I'd like to build some port-makers on Turk Island, but the Master Builder won't see me because I'm not that well thought-of. So I tried holding a celebration. Was 20 units of food and drink enough? No. 40? No. 60? No. 100? Still no.

I also lavished the church and the governor with money - more than 100,000 gold pieces. Still no joy.

What can I do to be allowed to build on this island and so give jobs to people?

Trade. Try to keep the place stocked with at least a bit of everything. And never buy things there that are already rare. Buying their products doesn't matter (much or at all?), sell them what they want.

OK, so that one will work, but I was hoping for something more immediate. I've been trading with the place for ages and ages, although I didn't pay attention to whether I was buying scarce items.

That one DID work. Building permission cost me 100,000+ gold and there's no option to build a port-maker. Might go for a tobacco plantation instead, as tobacco sometimes fetches a massive amount, although I chose Turk Island because wood and sugar were cheap and you need those to make port, which was expensive there.

There is a map.pdf in your PR folder, that shows what each place can produce. Use it so you don't have to guess for the next one.

I had been thinking that I'd like to know that. There's a map PDF file in the main folder but it doesn't say what facilities are possible in each location. I don't have a PR folder.

I meant the main folder, you found it already. All productions are possible to both you and the town. If the place makes a certain good, you can produce it there as well as the computer players.

Turk Islands makes dye, timber, tobacco, cloth and bricks, and salt inefficiently. That won't change, those, all those and only those are available. Helps if you know what the goods icons mean so you can see it ingame too, when you click on the well.

Oops. By "what each place can produce" I thought you meant which production facilities could be built at certain places, not what goods you can get.

Lol, but I did mean building production facilities.

Stuff to buy is quite random, you can buy everything everywhere, just not all the time. If a computer ship goes to turk islands and sells them a whole convoy worth of meat, there will be meat at great prices to buy for a while. Until they ate it all or you buy it to sell elsewhere, or another computer ship buys it to do that. Of course its more probable that you can buy dye there than meat but even thats not guaranteed, a raw material might be missing stalling production or the town has become so big it uses more than gets produced locally.

Oops x2. So the items shown on the map are what you can get at a place and what you can make at the place. Should have thought of that.

I do have one more reputational question: Is there any way to make countries like me more? I started off as Spanish but later turned Dutch for some unfathomable reason. I do a lot of piracy against the French and while I can use Dutch and Spanish ports, the governors won't deal with me. The method for getting individual ports to like you more has been described, but is there anything that works against the country as a whole?

Since it isn't in the manual, perhaps there's nothing, but I don't believe the manual speaks of piracy.

Just in case, that single icon of a good shown on the ingame world map near each town name is a thing the town has run out of. If they're lacking several things the game picks one. Those icons are a bit slow to update and the npc traders see them too. So its entirely possible that some other ship delivered that missing thing just before you arrived, making it look like the icon shows surplus when it meant lack.

Nothing informs you of good deals to buy lots of cheap somethings, you have to luck into them, check back often, use your manager or any combination of those.

Not even going to guess on the politics thing, I know its possible to keep all nations at least friendly enough to trade everywhere so one doesn't have to rely on npc ships to supply towns, but I don't know how.

So I just picked up the first game yesterday. If you hunt pirates, especially named ones, it seems to increase your reputation with the various factions. Plus if you capture them, you can ransom them back to their nations for a decent amount of money.

I have to say this game is amazing, I wish I would have known about it sooner... And Barque's rule.

Unless you're talking about Barque having a rule, I disagree entirely. Barques are near-worthless financially and not very fast. And I got gold for capturing infamous pirates, but not the ones who are assigned to countries. This was after getting messages saying I was in for a reward.

I have another popularity-related question: How do I make countries REALLY hate me? When I go to French ports, I can attack, but when I go to English or Dutch ones, I just get to choose whether to sneak in. This is after stealing many English ships. I'd like to attack English towns when France and Spain are at peace.

EDIT: I cracked this one. The trick was to tick the "Attack which nation?" box for the target country. This has made my strategy much more productive. Previously, I was restricted to attacking the ports of France, and I went massively into debt when Spain and France were buddies.