Should Rum be a Smuggled good ?

[Talisman]

There have been requests in the past that Rum should not be a smuggled good. - It is contraband on the islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao.

This has caused some players problems in the past when the smugglers take all their rum & their crew mutinies soon after they sail away.

There are slight solutions for this problem already in the game:

1) buy the supplies offered by the smugglers for 1,000 gold - they contain a small supply of rum.

2) spend gold raising your crews moral at sea & get to nearest island to buy rum as quickly as possible ( probably spend all your smuggling profits )

3) if you have the Trustworthy ability (can buy contraband goods in stores) - go to the nearest store on the island & buy rum.

So should Rum be replaced with Wine and, or Ale as contraband good or should things be left as they are now - look on it as a challenge for the player.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

Rum should not be a smuggled good on Dutch islands because the smugglers take it and even with the trustworthy ability rum cannot be bought there. When I know I'm going to a Dutch island I always double up my rum supply.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Good call, Talisman! It's been like this since the stock game, which never required the player to have rum. It was just another good.
As such, this "challenge" has never been intended, we just never bothered to do anything about it. I'd say just replace it with another good instead.
Is there any particular reason why the Dutch would consider rum to be contraband? Don't they drink rather a lot of it too?

While we're at it, is there anything we can do to put some sense in the importing/exporting/contraband lists of the various islands?
Are different nations or different islands historically known for certain products, for example? If so, we could try to add some of that into the setup.

 

[mjh623]

Well now, you be wantin' to drive me out of business, is it? Many a tidy profit have I made discreetly distributing rum to the more "free minded" denizens of the Dutch settlements. The profitable solution I use is I take some small captured ship, stock it to the gun-wales with rum and dock it at, say, Sao Jorge. Then each time I make a libation distribution run there, I simply restock the Jezebelle from the docked vessel after the deal is done, and sail on with my jolly tars grogged to the gills.