I'm a whiny little coward who avoids feeding the pig-King by buying European units whenever I have enough gold, even when its going to be some time before I get a ship back to Europe. Unfortunately, it has its costs, as I never have enough gold saved up to buy the more expensive units until I'm selling galleons of treasure or trade goods.
I've started to notice, however, especially playing on much larger AOD2 maps when I spend a lot of time exploring and hunting for the best spot to plop down my first settlement, meanwhile getting good amount of gold from ruins/grounds/native settlement first contacts, that the king never seems to ask for me to kiss his ring before I actually put down the first settlement. I've played dozens of games since I wondered about that, intentionally putting off making my first settlement until I had explored every land tile on the biggest landmass(es) and often after I had already bought Galleons using the insta-Gold and sold several of the Treasure units, and not once did the King ask for kiss-the-Ring until several turns after making my first settlement. In my current game, I didn't even settle until turn 200 (its on a huge AOD2/Faireweather map on Marathon which I think is 1000 turns, so yeah I've "wasted" a quarter of the game with no settlements, but I'm already kicking serious tail!).
Can anyone concretely confirm that the king never demands gold to kiss his ring before you let down your first settlement?
I've started to notice, however, especially playing on much larger AOD2 maps when I spend a lot of time exploring and hunting for the best spot to plop down my first settlement, meanwhile getting good amount of gold from ruins/grounds/native settlement first contacts, that the king never seems to ask for me to kiss his ring before I actually put down the first settlement. I've played dozens of games since I wondered about that, intentionally putting off making my first settlement until I had explored every land tile on the biggest landmass(es) and often after I had already bought Galleons using the insta-Gold and sold several of the Treasure units, and not once did the King ask for kiss-the-Ring until several turns after making my first settlement. In my current game, I didn't even settle until turn 200 (its on a huge AOD2/Faireweather map on Marathon which I think is 1000 turns, so yeah I've "wasted" a quarter of the game with no settlements, but I'm already kicking serious tail!).
Can anyone concretely confirm that the king never demands gold to kiss his ring before you let down your first settlement?