Crew Immortality

[Salty Dog]

A number of years ago, someone computed the amount of gold per crew member it takes to keep them from staging a mutiny. This is what we call "Immortality" because even if you run out of food and stop gathering plunder, they will not mutiny, leave and take gold with them.

Someone discovered the impact the"
Three String Fiddle
Concertina
Quartermaster, and
Cook

had on crew morale. I recall the Cook had the greatest impact on morale and I recall that if you had everything listed above the magic number went all the way down to about 1007 gold per crew member. Without any of the above items it was perhaps 1100 per crew member but I could be wrong about that number.

I am bringing this up because we have not addressed this subject in quite a few years.

Does anyone know where this thread is on this Forum, or recall the exact number/cause/effects?

[Roland]

Sashanan laid out the computations for crew happiness in section 7.9 of the 2008 edition of his strategy guide. But he summarized the conclusion thus: The rule of thumb of 1000 gold per crew member to never see a mutiny is pretty accurate and all you really need to know.

You can find links to Sashanan's work here:
http://www.hookedonpirates.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7907

[corsair91]

FAQ/Strategy Guide by Sashanan
Version: 1.5 | Updated: 05/12/08
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/915017-sid-meiers-pirates/faqs/34143


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
[7.9] CREW HAPPINESS CALCULATION
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Up until v1.5 of this guide, the exact calculation for the happiness rating of
your crew was a mystery to me. Along with other veterans of the game we
discovered that eventually, there is a cutoff point where no matter how long
you sail, your crew will never fall to mutiny – we also found it to be roughly
1000 gold per crew member. But we never got at the precise formula, as it
contains a lot of different factors.

The mystery has been solved now by Wes Atkinson who generously provided the
exact formula, gleaned from studying game data. This is a pretty technical
section, so feel free to skip this if you’re not interested in the inner
workings. The rule of thumb of 1000 gold per crew member to never see a mutiny
is pretty accurate and all you really need to know.

The following formula calculates the minimum amount of gold required for a crew
to have a certain morale level:

G = R * (20 + C – 19*K) * M – 500

G = total amount of gold on your ships
C = crew size
K = 0 if you don’t have the Cook specialist, 1 if you do
M = morale rating; 1 = Unhappy, 2 = Content, 3 = Happy, 4 = Very Happy

It bears restating, as I’ve claimed the opposite in earlier versions of the
guide, that G is the amount of gold in your hold as shown in the bottom left
corner of the screen when you’re on the world map. It does NOT matter how much
of this gold will go to the crew when you divide up the plunder, and what %
goes to you (as affected by the difficulty level). I thought the crew cared.
They do not.

R is a calculation of its own:

R = (int((T-D) / 2) ^ 2 ) – 4*I)

T = total months of expedition
D = difficulty level: 4 = Apprentice, 3 = Journeyman, 2 = Adventurer,
1 = Rogue, 0 = Swashbuckler
I = 2 if you have the Concertina, 1 if you have the 3-Stringed Fiddle only, 0
if you have neither

Furthermore, R is capped at 999.

What does this all mean? Depending on all the factors in the calculation –
whether or not you have a Cook, 3-Stringed Fiddle and/or Concertina, difficulty
level, and how long you’ve been sailing, it is possible to calculate how much
gold it takes to reach a specific morale level. For example, let’s assume an
Adventurer level game, crew of 100, with the Cook and both items available, and
we’ve been sailing for 24 months. First we calculate R:

R = (int((24 – 2) / 2) ^ 2) – 4*2
= (11^2) – 4*2
= 121 – 8
= 113

Now to plug that and the values for C (100) and K (1, for the Cook) in the main
calculation:

G = 113 * (20 + 100 – 19) * M – 500
= 113 * 101 * M – 500
= 11413M – 500

Now if we plug in the values for each morale rank, we can determine the exact
amounts of gold needed for certain morale levels.

The crew will be very happy if G is at least:

G = 11413 * 4 – 500 = 45152

They would be at unhappy if G is at least:

G = 11413 * 4 – 500 = 10913

If after two years, this crew would have less than 10913 in their holds, they’d
be mutinous.

So what’s this about a rule of thumb that 1000 gold per crew member is enough
to keep them happy forever? This is where R being capped at 999 comes in. The
longer you sail, the higher T becomes and thus the higher the value for R, but
at 999, it no longer matters how many months you sail, so it’s essentially a
worst case scenario. Let’s say we haven’t sailed for 24 months but for 10 years
(120 months) in the previous example:

R = (int((120 – 2) / 2) ^ 2 – 4*2
= (59^2) – 4*2
= 3481 – 8
= 3473

R now gets reduced to its cap of 999. Moving on to G:

G = 999 * 101 * M – 500
= 100899M – 500

So now, for our crew to be at least Unhappy (M = 1) so they will not mutiny,
we’re looking at:

G = 100899 – 500 = 100399

Dividing this by 100 to get to the gold per crew member, we come to 1004 gold;
very close to the 1000 gold often used as a rule of thumb. Similarly, the
values for being Content and Happy come to roughly 2000 and 3000. The values
get skewed somewhat for very small crews, but they work well enough in all
other cases.

Perhaps more interestingly, what does this tell us about what the Cook, the
special items, and the difficulty level do, exactly?

1. The (20 + C-19*K) calculation comes to [crew size + 1] when you have a cook.
Combined with the maximum of 999 R, this result in the “almost but not quite”
1000 gold per crew member needed for each morale level, further corrected by
the 500 that’s subtracted at the end. Without a cook, it is as if we have 19
more crew members than we do. At this point 100000 gold (roughly) would be
needed for 81 crew members already. Put differently, with a crew of 100, the
cook is letting us get away with about 20% more crew or 20% less gold,
depending on how you want to look at it. However, since 19 is a fixed number,
this percentage only holds true for crews of 100 – the cook’s impact is
absolute. On larger crews, the relative benefit is lower and on smaller crews
it is larger.

2. The 3-Stringed Fiddle and the Concertina do exactly the same thing (with the
Concertina being cumulative and thus doubling the effect). They lower the value
of R by a flat 4 or 8. Since R is an exponential value, this means that their
relative benefit drops rapidly the longer an expedition lasts, at some point
disappearing entirely when they fail to reduce R below 999.

3. From the formula for R it is possible to derive the moment at which it
exceeds 999, whether or not you have the special items; this is the number of
months at which your crew’s demands for gold stop increasing. The moment, in
other words, where the “1000 gold per crew member” estimate comes into play.
Due to the position of D in the calculation for R, this varies per difficulty
level, but only slightly. On Apprentice, the R cap is hit at 68 months, and at
each higher difficulty level it happens one month earlier, for 64 months on
Swashbuckler. Therefore you have about five and a half years since the last
time you divided the plunder before you really need 1000 gold per crew member,
and after that, you can sail for as long as you like without ever seeing a
mutiny.

4. Perhaps most surprisingly, nowhere in the calculation do we find the
Quartermaster. Maybe he does something else – perhaps has an impact on what
actually happens when your crew has fallen to Mutinous status – but he does not
factor into your crew’s morale, and is not equivalent to the Cook as I always
thought.

[Pirate]

I added some women on the deck that ought to be enough to satisfy them if not then I’m certainly not going anywhere 😁

[Salty Dog]

Thank you! This is as I recalled, the Cook is by far the most important improvement to morale and the biggest impact on immortality besides actual gold results.

[bryce777]

To actually recruit them though, you need about 2000 gold per man once you have gone past the honeymoon phase of the expedition. That's part of why I like to divide just before going after monty. If you have a big ship like frigate with triple hammocks and some decent fame then you can immediately get a 200-300 crew and then pick up more men from pirate dens as you go and get 400, 500 or even more by the time you reach him even if it is very early in the game. That way you can beat him 3-5 years in while you are still young and strong, even with just 1-2 map pieces. Then you can take your time on the other bits like finding the lost treasures.