Bragging rights: Youngest age to be governor (105 fame)?

[Gandalf]

With no outright cheating, but you can use as many exploits as you know of (eg repeatedly sacking a city to gain Duke of all 4 nations)

My estimate is that a very accomplished player could do this by age 26.
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Gandalf the White
Wizard-Pirate of the Western Seas
Large Frigate: The Glamdring II

[headrock]

Well it takes approximately 264 days to get all the duke ranks in this method, not including preparation work.

Easy formula:
7 days each time you raid (since you go into town) + add ~1 day leaving the town, doing a U-turn, and heading back in * 33 times you need to do this to get 8 ranks each (32 if you do a good capture right off, say on a weak city) puts you at 264 days more or less.

However, you often end up with everybody being rather upset (This may be a good method to piss off more than one nation, but I have no way of really checking it out).

And you have to spend your first year hoarding battleships and crew for the assault (not ALWAYS, depends alot on luck and what ship, era, and location you started in).

At the end of the repeated assaults, you have (at the very least) 32 points, with somewhere close to 20 wealth due to land granted by the governors of the unfortunate colony you are obliterating. You could continue plundering the same city several more times to get a higher wealth rating - I've had govs grant me over 2000 acres in one visit just cause I took the city from their enemies. So it would be extra fun to plan your order of takeovers carefully.

So let's say two years so far. Spend the next couple of months hunting down a war canoe (Could take a few days) and from thereon it takes roughly (ROUGHLY) two years to complete all treasure quests, pirates, and lost family quests. Actually, since we're talking about 106 points, you could skip both the lost cities quest altogether, and your choice of Montalban's Hideout Assault or your Grandfather. In either way, that makes it age 22, but the money from the hideout can be worth your while. Grandpa ain't worth s***


Your challenge is VERRRRRRY interesting, I think I will spend some eager hours on that particular one tomorrow.

YARRRR!

The real question is - what difficulty are we talking?
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Blondebeard: "Madre de Dios! Es el Pollo Diablo!!"
<Spanish Guitar Riff>
Guybrush: "Si! He dejado en libertad los prisioneros, y ahora vengo por TE!"

[Dirk Struan]

[quote="Gandalf"]With no outright cheating, but you can use as many exploits as you know of (eg repeatedly sacking a city to gain Duke of all 4 nations)

My estimate is that a very accomplished player could do this by age 26.[/quote]

What method would this be? Someone want to fill me in?
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"Even the strongest man must sleep and even the smallest child can carry a knife" -Hobbes

[headrock]

Well that didn't take long (The whole point was not to, wasn't it?)

I'll post the thumbs first, I'll add the story tonight.

Click thumbnail to Enlarge











_________________
Blondebeard: "Madre de Dios! Es el Pollo Diablo!!"
<Spanish Guitar Riff>
Guybrush: "Si! He dejado en libertad los prisioneros, y ahora vengo por TE!"

[Falconer]

32, but that will be the same every game I play.. won't change for another.... 4 months.

[Rock]

Jeez Falconer, with that line of thinking I guess I can't start off any game better than 43 in fair health! The best I can hope for is to make Governer at 51 near death! I guess the story line would have to change for me too. "After taking the Revenge by force, you sail to the nearest tavern where you drink and wench for 25 years and then finally decide it's time to start an adventure!
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"You can't fight in here!! This is the war room!" - Dr. Strangelove

[Falconer]

Haha, I suddenly feel less old.

Damn, this forum *is* filled with oldies isn't it? I mean, anyone below 20 here? Step forward please!

[Howie]

[headrock]

Ok, I promised the story so here it is.
But first all all, thanks for the challenge, Gandalf! It was very interesting, and I have the feeling I'll try that challenge again to see if I can do any better.


It starts in 1640, a period I have great fondness for. Most cities in the caribbean, both spanish and otherwise, are either
HEAVILY defended (I saw 1240 soldiers in Panama when I dropped by for a visit!!!) or weak as reeds to be harvested.
Took the English as my nationality so I could start at St. Kitts.
The game difficulty was set at Rogue, and I took Navigation as my skill, to speed things up.


Game starts, I sail up and down the Lesser Antilles to catch three sloops, a pinnace, and a brig (That's what I found, no particular choice on my behalf ) Filled them all with crew until I had about 220, enough to take out a small city without losing too many men.

Hurried down to Trinidad, where to my surprise and terror I found it bristling with about 500 enemy men!! Quickly turned my tail and ran, cursing my bad luck, when suddenly I noticed an Indian village right on the peninsula next to Trinidad. Convinced them to go after Margarita (whose troop size I did not know). I took one canoe (DUH, I'm going to need it!!) and let the others do their dirty work. They cut the Margaritan forces by one third, leaving but a hundred troops to guard the city. Naturally, I attacked.

I continued to conquer Margarita for the several following months, occassionally sailing off to catch any specialists that were reported to be sailing in the area. I took the city enough times to earn all promotions, and luckily also got some Items - this is mostly luck, since Margarita seemed to somewhat replenish its gold stock several times! It should've had 0 or 100 gold each time I sacked it, but sometimes it would again have several thousand, which kept my balance in a good place.

After this year of blood and violence, I was ready to sail again. Sold the ships (all except the canoe), and by now I had both the RANK quests and the WEALTH quests at full points (Governors give you LOOOOOTS of land when you do the conquer-over-and-over tactic). But it also gets the other nations pretty upset at you, so the first thing I should've was done to get to a Jesuit Mission and convince them to send an Amnsety ship. Sadly I hadn't thought of this until I was sailing near Puerto Bello, so I hadn't visited any of the spanish cities along the main (they kept firing at me).
This coupled with my other biggest mistake so far - I should've spent a month or so upgrading my canoe with Cotton Sails and Copper Plating, and that probably ate a whole lot of time later, because I went into every pirate haven to see if they had the upgrades I needed. None of the 4 nations would let me sail into their cities...

By this time I already had two lost city pieces, and knew where the city was. I sacked it, taking out Blackbeard, Morgan, and L'Mayonnaise along the way. The crew was very happy (I kept the same crew until the end of the game, BTW )

I started sailing around mexico to find all the named-pirates that were sailing there, then sailed up to St. Augustine and back down towards Hispaniola. My last named-pirate battle was against Bart Roberts, near Tortuga.

From that point on I went sailing after Raymondo and Montalban. The only Beautiful Daughters I could find were in Margarita and Martinique, which were both french. Martinique, BTW (And all other cities in that area) wouldn't let me in until MUCH later in the game.

As you can see from the screenies posted earlier, I didn't follow my original plan exactly. The first lost city was mine, and I had forgotten that each Montalban is worth 2 points, so I was about 12 points ahead. This meant I didn't have to rescue all family members. However, as things worked out, I rescued two of them, and instead gave up on two Pirate Treasures (I had only started treasure-hunting VERY late in my game).

Eventually I got Miss Margarita kidnapped, this was very close to the end of my game. When I got her back to Margarita, I saw the that city was conquered by the Dutch! This scared the crap out of me, since I've been reading about how that can make the whole romance quest go sour (You'd have to start all over again...). But luckily, it didn't. I married the girl, and got another lost inca map from her (Hence 107 points! )


I had done some rather silly sailing, and hadn't paid enough attention to what I was doing, but I'm glad that I could finish the challenge one year ahead of your original estimate. I was pissed I couldn't make it by age 22, but now I understand that could be MUCH more difficult, even if I tried again.

P.S. if I'd played Journeyman or even Apprentice, it would take MUUUUUUCH less time.
_________________
Blondebeard: "Madre de Dios! Es el Pollo Diablo!!"
<Spanish Guitar Riff>
Guybrush: "Si! He dejado en libertad los prisioneros, y ahora vengo por TE!"

[headrock]

[Gandalf]

I did the 105 points by age 24. I continued with the same pirate and got all 126 fame points by 28. I started in the 1680s.

Yet despite "been there, done that" I still have not seen a Ship of the Line. At the end of my 126 points I pissed off the British repeatedly, the biggest I've managed to hijack is a large frigate they sent my way. Who do I have to piss off to get an SoL anyway?
_________________
Gandalf the White
Wizard-Pirate of the Western Seas
Large Frigate: The Glamdring II

[Rock]

Don't feel bad Gandalf... I haven't seen one either.
_________________
"You can't fight in here!! This is the war room!" - Dr. Strangelove

[Howie]

[headrock]

I just finished 105 fame points at age 22, but this was done on Apprentice (Just to see what would happen). You wouldn't believe how much time it saves to be able to get those pirate maps in one piece instead of four (It's more than X4 ).
I'm pretty happy with that game, it was done pretty much as quickly as possible, with no major mistakes. Four years' career to become a governor ain't bad

If anyone wants I'll post more screenies.
_________________
Blondebeard: "Madre de Dios! Es el Pollo Diablo!!"
<Spanish Guitar Riff>
Guybrush: "Si! He dejado en libertad los prisioneros, y ahora vengo por TE!"

[headrock]

Gandalf - the most often I've seen a SOL is once per game-year, and I did lots of work in that particular career to make that happen, so no worries, you'll see one eventually. Just keep a non-spanish unhappy (40k bounty seems to do the trick) and hang around a place with many of their towns. This would probably be enough to give you ONE, if you spend enough time at it. Don't despair.
_________________
Blondebeard: "Madre de Dios! Es el Pollo Diablo!!"
<Spanish Guitar Riff>
Guybrush: "Si! He dejado en libertad los prisioneros, y ahora vengo por TE!"