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Completed Let's voyage to the New Horizons in Uncharted Waters II!
- Thread starter Monstrous Bat
- Start date
.
I'm so engrossed with your LPs, that I can't stop viewing them, even if I am hungry for pizza. 
Is it still possible to invest on ports/shipyards even when you're a pirate?
Monstrous Bat
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2011
- Messages
- 638
Yes. Investing at shipyards is exactly the same as investing at markets, except you're improving the port's industry rather than economy.
Too much trouble, mostly. Even with only two ships we're kicking everyone except the Barbary Pirates' asses. Adding more galeasses would just be overkill. Besides, you can only directly control your flagship in battles, so ships captained by our mates would fight much less efficiently than our flagship. Also there're... problems with allowing one of your less loyal mates to captain a ship.
Let's get build up Bristol then to get those sweet-ass barges and frigates.
Monstrous Bat
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2011
- Messages
- 638
War and Loots, Continued
Before we can start pirating again, we must replenish our numbers first.
I also invested at the market again. Ceuta is already a neutral port, but I wanted to increase its economy capacity further so that recruiting crew will be less annoying.
It took us quite some time (and money) to raise our crew count to an acceptable number. In any case, we're now prepared to go pirating again.
A few days later, we sighted two NPC fleets trying to cross the Strait. If we're quick, we might be able to catch both of them.
The Italian fleet comes first. Their commodore is experienced, but our ships are larger.
This is a Carrack. We've already fought and seized many of these, but I'd forgotten to take any screenshots of them until now.
Once again, I decided to kill some of the enemies' convoy ships for some XP.
Getting hit by guns has lowered Feminism's max durablity by another point!
Oh and BTW, this is a Buss.
We managed to finish off enemy ship number 4,
But then the enemies began fleeing, so we were forced to rush their flagship and finish them off.
Victory is ours!
Pretty lame loot this time.
We seized all the busses (bussi?) and carracks.
Said Luigi before Catalina Annihilated him.
Quick, sell off the seized ships! We've got another fleet to attack, remember!
We lost a considerable number of crew from the last battle. However, some of the enemy crew defected to us after the battle, and we actually ended up with more crew than we had before the battle.
Those bussi are surprisingly worthless.
Off we go.
The Dutch fleet was throughly unimpressive. Their ships are small, and their commodore is weak.
You should know how this goes by now.
Back in Ceuta, we sold the ships for some nice cash (again).
Also, it seems like we have already pissed off every country in the game except Turkey.
While looking at Feminism's stats, I discovered that she doesn't have any guns installed.
I have repeatedly stated that guns are crap in UW2 and this is still true. However, having guns will give us something to do when we're closing up on the enemy ships, and firing gunshots gives a small amount of battle experience, so we still want to have some guns.
I ordered that 50 cannons be installed on Feminism. It's a bit costly, but we can afford it.
Oh, it's Idin again. We're still not prepared to take on the Barbary pirates.
But we may be able to take on this guy.
Hmmm. His battle level is almost as high as Idin's, but his ships are pretty crappy. We should be able to handle this.
We outnumber them 5:3. So long as we can keep the enemy convoy ships from attacking us we should be fine.
We fired a shot at the enemy flagship because we had nothing better to do.
The enemy ships returned fire, damaging Feminism a bit. At least she didn't lose maximum durablity this time.
Another turn later, the enemy ships began fleeing.
I tried to farm the convoy ships for extra experience,
But Vittorio just suicided by attacking Feminism.
Well, I'm not complaining.
After the battle, I discovered that our fleet has drifted away from Ceuta, and we can't get back there without giving the seized ships some crew. It's not a big problem, but it's very annoying.
Anyway, we sold the seized ships, then set sail and waited outside Ceuta for 9 days before this Turkish fleet showed up.
Their commodore is pretty mediocre. More importantly, though, this is the first Turkish fleet that we have attacked.
We won the battle without much trouble.
Seems like they were carrying sugar on their ships!
Selling the sugar and ships net us a tidy profit.
Another Turkish fleet with a mediocre commodore.
:yawn:
Their fleet was mostly made of Xebecs. These ships are pretty weak and I'm not sure why the Turks are using them for battle.
Said Sallah before Catalina Demolished him.
For some reasons, the Xebecs are considered very valuable by the shipyard guys.
In other news, we have finally succeeded at pissing off every country in the game. Hurrah!
Another Turkish fleet.
He was met with the same fate as his countrymen had.
We're really filthy rich now. I'm not very comfortable with carrying so much money on us, though. Maybe we should deposit them at a bank.
The port of Ceuta doesn't actually have a bank, however, so we had to go to Seville.
Also, I've noticed that so far, we haven't actually fought many Portuguese fleets, mostly because they don't seem to cross the Strait of Gibraltar often. Maybe we should park our ships near Lisbon if we want to kill more Portuguese dudes.
On our way to Lisbon, we ran into this guy.
Hmm. Obviously we can take on them without any troubles, but right now we aren't near any ports, so dragging the seized ships to a port to sell them would be a bit annoying. I think I'll pass.
Uh. I take that back. The opportunity to seize multiple Galleons is just too tempting. Plus this guy is weak.
We killed many enemy convoy ships for some nice XP. Unfortunately, Feminism lost two points of maximum durablity in the process!
Sometimes we're not given the option to seize all the enemy ships after a battle. I don't know what the cause of this, and it's really annoying when it happens.
Oh well. 4 Galleons will still get us a lot of money.
Said Xavier before Catalina Disemboweled him.
We used up some lumber to repair our ship, then stopped at Lisbon.
Sure it does but the effect is extremely minor. You'd be better off donating a few thousand coins.
Anyway, selling off the Galleons has finally gave us enough money to buy something that I'd wanted to.
I moored our battleships and took out Qwinn again. We're going to voyage to faraway lands... The lands of Africa.
We encountered a giant black manta ray while we're sailing near the Ivory Coast. There're some random encounters like this in UW2. Some (all?) of them have special effects on our fleet or commodore. I have absolutely no idea what the giant manta ray event does, though.
Here's our destination: the city of Timbuktu.
Remember when I said that Timbuktu is a noteworthy port for reasons that will become apparent much later? This is the reason. We're looking for the secret item sold in the item shop of Timbuktu.
The Crown of Glory, the Gold Bracelet and the Ruby Scepter are all useless treasure items that are not worth spending money on.
The Crusader Sword, on the other hand, is very very useful. It's a ☆-rank weapon, which is very powerful. Unfortunately, it also costs an arm and a leg to buy. I won't be actually buying the Crusader Sword, though, because it's a fencing sword and unless I'm insane, those do less damage than other weapons. There's also no bonus for using it together with the Crusader Armor AFAIK. I think we'd be better spending our money on another ☆-rank weapon. Back to Europe we go.
We stopped at Hamburg. This is another noteworthy city, for various reasons.
First off, Hamburg is the only place in the game where you can learn the Gunnery skill.
I think what this guy says is true, never tested it out though.
Right now, Hamburg is allied with Holland, though it won't remain this way for long.
We invested 50,000 gold coins at the market (to improve Hamburg's economy) and shipyard (to improve its industry). The reason for this will become apparent later.
Here's Dr. Wolf, who will teach the Gunnery skill to Catalina.
Or rather, he would if Catalina didn't already have the skill.
There's an item shop in Hamburg, but it doesn't have anything of worth.
We're looking for a suit of ☆-rank armor now. We've already seen the Crusader Armor, but it's expensive as hell and I would rather not spend so much money on it if I have any alternatives. A few pages ago, @Kazette mentioned the Errol's Plate which is another suit of ☆-rank armor. I remember about the existence of such a suit of armor, but I don't remember where to buy it. I think it's somewhere in North Europe though. Let's check out Oslo first.
No Errol's Plate here.
Our next stop is Amsterdam, the capital of Denmark.
Yes but they're still terrible so who cares. It's really annoying when the enemy commodore has this skill though.
There's another cartographer living in Amsterdam. We wouldn't gain much from learning Cartography now, but I decided to enroll for a lesson anyway because why the heck not. Catalina has enough knowledge after all.
The item shop in Amsterdam doesn't have Errol's Plate, but there're other somewhat interesting items for sale here.
The Theodolite functions like the Sextant, but a bit more accurate. Generally speaking, though, the Sextant is accurate enough, so we don't really need this.
Using the Pocket Watch on the seas will tell us exactly what time it is. It's hilariously useless.
I decided to buy it anyway because hey, it's cheap enough. However, it turned out that we already have all our item slots filled. We should sell some useless items we own.
When selling items in the item shop, it's important that you refuse the shopkeeper's first offer. Bargain with the shopkeeper, and you will be able to get much more money from selling the item.
We also sold all the accessories/treasures we seized.
In the end, we gain about 50,000 coins from selling some unneeded items.
The items shop in Antwerp still doesn't have what we're looking for, though it does sell the Dutch tax permit.
Also, it's a new month, so we went back to Hamburg to check how it has developed. Indeed, the city's economy and industry has both improved significantly.
By the way, bank interests are also calculated and paid on the first day of each month. We now have 1 million gold pieces in our bank account, which is the hard cap of the money we can have in our account. If we can't have any more money in our account, the bank will not pay interest for our savings, which is bad.
We withdrew some money from the bank and invested at the market and shipyard again.
Later, we arrived at the port of Copenhagen, which is most certainly not the capital of Denmark. There's also supposed to be great armorers here...
Another possible sponsor is located in Copenhagen.
I remember it now... Errol's Plate is sold in this town. I withdrew some money from the bank so that we can afford to buy it.
Aha! Here it is!
By the way, this is the Plate Mail. It's not a secret item, and is probably the best armor you can get early in the game.
And of course, here's Errol's Plate. ☆-rank, just like the Crusader Armor, but only costs half as much as the latter. I'm not sure if it's any weaker than the Crusader Armor, but it's powerful enough to render us nearly invincible in duels so who even cares anyway.
Catalina bought and equipped Errol's Plate.
On the next day, we deposited most of our excessive money bank into the bank. We're going to need them later.
Later, we stopped at Bergen to resupply. We're going to embark on a big adventure, so let's make sure we're well prepared.
Now, you might be wondering what we're trying to do. The answer is...
We ran into another random encounter shortly after leaving Bergen.
It's the ghost ship event, one of the worst in the game. I remember very clearly what it does -- it lowers the luck of your commodore, making it much more likely for bad shits to happen to you.
We haven't even been sailing for a week yet, but I'm going to stop in Narvik to resupply while we still have the chance. Ports are rare around the Arctic Circle.
Ready to go again.
Oh god please not the ghost ship again
Phew, it's just some heavy fog. I think this one doesn't do anything bad other than drastically reducing our lookout range.
The fog cleared just a day later.
Uh... Dikson? I don't remember anything about this port.
Oh well, I'm not complaining. Time for another resupply.
This time, I deliberately made it so that our fleet has much less water than food. The reasoning is that water can be searched for, whereas there's no easy way to gain food while on the seas.
Have a look at those glaciers.
I swear, I don't remember there being so many ports around the Arctic Circle. Not going to stop this time though.
As we sailed further east, we accidentally stumbled upon a village. We're not deliberately looking for villages anymore, but now that we have discovered the village, we might as well go see what do they have there.
After spending some food entertaining the villagers, we discovered the now-extinct Steller's Sea Cow.
Woohoo! We're past the Bering Strait again. Now we just have to sail southwest to get to Japan.
We're almost out of water, though, so I ordered our guys to search for water. Actually finding any water proved much more difficult than I had expected, however. This may have something to do which the ghost event lowering Catalina's luck earlier.
For a moment there, I was worried that we might dehydrate, but our boys managed to find water right before we completely dried our reservoir. Well done!
Right. We won't be having any more water problems during this voyage.
The rest of the journey was uneventful, and we made our way to Sakai.
Here's what we came for: the Magic Muramasa. Its price is the same as that of Crusader Sword, but it's a curved sword which makes it more powerful than fencing swords. I think.
Catalina will be able to pretend that she's a samurai from now on. Female pirate and female samurai, which one is more ridiculous and why?? Discuss!!
Oh and we sold off Catalina's old scimitar. It's not like she has any use for it anymore.
Andreas predicted a storm immediately after we had left Sakai.
And we didn't even have enough time to land our ship before the storm struck us.
We landed our ship and waited for the weather to calm down.
We survived the storm (of course), but Qwinn still took some damage, so we went back to Sakai to get her repaired.
Again?
Once again, we were able to survive by landing our ship. But then...
The fuck is this shit! Storms aren't supposed to occur this often! Must be that damned ghost ship...
Phew.
Oh for fuck's sake! We aren't even adjacent to the lands this time!
We used our last bottle of Balm to make the weather calm down.
After we'd finally escaped from those cursed islands, I decided to pay a visit to Changan since we didn't visit any Chinese ports during our circumnavigation earlier.
This is how Chinese ports look in UW2.
For some inconceivable reasons, there's an used French ship in a Chinese shipyard.
There's a huge palace-like building in center of the city.
Like many other megabuildings in UW2, there's nothing we can do here whasoever.
It sure looks pretty nice though.
Oh and of course, there's a branch of Marco Polo bank here as well.
The item shop in Changan has some interesting items for sale.
The silkwares and the Chinese Dress are just useless accessories.
The Blue Crescent, on the other hand, is a ☆-rank weapon that only costs 24,000 coins to buy. I'm not sure what makes it so much cheaper than other ☆-rank equipments, but I vaguely remember the Blue Crescent being only A-rank in a different version of UW2 that I had played. I might be dreaming though. Also, it should be noted that the Blue Crescent is the weapon used by Guan Yu from the Three Kingdoms Era.
Welp, there's nothing more to be done here. Back to Europe we go.
Ugh, we're barely past the Bering Strait and we're already almost out of water.
We were able to locate a water source pretty quickly this time though.
Also we dicked around the Arctic Ocean a bit in hope that we might find a village.
I wasn't expecting to actually find one, but it seems like we got lucky.
We "discovered" the Aurora phenomena here! It's an A-rank discovery.
That's the port of Bergen. We're back to Europe.
Hell yeah. We have went from Asia to Europe through the Arctic Ocean! Without resupplying in the route even once! You watching there? Kattze?
That was by far the longest voyage we've had yet, lasting 55 days. Everybody gained a navigation level as we stopped in Hamburg.
Next time: Catalina progresses in the story. Maybe also beats up some fellow pirates.
Before we can start pirating again, we must replenish our numbers first.
I also invested at the market again. Ceuta is already a neutral port, but I wanted to increase its economy capacity further so that recruiting crew will be less annoying.
It took us quite some time (and money) to raise our crew count to an acceptable number. In any case, we're now prepared to go pirating again.
A few days later, we sighted two NPC fleets trying to cross the Strait. If we're quick, we might be able to catch both of them.
The Italian fleet comes first. Their commodore is experienced, but our ships are larger.
This is a Carrack. We've already fought and seized many of these, but I'd forgotten to take any screenshots of them until now.
Once again, I decided to kill some of the enemies' convoy ships for some XP.
Getting hit by guns has lowered Feminism's max durablity by another point!
Oh and BTW, this is a Buss.
We managed to finish off enemy ship number 4,
But then the enemies began fleeing, so we were forced to rush their flagship and finish them off.
Victory is ours!
Pretty lame loot this time.
We seized all the busses (bussi?) and carracks.
Said Luigi before Catalina Annihilated him.
Quick, sell off the seized ships! We've got another fleet to attack, remember!
We lost a considerable number of crew from the last battle. However, some of the enemy crew defected to us after the battle, and we actually ended up with more crew than we had before the battle.
Those bussi are surprisingly worthless.
Off we go.
The Dutch fleet was throughly unimpressive. Their ships are small, and their commodore is weak.
You should know how this goes by now.
Back in Ceuta, we sold the ships for some nice cash (again).
Also, it seems like we have already pissed off every country in the game except Turkey.
While looking at Feminism's stats, I discovered that she doesn't have any guns installed.
I have repeatedly stated that guns are crap in UW2 and this is still true. However, having guns will give us something to do when we're closing up on the enemy ships, and firing gunshots gives a small amount of battle experience, so we still want to have some guns.
I ordered that 50 cannons be installed on Feminism. It's a bit costly, but we can afford it.
Oh, it's Idin again. We're still not prepared to take on the Barbary pirates.
But we may be able to take on this guy.
Hmmm. His battle level is almost as high as Idin's, but his ships are pretty crappy. We should be able to handle this.
We outnumber them 5:3. So long as we can keep the enemy convoy ships from attacking us we should be fine.
We fired a shot at the enemy flagship because we had nothing better to do.
The enemy ships returned fire, damaging Feminism a bit. At least she didn't lose maximum durablity this time.
Another turn later, the enemy ships began fleeing.
I tried to farm the convoy ships for extra experience,
But Vittorio just suicided by attacking Feminism.
Well, I'm not complaining.
After the battle, I discovered that our fleet has drifted away from Ceuta, and we can't get back there without giving the seized ships some crew. It's not a big problem, but it's very annoying.
Anyway, we sold the seized ships, then set sail and waited outside Ceuta for 9 days before this Turkish fleet showed up.
Their commodore is pretty mediocre. More importantly, though, this is the first Turkish fleet that we have attacked.
We won the battle without much trouble.
Seems like they were carrying sugar on their ships!
Selling the sugar and ships net us a tidy profit.
Another Turkish fleet with a mediocre commodore.
:yawn:
Their fleet was mostly made of Xebecs. These ships are pretty weak and I'm not sure why the Turks are using them for battle.
Said Sallah before Catalina Demolished him.
For some reasons, the Xebecs are considered very valuable by the shipyard guys.
In other news, we have finally succeeded at pissing off every country in the game. Hurrah!
Another Turkish fleet.
He was met with the same fate as his countrymen had.
We're really filthy rich now. I'm not very comfortable with carrying so much money on us, though. Maybe we should deposit them at a bank.
The port of Ceuta doesn't actually have a bank, however, so we had to go to Seville.
Also, I've noticed that so far, we haven't actually fought many Portuguese fleets, mostly because they don't seem to cross the Strait of Gibraltar often. Maybe we should park our ships near Lisbon if we want to kill more Portuguese dudes.
On our way to Lisbon, we ran into this guy.
Hmm. Obviously we can take on them without any troubles, but right now we aren't near any ports, so dragging the seized ships to a port to sell them would be a bit annoying. I think I'll pass.
Uh. I take that back. The opportunity to seize multiple Galleons is just too tempting. Plus this guy is weak.
We killed many enemy convoy ships for some nice XP. Unfortunately, Feminism lost two points of maximum durablity in the process!
Sometimes we're not given the option to seize all the enemy ships after a battle. I don't know what the cause of this, and it's really annoying when it happens.
Oh well. 4 Galleons will still get us a lot of money.
Said Xavier before Catalina Disemboweled him.
We used up some lumber to repair our ship, then stopped at Lisbon.
Sure it does but the effect is extremely minor. You'd be better off donating a few thousand coins.
Anyway, selling off the Galleons has finally gave us enough money to buy something that I'd wanted to.
I moored our battleships and took out Qwinn again. We're going to voyage to faraway lands... The lands of Africa.
We encountered a giant black manta ray while we're sailing near the Ivory Coast. There're some random encounters like this in UW2. Some (all?) of them have special effects on our fleet or commodore. I have absolutely no idea what the giant manta ray event does, though.
Here's our destination: the city of Timbuktu.
Remember when I said that Timbuktu is a noteworthy port for reasons that will become apparent much later? This is the reason. We're looking for the secret item sold in the item shop of Timbuktu.
The Crown of Glory, the Gold Bracelet and the Ruby Scepter are all useless treasure items that are not worth spending money on.
The Crusader Sword, on the other hand, is very very useful. It's a ☆-rank weapon, which is very powerful. Unfortunately, it also costs an arm and a leg to buy. I won't be actually buying the Crusader Sword, though, because it's a fencing sword and unless I'm insane, those do less damage than other weapons. There's also no bonus for using it together with the Crusader Armor AFAIK. I think we'd be better spending our money on another ☆-rank weapon. Back to Europe we go.
We stopped at Hamburg. This is another noteworthy city, for various reasons.
First off, Hamburg is the only place in the game where you can learn the Gunnery skill.
I think what this guy says is true, never tested it out though.
Right now, Hamburg is allied with Holland, though it won't remain this way for long.
We invested 50,000 gold coins at the market (to improve Hamburg's economy) and shipyard (to improve its industry). The reason for this will become apparent later.
Here's Dr. Wolf, who will teach the Gunnery skill to Catalina.
Or rather, he would if Catalina didn't already have the skill.
There's an item shop in Hamburg, but it doesn't have anything of worth.
We're looking for a suit of ☆-rank armor now. We've already seen the Crusader Armor, but it's expensive as hell and I would rather not spend so much money on it if I have any alternatives. A few pages ago, @Kazette mentioned the Errol's Plate which is another suit of ☆-rank armor. I remember about the existence of such a suit of armor, but I don't remember where to buy it. I think it's somewhere in North Europe though. Let's check out Oslo first.
No Errol's Plate here.
Our next stop is Amsterdam, the capital of Denmark.
Yes but they're still terrible so who cares. It's really annoying when the enemy commodore has this skill though.
There's another cartographer living in Amsterdam. We wouldn't gain much from learning Cartography now, but I decided to enroll for a lesson anyway because why the heck not. Catalina has enough knowledge after all.
The item shop in Amsterdam doesn't have Errol's Plate, but there're other somewhat interesting items for sale here.
The Theodolite functions like the Sextant, but a bit more accurate. Generally speaking, though, the Sextant is accurate enough, so we don't really need this.
Using the Pocket Watch on the seas will tell us exactly what time it is. It's hilariously useless.
I decided to buy it anyway because hey, it's cheap enough. However, it turned out that we already have all our item slots filled. We should sell some useless items we own.
When selling items in the item shop, it's important that you refuse the shopkeeper's first offer. Bargain with the shopkeeper, and you will be able to get much more money from selling the item.
We also sold all the accessories/treasures we seized.
In the end, we gain about 50,000 coins from selling some unneeded items.
The items shop in Antwerp still doesn't have what we're looking for, though it does sell the Dutch tax permit.
Also, it's a new month, so we went back to Hamburg to check how it has developed. Indeed, the city's economy and industry has both improved significantly.
By the way, bank interests are also calculated and paid on the first day of each month. We now have 1 million gold pieces in our bank account, which is the hard cap of the money we can have in our account. If we can't have any more money in our account, the bank will not pay interest for our savings, which is bad.
We withdrew some money from the bank and invested at the market and shipyard again.
Later, we arrived at the port of Copenhagen, which is most certainly not the capital of Denmark. There's also supposed to be great armorers here...
Another possible sponsor is located in Copenhagen.
I remember it now... Errol's Plate is sold in this town. I withdrew some money from the bank so that we can afford to buy it.
Aha! Here it is!
By the way, this is the Plate Mail. It's not a secret item, and is probably the best armor you can get early in the game.
And of course, here's Errol's Plate. ☆-rank, just like the Crusader Armor, but only costs half as much as the latter. I'm not sure if it's any weaker than the Crusader Armor, but it's powerful enough to render us nearly invincible in duels so who even cares anyway.
Catalina bought and equipped Errol's Plate.
On the next day, we deposited most of our excessive money bank into the bank. We're going to need them later.
Later, we stopped at Bergen to resupply. We're going to embark on a big adventure, so let's make sure we're well prepared.
Now, you might be wondering what we're trying to do. The answer is...
Challenge accepted, Kattze. This time, we're going through the [i/Arctic Ocean[/i]!Also, go through Siberia to Asia I dare you.
We ran into another random encounter shortly after leaving Bergen.
It's the ghost ship event, one of the worst in the game. I remember very clearly what it does -- it lowers the luck of your commodore, making it much more likely for bad shits to happen to you.
We haven't even been sailing for a week yet, but I'm going to stop in Narvik to resupply while we still have the chance. Ports are rare around the Arctic Circle.
Ready to go again.
Oh god please not the ghost ship again
Phew, it's just some heavy fog. I think this one doesn't do anything bad other than drastically reducing our lookout range.
The fog cleared just a day later.
Uh... Dikson? I don't remember anything about this port.
Oh well, I'm not complaining. Time for another resupply.
This time, I deliberately made it so that our fleet has much less water than food. The reasoning is that water can be searched for, whereas there's no easy way to gain food while on the seas.
Have a look at those glaciers.
I swear, I don't remember there being so many ports around the Arctic Circle. Not going to stop this time though.
As we sailed further east, we accidentally stumbled upon a village. We're not deliberately looking for villages anymore, but now that we have discovered the village, we might as well go see what do they have there.
After spending some food entertaining the villagers, we discovered the now-extinct Steller's Sea Cow.
Woohoo! We're past the Bering Strait again. Now we just have to sail southwest to get to Japan.
We're almost out of water, though, so I ordered our guys to search for water. Actually finding any water proved much more difficult than I had expected, however. This may have something to do which the ghost event lowering Catalina's luck earlier.
For a moment there, I was worried that we might dehydrate, but our boys managed to find water right before we completely dried our reservoir. Well done!
Right. We won't be having any more water problems during this voyage.
The rest of the journey was uneventful, and we made our way to Sakai.
Here's what we came for: the Magic Muramasa. Its price is the same as that of Crusader Sword, but it's a curved sword which makes it more powerful than fencing swords. I think.
Catalina will be able to pretend that she's a samurai from now on. Female pirate and female samurai, which one is more ridiculous and why?? Discuss!!
Oh and we sold off Catalina's old scimitar. It's not like she has any use for it anymore.
Andreas predicted a storm immediately after we had left Sakai.
And we didn't even have enough time to land our ship before the storm struck us.
We landed our ship and waited for the weather to calm down.
We survived the storm (of course), but Qwinn still took some damage, so we went back to Sakai to get her repaired.
Again?
Once again, we were able to survive by landing our ship. But then...
The fuck is this shit! Storms aren't supposed to occur this often! Must be that damned ghost ship...
Phew.
Oh for fuck's sake! We aren't even adjacent to the lands this time!
We used our last bottle of Balm to make the weather calm down.
After we'd finally escaped from those cursed islands, I decided to pay a visit to Changan since we didn't visit any Chinese ports during our circumnavigation earlier.
This is how Chinese ports look in UW2.
For some inconceivable reasons, there's an used French ship in a Chinese shipyard.
There's a huge palace-like building in center of the city.
Like many other megabuildings in UW2, there's nothing we can do here whasoever.
It sure looks pretty nice though.
Oh and of course, there's a branch of Marco Polo bank here as well.
The item shop in Changan has some interesting items for sale.
The silkwares and the Chinese Dress are just useless accessories.
The Blue Crescent, on the other hand, is a ☆-rank weapon that only costs 24,000 coins to buy. I'm not sure what makes it so much cheaper than other ☆-rank equipments, but I vaguely remember the Blue Crescent being only A-rank in a different version of UW2 that I had played. I might be dreaming though. Also, it should be noted that the Blue Crescent is the weapon used by Guan Yu from the Three Kingdoms Era.
Welp, there's nothing more to be done here. Back to Europe we go.
Ugh, we're barely past the Bering Strait and we're already almost out of water.
We were able to locate a water source pretty quickly this time though.
Also we dicked around the Arctic Ocean a bit in hope that we might find a village.
I wasn't expecting to actually find one, but it seems like we got lucky.
We "discovered" the Aurora phenomena here! It's an A-rank discovery.
That's the port of Bergen. We're back to Europe.
Hell yeah. We have went from Asia to Europe through the Arctic Ocean! Without resupplying in the route even once! You watching there? Kattze?
That was by far the longest voyage we've had yet, lasting 55 days. Everybody gained a navigation level as we stopped in Hamburg.
Next time: Catalina progresses in the story. Maybe also beats up some fellow pirates.
Troll. 
procrastinator
Arcane
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Monstrous Bat
Cipher
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I think they do about the same amount of damage. Maybe heavy swords are slightly more powerful, I'm not sure. In fact I'm not sure if there even is any difference between the different kinds of swords.
Monstrous Bat
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2011
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- 638
Vengeance
So we're back to Hamburg.
We invested some money again. This should be enough to get Hamburg's economy and industry up to 1000.
Our investment won't take effect until next month, though, so we went to the guild to see if there's any quest we can do to kill some time.
In the end, though, I decided to go on a tour around North Europe instead.
We dicked around Greenland for a while, discovering a port but no villages.
Also, we found Khayr's fleet parking near Iceland on our way back. I'm not quite sure what he is doing here.
The journey was long enough to give Catalina a level.
Hamburg's industry has been maxed out. Unfortunately, its economy is not.
This should be enough to bump its economy up to 1000 next month.
But while we're waiting for our investment to take effect, let's pay a visit to the shipyard. I think most of the things that I was going for has already been unlocked.
Now that Hamburg's industry has been maxed out, we can see some new ships that wasn't available before.
This is the Frigate. It's... not very good. It's better than the Galleon, but considerably worse than the Galeass.
And this is the Full-rigged Ship. It's the ultimate ship in the game. This ship is only unlocked at 1000 industry, and even then, only a selected few ports are able to build it. It's a lot larger than pretty much every other ship in the game. Unfortunately, it's also slow as hell. Obviously it would make an excellent battleship, but I still decided against building one, partly because it would be kind of overkill and partly because it's hard to come up with a name better than Feminism.
Maxing out a port's economy and industry capacities does more than unlocking a bunch of ships -- it also unlocks the ultimate figurehead and gun. Unfortunately these are only available if your commodore has maxed out luck, and in case you've forgotten, Catalina's luck had just taken a big hit from the ghost ship event. This should be easy to fix though.
We did the donation exploit again, and Catalina's luck was remaxed in no time.
Now the next step is a bit tedious. You have to go to the shipyard and ask about figureheads. There's a chance that you'll see the secret figureheads; if you aren't, try again until the shipyard worker tells you that they have a great selection today.
This is what we're looking for, the Angel figurehead. It does what the other figureheads do, but better. I mean I'm not even sure what does the other figureheads do but I'm pretty sure Angel does it better. Yeah.
Getting the port's economy and industry capacities high also unlocks this: the Carronade. It's the ultimate gun in the game, as powerful as the Cannon without the Cannon's shitty range. If you grind up your battle level, learn Gunnery, and install Carronades on your ships, you'll actually be able to sink enemy ships reasonably efficiently. Not that you would really want to do this, as sunken ships can't be sold at shipyards. Guns are so useless.
Earlier in this thread, Kattze mentioned that we could buy Frigates and Barges in Bristol. I don't remember much as to how to unlock these ships. We have already seen Frigates in Hamburg, but I didn't see any Barges. Maybe they're only available in Bristol.
So if we invested to improve the port's industry, we'd be able to buy ships that doesn't suck?
No, Istanbul - Athens is a much better trade route. You're so full of shit, market guy.
Right now the only ship available here is the Caravela Redonda. We invested another 50k coins at the shipyard in hopes that this will unlock some non-shitty ships.
Also, the item shop here sells Claymore, an A-rank weapon. It's pretty cheap for its power.
Also, Hamburg's industry is finally maxed out, so we can now purchase the ultimate figurehead:
The Goddess is the hardest figurehead to unlock, requiring maxed out economy and industry and maxed luck for your commodore. Its effect is also the most powerful of all figureheads.
I still don't know what the figureheads actually do.
We went to Bristol and invested again. It'll take a few months to get the port's industry up to 1000.
We went back to Seville to moor Qwinn and take out our battleships again.
Also, I changed Feminism's cargo capacity to make more room for the crew. We didn't really need so many guns anyway.
We hired some people into our fleet, then went back to Ceuta.
Turns out that Ceuta has decided to ally itself with Portugal again.
We solved the problem by investing at Ceuta again.
We spent a few days hiring crew before set sail.
Hmmm... It's Idin Leis. Now that Catalina is equipped with overpowered magical gears, maybe she'll actually stand a chance against Idin.
Well, let's try taking them on.
Ugh. I was hoping that our flagship would spawn near Idin's so that we could challenge him to a duel immediately, but apparently our luck wouldn't have it that way.
I ordered Kaiserin to run away, while Catalina waited for the enemy flagship to get closer.
Kaiserin ended up tanking a hit anyway, though it's nothing too serious.
Dammit, Idin's ship is parking just outside our melee range.
I guess we have no option other than charging right into the enemy formation, then.
Enemy gunfire knocked Feminism's durability down to 22 in a single turn, in addition to killing quite a few of her crew.
The good news is that Idin's flagship is finally in our melee range now.
If our opponent had focused fire on Feminism for another turn, we'd be dead now. The AI is dumb, however, and attacked us in melee instead of keeping shooting at Feminism.
Also, Idin challenged us to a duel when he has no real reason to. WTF. Well, in any case, if we want to win the battle, this is our chance.
The duel started well for Catalina, who managed to land several hits on Idin while blocking all his attacks.
Unfortunately, due to Idin's super high level, getting hit by him even once hurts like hell.
In the end, Catalina was unable to defeat Idin within ten turns, so the duel ended a draw.
However, thanks to the sheer stupidity of the AI, we managed to live yet another turn and got another chance to duel Idin.
Unfortunately, the duel wasn't going very well for Catalina.
Idin kept landing hits, while Catalina kept missing. Idin quickly turned the tide around and defeated Catalina in a few rounds.
...So our Spanish piratess is dead now.
Well, that sure went poorly. Let's try again.
During our second attempt at defeating Idin, I discovered something unexpected. Previously, I was telling Catalina to dodge every turn because I thought it would counter Idin's strongest attack, but it didn't work very well. This time, I told Catalina to block every turn, and this tactic is actually working really well, Catalina is blocking a lot of attacks and even when she fails to block, she doesn't take that much damage. Still, she was unable to win the duel in 10 turns.
A few turns later, the enemy ships suddenly started retreating. Turns out that we were killing more of their men than I thought we were, and their flagship's crew number is dangrously low. The AI is too stupid to realize that one more direct hit on Feminism is enough to sink her, so it decided to retreat.
I tried to take out the enemy flagship via regular meleeing. We were killing more than they were, but we're still losing the fight. I guess we had no option other than duelling Idin after all.
I... can't believe that actually worked. With a few lucky blocks, Catalina was actually able to defeat Idin!
We won the battle with 6 points of durablity and 12 crew left. To be honest, though, the retarded AI is the only reason we're able to win the battle at all.
Evidently, we can only seize enemy ships that were in our vision range when we won the battle. In this case, it's only Idin's flagship. Oh well.
Pretty much everyone on Feminism was killed during the previous battle. We could barely gather enough people to get our fleet back to Ceuta.
Catalina has gained a lot of experience from defeating Idin. At least I think she has.
Hmmm... Now that I think about it, that's a fine Galeass we've got. Maybe we shouldn't sell it.
Alright, we're keeping this ship for ourselves. We named it after the most distinctive feature of its former owner, and Andreas was appointed the captain of our new ship.
Oh, I almost forgot. We used some lumbers seized from Idin to repair Feminism.
Well, it's time to go out and murder some unfortunate bugger again. Hopefully against someone not ridiculously overpowered this time.
Yeah, this guy looks like an easy target.
Catalina beat him handily in a duel.
Note that our piracy fame is over 30,000 now.
I'm... not sure what we were doing in the screenshots above. I think we were dicking around the Iberian Peninsula looking for preys.
:yawn:
Also, there was a lot of wine on their ships. Yay, I guess?
The wine were worth about 10,000 coins. I suppose some extra money is always nice, but at this point we don't really have many things to spend it on.
We beat up some more weaklings,
And Catalina finally gained another battle level.
In addition to being hated by pretty much every country, Catalina is now pretty famous as a pirate. Fames cap out at 50k, so I think we can expect a progression in the story soon.
Have we signed contract with the wrong sponsor? Well, it no longer matters now.
Also, it's a new month, so we invested in Bristol again.
A surprising number of NPC fleets decided to show up near Bristol while we're dicking around to kill time. We murdered them all.
When December rolled around, we went to pour even more money into the shipyard in Bristol.
The shipyard now offers a respectable selection, including Galleons and Sloops.
Neither of them are of any use to use, though.
Industry here should be maxed out next month.
Now that our business in Bristol is concluded for the time being, we should go back to pirating around Ceuta again. A few days later, our old friend Khayr decided to show up.
Hmm. We were barely able to beat Idin, who was a bit weaker than Khayr. Still, I want to try our hands at beating Khayr as well..
We shall see about that.
Our tactic is the same as that we had used agained Idin: rush to the enemy flagship and duel their captain.
The enemy ships landed some nasty hits on Feminism, but that's to be expected.
I... don't really know what happened here. Catalina kept landing hits on Khayr while blocking just about every single counterattack.
Khayr was down before long.
"Tell me, what happened to the fleets you had attacked?"
"FEMINISM HAS UNMADE THEM."
"What happened to Idin and his men?"
"FEMINISM HAS UNMADE THEM."
"I... see."
I swear I didn't savescum here. It's just a complete fluke.
We did seize quite a few Galeasses, which is pretty sweet.
Said Khayr beforeCatalina Feminism Unmade him.
We can get much more fame from defeating a powerful pirate like Khayr than we do from beating up random dudes. Catalina is close to maxing out her piracy fame.
Catalina gained a large chunk of experience from besting Khayr in a duel as well.
Hmm, looking at Catalina's fame, I couldn't help feeling that we should have made some progress in the story long ago. Maybe we just have to visit the right building.
Well, no. I've checked every single building in Ceuta, but no special event occured.
Perhaps we need to visit a port that isn't located in Europe? I remember at least one special event that can't be triggered in European ports.
Nope. Nothing happening here.
We went to check Argin, but still didn't get any special event. Both Santa Cruz and Argin are allied with Portugal though, which may be the problem.
There happens to be a bank in Argin, where we deposited most of our cash.
We checked out another port, which is allied with Holland. Still no special events.
But then we went to Algiers and finally ran into the person we're looking for.
"Oh, it's you."
"So, Joao was in that port just as I said, wasn't he?"
"But things didn't go very well there."
"Well, I just told you to go there. I never told you to let him go, and get all tied up!"
"How dare you say that!"
"People loved the story how that old man tied you up like a cow!"
"Shut up, dog face. I'll teach you to make fun of me."
"Whoa! Hold on a minute there."
"I won't stop Andreas if you were only looking for us so you could tease us, you weasel-faced numskull."
"Ouch! No! Ouch! It just slipped out of my lips! Ouch! The true reason is, ouch!, I've got some information for you."
"Information? That must be about Joao."
"Uuuhh... Let me go..."
"That's enough, Andreas. Stop it."
"Gasp, gasp... I thought I'd never breathe again."
"Tell us what you know."
"I will, but in one condition."
"Andreas, he's all yours. Have fun."
"Oh, no. OK, I'll tell you. There's someone who knows where Joao's fleet is."
"Who is it?"
"A Portuguese nobleman of high rank. But I'm not supposed to tell his name."
You were not supposed to get strangled by Andreas either, were you?
"That sounds suspicious. If he is a man of high rank, why can't he identify himself?"
"I haven't finished yet. That nobleman has a grudge against the Francos. That's why he's been following Joao's activities. If you wish, he can help you, he says."
"Sounds too good to be true. It might be a scheme."
"It isn't a scheme. But he has a request of you. His son has a crush on a girl called Lucia in the Lisbon pub. He wants to see her alone."
I like where this is going...
"But because he's a nobleman, he can't see her in public. So he wants you to take her to meet him at another port. If you can do that, he'll let you know where Joao is."
Totally not suspicious. Not at all.
"Is that all? It's easy to kidnap a girl."
"Not a kidnapping. We need to take her out secretly."
No Emilio you're so full of shit. This totally is kidnapping.
"I'm not too keen on this scheme, but if we can find out where Joao is..."
"It's a great opportunity. You accept the deal, right?"
"OK, it's a deal. Where do we bring the girl?"
"There is a port called Ceuta, just south of Lisbon. Bring her to the lodge there. I'll report our deal to the nobleman. Good luck!"
"Any day now, Joao will be within our grasp."
"It's not a bad deal. It's good to have support from someone."
So we're now kidnapping young barmaids for some shady Portuguese aristocrat and possibly-rapist? Wow. That's a new low, even for us.
"There's a woman over there."
"Would you like anything to drink?"
"She's beautiful, but not young."
"No, not an old lady like her."
"Who're you calling an old woman?"
"Oooops, she heard us."
"Of course, everyone heard you, you loudmouth."
"Old lady, my foot. Just get lost, children! You're not welcome here!"
"Blast! Let's get out of here."
"We're not having much luck with this older generation. First Rocco, and now this!"
"Excuse me, are you Lucia?"
"No, Lucia is my daughter."
"May I speak to Lucia?"
"Why yes. Actually, if you're a traveler, tell her some interesting stories. She'll be delighted. Lucia! You have a cuntomer. Lucia!"
"Yes, mother."
"This lady wants to talk to you."
"Oh, are you a stowaway? Oh, I'm so envious. I'd love to travel, too."
"Anyone can travel, if they have 2 things - a ship and plenty of courage."
Tell that to all the seafaring dudes we've murdered.
"But I have to work here."
"That's true. Not to change the subject, but do you know a young noble who visits here from time to time?"
I don't think Perot had ever said anything about the nobleman being "young". Catalina is just making shit up here.
"Yes, he comes here incognito. He is always kind and sincere, and he's very handsome."
"That man said he wants to meet with you, but he can't come here right now. He's asked me to bring you to visit him."
"Really?!"
"Would you like to go? He's in a port called Ceuta, just to the south of Lisbon."
"Ceuta... I heard it's beautiful. What luck - taking a trip and seeing you-know-who! Please take me!"
"Then get ready, quickly. Where's a good place to meet?"
"OK, I'll be ready as soon as possible. Wait for me at the lodge in 2 hours."
"Tell your mother so she won't be worried."
"Alright."
Well, that was easy. You'd think Lucia's mother would be able to recognize Catalina, but apparently our piratess is less famous than we'd thought.
Later, at the lodge...
Another hour later...
"Yes."
"I hope I didn't keep you waiting for too long."
"No, we just got here. Let's go to my ship."
"I'm so excited!"
We arrived at Ceuta without any trouble.
"Yes, he's waiting for you. I also have a message for you from a man called Perot. He wants you to go to the pub after you bring Lucia to the lodge."
"Thank you!"
"Catalina, thank you very much. I won't forget your kindness."
"I have an appointment so I must leave now. Good luck!"
Yeah, good luck not getting raped, girl.
At the pub:
"Commodore, she looked happy. Feels good when you do a good deed for someone."
"And she was pretty. No wonder that nobleman likes her."
"He's probably a respectable guy, unlike those Francos. According to her, he is kind, sincere, and handsome. I can't believe that somebody as sly as Joao could also be a Portuguese noble."
Seriously, are you guy really THIS bad with criminology?
"Hi Catalina, it seems you safely brought Lucia to this port."
"So Perot, can you tell me now where Joao is?"
"Sure. Joao is in Alexandria."
"Andreas, Emilio, let's go."
"Good luck. Try not to botch up the job again!"
Immediately after leaving Ceuta, we found Idin's fleet parking nearby, doing nothing. I decided to fight him again for XP because hey, if we could beat him once, we should be able to do it again.
Before going into battle, I captured a screenshot of Catalina's character sheet so that we could know how much XP she could gain from besting Idin in a duel.
Let's go.
Our tactic is still the same as the last time: rush the flagship, duel the commodore and pray it works.
Unfortunately it didn't work very well. The duel ended in a stalemate.
On the next turn, the enemy ships sunk Feminism with a barrage of cannon fire.
Well, that went badly.
So let's do it again.
As you can see, the outcome of a duel can... kind of fluctuate at times.
We got to seize a lot of good stuff this time, including 4 galeasses.
Said Idin beforeCatalina Feminism Unmade him. Again.
Seems like Catalina gained 490 points of experience from all the trouble. Not bad, but I was kind of expecting more. Oh well.
Later, when we hit the shipyard, I decided to reserve another one of Idin's Galeasses for our own use. I named the ship BlkBeard. You should be able to tell by now that I'm really good at naming our ships.
Goodbye Kaiserin, you have served us well. Now our fleet consists exclusively of Galeasses.
Oh, and I ordered all guns on BlkBeard to be removed to make more space for cargo.
Okay, now we're heading to Alexandria.
At the pub in Alexandria:
"Today is the day I will defeat Joao. We must act carefully."
"Excuse me."
"You are...?"
"Otto Baynes. I command a Privateer Fleet from England."
"What would a commodore of England need from me?"
"I've been following you since I saw you in Ceuta. The pirate you were talking to in the pub is Bret Perot, isn't he?"
"Yes, he is. What about him?"
"He's been linked to Marquis Martinez. Are you aware of that?"
"I see. So the nobleman that Perot was talking about is Marquis Martinez. What about him?"
"Then you are kidnappers. Where is Lucia? If you return her now, we'll save your life."
"What are you talking about? If you insist on making false charges, I'll dump you in the ocean as shark bait."
"Watch your mouth, pal!"
"What! You shut up!"
"Calm yourself, Andreas."
"Otto, why are you saying we kidnapped her? I just accepted Marquis Martinez's request to take her to Ceuta."
"Are you saying that you did it without knowing who he is? I found out about this crime only by chance. Matthew, explain it to them."
"Yes, sir. A while ago when I was drinking at the pub in Algiers, I overheard a conversation between Marquis Martinez and the pirate, Perot. It seems Lucia inadvertently overheard a big secret of theirs. That's why they plotted her kidnapping. It was a clever idea. If a woman like you invites her, the girl and her mother would not be suspicious."
I think "overheard a big secret" is a pretty weird way to say "being the target of a rape".
"Is that really true?"
"Why on earth would we lie?"
"Blast! Perot tricked us!!"
"That means Lucia is in danger! Otto, I caused this terrible situation. I must take care of it."
"You must do what you feel is right. While in the pub, I also heard that Perot is heading to the Black Sea."
"Than you for telling us."
Well then, to the Black Sea we go. Istanbul is the biggest port near the Black Sea, so natually, we went there first.
We checked out several buildings in Istanbul, but found no trace of Perot.
The item shop here has some stuff for sale, but we already have all the useful ones anyway.
Maybe we should go check out other ports in the Black Sea.
To be honest, I didn't remember there was any port in the Black Sea other than Istanbul. There's not much of interest in the Black Sea, so I usually wouldn't explore here.
We looked in a few more ports, but still couldn't find Perot.
Turned out we actually got to Black Sea earlier than Perot. Perot is arriving only now.
Perot's fleet attacked us when our fleet got close to them.
All right, now. Remember when I said that I've never completed Catalina's story? This asshole is the reason for that.
Many years ago, when I was a mentally healthy elementary schooler rather than the mondblutist savescummer that I am now, my parents bought me a bootleg CD of UW2. After beating the game once as Otto, I decided I'll play Catalina next. I was pretty bad at the game back then, and I wasn't able to build up a powerful fleet in a short time like I did in this LP. So I mostly just fought small merchant fleets to build up my fame.
In that playthrough, I progressed in the story very quickly - too quickly, perhaps. I actually got to this point of the story before I could get enough money to buy Catalina some good equipment. Anyway, Otto told me about Perot's whereabouts, so I went to the Black Sea. But I didn't take my battleships with me; instead, I just headed to the Black Sea in a single small, fast ship. Why? I don't know. Probably because Perot acted like such a big pussy up to that point that I didn't expect to battle him at all. So, I went to Istanbul, looked all over the place for Perot to no avail, and spent a few days in Istanbul doing nothing. And when I eventually left Istanbul, I found Perot waiting for me just outside the port.
It was a quick battle. I wasn't prepared for a battle at all, so Perot easily crushed my fleet even though he's not that strong himself. I reloaded and tried to get away from Istanbul to retrive my battleships, but was unable to escape from Perot because he'd just attack me right after I left the port. After a few attempts I gave up. I then tried to defeat Perot's fleet with the few resource I had on my hand, but unfortunately my lone ship is too small to stand any chance against the enemy, and Catalina has shit equipment so duelling Perot personally is out of question. Worse yet, I'd just spent all my money on a new Venetian Galeass (which was still in construction in Venice), so I can't even buy a bigger ship at Istanbul's shipyard. Finally, I didn't have a backup save - my only save was the one where I'm being blockaded in Istanbul.
In other words, I got caught in an unwinnable situation.
I spent a few days frantically trying to salvage the save, but eventually gave up. Ever since then, I've developed a habit to always backup my save once in a while, while I'm playing a CRPG. I've also gone back to UW2 a few times, beating the game with different protagonists, but I never gathered the courage and motivation to replay Catalina's story... until now.
This isn't Catalina's vengeance. This is my vengeance.
Enough of this whining, though. Let's get back to business. This is Perot's flagship. Winning this fight is actually pretty piss easy as long as you don't make any spectularly retarded decisions as I did when I'm 10.
Perot pretty much didn't stand a chance.
We also got to seize some Galleons after the battle, not that it matters at this point.
"Bret Perot! What have you done to that girl?!"
"Ha, ha, ha! You'll never find her! She's probably on the far side of the world by now!"
"You'd better tell us what you've done, or I'll break every..."
"Even if you did defeat me here, there's no way you'll ever stop the Atlantean armies. They will conquer the world!"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Perot. But don't kid yourself. You're just a scurvy pirate, and you always will be."
"Even so, he said some pretty interesting things, wouldn't you say?"
With Perot finally taken care of, we returned to Istanbul to see if we could gather more information about this "Atlantean armies" thingy he was talking about.
Next time: Monstrous Bat doesn't take 3 months writing an update. Hopefully.
So we're back to Hamburg.
We invested some money again. This should be enough to get Hamburg's economy and industry up to 1000.
Our investment won't take effect until next month, though, so we went to the guild to see if there's any quest we can do to kill some time.
In the end, though, I decided to go on a tour around North Europe instead.
We dicked around Greenland for a while, discovering a port but no villages.
Also, we found Khayr's fleet parking near Iceland on our way back. I'm not quite sure what he is doing here.
The journey was long enough to give Catalina a level.
Hamburg's industry has been maxed out. Unfortunately, its economy is not.
This should be enough to bump its economy up to 1000 next month.
But while we're waiting for our investment to take effect, let's pay a visit to the shipyard. I think most of the things that I was going for has already been unlocked.
Now that Hamburg's industry has been maxed out, we can see some new ships that wasn't available before.
This is the Frigate. It's... not very good. It's better than the Galleon, but considerably worse than the Galeass.
And this is the Full-rigged Ship. It's the ultimate ship in the game. This ship is only unlocked at 1000 industry, and even then, only a selected few ports are able to build it. It's a lot larger than pretty much every other ship in the game. Unfortunately, it's also slow as hell. Obviously it would make an excellent battleship, but I still decided against building one, partly because it would be kind of overkill and partly because it's hard to come up with a name better than Feminism.
Maxing out a port's economy and industry capacities does more than unlocking a bunch of ships -- it also unlocks the ultimate figurehead and gun. Unfortunately these are only available if your commodore has maxed out luck, and in case you've forgotten, Catalina's luck had just taken a big hit from the ghost ship event. This should be easy to fix though.
We did the donation exploit again, and Catalina's luck was remaxed in no time.
Now the next step is a bit tedious. You have to go to the shipyard and ask about figureheads. There's a chance that you'll see the secret figureheads; if you aren't, try again until the shipyard worker tells you that they have a great selection today.
This is what we're looking for, the Angel figurehead. It does what the other figureheads do, but better. I mean I'm not even sure what does the other figureheads do but I'm pretty sure Angel does it better. Yeah.
Getting the port's economy and industry capacities high also unlocks this: the Carronade. It's the ultimate gun in the game, as powerful as the Cannon without the Cannon's shitty range. If you grind up your battle level, learn Gunnery, and install Carronades on your ships, you'll actually be able to sink enemy ships reasonably efficiently. Not that you would really want to do this, as sunken ships can't be sold at shipyards. Guns are so useless.
Earlier in this thread, Kattze mentioned that we could buy Frigates and Barges in Bristol. I don't remember much as to how to unlock these ships. We have already seen Frigates in Hamburg, but I didn't see any Barges. Maybe they're only available in Bristol.
So if we invested to improve the port's industry, we'd be able to buy ships that doesn't suck?
No, Istanbul - Athens is a much better trade route. You're so full of shit, market guy.
Right now the only ship available here is the Caravela Redonda. We invested another 50k coins at the shipyard in hopes that this will unlock some non-shitty ships.
Also, the item shop here sells Claymore, an A-rank weapon. It's pretty cheap for its power.
Also, Hamburg's industry is finally maxed out, so we can now purchase the ultimate figurehead:
The Goddess is the hardest figurehead to unlock, requiring maxed out economy and industry and maxed luck for your commodore. Its effect is also the most powerful of all figureheads.
I still don't know what the figureheads actually do.
We went to Bristol and invested again. It'll take a few months to get the port's industry up to 1000.
We went back to Seville to moor Qwinn and take out our battleships again.
Also, I changed Feminism's cargo capacity to make more room for the crew. We didn't really need so many guns anyway.
We hired some people into our fleet, then went back to Ceuta.
Turns out that Ceuta has decided to ally itself with Portugal again.
We solved the problem by investing at Ceuta again.
We spent a few days hiring crew before set sail.
Hmmm... It's Idin Leis. Now that Catalina is equipped with overpowered magical gears, maybe she'll actually stand a chance against Idin.
Well, let's try taking them on.
Ugh. I was hoping that our flagship would spawn near Idin's so that we could challenge him to a duel immediately, but apparently our luck wouldn't have it that way.
I ordered Kaiserin to run away, while Catalina waited for the enemy flagship to get closer.
Kaiserin ended up tanking a hit anyway, though it's nothing too serious.
Dammit, Idin's ship is parking just outside our melee range.
I guess we have no option other than charging right into the enemy formation, then.
Enemy gunfire knocked Feminism's durability down to 22 in a single turn, in addition to killing quite a few of her crew.
The good news is that Idin's flagship is finally in our melee range now.
If our opponent had focused fire on Feminism for another turn, we'd be dead now. The AI is dumb, however, and attacked us in melee instead of keeping shooting at Feminism.
Also, Idin challenged us to a duel when he has no real reason to. WTF. Well, in any case, if we want to win the battle, this is our chance.
The duel started well for Catalina, who managed to land several hits on Idin while blocking all his attacks.
Unfortunately, due to Idin's super high level, getting hit by him even once hurts like hell.
In the end, Catalina was unable to defeat Idin within ten turns, so the duel ended a draw.
However, thanks to the sheer stupidity of the AI, we managed to live yet another turn and got another chance to duel Idin.
Unfortunately, the duel wasn't going very well for Catalina.
Idin kept landing hits, while Catalina kept missing. Idin quickly turned the tide around and defeated Catalina in a few rounds.
...So our Spanish piratess is dead now.
Well, that sure went poorly. Let's try again.
During our second attempt at defeating Idin, I discovered something unexpected. Previously, I was telling Catalina to dodge every turn because I thought it would counter Idin's strongest attack, but it didn't work very well. This time, I told Catalina to block every turn, and this tactic is actually working really well, Catalina is blocking a lot of attacks and even when she fails to block, she doesn't take that much damage. Still, she was unable to win the duel in 10 turns.
A few turns later, the enemy ships suddenly started retreating. Turns out that we were killing more of their men than I thought we were, and their flagship's crew number is dangrously low. The AI is too stupid to realize that one more direct hit on Feminism is enough to sink her, so it decided to retreat.
I tried to take out the enemy flagship via regular meleeing. We were killing more than they were, but we're still losing the fight. I guess we had no option other than duelling Idin after all.
I... can't believe that actually worked. With a few lucky blocks, Catalina was actually able to defeat Idin!
We won the battle with 6 points of durablity and 12 crew left. To be honest, though, the retarded AI is the only reason we're able to win the battle at all.
Evidently, we can only seize enemy ships that were in our vision range when we won the battle. In this case, it's only Idin's flagship. Oh well.
Pretty much everyone on Feminism was killed during the previous battle. We could barely gather enough people to get our fleet back to Ceuta.
Catalina has gained a lot of experience from defeating Idin. At least I think she has.
Hmmm... Now that I think about it, that's a fine Galeass we've got. Maybe we shouldn't sell it.
Alright, we're keeping this ship for ourselves. We named it after the most distinctive feature of its former owner, and Andreas was appointed the captain of our new ship.
Oh, I almost forgot. We used some lumbers seized from Idin to repair Feminism.
Well, it's time to go out and murder some unfortunate bugger again. Hopefully against someone not ridiculously overpowered this time.
Yeah, this guy looks like an easy target.
Catalina beat him handily in a duel.
Note that our piracy fame is over 30,000 now.
I'm... not sure what we were doing in the screenshots above. I think we were dicking around the Iberian Peninsula looking for preys.
:yawn:
Also, there was a lot of wine on their ships. Yay, I guess?
The wine were worth about 10,000 coins. I suppose some extra money is always nice, but at this point we don't really have many things to spend it on.
We beat up some more weaklings,
And Catalina finally gained another battle level.
In addition to being hated by pretty much every country, Catalina is now pretty famous as a pirate. Fames cap out at 50k, so I think we can expect a progression in the story soon.
Have we signed contract with the wrong sponsor? Well, it no longer matters now.
Also, it's a new month, so we invested in Bristol again.
A surprising number of NPC fleets decided to show up near Bristol while we're dicking around to kill time. We murdered them all.
When December rolled around, we went to pour even more money into the shipyard in Bristol.
The shipyard now offers a respectable selection, including Galleons and Sloops.
Neither of them are of any use to use, though.
Industry here should be maxed out next month.
Now that our business in Bristol is concluded for the time being, we should go back to pirating around Ceuta again. A few days later, our old friend Khayr decided to show up.
Hmm. We were barely able to beat Idin, who was a bit weaker than Khayr. Still, I want to try our hands at beating Khayr as well..
We shall see about that.
Our tactic is the same as that we had used agained Idin: rush to the enemy flagship and duel their captain.
The enemy ships landed some nasty hits on Feminism, but that's to be expected.
I... don't really know what happened here. Catalina kept landing hits on Khayr while blocking just about every single counterattack.
Khayr was down before long.
I swear I didn't savescum here. It's just a complete fluke.
We did seize quite a few Galeasses, which is pretty sweet.
Said Khayr before
We can get much more fame from defeating a powerful pirate like Khayr than we do from beating up random dudes. Catalina is close to maxing out her piracy fame.
Catalina gained a large chunk of experience from besting Khayr in a duel as well.
Hmm, looking at Catalina's fame, I couldn't help feeling that we should have made some progress in the story long ago. Maybe we just have to visit the right building.
Well, no. I've checked every single building in Ceuta, but no special event occured.
Perhaps we need to visit a port that isn't located in Europe? I remember at least one special event that can't be triggered in European ports.
Nope. Nothing happening here.
We went to check Argin, but still didn't get any special event. Both Santa Cruz and Argin are allied with Portugal though, which may be the problem.
There happens to be a bank in Argin, where we deposited most of our cash.
We checked out another port, which is allied with Holland. Still no special events.
But then we went to Algiers and finally ran into the person we're looking for.
You were not supposed to get strangled by Andreas either, were you?
I like where this is going...
Totally not suspicious. Not at all.
No Emilio you're so full of shit. This totally is kidnapping.
So we're now kidnapping young barmaids for some shady Portuguese aristocrat and possibly-rapist? Wow. That's a new low, even for us.
Tell that to all the seafaring dudes we've murdered.
I don't think Perot had ever said anything about the nobleman being "young". Catalina is just making shit up here.
Well, that was easy. You'd think Lucia's mother would be able to recognize Catalina, but apparently our piratess is less famous than we'd thought.
Later, at the lodge...
Another hour later...
We arrived at Ceuta without any trouble.
Yeah, good luck not getting raped, girl.
At the pub:
Seriously, are you guy really THIS bad with criminology?
Immediately after leaving Ceuta, we found Idin's fleet parking nearby, doing nothing. I decided to fight him again for XP because hey, if we could beat him once, we should be able to do it again.
Before going into battle, I captured a screenshot of Catalina's character sheet so that we could know how much XP she could gain from besting Idin in a duel.
Let's go.
Our tactic is still the same as the last time: rush the flagship, duel the commodore and pray it works.
Unfortunately it didn't work very well. The duel ended in a stalemate.
On the next turn, the enemy ships sunk Feminism with a barrage of cannon fire.
Well, that went badly.
So let's do it again.
As you can see, the outcome of a duel can... kind of fluctuate at times.
We got to seize a lot of good stuff this time, including 4 galeasses.
Said Idin before
Seems like Catalina gained 490 points of experience from all the trouble. Not bad, but I was kind of expecting more. Oh well.
Later, when we hit the shipyard, I decided to reserve another one of Idin's Galeasses for our own use. I named the ship BlkBeard. You should be able to tell by now that I'm really good at naming our ships.
Goodbye Kaiserin, you have served us well. Now our fleet consists exclusively of Galeasses.
Oh, and I ordered all guns on BlkBeard to be removed to make more space for cargo.
Okay, now we're heading to Alexandria.
At the pub in Alexandria:
I think "overheard a big secret" is a pretty weird way to say "being the target of a rape".
Well then, to the Black Sea we go. Istanbul is the biggest port near the Black Sea, so natually, we went there first.
We checked out several buildings in Istanbul, but found no trace of Perot.
The item shop here has some stuff for sale, but we already have all the useful ones anyway.
Maybe we should go check out other ports in the Black Sea.
To be honest, I didn't remember there was any port in the Black Sea other than Istanbul. There's not much of interest in the Black Sea, so I usually wouldn't explore here.
We looked in a few more ports, but still couldn't find Perot.
Turned out we actually got to Black Sea earlier than Perot. Perot is arriving only now.
Perot's fleet attacked us when our fleet got close to them.
All right, now. Remember when I said that I've never completed Catalina's story? This asshole is the reason for that.
Many years ago, when I was a mentally healthy elementary schooler rather than the mondblutist savescummer that I am now, my parents bought me a bootleg CD of UW2. After beating the game once as Otto, I decided I'll play Catalina next. I was pretty bad at the game back then, and I wasn't able to build up a powerful fleet in a short time like I did in this LP. So I mostly just fought small merchant fleets to build up my fame.
In that playthrough, I progressed in the story very quickly - too quickly, perhaps. I actually got to this point of the story before I could get enough money to buy Catalina some good equipment. Anyway, Otto told me about Perot's whereabouts, so I went to the Black Sea. But I didn't take my battleships with me; instead, I just headed to the Black Sea in a single small, fast ship. Why? I don't know. Probably because Perot acted like such a big pussy up to that point that I didn't expect to battle him at all. So, I went to Istanbul, looked all over the place for Perot to no avail, and spent a few days in Istanbul doing nothing. And when I eventually left Istanbul, I found Perot waiting for me just outside the port.
It was a quick battle. I wasn't prepared for a battle at all, so Perot easily crushed my fleet even though he's not that strong himself. I reloaded and tried to get away from Istanbul to retrive my battleships, but was unable to escape from Perot because he'd just attack me right after I left the port. After a few attempts I gave up. I then tried to defeat Perot's fleet with the few resource I had on my hand, but unfortunately my lone ship is too small to stand any chance against the enemy, and Catalina has shit equipment so duelling Perot personally is out of question. Worse yet, I'd just spent all my money on a new Venetian Galeass (which was still in construction in Venice), so I can't even buy a bigger ship at Istanbul's shipyard. Finally, I didn't have a backup save - my only save was the one where I'm being blockaded in Istanbul.
In other words, I got caught in an unwinnable situation.
I spent a few days frantically trying to salvage the save, but eventually gave up. Ever since then, I've developed a habit to always backup my save once in a while, while I'm playing a CRPG. I've also gone back to UW2 a few times, beating the game with different protagonists, but I never gathered the courage and motivation to replay Catalina's story... until now.
This isn't Catalina's vengeance. This is my vengeance.
Enough of this whining, though. Let's get back to business. This is Perot's flagship. Winning this fight is actually pretty piss easy as long as you don't make any spectularly retarded decisions as I did when I'm 10.
Perot pretty much didn't stand a chance.
We also got to seize some Galleons after the battle, not that it matters at this point.
With Perot finally taken care of, we returned to Istanbul to see if we could gather more information about this "Atlantean armies" thingy he was talking about.
Next time: Monstrous Bat doesn't take 3 months writing an update. Hopefully.
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procrastinator
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Bros
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I need something
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Which is called
Monstrous Bat
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"A new page"
Where?
procrastinator
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Monstrous Bat
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The Truth?
We returned to the pub in Istanbul to see if we could trigger any more events, but no such luck.
Who gives shit, their fleet fall to Catalina as easily as everyone else's.
Seeing that there's nothing to be done in Istanbul, we sold the ships seized from Perot and returned to Ceuta.
Nothing happening here, either. We then went to Bristol to see if there's any good ship available.
Just as we were running out of supplies, we ran into this guy again. Catalina immediately ordered the men to attack.
Doria's level is actually almost as high as Idin, but for some reasons he seems much weaker in a duel.
Catalina defeated him without much trouble.
Good. We can stop worrying about supplies for a while. After we'd finished loading the food and water onto our fleet, Andreas started talking...
"Even so, it's too early to relax. We better watch out, so we don't get fooled again."
"They wouldn't have the nerve to do that to us."
"Well, you've got a point there."
"Have you loaded up all our spoils of victory?"
"Don't worry, it's all taken care of."
"Oh, Commodore, there was a navigator hiding in the main hold of the enemy's ship."
"Deal with him as you see fit."
"He says he knows something that may interest you."
"Then bring him here."
"Here's the lout."
"You, you're the female pirate, Catalina."
"And what of it?"
"I have some information you may find interesting. We can make a deal."
"No, thank you, I don't make deals. Andreas, take him away and dump him in the ocean with a sinker."
"Yes, ma'am."
"W, Wait, don't, please!"
"Then speak up. If your information is really useful, maybe I'll spare your life."
"I know where Joao is. He's at a port called Massawa in the Middle East, defending it from the Turkish forces. Some people think he's foolish to try and confront the Turkish power all by himself, but I think he's brave, a real hero. That's all I know."
"Andreas, take him away."
"Dump him into the sea?"
"Untie him and toss him gently overboard when land is in sight. He may survive, if he's lucky."
"Huh, you're a lucky guy. This is the first time the Commodore ever let a prisoner go."
I guess Catalina is basically Medival Hitler at this point.
"Emilio, direct the bow to the Middle East.
"Yes, ma'am."
"I didn't completely believe that lout, but I think we should head for Massawa and check things out anyway."
Sorry Vittorio, nobody cares about what you have to say.
It's apparent that our next destination is Massawa. One thing at a time, though. We've still got to check Bristol's shipyard.
Bristol's industry has been maxed out,
So we can finally purchase the Barge here:
The Barge... well, it's a fine ship, but it's slower and only slightly larger than the Galeass, so honestly, unlocking it is probably more trouble than its worth.
We're going to embark on another long journey, so we dropped most of our crew at the pub. We also didn't sell the Galleons seized from Vittorio so that we could use them to carry more supplies.
We also withdrew some of our money from the bank so that we would actually have money to buy supplies.
Finally, we went to Barcelona to stock up on balms. You really don't want to get caught in a storm without any balms.
In the end, we had to sell off one of the seized Galleons anyway, because we need a first mate with Celestial Navigation in order to use autosail and I can't be assed to manually sail all the way to Massawa.
No biggies, though. We can still last pretty long on the seas.
I actually intended to order Dante to sail to Cape Town, but I accidentally chose Timbuktu as our destination instead because I wasn't paying attention.
We got caught in a storm near the estuary of Niger River.
Good thing that we have plenty of Balms to spare.
Here I finally realized that we're not quite heading in the right direction and told Dante to go to Sofala instead.
As we got near the southern tip of Africa, another random event was triggered.
I'm not sure what's the effects of this event, or if it had any effects at all.
We stopped at Sofala to resupply. Many of our mates levelled.
Yet another random event struck our fleet in the Red Sea.
...Uhh. At least the game has the decency of telling us what exactly happened this time.
We're at our destination.
We can't leave Massawa once we're here. Emilio will stop us if we'd attempt to enter the harbor. Let's go check out the shipyard first - our ships need repair anyway.
"Of course, I do. He is our savior."
"Your savior?!"
"What else would you call a man who is trying to single-handedly save this port from the Turks?"
"That's unbelievable."
We had our ships repaired at the shipyard, then went to look for Joao elsewhere.
More random historical tidbits.
"Of course I have. He's the savior of our city."
"Where is he?"
"He went to the harbor."
"He's going to run away!"
"It took me a while to locate you, Joao."
"Blast! It's her again. Ye couldn't have picked a worse time, missie!"
"Shouldn't we ask about Lucia?"
"Lucia? Oh that girl from the pub in Lisbon. I'm sorry about what happened."
"So you were the one who kidnapped her!"
"It turned out that way. But we were tricked by a pirate who belonged to the gang we just destroyed. But an accidental kidnapping is nothing, compared to the vile deeds you have done."
"What a cold-blooded woman..."
"Tell me, is Lucia safe?"
"I don't know. I defeated all the pirates on board, but I didn't find her anywhere. But enough of this chitchat. Draw your sword! My time for revenge has come!"
"Sorry Catalina, but I don't have time to deal with you right now. I have to battle the Turks. So please let me pass. I don't know why you're after me, but I promise that after this battle, we will finally cross swords."
"Alright. I'll let you go this time."
"Commodore, do you believe what he says?"
"They're calling him the savior of the city. We'll see his true colors if he's acting up, and whether he can save this port or not. When you come back, I'll be your last match. Though I don't expect you'll make it back alive."
"Enough of your blather, pirate lady!"
"Don't bother, Rocco. It's no use saying anything to her. The fire of vengeance has burned away all traces of her compassion."
"Commodore Joao, just ignore her and let's go. We'll be back. And ye'll regret it, not us!"
Later...
"So you believe him, after all."
"No, I still don't trust him. The person I believe is Lucia."
"Lucia?"
"She said that Joao is kind and sincere. I wanted to see if that's true."
How it comes that now you know it's Joao she's talking about?
"Commodore, it's a bit late, but we can still make it to the battle."
"What?"
"I don't want to just wait here. The enemy has thousands. Why don't we show one of them what it really feels like to be attacked?"
Sounds like a plan.
Unfortunately, we didn't bring that many people along, and as a result we were only able to fully crew Feminism. It's technically possible for us to recruit a bunch of dudes at the pub, but with Massawa's economy it would to take forever. 340 crew on Feminism is probably enough, though. Other ships will just have to stay away from the fray.
After we left Massawa, a lone fleet dropped by. Turned out it's just some random Englishmen. We left them alone.
One day later, a much larger fleet appeared near Massawa.
Yes, this must be the Turkish fleet they were talking about. A battle broke out as we closed on the Turks.
"That's a Portuguese ship. It must be Joao's. Look, it's coming toward us!"
"Catalina, what are you doing here!"
"You were taking so long. I thought I'd come and help you get this over with. Don't get me wrong. I haven't forgiven you. It's just that I can't let anything interfere with my revenge. If anyone is going to defeat you, it's going to be me."
News to me. I thought we were just killing some Turks to quench our thirst for blood.
"I'll take care of this fleet. You concentrate on the enemy's flagship."
We ordered our convoys to flee, since Feminism can handle this alone. (Fun fact: the number of crew onboard only affects a ship's speed outside combat, which means a ship with only 1 man onboard would still be able to move at full speed in combat.)
Catalina dueled the enemy commodore and won easily.
Said Siddath before Catalina Pulverized him.
Later, back in Massawa, we learned that Joao too has already returned.
This is Massawa's palace. Unlike most other palaces in UW2, it's located in the western rather than northern part of the port.
"No way! It's too dangrous in the middle of all these enemies."
"Wait, no, Andreas. This is her problem, what's been tormenting her all this time. We have to let her get throught this on her own."
"Catalina, thank you for joining the battle. You were a big help. Now as I promised, shall we settle the score?"
"Catalina, may I ask you just one question?"
"What is it?"
"Why do you think Joao is your enemy?"
"I have witnesses to his family's wicked deed. On April 10, 1522, a Spanish Royal Navy fleet was set ablaze by a Portuguese fleet while it was resupplying at the port of Santo Domingo. The order of the attack came from none other than the Franco family. The main mast of the flag ship had a banner with the red cross of the Malta Knights, which is the Franco's family crest."
"Well, that's strange."
"What is? Who are you, anyway?"
"Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. I am Pietro Conti, an adventurer from Genoa. I said strange, because you said it was the Franco's private fleet. Joao, tell her the facts."
"You may not believe it, but in April of 1522, my family didn't have a private fleet. It's true that my father, Leon Franco, used to have a powerful fleet, but that was many years ago. Once he married my mother, he stopped sailing. He gave his fleet to the Portuguese Royal Navy. So the Francos didn't have have a fleet until I built one."
"Then who destroyed my brother and Hernan?"
"I don't know, though it may indeed have been someone from Portugal. But I can guarantee that the incident had nothing to do with the Francos."
"I don't know... I just don't know what to think. You may go now."
"I'll try to find out the truth, if I can. Your enemy has not only destroyed your brother and fiance, but blackened my family's name as well.
"Please, just go. This female pirate doesn't need pity from a Portuguese."
What, so you're just going to take his words for that? Not even some old-fashioned denial?
We tried to enter the palace again, but found it locked. This means that no more events can be triggered here for the time being.
We looked around Massawa for a while in an attempt to further advance in the story, to no avail. Looks like our bussiness here is concluded.
Catalina seems to be in a bit of a bad mood right now. Let's cheer her up by murdering a few hapless Italians!
The Italian commodore was a mundane man not worthy of any detailed description.
I was hoping that beating a fleet would trigger an special event like the last time, but alas, no such luck this time.
And the palace in Massawa is still locked.
I suppose it's time for us to return to Europe, then.
We sailed until we're almost out of supplies, at which point we stopped at Argin. Doing so earned Catalina another level.
When we went to the shipyard to repair our ships:
"Why yes, I am."
"A Turkish trader called Ali Vezas was looking for you."
"I've never heard of that name before."
"I heard that he is trying to recruit allied ports for Suleiman II the Magnificient of the Ottoman Empire. He doesn't like pubs, so he wants to meet you at the lodge."
We've just murdered a bunch of Turks, and now this Turkish merchant working for the Ottoman emperor is looking for us? Geez, I wonder what he's up to...
"A trader, humph... He must be a stingy annoying guy."
"Stop it, Andreas. Alright, I'll go see him."
Some more random scenry and helpful NPC.
"And what if I am?"
"My name is Ali Vezas. I'm a Turkish trader."
You're not fooling anyone, Andhaira.
"And?"
"An adventurer we both know, Pietro Conti, has asked me to find you."
"Ah yes, I have met him before."
"He needs to see you as soon as possible. But he's too busy to come and find you, so he wants you to go to him."
"Hmmm. I may stop by and see him, if I have the urge to do so."
"He's in Lisbon. Say hello to him, and tell him that I sent you."
"Lisbon... I don't have very good memories of that place."
Funnily, right after Ali finished his speech, a bunch of Portuguese attempted to mob Catalina.
She managed to get away though (presumbly through cutting down a few dozens of ruffians with her magical katana). To Lisbon we go, then.
"That's the residence of our Prime Minister, Leon Franco."
"What a gorgeous house! Of course, the Duke is wealthy."
"I'm concerned about being attacked by Commander Ezequiel. I'll go alone. Please go and wait for me on the ship."
"You men would be a burden on me if you came along."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Catalina Erantzo. I came to see Pietro Conti."
"Ah, so you are Catalina Erantzo. I've heard a lot about you from my son, Joao."
Uhhh. I hope he didn't mention anything about a girl named Lucia...
"Thank you very much for saving him."
"Is Pietro here?"
"Yes, just a moment, please."
"Hi, Catalina, I was waiting for you."
"Why are you looking for me?"
"Well, I'm going to tell you something you really want to know."
"There is nothing I want to know."
"What happened to your fire of vengeance?"
"I haven't forgotten about it. But, it's just so hard... I just don't know who is responsible."
"Do you want to know?"
"Do, do you know?"
"It's Marquis Martinez, from Portugal."
"You are not just making this up, are you?"
"Of course not. I have evidence. A live witness."
"Yes, I am the witness."
"You are...?"
"My name is Raul Franco. I am the father of Leon Franco, and the grandfather of Joao, whom you were chasing."
So you're testifying against the political opponent of your own son. Very convincing.
"But I thought you were dead! I heard that you were lost at sea over 20 years ago!"
"I was a prisoner for a long time, in an underground dungeon in Neo-Atlantis."
Yes - Raul Franco, the father of Duke Franco, is still alive! You've been told since UW1 that he's dead, but in fact he is not. He actually got captured by the Neo-Altanteans and spent the past 20 years in some South American shithole before Pietro rescued him in UW2. Actually, reuniting Raul and Leon is the ultimate goal in Pietro's story, so you could say that at this point in Catalina's story, Pietro has already "beaten the game".
"Neo-Atlantis?"
"Yes, Neo-Atlantis. There are some outrageous in this world who would do evil deeds. But do you know anything about Atlantis?"
"Atlantis, yes, Wasn't that a land of advanced culture and technology? But that's just a myth."
"That's why I said outrageous. There are people who are trying to make that fantasy world a reality. Of course it's just a fake, but they call themselves Atlanteans, and their man-made nation, Neo-Atlantis. The leader of that group is the Marquis Martinez. They've built a fortress in Amazon. They've enslaved the natives and are pretending to look for the ruins of Atlantis. Their scheme is to build a massive military force to control not only the Turks, but the entire world."
"It's outrageous."
"They're a bunch of fanatics! And, my brother..."
"Your brother Michael just ran into the wrong crowd. He found the Neo-Atlantis stronghold while on a scout mission. It's an obvious violation of Treaty of Tordesillas. He was on the way to report it when he was attacked."
"I see... Where is Martinez now?"
"He's probably in the Neo-Atlantis stronghold. But be careful. Their fortress is well defended."
"I also heard that Spain's Commander Ezequiel is still pursuing you."
"Don't worry. I can take care of Commander Ezequiel. Thank you both so much for telling me all this. I... I don't know how to thank you. I.. I must be going now..."
"Take care."
"Good luck."
And with that ends this rather lengthy conversation. Now that Catalina is no longer feuding the Francos, she can actually sign a contract with them. Yes, Duke Franco is another possible sponsor, though Catalina can't sign a contract with them before this point, and Joao can't sign a contract with them ever. Pietro, on the other hand, automatically gets in contract with the Francos shortly after starting out.
Also, Emilio would stop us if we tried to enter the pub in Lisbon now. Probably a good idea, given that Lucia's mother would likely be pretty mad at us.
Well, you've been doing this for as long as I have. Now all that is left is to follow the lead. To South America!
Next time: the endgame.
We returned to the pub in Istanbul to see if we could trigger any more events, but no such luck.
Who gives shit, their fleet fall to Catalina as easily as everyone else's.
Seeing that there's nothing to be done in Istanbul, we sold the ships seized from Perot and returned to Ceuta.
Nothing happening here, either. We then went to Bristol to see if there's any good ship available.
Just as we were running out of supplies, we ran into this guy again. Catalina immediately ordered the men to attack.
Doria's level is actually almost as high as Idin, but for some reasons he seems much weaker in a duel.
Catalina defeated him without much trouble.
Good. We can stop worrying about supplies for a while. After we'd finished loading the food and water onto our fleet, Andreas started talking...
I guess Catalina is basically Medival Hitler at this point.
Sorry Vittorio, nobody cares about what you have to say.
It's apparent that our next destination is Massawa. One thing at a time, though. We've still got to check Bristol's shipyard.
Bristol's industry has been maxed out,
So we can finally purchase the Barge here:
The Barge... well, it's a fine ship, but it's slower and only slightly larger than the Galeass, so honestly, unlocking it is probably more trouble than its worth.
We're going to embark on another long journey, so we dropped most of our crew at the pub. We also didn't sell the Galleons seized from Vittorio so that we could use them to carry more supplies.
We also withdrew some of our money from the bank so that we would actually have money to buy supplies.
Finally, we went to Barcelona to stock up on balms. You really don't want to get caught in a storm without any balms.
In the end, we had to sell off one of the seized Galleons anyway, because we need a first mate with Celestial Navigation in order to use autosail and I can't be assed to manually sail all the way to Massawa.
No biggies, though. We can still last pretty long on the seas.
I actually intended to order Dante to sail to Cape Town, but I accidentally chose Timbuktu as our destination instead because I wasn't paying attention.
We got caught in a storm near the estuary of Niger River.
Good thing that we have plenty of Balms to spare.
Here I finally realized that we're not quite heading in the right direction and told Dante to go to Sofala instead.
As we got near the southern tip of Africa, another random event was triggered.
I'm not sure what's the effects of this event, or if it had any effects at all.
We stopped at Sofala to resupply. Many of our mates levelled.
Yet another random event struck our fleet in the Red Sea.
...Uhh. At least the game has the decency of telling us what exactly happened this time.
We're at our destination.
We can't leave Massawa once we're here. Emilio will stop us if we'd attempt to enter the harbor. Let's go check out the shipyard first - our ships need repair anyway.
We had our ships repaired at the shipyard, then went to look for Joao elsewhere.
More random historical tidbits.
Later...
How it comes that now you know it's Joao she's talking about?
Sounds like a plan.
Unfortunately, we didn't bring that many people along, and as a result we were only able to fully crew Feminism. It's technically possible for us to recruit a bunch of dudes at the pub, but with Massawa's economy it would to take forever. 340 crew on Feminism is probably enough, though. Other ships will just have to stay away from the fray.
After we left Massawa, a lone fleet dropped by. Turned out it's just some random Englishmen. We left them alone.
One day later, a much larger fleet appeared near Massawa.
Yes, this must be the Turkish fleet they were talking about. A battle broke out as we closed on the Turks.
News to me. I thought we were just killing some Turks to quench our thirst for blood.
We ordered our convoys to flee, since Feminism can handle this alone. (Fun fact: the number of crew onboard only affects a ship's speed outside combat, which means a ship with only 1 man onboard would still be able to move at full speed in combat.)
Catalina dueled the enemy commodore and won easily.
Said Siddath before Catalina Pulverized him.
Later, back in Massawa, we learned that Joao too has already returned.
This is Massawa's palace. Unlike most other palaces in UW2, it's located in the western rather than northern part of the port.
What, so you're just going to take his words for that? Not even some old-fashioned denial?
We tried to enter the palace again, but found it locked. This means that no more events can be triggered here for the time being.
We looked around Massawa for a while in an attempt to further advance in the story, to no avail. Looks like our bussiness here is concluded.
Catalina seems to be in a bit of a bad mood right now. Let's cheer her up by murdering a few hapless Italians!
The Italian commodore was a mundane man not worthy of any detailed description.
I was hoping that beating a fleet would trigger an special event like the last time, but alas, no such luck this time.
And the palace in Massawa is still locked.
I suppose it's time for us to return to Europe, then.
We sailed until we're almost out of supplies, at which point we stopped at Argin. Doing so earned Catalina another level.
When we went to the shipyard to repair our ships:
We've just murdered a bunch of Turks, and now this Turkish merchant working for the Ottoman emperor is looking for us? Geez, I wonder what he's up to...
Some more random scenry and helpful NPC.
You're not fooling anyone, Andhaira.
Funnily, right after Ali finished his speech, a bunch of Portuguese attempted to mob Catalina.
She managed to get away though (presumbly through cutting down a few dozens of ruffians with her magical katana). To Lisbon we go, then.
"You men would be a burden on me if you came along."
Uhhh. I hope he didn't mention anything about a girl named Lucia...
So you're testifying against the political opponent of your own son. Very convincing.
Yes - Raul Franco, the father of Duke Franco, is still alive! You've been told since UW1 that he's dead, but in fact he is not. He actually got captured by the Neo-Altanteans and spent the past 20 years in some South American shithole before Pietro rescued him in UW2. Actually, reuniting Raul and Leon is the ultimate goal in Pietro's story, so you could say that at this point in Catalina's story, Pietro has already "beaten the game".
And with that ends this rather lengthy conversation. Now that Catalina is no longer feuding the Francos, she can actually sign a contract with them. Yes, Duke Franco is another possible sponsor, though Catalina can't sign a contract with them before this point, and Joao can't sign a contract with them ever. Pietro, on the other hand, automatically gets in contract with the Francos shortly after starting out.
Also, Emilio would stop us if we tried to enter the pub in Lisbon now. Probably a good idea, given that Lucia's mother would likely be pretty mad at us.
Well, you've been doing this for as long as I have. Now all that is left is to follow the lead. To South America!
Next time: the endgame.
Monstrous Bat
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2011
- Messages
- 638
I prefer to think that Koei just cannot into writing. In my experience, Koei games are best when they aren't trying to shove some emotionally engaging deep story down your throat. I think Otto's story has better writing than the others, but that may just be 11-year-old me having terrible taste.
Monstrous Bat
Cipher
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2011
- Messages
- 638
Grand Finale: Betrayal at Kayenne
When we last left, I ordered our fleet to sail for Cayenne. A few minutes later, I suddenly realized that the fleet is actually heading towards the Arctic Ocean for some reasons. Yes, autosail sometimes screw up like that. I reloaded and guided the fleet to South America manually.
Huh... those two fleets seem to be following us. What are they up to?
Turns out they're battle fleets from Spain. I suppose they're the Spanish pursuers Pietro warned us about.
Indeed, they're clearing going after us. Unfortunately our fleet is still undercrewed, but Feminism should be able to handle this alone.
Hugo Montoya's fleet caught up with us first.
We're given three options here: Fight, Flee or Surrender. These are also the options you would be presented with if you're attacked by pirates. Flee has a chance of failing, and even if you succeed, the enemy will probably just attack you again right away, so fleeing is rather pointless unless your fleet is faster than the enemy's. Surrender does what it says on the tin: the enemy will take most of your cash and all your goods, but you get to keep your live, your ships and a few thousand coins. We're going to fight them this time.
Our tactic is the same as ever. I ordered all other ships to flee while Feminism rushes the enemy flagship. Unfortunately, Hugo's flagship was always just outside our movement range.
It took us a few turns to get close to the enemy flagship, and Catalina was blocked by enemy crew when she tried to duel Hugo. Things are looking pretty grim.
One turn later, Feminism is almost sank. Catalina desperately attempted to get to Hugo for one last time.
Surprisingly, she succeeded this time!
Hugo's fleet may be stronger, but he had no chance of besting Catalina in a duel. We narrowly avoided a defeat, but that was way too close for pleasure. I got kind of overconfident there.
And we've still got to fight another Spanish fleet!
Feminism immediately charged the enemy flagship in an attempt to duel their commodore, but failed.
Thankfully, Hernan's level is a lot lower than Hugo's, so his guns deal less damage as well. That combined with the stupid AI enabled us to live another turn, and Catalina successfully dragged Hernan into a duel this time.
Phew! We have won. Seems like there's only two Spanish fleets chasing us.
Many of our crew was slain during the previous battles. We don't even have enough crew for our ships, leaving some of the ships sailing at a slower speed than normal.
I had Feminism repaired as soon as we got close to land.
We then started going down the coastline of South America, drifting at a very slow speed thanks to being undercrewed. We eventually reached the port of Pernambuco after a long while.
I can't like the sound of that, Emilio, but I suppose we don't have any other options.
We invested money to improve the port's economy (to make the process of recruiting crew less mind-numbingly tedious), then went to the lodge and immediately triggered an event.
"The people fighting against the pirates are Joao and Rocco!"
"Rocco? Then we have nothing to worry about."
"Let's hide here and watch. We can surprise them if Joao and Rocco get into trouble."
"Arrgghh! How many men do I need to defeat?! Blast! This can't be!"
"Rocco, what's the matter?"
"I'm sorry, Commodore. Lucia was taken as a hostage."
"It's alright, Joao. Go without me!"
"Now, drop your sword and line up there."
"We have no choice. Do as you like."
"Ha, ha, what a fool."
BUT SUDDENLY!
"Joao, I'll take care of these hoodlums, so grab Lucia and get out of here!"
"Thanks Catalina, I owe you one!"
You get one guess as to how many turns this guy lasted.
At the harbor...
"I'll get Martinez for this. I swear it."
"No you won't! That's my job!"
You heard that, Joao. She's not even going to deny it.
"Catalina, you're safe! But what are you doing here in South America?"
"I found my true enemy - Marquis Martinez. He's the one who sank my brother's ship."
"What?!"
"While Michael was on a mission to explore the New World, he discovered the Portuguese scheme of Neo-Atlantis. By the Treaty of Tordesillas, the land west of 46°W longitude is Spanish territory. The Neo-Atlantis project is a serious violation of that treaty."
"So Martinez had your brother's mouth shut before the scheme was uncovered in Europe. A devious plan."
"I know where Martinez is, but it's a fortress. A normal approach won't work. Besides, I have one more problem."
"Commander Ezequiel of the 'Invincible Spanish Fleet,' right?"
"Exactly. Rumor has it he's still after me and is somewhere in the vicinity."
"It seems our chances of victory are pretty slim. But there is one way we can succeed."
"What is it?"
"If we tell Commander Ezequiel about Neo-Atlantis, maybe he'll help us."
"What? That's impossible! I'm wanted by the Spanish Navy and you're from Portugal, his sworn enemy."
"Well, it won't work if we don't try. We don't have any other choice."
"I suppose you're right. Actually, I'm tired of battling my own country. I've been thinking about surrendering."
what
The item shop in this port actually has a pretty badass sword for sale.
The Rune Blade is another ☆-ranked weapon. I've no idea how powerful it is, but I doubt it'd be much better than the Magic Muramasa.
:ehue:
We spent a few days in Pernambuco recruiting men. This took quite a while thanks to the low economy capacity, but eventually we got our headcount back to a respectable level again.
Time to leave.
Immediately after leaving Pernambuco, we got attacked by Commander Ezequiel's fleets!
"Wait, I'd like to talk to Commander Ezequiel!"
"I am Commander Ezequiel."
"I am Joao Franco, the son of Duke Franco in Portugal. I have no desire to fight you. I was looking for you because I need your help."
"We don't want to fight either, but we have an urgent task. It's my duty to arrest that pirate. I will hear you out after I have dealt with her."
"Wait, Commander. I'm surrendering."
"What?!"
"So please listen to the Portuguese gentleman. Please... Commander."
"Alright. As a matter of gentlemen's courtesy, I'll listen to you."
"This is rather embarrassing, but I must tell you about an internal rivalry that is threatening the stability of Portugal. Two factions split the land- the Francos lead the liberal reformists, and Marquis Martinez leads the conservative nobility."
What, so we're supporting liberals now? Is being a nefarious pirate who murder people in hundreds not evil enough for you?
"The members of the Francos family are not wealthy aristocrats, but they have earned the King's trust and popular support. The Martinez supporters are not happy about it and have come up with an outrageous scheme. The have built a replica of Atlantis in South America, deep in the forest. They have formed a navy of the worst pirates around and plan to being attacking the nations of the world. They call their stronghold Neo-Atlantis. And their goal is the subjugation of the entire world!"
"The Neo-Atlantis stronghold is located on the Amazon river. My brother Michael found this and was silenced by Martinez before he could report it."
"It may be that this is the Neo-Atlantis of which you speak. If so, we can't ignore the facts. You shall have my assistance. I will fight with you, for all of Iberia."
"Thank you very much. We'll lead the way, so please follow us."
And then a bunch of friendly fleets started to follow us around. Oh, and apparently Catalina didn't actually surrender. I don't know either.
Among our new allies (?) are the two guys we had just beaten two months ago, as well as Joao himself.
Joao actually brought some fairly badass ships with him.
As we headed north to the Amazon river, we ran into a whole lotta of strange ships.
This one is apparently captained by the dude who had been cut down in the pub in Pernambuco earlier.
There's also this Turk commanding a bunch of Galeasses, and some other dudes of whom I didn't bother taking a screenshot. I suppose this is the Neo-Atlantean navy they've been taking about? They don't seem to be going after us, though.
Oh, nevermind. Now they are.
Apparently the enemy fleets can't actually catch up with us. We eventually decided to turn to face the enemy, though.
Of all the Neo-Atlantean fleets, this one was the closest to us. But we ended up fighting someone else for some odd reasons.
Of course, we didn't forget to assign all the crew on Feminism to combat duty before engaging.
"Our fleet will take care of the enemy's fortress. I'll leave you the rest."
I don't see any fortress.
"Joao, please let me confront Martinez."
"Of course! It's finally your chance for revenge. Meanwhile, I'll take care of the rest of the fleet."
Time for the anticlimatic final battle!
Here's the bio of the enemy commodore. He's quite competent, but Catalina has vanquished greater foes.
Unfortunately for Mohammed, the fleet he commands is a pretty shitty one. The best ship he has is a Galleon, and he doesn't even have 10 of them. If he commanded a fleet of 10 Galeasses like the other Neo-Atlantean commodores, he might actually provide a challenge. As it stands the final battle is more of a joke than anything.
Since Mohammed's flagship has less crew than Feminism, Catalina could just go ahead and duel him.
Thanks to his nice equipment and some lucky dodges, Mohammed actually survived his first duel with Catalina.
But that did not help him much. His convoy ships dealt very little damage to Feminism with their gunfire, and on the next turn Catalina challenged him to a duel again.
Mohammed started out with as many HP as he had at the end of the last duel. Which is to say way too little.
Poor guy. I almost felt sorry for him.
Apparently, defeating that one fleet was all that Catalina had to do. While Mohammed fell to Catalina's sword, Martinez was busy getting burnt to death.
"And Commander Ezequiel blew up the entire fortress! The Spanish Fleet is truly invincible."
Just wait till Otto kicks his ass.
"Commodore, we have contact from Commander Ezequiel's fleet. It's sending a flag signal."
"What does the signal say?
"'Congratulations on your victory. We'll meet again for our rematch."
"Meet again for our rematch... Next time we'll be enemies."
Wait I thought we were surrendering?
"How shall we respond?"
"I have an idea. How about this? 'It's easy to destroy you completely, but I'll let you go to maintain our relationship. If you want your life, leave your gold and cargo.' What do you think?"
"We should make sure we're a good distance away if you really want to send that message."
"That's true, Commodore. Ha, ha."
You're a worse comedian than I am, Andreas.
I've got the feeling that I don't want to know what's Catalina's idea of a "happy life".
Also, the "rematch" with Commander Ezequiel never happened because he got murderized by Otto. Go figure.
Catalina's ending (Note: the video is from the SNES version, which may be quite different from the PC version I'm playing)
Again, for the sensible people who don't watch videos in LPs, I've screenshotted the ending sequence for you:
Good thing for you, I guess.
Alright, the LP's over. Time to go home, kids.
...
You know what? That ending sucked balls. I have a better idea.
That Martinez dude and his shitty nation is doomed to fail anyway. Catalina would just degrade herself by deigning to fight that bunch of retardos. She could do something that would cause much more butthurt.
Eat our sword, liburul kid
"I didn't expect to fight him here, but then I do have a bit of a grudge against him."
"But he's completely off guard. I can't believe you would pull such a dirty trick! My style must be rubbing off on you, eh?"
"There isn't any deep meaning to this. I was just testing to see what would happen if I attacked Joao now."
"May I give you a piece of advice?"
"Sure, what is it?"
Joao is right, BTW - if we attacked Joao here, the Neo-Atlantean fleets will never show up, rendering the game unwinnable, so we'll never see the ending.
Nothing of value was lost.
Defeating Joao is trivially easy at this point. He's at a lower level than many commodores Catalina has defeated.
After slaying Joao with her own hands, Catalina returned to Europe and continued to terrorize the Mediterranean waters. While she never forgot how she was fooled into "accidentally kidnapping" Lucia for some rapist, she was able to move on and lead a happy life.
And if you ask me, I'd say that's a much better ending.
When we last left, I ordered our fleet to sail for Cayenne. A few minutes later, I suddenly realized that the fleet is actually heading towards the Arctic Ocean for some reasons. Yes, autosail sometimes screw up like that. I reloaded and guided the fleet to South America manually.
Huh... those two fleets seem to be following us. What are they up to?
Turns out they're battle fleets from Spain. I suppose they're the Spanish pursuers Pietro warned us about.
Indeed, they're clearing going after us. Unfortunately our fleet is still undercrewed, but Feminism should be able to handle this alone.
Hugo Montoya's fleet caught up with us first.
We're given three options here: Fight, Flee or Surrender. These are also the options you would be presented with if you're attacked by pirates. Flee has a chance of failing, and even if you succeed, the enemy will probably just attack you again right away, so fleeing is rather pointless unless your fleet is faster than the enemy's. Surrender does what it says on the tin: the enemy will take most of your cash and all your goods, but you get to keep your live, your ships and a few thousand coins. We're going to fight them this time.
Our tactic is the same as ever. I ordered all other ships to flee while Feminism rushes the enemy flagship. Unfortunately, Hugo's flagship was always just outside our movement range.
It took us a few turns to get close to the enemy flagship, and Catalina was blocked by enemy crew when she tried to duel Hugo. Things are looking pretty grim.
One turn later, Feminism is almost sank. Catalina desperately attempted to get to Hugo for one last time.
Surprisingly, she succeeded this time!
Hugo's fleet may be stronger, but he had no chance of besting Catalina in a duel. We narrowly avoided a defeat, but that was way too close for pleasure. I got kind of overconfident there.
And we've still got to fight another Spanish fleet!
Feminism immediately charged the enemy flagship in an attempt to duel their commodore, but failed.
Thankfully, Hernan's level is a lot lower than Hugo's, so his guns deal less damage as well. That combined with the stupid AI enabled us to live another turn, and Catalina successfully dragged Hernan into a duel this time.
Phew! We have won. Seems like there's only two Spanish fleets chasing us.
Many of our crew was slain during the previous battles. We don't even have enough crew for our ships, leaving some of the ships sailing at a slower speed than normal.
I had Feminism repaired as soon as we got close to land.
We then started going down the coastline of South America, drifting at a very slow speed thanks to being undercrewed. We eventually reached the port of Pernambuco after a long while.
I can't like the sound of that, Emilio, but I suppose we don't have any other options.
We invested money to improve the port's economy (to make the process of recruiting crew less mind-numbingly tedious), then went to the lodge and immediately triggered an event.
BUT SUDDENLY!
You get one guess as to how many turns this guy lasted.
At the harbor...
You heard that, Joao. She's not even going to deny it.
what
The item shop in this port actually has a pretty badass sword for sale.
The Rune Blade is another ☆-ranked weapon. I've no idea how powerful it is, but I doubt it'd be much better than the Magic Muramasa.
:ehue:
We spent a few days in Pernambuco recruiting men. This took quite a while thanks to the low economy capacity, but eventually we got our headcount back to a respectable level again.
Time to leave.
Immediately after leaving Pernambuco, we got attacked by Commander Ezequiel's fleets!
What, so we're supporting liberals now? Is being a nefarious pirate who murder people in hundreds not evil enough for you?
And then a bunch of friendly fleets started to follow us around. Oh, and apparently Catalina didn't actually surrender. I don't know either.
Among our new allies (?) are the two guys we had just beaten two months ago, as well as Joao himself.
Joao actually brought some fairly badass ships with him.
As we headed north to the Amazon river, we ran into a whole lotta of strange ships.
This one is apparently captained by the dude who had been cut down in the pub in Pernambuco earlier.
There's also this Turk commanding a bunch of Galeasses, and some other dudes of whom I didn't bother taking a screenshot. I suppose this is the Neo-Atlantean navy they've been taking about? They don't seem to be going after us, though.
Oh, nevermind. Now they are.
Apparently the enemy fleets can't actually catch up with us. We eventually decided to turn to face the enemy, though.
Of all the Neo-Atlantean fleets, this one was the closest to us. But we ended up fighting someone else for some odd reasons.
Of course, we didn't forget to assign all the crew on Feminism to combat duty before engaging.
I don't see any fortress.
Time for the anticlimatic final battle!
Here's the bio of the enemy commodore. He's quite competent, but Catalina has vanquished greater foes.
Unfortunately for Mohammed, the fleet he commands is a pretty shitty one. The best ship he has is a Galleon, and he doesn't even have 10 of them. If he commanded a fleet of 10 Galeasses like the other Neo-Atlantean commodores, he might actually provide a challenge. As it stands the final battle is more of a joke than anything.
Since Mohammed's flagship has less crew than Feminism, Catalina could just go ahead and duel him.
Thanks to his nice equipment and some lucky dodges, Mohammed actually survived his first duel with Catalina.
But that did not help him much. His convoy ships dealt very little damage to Feminism with their gunfire, and on the next turn Catalina challenged him to a duel again.
Mohammed started out with as many HP as he had at the end of the last duel. Which is to say way too little.
Poor guy. I almost felt sorry for him.
Apparently, defeating that one fleet was all that Catalina had to do. While Mohammed fell to Catalina's sword, Martinez was busy getting burnt to death.
Just wait till Otto kicks his ass.
Wait I thought we were surrendering?
You're a worse comedian than I am, Andreas.
I've got the feeling that I don't want to know what's Catalina's idea of a "happy life".
Also, the "rematch" with Commander Ezequiel never happened because he got murderized by Otto. Go figure.
Catalina's ending (Note: the video is from the SNES version, which may be quite different from the PC version I'm playing)
Again, for the sensible people who don't watch videos in LPs, I've screenshotted the ending sequence for you:
Good thing for you, I guess.
Alright, the LP's over. Time to go home, kids.
...
You know what? That ending sucked balls. I have a better idea.
That Martinez dude and his shitty nation is doomed to fail anyway. Catalina would just degrade herself by deigning to fight that bunch of retardos. She could do something that would cause much more butthurt.
Eat our sword, liburul kid
Joao is right, BTW - if we attacked Joao here, the Neo-Atlantean fleets will never show up, rendering the game unwinnable, so we'll never see the ending.
Nothing of value was lost.
Defeating Joao is trivially easy at this point. He's at a lower level than many commodores Catalina has defeated.
After slaying Joao with her own hands, Catalina returned to Europe and continued to terrorize the Mediterranean waters. While she never forgot how she was fooled into "accidentally kidnapping" Lucia for some rapist, she was able to move on and lead a happy life.
And if you ask me, I'd say that's a much better ending.
procrastinator
Arcane
- Joined
- May 10, 2011
- Messages
- 1,059
For a moment it looked like the guy would turn into his True Final Neo-Atlantean fire elemental form.
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