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#4072
The following formula calculates the minimum amount of gold required for a crew to have a certain morale level:
G = R * (20 + C – 19*K) * M – 500
G = total amount of gold on your shipsC = crew sizeK = 0 if you don't have the Cook specialist, 1 if you doM = morale rating; 1 = Unhappy, 2 = Content, 3 = Happy, 4 = Very HappyIt bears restating, as I've claimed the opposite in earlier versions of the
guide, that G is the amount of gold in your hold as shown in the bottom left corner of the screen when you're on the world map. It does NOT matter how much of this gold will go to the crew when you divide up the plunder, and what %
goes to you (as affected by the difficulty level). I thought the crew cared. They do not.R is a calculation of its own:R = (int((T-D) / 2) ^ 2 ) – 4*I)T = total months of expeditionD = difficulty level: 4 = Apprentice, 3 = Journeyman, 2 = Adventurer,
1 = Rogue, 0 = SwashbucklerI = 2 if you have the Concertina, 1 if you have the 3-Stringed Fiddle only, 0 if you have neitherFurthermore, R is capped at 999.What does this all mean? Depending on all the factors in the calculation –
whether or not you have a Cook, 3-Stringed Fiddle and/or Concertina, difficulty level, and how long you've been sailing, it is possible to calculate how much gold it takes to reach a specific morale level. For example, let's assume an
Adventurer level game, crew of 100, with the Cook and both items available, and we've been sailing for 24 months. First we calculate R:R = (int((24 – 2) / 2) ^ 2) – 4*2 = (11^2) – 4*2 = 121 – 8 = 113
Now to plug that and the values for C (100) and K (1, for the Cook) in the main calculation:G = 113 * (20 + 100 – 19) * M – 500 = 113 * 101 * M – 500 = 11413M – 500Now if we plug in the values for each morale rank, we can determine the exact
amounts of gold needed for certain morale levels.The crew will be very happy if G is at least:G = 11413 * 4 – 500 = 45152They would be at unhappy if G is at least:G = 11413 * 4 – 500 = 10913
If after two years, this crew would have less than 10913 in their holds, they'd be mutinous.So what's this about a rule of thumb that 1000 gold per crew member is enough to keep them happy forever? This is where R being capped at 999 comes in. The
longer you sail, the higher T becomes and thus the higher the value for R, but at 999, it no longer matters how many months you sail, so it's essentially a worst case scenario. Let's say we haven't sailed for 24 months but for 10 years
(120 months) in the previous example:R = (int((120 – 2) / 2) ^ 2 – 4*2 = (59^2) – 4*2 = 3481 – 8 = 3473R now gets reduced to its cap of 999. Moving on to G:G = 999 * 101 * M – 500
= 100899M – 500So now, for our crew to be at least Unhappy (M = 1) so they will not mutiny, we're looking at:G = 100899 – 500 = 100399Dividing this by 100 to get to the gold per crew member, we come to 1004 gold;
very close to the 1000 gold often used as a rule of thumb. Similarly, the values for being Content and Happy come to roughly 2000 and 3000. The values get skewed somewhat for very small crews, but they work well enough in all
other cases.Perhaps more interestingly, what does this tell us about what the Cook, the special items, and the difficulty level do, exactly?1. The (20 + C-19*K) calculation comes to [crew size + 1] when you have a cook.
Combined with the maximum of 999 R, this result in the "almost but not quite" 1000 gold per crew member needed for each morale level, further corrected by the 500 that's subtracted at the end. Without a cook, it is as if we have 19
more crew members than we do. At this point 100000 gold (roughly) would be needed for 81 crew members already. Put differently, with a crew of 100, the cook is letting us get away with about 20% more crew or 20% less gold,
depending on how you want to look at it. However, since 19 is a fixed number, this percentage only holds true for crews of 100 – the cook's impact is absolute. On larger crews, the relative benefit is lower and on smaller crews
it is larger.2. The 3-Stringed Fiddle and the Concertina do exactly the same thing (with the Concertina being cumulative and thus doubling the effect). They lower the value of R by a flat 4 or 8. Since R is an exponential value, this means that their
relative benefit drops rapidly the longer an expedition lasts, at some point disappearing entirely when they fail to reduce R below 999.3. From the formula for R it is possible to derive the moment at which it
exceeds 999, whether or not you have the special items; this is the number of months at which your crew's demands for gold stop increasing. The moment, in other words, where the "1000 gold per crew member" estimate comes into play.
Due to the position of D in the calculation for R, this varies per difficulty level, but only slightly. On Apprentice, the R cap is hit at 68 months, and at each higher difficulty level it happens one month earlier, for 64 months on
Swashbuckler. Therefore you have about five and a half years since the last time you divided the plunder before you really need 1000 gold per crew member, and after that, you can sail for as long as you like without ever seeing a
mutiny.4. Perhaps most surprisingly, nowhere in the calculation do we find the Quartermaster. Maybe he does something else – perhaps has an impact on what actually happens when your crew has fallen to Mutinous status – but he does not
factor into your crew's morale, and is not equivalent to the Cook as I always thought.