After hitting nobility rank and seeing a bit of how the influence game works and how some of the more advanced mechanics can impact gameplay and specfically, port control, I've come to realize that this is much more a PTW format on the order of Dungeons and Dragons instead of a FTP game based on ships and the age of sail.

With that in mind, I make the following suggestion:

Make influence in ports reflective not just of coin spent and/or voodoo cast but have ships and more important ship gun power serve as a multiplier of said influence. Its how things worked in the historical period and it fits more the advertised genre of the game. Two players spend coin or cast on a port to affect influence, each should have the total gun power of his or her combined fleets factor as a multiplier of said influence.

Edits:

Initial ideas:

The suggestions made by Alkie and Synaster are exactly what I'm looking at and I would prefer this be a collaborative effort as I don't have the years in some folks do in this game.

I'm not sure if the idea of ships (ie: synaster's)

0-50 ships = 80% influence multiplier
50-100 ships = 90%
100-200 = 100% Influence (all of it counts)
200-250 = 105% Influence

or Alkie's

x.05 gun/fleet power (Governor)
etc
x.033 gun/fleet power (Captain)
x.03 gun/fleet power (Pirate or Citizen)

is a better basis?

ideas, thoughts etc

If this was implented it would definitely make the game a lot more interesting

Things would be a lot different. But how much would a player's influence be affected? What if he gets defleeted? He wouldnt be much if he didn't have the gun power to back himself up, but what about his buddies fire power? That should count also right?

I should have just said that nation influence should give a player s influence a boost, maybe

Best to elaborate a bit more on this game changer S.Hopkins

Instead of using ships to help with port control as you are stating, can an implementation of land armies be used instead?

I think that's planned for the future. Ships should play a big role, they had a lot of power, transporting troops, supplies, keeping others from transporting those things, you could do a lot with a strong navy. Players should be able form blockades, that would be a big game changer that would be affected by ship fire power

Interesting idea hopkins. +1 for historical reference.

But seriously it's pretty realistic: having more ships, will in a way, give u more influence that what u currently have.

How bout providing some figures or models that u have in mind? I think, it might work if we have some kinda modifier to influence gained via gold coins, based on number of ships, such as "0-50 ships- 80%, 51-100 ships- 90%, and so on.."

Interesting ideas.. but aren't you just handing more economic power to the mega-traders?

Well if you look at it from a pirates perspective big plunder for sure, but there's some truth in what you say, so perhaps setting up the multipliers by Noble Rank/Pirate.

FYI: x = multiplier
example: x.05 gun/fleet power [Governer]
x.03 gun/fleet power [Pirate ]
ect ect...