OldGamesRBest: I bought Patrician 3 a couple of weeks ago and have fun playing it, but still have not become Mayor of a hometown yet. I've been on the nomination list a few times now but never get elected. Can someone offer advice on this?
Also, captains really are a rarity. Is there anything I can do to find more of them?
Any pointers or tips on how to get more out of this otherwise good game would be appreciated.
Captains: The AI only puts captains on cogs (and hulks later), while its random where captains appear, that makes it more probable to find them in river towns, the AI can't snatch them there. In the long run this is a good use for tiny useless snaikkas, dot a few around the map so you can reach everywhere quickly and check every few days for captains and spices.
Mayor: "Just" having the biggest bussiness around will pretty much guarantee election. Make them work for you and charge them rent ahm provide jobs and housing I mean. Thats a big one. The other big one is selling what the town needs. Selling is a massive reputation boost. Buying is mostly neutral. If you're on second place in the list, church decoration donations, parties, and bribes become an option for that little extra push, but it would be pretty hard and expensive to work your way up from last place like that. Quite expensive too and these last only a short time so do them so they take effect only days before election. Getting caught with the jolly roger is obviously not a good idea, maybe catching pirates helps, it is great for your global rep but not sure if it affects local too.
For the pointers, ask more specifically. Some random stuff:
Play slower. I use the toggle between "pause" and faster a lot, what faster is goes down over the course of a game when there are more things to do.
Lübeck has been carefully crafted to be the most beginner friendly town around, it has some of almost everything, that makes it quite forgiving about mistakes.
Stick with one trading difficulty (in the advanced difficulty settings) for all your games for now, doesn't matter which but you want to get a solid feel for prices and that won't happen if you switch around too much. The effect of the other settings isnt so "numerically obvious" (Pirates on high? I know I can beat them, I don't have to prove that every game week)
All goods are "real", once they exist they move around the map, getting delivered by ships, used by production, stolen by pirates... the game doesn't guesstimate how much a town has from its size, every piece arrived or got produced there.
Learn to fight manually. Its good to have that option, autofight AI is really stupid.
Useless ships get thrown into one big convoy in your home town, no sailors, no cost, to store all that grain you overproduced for winter. There are never too many ships.
Use autoroutes for repetitive things.
Don`t worry too much about the AI traders, you can't beat them, in their ineffective and slow way they keep the hansa running, or limping, no matter what the player does. One day you'll outgrow them so much they won't matter.
