Sarariman: I'm actually thinking of giving up on the game. I don't get missions from governors or rewards for capturing buccaneers and there hasn't been an infamous pirate for ages and ages. I'm hoping that I can just change a character in some file for each of these. Who'd like me to keep playing?
The game goes in phases.
It's pretty common to have no "quests" to do. There are only so many buccaneers, and they are offered kind of in line with your ability to take them on. If you are decent at combat, it's easy to be ahead of the curve with nothing to do.
The economic model leaves lots to be desired. It would be nice if you could make a living building plantations, but you can't. Until you have maxed out your fleets, there is rarely any point to building anything, and then you are only doing so to prevent boredom from setting in. You just have to settle for diddly-squat, hoping to make enough on the spread to pay your expenses. In my experience, you generally don't. Your trade routes have to subsidize your production.
This is the phase of the game where you squeeze every penny, setting up automated trade routes based on the specifics of which towns have how many of each production facility. And you have to constantly adjust the routes, because, so far as I can tell, running out of money has no effect at all on the AI, and heaven help you if you've built something in a town where the AI undercuts base expenses.Which will eventually happen. So start a new game. Defeat a fleet of barques with a pinnace or two.
From time to time, I can grow population fast enough to keep production profitable, but I have no idea what i did.
