Captain Tartoof;

 

As our crew ‘Strategist’ I’ve taken it upon myself to look at the flag strategy as well.  We want to be the best on Hunter and it won’t happen overnight.  It won’t happen at all if we don’t start doing things to achieve our goal.  Below is a foot print for my proposed strategy.  I won’t be addressing personnel issues in this.  I’ll leave that up to you.  You might want to keep our strategy close to your chest for a while or at least the details even from the other royalty until you have worked out who among them you trust implicitly with this information.  When (if) you pass it on to others make sure that they don’t pass it on their friends.  Remember, if they decide to leave the flag they would take this info with them.

 

Personally, I don’t have ambitions for the Top Dog position but I really enjoy being second in command and having the ear of the King. For my work here and all of my future work with you and the flag I request an appointment to royalty and the governorship of the second island we control (medium or large).  I’ll leave the first to you.

 

Our Flag Strategy

 

Besides trying to get more crews into our flag our biggest goal for expansion and notoriety in Hunter Ocean should be for control of some Islands.  This may seem far fetched or way too long away from now but it is not.  You have to start planning early.

 

Some information about Islands on Hunter to keep in mind in our discussions:

 

There are three sizes of Islands –

 

            Large – These are the best to have.  Can have as many infrastructure buildings and trade buildings as possible.  These will spawn greenies once inhabited and built up enough.  Because they are the best the will be the most coveted by the biggest flags.

 

            Medium – This size island can have as many infrastructure buildings and up to five trade buildings.  These will also spawn greenies.

 

            Outpost – These can only have a fort and one trade building.

 

Each island has up to two natural resources. 

 

There are 43 Islands on Hunter of which seven are inhabited.

 

If we were to start considering a take over of an island I would not suggest one that is already inhabited.  These are held by large flags and will be heavily defended in a blockade.  We need to blockade one that is out of the way but not too far out of the way.

 

If it is just ‘one island over’ then that will probably bring out the bigger flags to take it over, or even many of the smaller/medium ones.  If we go too far away we will run out of supplies way before we could establish an island.

 

I would look at something that is about two islands away.  This way a heavily stocked ship could make it there and back with out too much difficulty, yet it is far enough away that it would be an effort for others.  I thought of Toba Island but I think that will draw the bigger flags our way.

 

Here is the key to the islands on the map:

 

 

Here is our current archipelago (Orion);

 

 

I looked at the Pleiades Arch but it is already starting to be inhabited and I was not thrilled with the islands in the Horse Head Arch. If we go past Saiph Island into the Eagle Archipelago;

 

 

The Island I think we need to target is Hubble.  It is nine leagues past Saiph Island on the other side of Ix Chel Island.  The reason I think this would be best is it has two very important resources; Iron and Wood.  Those two and Hemp can keep us in basic supplies and will be able to expand our influence rapidly.  The island next to it (five leagues away), Ilha da Aguia, has Iron and Hemp.  Both of these islands are medium islands.

 

With three very important resources on two adjacent medium size islands I believe we could start our empire.

 

Now that we have a goal we need to figure out how to get there.  It is going to cost us some poe and time.  Lots of poe.

 

To take over an island we need to do a blockade.  We need to review blockade strategy on the boards as well as complete understanding of them with in the yypedia.  I know that you can set the type of ships that are being used can be a useful tactical element.

 

First things first – the cost of the war chest of a medium island is 75,000 poe.  When you consider the personnel issues with running a flag you will have to think about who will help pay for the war chest.  If we ask every crew to chip in then what will they get out of it?  If you will become the first governor in our flag then I would assume that we would put up the lion’s share.  One of the carrots that we would have at our disposal is that, you, as the governor can let people open shops and bazaars.  These can be used to entice captains to join us.  Later on in this I will discuss the economics of our empire.

 

We should go after the first island and then wait about one month and go after the second island.  We don’t want to spend too much time in between the blockades because that could allow others to start setting up in our area.  But we need some time to start having the first island’s economy to take hold.

 

We really need to read up on blockades to determine how we want to run them.  What kind of ships to use, etc.  You should also try to get an idea of what ships do we currently have within the flag now.  It would be nice to get some experience in bnaving a blockade.  Maybe we should look into a non-sinking one, or two, and take our ships into it. 

 

Working out the blockade tactics will have to be done later when either we develop more experience or we have it in others with in the flag.

 

Once we get our first island, and like I mentioned earlier, it should be Hubble, we will need to start building a fort right away.  With iron and wood as our main resources on this island we can set up an iron monger bazaar first followed by a distillery.  With these two we can supply rum and cb to our fleets.

 

With seven types of shops and two medium islands that can only hold five shops each, we should be OK.  Both islands need an IM and Distillery as well as a Tailor.  Then split the apothecary, furnisher, shipyard and weaver bazaars between the two.

 

We don’t want a repeat of the fiasco with the wood problems in the Orion arch that currently have.  There are too many Ship Wright Shoppes on Aimuari and a lot of the wood was destroyed by bad placement of buildings.  So, when designing the layout of your island you need watch how you place buildings.  The two of us can draw up some sketches and go into detail on this later.

 

A fort is the first thing to that can be built on an island.  The thing that is going to make this whole plan a little difficult is that we need supplies to do this.  This means that we need to ship them in from the islands in the Orion arch.  What we would have to do is to let our crew and the crews of the flag know what we need and have them bring them in and buy from them.

 

They can either place a commodity bid for some of these items which is the cheapest but slowest way of getting it or they can do a purchase from the docks.  I don’t know if you ever did that or not but you have to access the hold of your ship and change the tab at the top left from relevant commodities to all or basic.  Then purchase from here.  Some will be lost on the way do to battles lost unless they go in pairs.  What they would do is sail two ships at once and watch from the crows nest.  When another ship looks like it will be attacking the two ships attack each other and then disengage after 10turns.  That is how you move large quantities of goods without losing them to pirates.

 

The commodities needed to start the fort can be available a head of time and placed on non-blockade ships.  This can speed up the process.

 

Once the fort is built then we can start getting iron and wood right from the island and not need to import them as much.  Hemp is a natural resource located on Saiph so we can get that easier until we take over the second island.

 

You can hand out deeds to the bazaars as vanity items to the different captains that supported our efforts.  It doesn’t really give them anything special but it looks nice.  You can also allow them to build shoppes on the island.  We can’t go overboard in allowing this though.

 

After the fort is built you then can start building different infrastructure buildings and bazaars.  I would do the IM next followed by the Distillery.  Then do the Inn and then the Tailor.  When you have those four buildings plus, at the minimum, a shack and a population of 250 then greenies will start appearing on the island. 

 

We actually want this because this is the turning point in the economy of our empire.  Greenies generate money in all sorts of fashions.  They join the navy and start to earn money.  They then join a crew and buy clothes and weapons. This increases the tax base.

 

Remember, once we have a bazaar set up shoppes and stalls will follow and all of those generate taxes which put lots of poe into the governor’s coffers.  This is very good and why we need to follow this strategy of taking over some islands.

 

I want to repeat this in case you are reading this and it is too early or too late.  As a governor of an island you set up the taxes.  A percentage of the weekly rent from all stalls and a percentage of the tax from everything that is sold will be paid to you. 

 

This means that you might make 50 poe from every stall on the island each week.  So if there are 100 stalls that would be 5k and 100 is not that many once we are more established, 2 – 3 months after taking over.  Also you get 10% of the each item’s tax that is sold.  For an Iron Monger you would be making 2 poe for each unit of small cb he sold and 4 poe for the mediums.  An IM which does not have a whole lot of funds or backing, like mine, might make 50 small and 20 medium units of cb a week.  (A unit of cb is 10 so I make around 500 small cb and 200 med cb a week.)  Which would give and additional 180 poe weekly to you in taxes.  Not counting swords.

 

If you think about what it would be like when an island is more established you will come to the same realization as me – it is good to be the governor.  We will have plenty of poe to dress nicely, buy lots of ships, and have great tournaments.  This is why I am requesting to be a governor of the second island.

 

Looking back on everything that I wrote you might not want to pass the details of this proposal to anybody or they will all be fighting for it.

 

Let’s just say we did get this far – what next?

 

There will be three things that we need to concentrate on next.

 

First – we are a contender and the other large flags will start to want a piece of our pie.  We should have grown sufficiently by this point with other crews joining to get in on our success.  We will need to have a large stock pile of poe for war chests as needed plus plenty of ships on our fleets.  This could be another bone that can be tossed to the different captains that support us.  You can buy ships for them from the taxes generated.  If you wish to go this way we should review what you are going to offer together to make sure that something doesn’t come back to bite us or that we are giving away too much too soon.

 

Second – General expansion.  We want to continually expand and we want to watch out what the other flags that have now porting at our islands are trying to do.  We should continue to expand away from Orion into the unexplored waters.  But we don’t want to do this too fast.  We should wait until the population of those two islands has gone up and there are plenty of stalls on them.  We can’t be spread too thin

 

Third – we need to take over Ix Chel Island if it hasn’t been by now.  This island is located between Hubble and Saiph.  When we take over this island and start to put a fort on it then the ferries will come and this will connect us to Orion.  I think.  Currently, only inhabited islands in the same arch are connected by ferries but that might change.  If not, it would still be good to take over this island soon after to give us a buffer between us an Orion as well as a poe font for those traveling and in need of cb and rum.

 

If we aggressively pursue this proposal we could have our first island this spring.