Your grandfather was a marauder and thought all of his life how great it would be to be a trader and a noble. He saw merchants who he was ransacking rise up in power and become powerful merchants. Your grandfather takes you to the side and tells you that you must fulfill his dream... and he would show you how to do it.

Easiest of this chapter. You can access your ship (if unselected for some reason) by clicking the anchor on the right hand side of the screen. This panel gives you all details on what ships you have free (anchored) and which ones are on the move. It is a way to quickly toggle between different ships.

With your ship selected right click on Zara. You will move to Zara and task complete.

To open the trade menu click on the market place. For more universal use middle click button on the town and a menu will open up. Click on market place.

Now slide the bars over on the pottery until you are buying the pottery. The green bars indicate how satisfied this good is in this town. 2 bars is considered to be good. After this the prices steadily increases. So try not to buy beyond two green bars. 1 green bar will still yield profit but will hurt the prosperity of that town.

Now right click on Venice again and open up your trade menu again. Slide the bar all the way to the left until you have almost one green bar. For maximum profit always try to keep the town in the red, to gain prosperity make sure it is always filled up two bars.

While at Venice middle mouse button click on the town and select "Harbor Master." On the right is the harbor, on the left is your SELECTED convoy. Left click on the ship on the right to add it to your convoy.

Kind of speaks for itself. Athens can be found by following the land east (so south then north). It is at the near bottom of what appears to be a peninsula.

If you pay some gold you can unlock the ability to trade in Athens early. Alternatively you can just purchase it all from Durazo which you already have a license for.

Two trips from Durazo however will give you precisely the 100 food you will need.

To advance in a level you need to meet three requirements:

(1) Wealth Level: Total money, property, and ship value
(2) Stowage: Total space including warehouses and ships.
(3) Workers/Sailors: Combined total of people working in your businesses and sailors on your ship.

For this first advancement you will only need to get a wealth level. To find out how much you need middle mouse button click on Venice.

At the menu select Senate. Select Advancement. On the right side of this is how much more you need and on the left side it is your total. It's more than likely you don't need anything.

To begin advancement hit Start and this will initiate a vote among members. At this point in the game everyone is 100% on your side.

However each councilor has a separate personality that is effected by how you trade, what you trade, who you trade with, what you sell/buy, and who you attack. There are Pro-Genoa members, Pro-Venice members, anti-Pirate members, anti-other members members and so on and so forth.

Go to Venice and middle mouse button click on it. Open up the City Council. The last toggle will read Mission and this is where your pick up is.

From here go to Rome and mission is complete.

You are given a free trading license with Rome. However now you must get two more.

Trading licenses can be expensive... if you buy from Genoa. As a rule try your hardest not to purchase any Genoa trading licenses until much later. You have to bribe them insanely high amounts of money to get them. Instead go for the Neutrals and Venitian ports, they are all cheap.

To figure out the alignment of a port left click on it with no ship in it and the City Information tab will pop up. It will indicate any alliance. Your best bet will be to head east and grab Athens and Thessalonika. But you are free to choose whichever ones you wish. You will eventually purchase all of the "Muslim" ports so you don't have to be too picky. Thessalonika will give you access to ridiculous amounts of wood and Athens is needed for a future mission.

Your personal family members are the captains of your convoy.

In order to form a new convoy you will either have to take one ship off of your current convoy, or make a new ship.

To take the ship off of your convoy, move your convoy into the town, select Harbor Master, and left click the ship to Harbor you want to give to your uncle's fleet.

To make a new ship go to the Shipyard (called Arsenal in Venice) and select the second tab. Order a Sloop. This will take time to build.

To create a whole new convoy go to Harbor Master, select the second tab (Ships) and select the ship you want to lead the convoy.

What a boring royal title. But here it is, another wealth based mission. To maximize your profits control your other fleet simultaneously with your current one to various ports. Take this time to unlock all of the Muslim ports. Most of them are hidden however you can still see the graphic of the port on the map to indicate where they are. Each one will be about 3,000 gold to unlock, but will give you access to far more resources and more places to sell goods.

A "killer" trade is to take Pottery from Tunisia and trade it to Constantinople. It's a very long trade, but it makes tones of money. As well you should consider doing some town quests. As well keep your eye out along the coasts between Constantinople and Athens as well as an island West of Rome. Often these have quests or opportunities that are always worth while.

If you followed my advice you would get this while doing Wholesaler. It's only 3000 gold so no biggie. The game will take some time to realize you've already done this however so after your father begins a rant about what the Doge wants with you, you will move on to the next task.

It's our first building mission... yay.

Go to Ragusa and click on City Hall. Here you will purchase your building license. Don't worry about money, the game is giving you money for this.

First up you will need to build a warehouse. There will be more later on about how to manage your warehouses. For now after building a warehouse click on the church icon. You will have all of the resources you need to build it. Normally you will have to sell these resources to the port to get your buildings built.

The spy is located on a boey directly to the east of Venice in a little harbor. Left click on this with your ship to pick him up. Head to Constantinople.

Note, before you go make sure to have two ships and fill up all of your slots with sailors.

To get sailors go to the Trade screen and click to "Equip" tab. Here you will be able to load on sailors and weapons. You will need to get at least combat strength 40. To figure out your combat strength on the right hand information pane click on the small picture of a canon. This will load up your combat information. At the very bottom is an up arrow to maximize your convoy strength. Once maximized make sure you are at at least 40. The higher the better obviously.

Note that if you were to empty your ship of sailors you would be turning sailors into workers for that town (in case you were wondering what this "needs workers" is all about).

Upon going to Constantinople you will engage in a battle.

You will need to do a Manual battle to win this.

Battle is pretty simple, right click the direction you want your ship to go and he will begin turning in that direction. Left click to fire. So basically spam left click at all times while positioning either of your sides to attack.

There is a semi-circle bar that fills up on each side of the ship, these are gauges showing when your cannons are reloaded.

If you want to change ships click on the ship you want to be on the right hand side pane.

If one ship takes too much damage click on the Target (retical) and order that ship to not engage. Your goal here is to destroy them with canon fire but not to engage in any sort of a take over (which will be covered later).

After this victory the spy will be in place and you will get your next task.

The five fragments will show up on the map as yellow dots. They are boeys on the game screen and all become visible. Simply go to the yellow dots and pick up all five boeys.

Now to put together the puzzle. The fragment always shows up in the exact same location however, it is in a small harbor area near Athens.

The last mission gave you a tonne of goods. Don't waste them. Go to Athens with them and sell off all of these goods to the local market. This will bring up your approval rating in the city and allow you to get a building license very quickly.

Go to the City menu and select to get a building license. Lay down a warehouse and select the second tab "Production." Each city can produce five goods. Select the Grapes icon and select to build two of these (these will produce wine).

Now middle mouse click button on Venice and build two Saline buildings (Salt for whatever reason they mis-spelled it). Once these are complete you will move on to the next task.

No matter what this guy says, a single trade route like this will be highly unprofitable. Instead add in more cities.


Make sure to add in more cities to this 5-6 will be good. Try to have as much variety in produced items as possible.

To make your trade route select your smaller convoy and click on the button on the right hand panel that looks like a money bag.

Hit the first button, this will allow you to pick your cities. Each city produces five goods and those icons are showing. Make sure to select ones with a decent amount of different in what they produce (as they will buy and sell everything from each other on a single perfect route).

Once you have these selected select "Edit Cities."

This will bring up a large screen, hit Manual mode.

The left side indicates the order of trade. You can change this by clicking on a city and using the up and down arrow keys to move them around, you can also delete cities here.

On the right side is the trade menu.

All of the default values here are done assuming you have industry in all of these cities, which of course you do not. So you will need to select "Buy" and purchase items in each city that are produced. You will need to adjust every single price and adjust them for a 20% increase. All of the values here are done assuming you are buying at 140% (3 green bars) instead of 120% (2 green bars). So they will never purchase things unless you fix this.

Manually input new values everywhere.

Now shift to Buy, if you haven't figured this part out at the top of the right hand panel you can shift to four modes Sell to Market, Send to Warehouse, Take from Warehouse, and Buy from Market. We won't be using these warehouses for a while so buy and sell from markets.

Make sure to sell every single item in each city that doesn't produce it. This trade route will now automatically move around and use these values. Make sure to activate the route, as well make sure both Venice and Athens are in this trade route.

You will want to have three ships for this. Head to your home port and pick up the new ship they have given you.

Make sure to fill up as many sailors as you can (full is best). As well make sure to get at least one oil (fire) and a few canister rounds. It is also wise to stack up on swords and guns for boarding parties. This will be essential. If you're into naval games you may be more used to the grape shot. The grape shot is the same concept... just was two centuries older.

If you sit in the small space between mainland and Syracuse you will eventually see a ship with a star on it. Don't worry it moves around for eternity. Engage it and select "Manual."

Now for the generic guide on how to take over a ship!


First things first you will want to move towards your enemy (remember we're right clicking to move) and when you are at about half distance from them deploy your oil by pressing W. Now you have a trail of fire behind you. Oil is used to burn sales (the logic doesn't make sense but it's the game mechanic). The more often you can make enemy ships go into the fire, the less they will be able to move. So immediately try and cut them in half and turn in the same direction as the ship you are trying to court.

In a perfect world you will want to try and make a circle around him to maximize the chances he will get through.

Now of course while doing this fire regular ammunition like a mad man.

The goal here is to make it so he moves far slower and that he has less men on his ship than you have on yours. Now of course he starts off with less, but the fewer men the better. This is what canister style munitions are for. They do very little ship damage and tones of sailor damage. To activate these on the right hand panel click on the ball and select canister.

You will also note that there is a hook here. This is your grappling hookers for taking over a ship. When his men are lower and his sailing power is smaller deploy the hooks.

In order to make this work you need to get your ship (while having grappling hooks engaged) within a circle of his ship. Every single enemy ship will instinctively run away from you as you try to do this. However if you have burned all or most of his sales.... he'll have nowhere to go.

If he has no sailing power make sure to hold Shift key (for slow) while inside of his circle because if you don't you will actually overshoot him and not be able to engage.

After the engagement you will lose some men, however in the long run you will have gained a ship and all of its cargo.

Taking over ships is a cheap and cost effective way to expand your trade routes and will become essential late game with rampant pirates.

NOTE: You cannot destroy the main ship, it has to be taken over. If you destroy it, load up a save because it will fail every time you destroy it.

This one is pretty simple, make sure all of your trade routes are profitable. You can find this by going to the Barrel (trade tab) on the right pane with a convoy selected. If it is profitable consider adding more ships to it as you will only be allowed a limited number of convoys. After the fact if the profits go down after adding in another ship, try adding in another city that can supply this convoy with goods to sell.

As well you should make sure to get a second convoy up and running.

Your main fleet can deal with pirates, do small trade and look along the coast line for free gold or easy money opportunities.

It is also a good time to expand into Constantinople, get a warehouse and try and start a few business there. Later on in the campaign there will be an infinite buying frenzy at Constantinople which will make you wealthy. This will allow you to dump bulk goods into the warehouse and make tones of money.

This is a very odd mission. You can buy the wine at Syracuse and never sell it at Venice, as long as you sell 80 wine from somewhere from Venice.

Anyway.

You will need to purchase a trade permit from Syracuse, which of course is very expensive. Every time I personally do this it "breaks the bank." After you finish this you will move on to chapter 2.

Note, although you have a trading license for Syracuse you should not build any businesses here or have any trading routes go through here. it just makes far later in the game that much more difficult.

The Ottoman Empire expands from the East. As you rise in rank suddenly you become very aware that politics is controlling everything. With your influence in the east falling you will need to be stronger than ever in order to prevent the Ottoman Empire from taking over Constantinople.

As a councilman you will have a permanent seat on the council and will be guaranteed at least one vote from the council of ten every single time. On top of this it opens up the option for marriage.

Much like other rounds just continue to expand your businesses and the number of ships on your convoys. You should almost always have the maximum number of convoys. If you do not make sure to build new ships and start them off on new convoys. Yes, one ship convoys are completely fine.

You should try and fill your ships full of sailors and have three ships in your convoy for the next part.

The flag of Genoa is the red cross on a white back drop (The Crusader flag). With a ship full of sailors sit outside of Ragusa waiting for some fleets bearing the mark of Genoa.

They will also have a star over their head. Note this is zero sum. If you do not kill these ships you lose the campaign. So position yourself outside of Ragusa on 1x speed and wait for them to come out. They are both faster than you so if you cannot connect with them you will have to reload and start over.

You can destroy these and that's fine, you can also board and gain more free ships. You may want to carry some oil just in case things get bad however.

If you fleet is strong enough you can simply Automatic engage them and get free wins.

Blacksmiths are for making tools. They require wood, from sawmills, and metal from foundries. So in order to build these business you will need to setup a production chain.

In order for this to work you will need to have 2x metal and 1x wood in your warehouse with the blacksmiths or else they will "need goods."

The easiest way to do this is to properly manage your warehouses to manage your goods.

Ah yes, the promised warehouse guide.


As stated previously ever single warehouse should always be set to "Sell Goods."

You should also think about selecting "Buy Goods at 100%." This means that when you have 4 solid green bars he will begin buying goods. However if the goods are not useful to the port (that is he's buying up finished goods) then you may want to turn this off.

Alternatively a port that has actual 100% goods is also a great place to setup a trading route to trade almost exclusively that good

Speaking of trading routes in order to make this work you can go in your trading route and select to have trading routes trade metal and wood to your blacksmith's port's warehouse. If you find that you have too much wood and metal sitting around you can simply make more blacksmiths and make more money.

The Keep Raw Materials button is your go to guy for businesses. This will automatically keep any good needed for production in the city. You can set the "number of days" supply you want to keep, but the default of 20 seems to be fine. After this the warehouse will automatically sell these goods.

Lock Goods allows you to stop certain specific amounts of goods from being sold. This is holding back goods. If you want to keep some raw materials for one business but not for another (which you haven't opened yet) you may want to use this option and select to hold back an appropriate amount of materials.

So for this particular task you will note that Ragusa can build blacksmiths, so let's build our blacksmiths there. Also we should note that Zara can build both sawmills and foundries, so let's get a building license and build these here.

If you have a trade route that goes through both Ragusa and Zara make sure to have it pick up wood and metal from Zara (trading port) and drop them off at Ragusa's warehouse. Remember you can set how much you want to trade so it doesn't get overfilled. Adjust it slightly higher as your demand for it increases.

Since all of your goods are being sold to market regular purchasing patterns work.

This one can be destroyed, however you do not have much time to destroy it... and it moves faster than you. Make sure to save your game in order to get to this one.

As well there is a Carvel (mis spelled in the game as well) sitting in the port that you can take. Make sure to fill up with sailors for this one.

Once you get to the pirate convoy you can automate this battle, as long as you have the higher overall battle score. If not, manual and use oil to your advantage.

If you have been spending your money and expanding your business, this should be easy. However if you have not... you will have to invest. As stated previously make sure to invest in Constantinople as very soon it will become highly profitable. It might even be worth while to start sending all of your trade routes into Constantinople.

This is sort of a sign of the major profit gaining time. Make sure before you pick up your diplomat you have a warehouse in Constantinople minimum and that you are producing from there as optimum. If you have any bulk sitting around in any of your warehouses (over producing something) move it to Constantinople. It is also wise to have all of your trade routes shift through Constantinople during this time because they will be able to dump every single resource for a limited time.

If you're set bring your diplomat can be found at City Hall and you can start the mission there. Make sure to have fully equipped ships with weapons and sailors.

You should have a decent number of Carvels at this point. Bring them to Constantinople and a single pirate will greet you. He should be easily defeated as long as you prepared. Move in to Constantinople to drop off the diplomat.... and then let the selling spree begin!

Well the time is here, time to go crazy. Try and ship any bulk amounts you have to Constantinople and send it directly to your warehouse. This will sell all of these items at top rates every single time.

Try to add Constantinople into all of your trading routes. If done right this can earn you an even 1,000,000 gold. It's a big opportunity to lose and will set the rest of your campaign forward.

If you however don't want to do this you can spend a little extra time trading later on and it's all fine. The event will end at a certain time and you will move on to the next part of it all.

Now you need to get the diplomat home. To do so you will have to fight 4 ships. You can go get repairs this isn't too time sensitive. Each is about 50-60 attack value which at this point should be very easy for you. Use fire to capture ships for later use.

Once in Constantinople click on the City Hall once again and select Mission to get your diplomat on board. A few seconds after leaving the port you will be attacked by a Pirate who is 100 strength.

On top of this it is a fight that must be done in the fog. My best advice is to use two fires to try and eat away at their sales and use an explosive barrel any time it looks like they might be close to you. Spam your left click button in hopes that you will get some shots off on one of their ships.

After this simply go to Venice in which the story will continue.

So this one is pretty cut and dry. You have to deliver Cloth, Silk and Wine to your warehouse.

Make sure to go to your warehouse and set these goods as locked amounts so that they're not sold directly to port. Alternatively just do the trade all at once.

You can buy Cloth from Ragusa, Silk from Constantinople, and Wine from Athens.

So now that you have courted the Morsinis you will need to complete a quest for the leader of the clan. Go to the senate and click on Tomaso Morsini. He will have a random mission for you. Just kidding, he just wants you to marry his daughter.

To marry her click on the Cathedral and provide 90 Wine, 90 Fruit, 90 Meat and 90 Bread.

You can get Fruit at Venice, Meat at Zara, Bread at Ragusa, and Wine at Athens.

Note, you have two years to complete this task. Some people like to take this opportunity to build up their business and increase their wealth before you hit any rollercoaster elements of the game. However for the most part if you have a 15-20 business at this point and 5 trade routes, you should be fine.

You will need to rank up twice. If you were ranking up as you could (which you should) you're fine. Otherwise you will have to wait 30 days in between each rank up. Take the time to build a new convoy and try and expand your businesses.

Friendly reminder, do not expand into Syracuse and do not trade with Syracuse, it'll make sense later.

You will also have to create 3 war frigates which you should add to your main fleet. These can be built in the Arsenal. Hit the second tab to go to building new ships.

Kaffa is located Northeast of Constantinople if you haven't found it yet. Head towards Kaffa and the convoy will come out eventually.

You should supply yourself with oil, swords and guns for this one. This ship is going to be 100 sailing power faster than your fastest, so you will need something to slow him down.

This mission is a one off. Make sure to save in advance as if you don't engage the ship immediately, you never will.

If you cannot identify the location on the 9/9 completed map look directly across from Durazzo and you will see a hook like harbor. Enter it and there you will find your prize... and the end of this chapter. This is one of the two generic places all find locations are in the game for the campaign.

Fear has caused a rampant refugee problem in the former states of the Byzantine Empire as former colonies of Constantinople are now taking in more refugees than has ever been heard of in the past. In these uncertain times people need to see wealth in order to feel like there is meaning in their life.

You are given 3 pieces of a map, but six are missing. In order to get more pieces you will need to go to the Senate and do missions from them that reward map pieces.

The location is just west of Athens in that little harbor again (I swear to god all treasure locations are in one of two places). It however will not become visible until you are able to get a piece of the map with an X indicated where it is. You will need to complete two senate missions for map pieces to do this.

Unfortunately the senate doesn't just pump out map missions, it has all sorts of stuff and so you'll have to do many missions to get to the right one. Alternatively you can just go pirate hunting until the mission comes up as this will protect your fleets and raise your standing with everyone.

Once you get to the location you get a treasure!

No strategic use here, just send it into a warehouse and let them dole it out over time.

This is easily one of the harder missions in the game, likely because of "luck." There is an achievement for defeating five ships while blockading. You can get it here. Ideally you will only want to fight 3 ships. But the more ships that come in to challenge you, the harder it will get.

So first things first you have new ships in Venice, make sure to add them to your fleet. Unlike other encounters you can swap out your best ships (by using the up arrow in the convoy view) after each battle. Make sure to have full sailors for this and stock up on oil, explosive barrels, small arms and specialty ammunition.

Once you're ready go to the port of Genoa. Once in Genoa go to Convoy View (magnifying glass) and click on the box next to a picture of a castle, this will blockade the port.

Once blocking you cannot stop or you fail the mission. Sit there until the three mission ships show up. But like I said, other ships can come to.

Use oil and explosives generously. The more ships you can hit with that, the shorter battles will be and the less losses you will take.

And this is why you haven't had any developments in Syracuse up until now.

Don't split up your giant fleet just yet. A giant bulk trader will be very useful for a little bit longer.

So you need to reduce Syracuse's prosperity a bit. Since you have no businesses or trade routes going in you have no worries about anything you make adding to the problem.

Instead just buy all of the resources and ship them off to one of your warehouses. If you do this three times their prosperity will fall to recession.

Now if you have businesses producing in Syracuse and trade routes, there is a different strategy for you. Expand your warehouse space in Syracuse and set to buy at 80% (Steward). Make sure you sell nothing to Syracuse. As well exclude Syracuse from all of your trade routes temporarily, don't worry you can add it in later.

it will be far more expensive for you to make them go into a recession, but you can do it. Use your main ship to buy goods while your warehouse fills up as well. It will eventually come in handy.

After three rounds Syracuse's prosperity rating (viewed in city info) will fall below 40%.

Well didn't that all just seem redundant all of a sudden.

Add Syracuse to all of your trade routes. If you created a warehouse full of goods set them to sell.

Otherwise it's just a matter of matching their needs with your supply.

If you have any convoys with points in Eagle Eye (great misunderstood talent by the way) you will be able to see Yellow dots on the map. Bulk suppliers and black markets will be very handy here as they will allow you to purchase a lot of goods very cheaply, which would be very helpful in re-supplying Syracuse.

Once you hit 80% you have to...

So to do this you will need to create a large number of businesses in Syracuse and a lot of homes to house them. You will also have to ship in people to do this with.

Since you have some fleets going through here your entire network will also benefit from having business in Syracuse.

Make sure to get a good variety of goods. Even establishing some meat production here might be helpful (make sure to have some salt delivered).

You can send sailors in as they are needed. The population will go up as prosperity increases as well.

Syracuse is pretty volatile however. It is on an island with a volcano and has no health care... means population drops are very likely.

Upon completing this mission your rating with the Loredon's will tank in the Senate. It means you will have one less vote in the next vote. And it's unfortunate because the next mission is

This one is kind of awkward, hopefully you haven't been ignoring the senate too much. If you have you might be in trouble.

You'll either be spending your time advancing your trading options (more stowage and workers) or you will be advancing senate interests (killing pirates doing missions). Either way, the mission is awkward because you never hit Grand Duke.

No two steps before Grand Duke (Marquiss) you get interrupted and a new task pops up.

There is a pirate convoy conveniently named "Kidnappers" moving around between Candia and Tunisia. You should have oil, cannister shots, small arms... all of your standard boarding stuff.

As always lay your oil and try and burn their sales and then come in for the take over. Honestly with this battle you can actually take over all three ships and be fine.

Once you have boarded the ship send Maria to your "closest port" which in this case will be Syracuse.

It's one of those two places again! Yes it's once again that little harbor just west of Athens.

There is a pirate waiting here, with four ships!

You can take over at least two of these. Make sure to spray your oil fiercely.

This engagement reveals the "final boss" fight.

This final "boss" fight is a tough one.

You will want three fleets fully staffed and fully armed. Your first two fleets will be for this part, your third will be for the next.

You will have to fight four pirate fleets to get the evidence against the Loredon family.

The trick is that whatever pirates you beat, stay beat. So you can engage with two different fleets and finish them off.

Make sure to use oil and explosive barrels often, you should have at least 20 per fleet so that you can spam oil and double and triple drop explosive barrels when you can get in range of an enemy for them. By doing this you can destroy most ships in a single pass.

Once you beat all four you will gain the final mission of the campaign.

After you finish them off however you will need to bring the information back to Venice. Another pirate fleet will show up to try and stop you. Sail to Durazzo and stay there. Have a THIRD fleet attack that pirate fleet while your ship repairs and gets a few more men. Once again use oil and explosive barrels freely as this is the final mission for the entire game.

There is a chance that a fleet from Ragusa or Zara will randomly attack you. To avoid this sail along the western side of the harbor to Venice. Don't ask why this happens, they're not even pirate fleets it's totally random and weird.

Upon bringing the evidence back to Venice you will have kicked Loredon out of the city council and a new friendlier one will replace him.

The campaign concludes here. At this point the game converts into a Free Play game. What adventures wait for you, are entirely up to you. If this game for you has been a strong one with weak pirate numbers (because you've been killing them) and highly profitable trade routes it might be worth keeping this game to try and "knock out" some achievements.