Mutiny

Mutiny is the lowest level of crew happiness. Mutiny is caused by the factors size of crew, gold accumulated and length of voyage [time since last plunder division]. The longer your voyage the more gold the crew will expect to have and not having enough gold will cause the crew to become mutinous and want to break off. Also having more crew members will mean that you will need to have more gold to satisfy all of them which is why a smaller crew demands less gold and is "slower" to become mutinous than a larger crew.

Causes of Mutiny
Mutiny can be caused by two things.

1. Not having any food in your ships cargo. The longer the crew is starved the more mutinous it will become. Musical instruments and quartermasters will not slow this kind of mutiny.

2. Not having enough gold for your crew and voyage length. The longer the voyage the more gold a crew expects and having a larger crew means you need more gold for each crew member.

Examples
 Example:  Crew members demand 100 gold per month to keep them happy so a crew of 100 would demand 10,000 gold per game month to stay happy therefore if you have been at sea for 10 months since the last plunder division you need to have 100,000 gold to keep the crew happy. Failing to suffice gold will slowly drop the crews happiness depending on how far off you are from what the crew demands and eventually not providing enough gold will cause a mutiny.

 Example 2: A quarter master and the musical instruments can reduce the amount of gold needed by 2/3 and therefore "slowing" the rate at which the crew become mutinous.

Preventing Mutiny
You can obtain special items through the governor daughters or buying them from the mysterious traveler in the tavern that permanently help slow down the rate of which the crew become mutinous. Having a quarter master in your crew also slows the rate at which the crew become mutinous. Also dividing the plunder will reset crew happiness and the size of the crew to 40 members. The amount of gold required for each crew member is capped between 1000 and 3000 gold per crew member. It is possible to sail indefinitely if you have a crew to gold ratio of 1:1000 or 1:3000 (without specialist and items).

This means, if you have the specialist and the special items, by manning a single 200-crew ship like a Treasure Galleon you need to have at least 200x1.000 = 200.000 gold to avoid mutiny at all.

Negative Effects
When a crew is mutinous they can take any random ship in your fleet except your flagship and a random number of crew members as well as any of your extra cannons you may have back to the nearest port. You can take back the ship with the normal Ship-to-Ship battles. The ideal way to take back mutinous ship in a less dangerous way is to have no extra cannons for which the mutinous crew to take. Also when having a mutinous crew and stopping at a port a random number of crew members will desert you, there is no way to return them and the longer you have your crew in mutiny the worse its effects become.