crown falls on the base old world )1 in each corner). Im not doing any expeditions until im ready.

I can get to investors and Ill progress as far as I can before picking up another region. (I ahve docklands and all dlcs)

I wont build airships until im ready for arctic.

The main island in Enbesa, Crown Falls in Trelawney and Manola are all preserved for me and that will be enough. You roll in so much money once you hit sckscrapers that if I need another island I can either buy it out, pirate mode it or just go to war... all of which Im looking forward to.

I am greatly enjoying this dedicated region progression. Ill see how it goes when I HAVE TO move to another region.

[Frequens]

Originally posted by Chaosium:

I never play with the AI competitors, they don't bring anything interesting nor missable and hog islands unnecessarily since they cheat resources, so there's no point having them around to stress you out

Yeah you have a point. Although, once you have a good grasp of the game and its mechanics there's no harm in setting up a sandbox game with two or three ai opponents of mixed difficulty.

As long as you manage to keep them in check and don't let them occupy too many useful islands you can even profit from their presence, especially if you go for Malching, Hunt, Gasparov, or Silva. Just keep an eye on them and their advance, leave one or two islands per region free for them to settle and their progress will slow down to an acceptable pace. They will pretty much always be at war with one another, sinking each other's ships by the thousands. You won't believe how many gold items I managed to obtain from their flotsam, LOL

Should one of them declare war on you, you can always seize one of their islands in response and thereby gain a handful of additional items. Razing an island always rewards you with a warehouse full of items.

[Whispdragoon62]

There isn't enough regions. I just slap down random buildings everywhere and pray it works.