Really major sailing bug

[Isildor Ravenclaw]

Today I sailed from Alexandria to Rome in a Phoenecian Trireme (speed of 14mph) via the Grain Route (distance of 435 miles) and arrived instantly, ie: only used one turn. I know when sailing one turn is one day of sailing, but travelling this quickly doesn't seem reasonable.

Even if I assume a ship travels 24 hours in a single turn, then I would expect to have travelled at most 336 miles in a turn. Unless you're factoring in really strong tail winds to push speed above 18mph, or else that my being a level 14 sailor helps significantly, then this isn't really plausible and I figured this was a bug.

I didn't wish to be seen to be profiting from a bug so I sailed back to Alexandria (took 2 turns) without selling my goods, and just continued game play as normal on land only.

If these sort of travel times are actually intentional I think it would be wise to readjust this. Otherwise we'll be seeing players zipping about the Mediterranean making millions of coins in profit in the space of an extremely small amount of turns, and the game will become ship dominated, so much so that players who own ships will have a ridiculously large advantage over those that don't.

If we look at the Grain Route I travelled today, Alexandria has 22,870 salt, weighing 137,220lb total. With a Trireme, it would take 17 trips to take all this to Rome, using a total of 51 turns if my travels today are anything to go by. Salt sells for 377 coins each in Rome, and is bought for 113 coins each in Alexandria. This means all this salt would result in a profit of 6,037,680 coins, excluding customs taxes (perhaps 5% less if we include them). And that's assuming the ship travels back to Alexandria empty. If it takes 212 ornamental weapons on each return journey (bought for 1442 coins each, sold for 3381 coins each), then they would make a profit of 6,988,156 coins on the weapons.

So to summarise, in 51 turns, travelling along the Grain Route with a Phoenecian Trireme, a player could make around 12 million coins in profit. Assuming there's other similar trails around, a basic account which gets 200 turns per day could make around 50 million coins in profit per day. There isn't a single terrestrial trail that could get profits even in the same league as that.

If this isn't a bug, it should be.



And now for some minor issues:

Crafting and such, which is meant to happen whenever I sail for a turn in much the same way as when I camp, did not happen.

When trying to travel along the Phoenician Trading Route #2 between Alexandria and Cyrene, I instead travelled along the overland route, The Gold Road. *edit* This seems to also be occurring on every sailing route that has a direct overland route between the same two cities the sailing route runs between.

Whenever I try to travel without animals, with the intention of travelling by ship, the game tells me I can't travel without animals. So far to get around this I purchase a mule before I leave in a ship, but this takes up space in the ship and seems a bit pointless if I intend to solely trade by ship for a while.

The sea route between Sparta and Salona is actually called Athens to Salona.

There is no Phoenician Trading Route #3, even though there's a #1, #2 and #4.

There's a spelling error in the name of the Segistica to Salona route. It should be Segestica to Salona.

[Isildor Ravenclaw]

Considering how long it's been I'm going to assume that either this has since been fixed, or else it's not a bug and it's not going to be fixed, so either way it's ok for me to use ships. If this is a false assumption on my part then I apologise in advance and hope I haven't damaged anything, but I'd really like to try out my ships now.

[Isildor Ravenclaw]

Just another issue related to ship routes:

I was on a ship route between Antioch and Ephesus performing a bandit quest and when I encountered some bandits I got this message:

[Hidden]

[Isildor Ravenclaw]