Bartolomeu and Elting

[Grey Roger]

Bartolomeu o Portugues to Johan Elting: "How many Dutch will you kill before you realize your mistake?"
Bartolomeu thinks to himself: "Better not tell him about the Dutch ships I captured on the way here..."

This is almost inevitable because Bartolomeu is Portuguese and Portugal is at war with Holland. So you start off hostile to Holland and, unless you choose to pay a Dutch governor lots of money for forgiveness, you stay that way, and the incident with the statuette which ends with you fighting a big Dutch ship doesn't help.

Which means Bartolomeu's apparent concern for Dutch lives looks a bit dodgy.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@Bartolomeu o Portugues: Any thoughts about this one? We could of course set Portugal and Holland to be friendly for the Assassin storyline.
But that is a bit of a cop-out.

 

[Grey Roger]

Relations during the "Spanish Main" period were somewhat fluid.

At the start, Portugal was the major sea power and in fact wanted to keep total control of the seas to itself. Holland started muscling in and England, nowhere near powerful enough to dominate the seas itself, joined Holland. Besides, England was hostile to Portugal because of the latter's alliance with Spain, the Iberian Union, and England was still hostile to Spain. The Iberian Union collapsed and England renewed its alliance with Portugal, while in the meantime it started having differences with Holland.

Originally our "Spanish Main" had England allied to Holland. I changed it so that they're at war, so that Michiel De Ruyter makes sense. It may be worth putting an exception into the "StartStoryline.c" to make England and Holland friends again, joint enemies of Portugal, which was the situation in 1660 when the storyline starts. Then all Bartolomeu has to do to avoid trouble with Holland is to fly an English flag, which I do anyway because the story sets England to be allied to France, and it's useful to be able to get into St. Pierre for various plot reasons, e.g. that's where Roxanne Lalliere lives.

 

[Bartolomeu o Portugues]

In the Bartolomeu storyline, in the StartStoryline.c, England was friend of Portugal. Someone changed that recently ??

 

[Pieter Boelen]

In the Bartolomeu storyline, in the StartStoryline.c, England was friend of Portugal. Someone changed that recently ??

Not intentionally, no. I might have made that the default in Periods.c though. And if I then removed it from StartStoryline.c and Grey Roger changed the defaults again later, it would indeed have gotten deleted. Oops!

@Grey Roger: Could you start a thread on the Bug Tracker regarding the things you found in the Bartolomeu storyline?
I don't know when I can find the time to do anything on that and Bartolomeu is stuck right now as well.
So when it is all together on the Bug Tracker, we can at least find it for future reference.

 

[Bartolomeu o Portugues]

Another thought about the relations.
In 1660, Holland was still at war with Portugal. But, in 1663 Holland signed a peace treaty with Portugal.

 

[Grey Roger]

In the Bartolomeu storyline, in the StartStoryline.c, England was friend of Portugal. Someone changed that recently ??

Checking "StartStoryline.c" as it appears in the 27th May zip update, it does still have the line to make England friendly to Portugal. And in my game, England is indeed friendly to Portugal.

Another thought about the relations.
In 1660, Holland was still at war with Portugal. But, in 1663 Holland signed a peace treaty with Portugal.

You could have Holland and Portugal make peace during the storyline. It probably won't be 1663, unless the player has been progressing very slowly through the story (I haven't exactly been sticking to the plot, instead going off and doing side quests and freelance raiding, and it's still not yet 1663 in my game ) but that treaty gives you a reason to end the war. You'd also need to have the player's relations with Holland set to neutral because Bartolomeu isn't a naval officer so his relations aren't tied to Portugal's. Otherwise Holland might make peace with Portugal but it won't make peace with Bartolomeu!

 

[Bartolomeu o Portugues]

Checking "StartStoryline.c" as it appears in the 27th May zip update, it does still have the line to make England friendly to Portugal. And in my game, England is indeed friendly to Portugal.

Great

You could have Holland and Portugal make peace during the storyline.

Yes

You'd also need to have the player's relations with Holland set to neutral because Bartolomeu isn't a naval officer so his relations aren't tied to Portugal's.

and yes

So, you can confirm these changes won't have any bad consequences on the quests.

 

[Grey Roger]

I added a couple of lines to make Holland neutral to both Portugal and you just before you go to Eleuthera. And then I took them back out again when I found that one of the first things to happen in "The Cartagena Firework" is that Holland and Portugal ally, especially since in my game it's now 1663 and time for the treaty to happen. Also, the letter from the Portuguese governor plus Elting introducing you to the Dutch governor give the perfect opportunity and reason for Holland to become neutral to you, so I added a line there.

Besides, Bartolomeu isn't the only one with a secret. Remembering when I played Elting in the "Assassin" storyline: I'm working for Spain, France is Spain's ally, I'm Dutch so don't want to fight Holland any more than necessary, and England is going to be important to the plot so it's worth not upsetting them. That only leaves one nation as a target. Which means the conversation goes:

Bartolomeu o Portugues to Johan Elting: "How many Dutch will you kill before you realize your mistake?"
Bartolomeu thinks to himself: "Better not tell him about the Dutch ships I captured on the way here..."
Johan Elting to Bartolomeu o Portugues: "I don’t know... I don’t know what’s good or what’s bad anymore... I’m just trying to stay alive, to tell the truth..."
Johan Elting thinks to himself: "Better not tell him about all the Portuguese ships I've sunk..."

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Bloody pirates!