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Also, what is the purpose of excommunicate a city? :evil:

[Sebatianos]

Originally posted by Roddent@Dec 4 2004, 03:29 AM
Also, what is the purpose of excommunicate a city? :evil:

If you excommunicate a city all good christian traders will respect that and aviod it, so you have less competition (also if the city is attacked it's less likely to get help - so it's up to you to save them).
You can also punish a city that way - they'll have less influence on the politics and religion...
Like I said - this game is trying to be acurate - to follow the real events in history!

Wow, a (more or less) living board for this great game! I've always loved it. Ever since I played one-ship trading games that I loved I always thought: 'why can't you have more ships, fleets that'd operate on their own, maybe even have battle fleets and armies of your own'. So, you can imagine how high I jumped when I found this.

Do you guys believe in bad luck? Here is my story in the current game of MP I'm playing.

Starting off, I discover that Venice has its own Rum. Shoot, that kills such a profitable early Venice-Rum route that I could get going with that lone donkey I get. But, fine, I'm not going to restart the game just because I got a little unlucky. Sending the donkey to do the trading runs one way, while the tri explores.

Launched the first trade route between Marseille and Tunis, soon saving up enough to add the second large cog there. Just when I thought I was begining to do well. PIRATES! 4 of them against my two cogs and two heavy guards. ALL FOUR HIT, sinking the whole fleet with 8 rum and some gold onboard. Aaagh! :ranting:

Recovering... Slowly... Discovered England, and launched those lovely routes with French cities, building them up gradually.

Doge election next turn. OK, fine, managed to free up 1000 or so from my operations, bought myself a senator, rubbing hands and waiting to be appointed into some sweet little position. Next turn, the senator DIES OF NATURAL CAUSES! :eeeeeh:

OK, I can wait. So I do, using the next couple of years to build up the business in Northern Europe. Next doge election, I bought another senator. Guess what happened next turn? Yup. Natural causes...

Finally made my way across the Sahara into those juicy cities that are supposed to have tons of ivory, gems and gold. IT DOESN'T! Well, it has gems in tiny amounts, and some ivory, but there is no market for ivory in Africa and gem markets are tiny, even though profits are big.

Most unlucky game I've had in a long time. But also the most exciting.

******

Back on topic of Q and A, does anyone know good ways to make profit on those long haul routes, say between China and Europe or India and Europe. Profit margins are huge, I agree, but the distance is so absurdly long that I just don't see it ever paying off unless you lay roads and then do the excommunicate trick.

Any ideas for good possible (because I know a lot of the goods are random) routes on the real world map?

Hah,

My luck wasn't quite that bad (as in lots of minor incidents), although it did have moments when I got really annoyed with the game. The worse that happened was one of the time I was making a bid for Pope. I had planned this for a few turns. Buying Cardinals when I could, until I had an outright majority. I assinated the pope successfully the the next turn 12, yes 12 Cardinals died of natural causes.

A bit annoying, not only for the lose of the papacy but also all that lovely income.

The only other serious catastrophe I had was more due to human error than anything else. I didn't quite understand how the plague mechanism worked and as a result my whole North sea trade network collapsed.

On Far East trading, basically you need lots of ships, so you need a lot of capital. I haven't quite refined it yet though.

Central Africa trading is a bit easier. (imo anyway.)

I had a huge link from Timbuktu - Katsina - Cairo - Venice - Wherever close when I had surplus (rare admittedly, usually happened after a pirate attack or something).

Basically, Timbuktu produce Gems, Katsina produced Ivory. Gems were transported from Timbuktu to Katina by two galley (one large, one small). From Katsina I had three camels traveling to Cairo to pick up the gems and padding extra space out with Ivory. From Cairo I had two Cogs taking them to Venice. The other way it was Venician Glass and food stuffs, until I realised I could get silver from Buda\Pest.

I found after that it got too complicated. But auto-buying is a beauty. I only figured out how the automated trade routes worked fairly late.

The only things I still I haven't worked out are. How to open markets in cities that are closed. And what the use for mercenaries is.

TWELVE! Wow! The most I ever had was one.

I use the north central African trade all the time - it's such a huge money maker! I never bother with Timbuktu, though. In all my games it produced all the same things that Katsina did, but was farther and only had pitiful amounts of them.

Like I said, though, a lot of this goods stuff is random. In one game I had Katsina produce gems, ivory, gold AND silver! While none of the north african ports had any. THAT was a money-machine!

Ships to the far east?! How long does it take? I'm thinking you do this after you get all the routes set up in Europe, eh? It's definitely more efficient to move stuff between London and Paris at 20 or 30 profit per lot than to haul it all the way from China even if it means 300 profit per lot.

You haven't used mercenaries?! Man, are you going to start playing this game a lot more now! This is one of the most fun things in it, IMO.

OK, so you hire an army. Then it becomes just like a trade group - you can move it around, etc. When an army gets into a port, it can board ships (somehow it gets its own ships, so you don't even need to keep yours to move it). Now, when you move it into a square with another unit or city, you can right-click and it'll bring up a menu for your army or city. There, you can click "Attack!" for instant bloodshed. k: You can attack other armies like this, or cities' garrisons or other players' trade units. When you are attacking 'friendlies' i.e. fellow Venetian merchants or "green" cities, you are comitting a crime, and if you are caught you can lose a ton of popularity as well as have to pay fines, which could be pretty bad.

BUT, the farther you are from Venice, the easier it is to get away with the crime. So, if you want to attack over Rome or people trading there, you can pretty much forget about it. But if someone is running a trade route in Novgorod, or even better, in China or India, you have a pretty good chance of killing or capturing them while avoiding the penalties. Mind you, you still have to win against the guards, just like the pirates or brigands.

How to get access to a closed city? Well, you can take it over. Kill the garrison and not only do you get access, but the city becomes yours complete with a puppet government. It shows as yellow instead of red or green then. Of course, that's assuming you pick "don't give it to Venice" when the question pops up. But why would you? A boost in popularity versus YOUR OWN PUPPET CITY?! Best thing about a city you own is that you can make it deny entry for other merchants, but allow you in. Can you say "monopoly"?

You can also bribe your way into a hostile city if you want. Right click and go for the "bribe" button, if I recall right. But why'd you want to when you can take it over?

How do I install this game? It's giving me a hard time when I simply click on the instal prompt. Would anyone walk me through how to do it another more effective way? Thanks.

Is it posible to setup automatic trade route?
and if it is HOW??

After downloading prince and tried to play by clicking on prince.exe, that's it. No game, back to windows. Is there something wrong with the files downloaded cause this is honestly fairly an old game and it means it requires conventional memory instead of Xp memory. How can this be overcome? Thanks

[Sebatianos]

You should download a program called DOSBox (look under utilities on the main site).
The game was made for MS-DOS and not Windows so there are some compatibility issues (that's why we have the compatibility icons included with every game). DOSBox emulates the MS-DOS within Windows, so you'll be able to play the game (but should read the DOSBox readme file carefully to learn how to use it).

I recently downloaded this game and I LOVE IT! k: k:

I do not have dosbox. I have XP, and it the game works fine. Sound, graphics, everything. Just wanting to inform you cause I heard some of you with xp were having trouble. Sorry guys, I feel for you.
:bleh: :whistle:

Back the whole Q+A thing:

on the game start screen, when you choose you and your opponents difficulty level, what does that mean? If your rival has a level of CHALLENGE! does that mean they are extremely difficult to beat? or its difficult for them?

Also, does anybody know a quick sea route to asia? It takes forever by boat. I thought I could go through the suez canal when I first started it. But it wasnt built yet. By the way, I am a HUGE fan of the more recent civilization games. So i think of this game in a purely warlike sense, instead of the monetary sense you guys have. so its really difficult for me to get rich.

Could anybody show me the ropes on how to get rich, fast? like I said, it takes forever for me to get some money while my rivals are getting rich, and it gets frustrating. I really like this game, though.
:Brain: :Brain: :Brain: :Brain: :Brain: :Brain: