Buccaneers: Seafaring
Privateers: no starting techs
Spain: Catholicism
England: Political Ambition, Protestantism
France: Political Ambition, Catholicism
Netherlands: Protestantism
Portugal: Seafaring, Catholicism
America: no starting techs
 

SCENARIO SETTINGS

-Random map. It is strongly recommended that you chose an "Archipelago" landmass. Smaller worlds result in shorter games but proportionally larger numbers of adjacent civs, resulting in more conflict. If you want less conflict, eliminate civs from the game by selecting the NONE option when clicking on the dropdown to choose your rivals.

-no shallow water rules: there are no deepwater squares. Every naval unit can travel in every type of water. Be advised--this results in significantly more naval battles.

-two plagues cycles roughly corresponding to the times of the major European outbreaks.

-no accelerated production

-barbarians: roaming

-cultural conversions are allowed

-map trading not allowed

-gold mines produce gold every 25 turns

-length: 540 turns in 540 years

-Victory conditions: you need 200,000 victory points or 150,000 culture points to win outright. You can also win by destroying all your opponents or by controlling 60% of the terrain and population.  You receive the most victory points by capturing cities. In this scenario, gold does not earn victory points.  Because you are going for a win based on victory points, population size, territory size, and military strength are not the most important factors. Concentrate on activities that generate victory points.


IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS

A victory with one of your flagships will launch a Golden Age.

Gold earns no victory points.  However, gold is important to your economy because each unit of gold brought to your capitol adds 200 gold to your treasury.

Exploration is important in this scenario. Map trading is not allowed so you need to explore in order to discover new terrain.

A conquest victory (destroying all opponents) will be difficult unless you are playing one of the pirate civs. Only the pirates have amphibious attack.  Some of the civs will colonize islands with only 1 land square (so there is no place to land invading troops).