How much your king matters

[Niccolomachiavelli]

Just to illustrate just how important it is that your King be connected by water to your overseas kingdom:

I am playing as the Egyptians. I've taken over pretty much the whole map except for england, italy, central europe etc. I took Spain a *long* time ago, as in 100 years ago. Anyhow, I have a pretty big string of ships going all over the place, which connected my king in Constantinonple to the rest of the world. So I click next turn and the Russians (1 of 4 remaining factions) send one measly Barque (or whatever their lowest level ship is called) and blockade a single water zone in my chain of ships. Within a single turn the loyalty in 2 of my Spanish provinces dropped to 0% and 3 others outright revolted. Also, 5 more territories revolted, which I had owned since the game started! Egypt revolted! I might also mention I had a mosque, a spy and an Imam (not an Alim, an Imam) in all said territories, whith just about every citizen satisfying structure I could make.

And this on top of the *constant* revolts I have to put down in the freshly counquered Russian territories. All in all I average about 3 revolts per turn in the russian territories alone. Makes me wish I had just stayed in Egypt and never tried to conquer the world.

[Hakonarson]

Leave your king in Egypt will accomplish the same thing!!

Constantinople is far to easy to blockade - as it was historically of course, but it's a vulnerable place to command an empire from if you are completley reliant on sea transportation.

[Niccolomachiavelli]

I had him in Constantinople because it was more or less the center of my empire. Besides, the Russian ship cut off my route somewhere near Cyrinicea(sp?) so I would have been shafted either way.

[Hakonarson]

Not necessarily - there are 2 communication paths around the Med - the Sth coast, and the Nth coast - if he cut your path at Cyrenacia then you might have a second path around Greece/Italy/Sth France.

Whereas Constantinople is a choke point - a single ship always cuts the path.

It doesn't actually matter where yoru King is physically - it's the communication path that matters.

Adn what the f**k was a Rusian ship doing off Nth Africa anyway??!! lol

[Niccolomachiavelli]

Its an odd setup right now. Its a standoff between the large armies of the Swiss, who have some huge stacks, and the Russians, who I just folded into a tight corner. Their ship somehow managed to float into N Africa. As far as the North route, there is no way I could use that. Its choked with Italian enemy ships and Swiss ships which will soon to be enemy. South route *was* clean until that Russian Gilligan found his way into my N. African route. At this point, rebel uprisings are more of a problem than the Alhomads, Byzantines and Turks ever were.