Explorer disguised as colonel-admiral ?

[unmerged(3195)]

Hi everybody ! This is my first post here even though I've been reading this forum weeks before I got the game.

I'm doing my first 1492-1792 campaign as Turkish, and was a bit envious towards other nations as I had no conquistadors or explorer so far.

When in 1570 or so, I remarked that one of my fleet commander had a distinct symbol looking like a sextant (or whatever this instrument is called) next to his name.

Passing the mouse over this symbol in the ledger told me that the guy (Ahmed) was a colonel. Strange for a fleet commander !

Selecting the relevant fleet on the map, then selecting the said Ahmed (there must be at least 5 commanders in this fleet), the same instrument symbol appeared, but the title appearing under the mouse was admiral, while passing the mouse over the golden star at the left made the title "flotilla admiral" appear.

Decided not to die stupid, I sent the whole fleet off Smyrna toward the Atlantic, I got the message that as the sea zone aimed for was uncharted, my ships wouldn't dare going there, but indeed they went and discovered, given a little time, all the West African Coast despite that my crew always tell me that it is impossible to go in uncharted seas !

Next to these guys, Colombus crew was enthusiastic on their way to America...

Also, the rule-book says that attrition is limited while an explorer is in the fleet, but I went from 15 warships down to 3 in a very short time...

Is it normal for an explorer not to reveal his true nature ? I've got a conquistador who's not ashamed to tell about it... I lost at least 10 years worth of exploration because of this shyness

If I could find a way to separate this Ahmed from overanking fellow officers (which trick I would appreciate by the way as I've been splitting and recombining my fleet ad nauseam and he's never in charge of any boat)would this pop up box telling me "you're trying the impossible" disappear ?

Is there somewhere a list of all pictorials used in this game that one could use to check something ? like a sextant means what ? (the rulebook lacks this kind of information)

I'm running the North American version, patch 1.08

 

[unmerged(2073)]

It does sound a little strange. Check first on your messages as you should get one each time "Hudson awaits your command in Anglia" or the like.

I guess one problem could be that they are simply added to the existing fleet in which a higher ranking commander has control but I've noticed sometimes that the commander message has come up before and when I go to find the guy he's just got lost in the fleet somewhere and doesn't even come up when I try to reorganise the fleet. Maybe he just wanted to spend a little time as the fleet chef or something.

Not sure if one of the problems with you're dwindling ressources could be the fact that your main fleet admiral is still in charge of the exploration fleet even if your explorer is supposedly in charge. But if you put the fleet in charge of the explorer I'm fairly certain that the game wont automatically assume that the stay-at-home admiral is in charge.

Otherwise, I've got no idea what it might be.

 

[unmerged(1457)]

Use the split button to separate leaders. Sextant is indeed an explorer.

 

[Dawgboy]

Robo's right. if you use reorganize, you get one of the generic leaders for your country. You have to use split to get the historical (i.e. higher value leader) If you have three or four historical leaders in there, this can be a bit tricky to get the mix you want.