GrapeShot

Port battles have long been a joke. Adding more rules to the already rickety rules contraption trying to prop them up won't help. Ditch the damn things, they're just strangling the game with their silly mechanics

Actually -- ignore this. I think it did appear after all.

I went to the missions tab. After I turned them in, I got a dialog window that popped and said I had earned the gold and experience, but the gold was not in my account.

I just did as delivery order to bring 285 gold coins to Mortimer Town. I fufilled iut but then was credited the 460000+ gold I was supposed to recieve. Would appreciate getting it.

Well, their is Paga Pete, his privateer, and his cabin boy who is too sore to sit down that keep us somewhat, sorta, kinda occupied.

Greast. Then put it in the northern Antilles and see how well it is received.

Further, we are taking a strategic portion of the map and removing it from normal game play. As a thought experiment, move this play pen from the Bahamas to the upper Antilles and see how fast some folks change their minds on the wisdom of this idea.And why even do this? All so sealclubbers sail pickles instead of larger ships?

It isn't trade routes that bother us, it is routes for expansion. Put this into place and the US is limited to only one direction, down the east coast of Florida. Meanwhile the entire east coast is exposed to fast raiders coming out of the Bahamas -- which we won't be able to do a damn thing about in terms of securing the area. Every pther nation can expand in multiple directions from their base. Meanwhile the US -- not surprisingly -- gets totally boned by this.

Or even stick them on the Texas Gulf coast -- that's carebear territory anyway. Just don't hem the US into only one path out. Leave us have options to expand like every other nation.

I'll have 2 ports down there by the end of the day.

Anolytic, That's what I do now. I was responding to Wind's suggestion that freetowns become trader only.

I want to sail the entire map, not just a slice of it.

Freetowns are absolutely needed by privateers. Take them away and you make everybody hug their home waters. People hopping in and out of a port os the problem, not patrols looking to do commerce raiding, but that is a separate issue. I like the free town north of CT. I alwats thought that was needed.

Test it in the Pacific then. Leave the entire Carib open to conflicr.