Uncharted Waters: New Horizons

• Only use rowing ships, never sails. There are too many points in the game where wind will suddenly stop and you'll be sitting there with your thumb up your ass as all your supplies quickly decrease. IMO the best ship in the game is the La Realle, an early row boat you can get used in most ports at the very beginning of the game, and I believe investing in Bordeaux a few times allows them to build it very early. Change the crew to five members, it will show that it can't run, but it can and it's extremely fast and will use almost no resources.

• The easiest way to make a ton of cash right out of the gate is to sail to the NW side of Greenland and hope that a village pops up. If it does, give the villagers food until you can discover a Sabretooth. Go sell the discovery and make more than enough money to get a serious trade route between Athens/Istanbul started. If the village isn't there, there are a lot of other ones available, but it is the easiest to get to and offers a huge benefit.

• Battles: Don't bother with cannons. Simply advance to the captain's ship and challenge them to a duel. Usually can't do this with a La Realle, so if you're going to be fighting grab a bigger ship like a Galleon or much later a Tekkousen (from Japan). Duels are basically rock-paper-scissors matches. You can get the best sword in the game at the black market in I believe Timbuktu very early. One of the best armors is in the black market in I think Copenhagen, which you can also get very early. In terms of battle commands, Thrust always does the most damage so be happy when you get a hit in with it.

• Trade: Most trade routes suck except for two. Athens-Istanbul art/carpet run makes you a ton of money extremely fast. Later on after some investing, you can do a silver/gold trade route between I think Naples and whatever city is on the Canary Islands (that place needs to be 1000 industry to have gold). Two extremely fast methods to make a lot of cash.

• Characters: Each story is good, Catalina and Otto's are both very short. Theirs and Joao's all have forced endings. The other three don't force you to go somewhere to end the game until you're ready.

• The most important crewmember to get is a guy with a high bookkeeping skill. If you follow my strategy you will only be using one La Realle for the majority of the game, so you don't need a whole bunch of experienced sailors with you.