Looking for a trade/ship oriented (war)game 1600 - 1750 era.

[Yskonyn]

I am a GG member indeed; Same handle: Yskonyn
Let me know for how much you want to give it to me.

Yes Gus, will do! ;)

[Gusington]

^Thank you. Whatever you get, post impressions...my finger is dangling over the buy button for Partrician IV but my experience with the first one is keeping me from purchasing.

[the potty 1]

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but there seem to be some glaring omissions here. Sailing games are a fairly sad little segment of the gaming industry, and there are some real stinkers out there. If your boat can reverse like a car, you should consider that the coders may not have ever seen an actual boat. I also have to say that I don't consider cannons to be optional, so there may be other games I haven't considered.

Here are the ones that I have found to have glimmers of brilliance.

Sid Meier's Pirates! - Pretty simplistic, but loads of fun. Get it.

East india company - Yes your inner accountant might be required to get going in this game, but eventually you can just rampage across the seas plundering other nations until .. their economy crashes and they have no more ships. Damn. Also note the Pirate Bay expansion removes the need for inner accountants. The sea battles are really good. It's on steam.

Age of Sail 2 - fairly old, crashes a fair amount, and perhaps too 'realistic' for the casual player. You may have trouble finding a copy. I liked it a lot.

Age of Pirates 1&2 - Not as old as Age of sail, but you will struggle to find a copy, and even worse I am still trying to get a copy of either myself. However this sounds like it might be cool. Really install one of the community bugfix mods, as the basic game is riddled with bugs and pretty unstable.

Port Royale 2&3 - Really not much of a sailing game, this is one for the inner accountant. It's on steam, but perhaps don't bother.

Empire Total war - Yes it's not a sailing game, but again the sea battles are really good. If you install the Darth mod, you can play as the pirate faction, which limits the number of land battles you need to get into, but as you need such a solid grasp of the economic system in order to support a huge pirate navy, perhaps you should rather play as one of the seafairing nations, England, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, America, France, anyone with a bit of coast really. It's on steam.

Assassin's creed 4 - Again I've only played AC 3, although I will definitely get AC4. Both are on steam. AC3 has about 2 hours of sailing missions, AC4 I assume loads more. The problem with both is, you need to run around in first person a lot, stealthing, and murdering various people up close and personal. This may not be for everyone. The AC3 sea battles are quite fun, if a bit easy. I'm hoping AC4 is more tactical.

Pirates of the Burning sea (Online) - perhaps slightly better than you might expect from an online game, but still not very good. Dominated by level 50 players, and level trumps skill most of the time. If you get to level 50 yourself, it may become more fun.

[mikeck]

Wasn't there a trading game that came out recently about Venice? You play a trader in Venice and build up your fleets and such. I believe it's in the 15th century? Possibly by the same guys that did the "Anno" series of games? Not sure

Edit: here it is: http://www.riseofvenice.com/us/

[bayonetbrant]

Wasn't there a trading game that came out recently about Venice? You play a trader in Venice and build up your fleets and such. I believe it's in the 15th century? Possibly by the same guys that did the "Anno" series of games? Not sure

Edit: here it is: http://www.riseofvenice.com/us/

Hey!  Here it is, on our front page!

http://grogheads.com/?p=4115

[mikeck]

Well it's pretty alright...but how does it play?

[bayonetbrant]

heliphino!

Ping Monty - he's the guy that sent over the screenshot :)

I just post them

[Nefaro]

Well it's pretty alright...but how does it play?

It's Port Royale 3... in Venice, reportedly.  It uses the same engine and game mechanics from the Patrician4/Port Royale 3 series.

And PR3 has already been mentioned here.

[mikeck]

Well it's pretty alright...but how does it play?

It's Port Royale 3... in Venice, reportedly.  It uses the same engine and game mechanics from the Patrician4/Port Royale 3 series.

And PR3 has already been mentioned here.

Nuff said

[-budd-]

Glance through the thread, didn't see any posts about it but EIC gold is $1.20 at bundles stars right now, steam key.

http://www.bundlestars.com/store/east-india-company-gold/

[Nefaro]

I could see some quality in parts of East India Company and it's sequel, Conquest of the Americas(?).  But some parts of it rubbed me wrong. 

One was the tactical combat.  It looked great but some of it was screwy if you used the 'Realism' settings.  For one, the ships would run out of cannon ammo in little time.. often without crippling an opponent in 1v1.  There also seemed to be weirdness with the ship speeds IIRC. 

The heart of the game, the strategic play on the map, also made it feel rather dull and uneventful to me.  I tried a few times to get into EIC but it wasn't quite clicking.  Definitely more oriented towards trading, as in the Port Royale series, but it didn't do that focus as well and lacked some of the historical flavor too.  Neither of these series had very interesting Pirate/Privateer gameplay - they felt very tacked on.

At a couple dollars, it's probably worth checking out to see if you like it.

[Gusington]

I definitely remember the EiC strategic game being a snoozefest, especially compared to other games like TW.

[the potty 1]

Cool, I just added Conquest of the Americas to my steam wishlist so I can grab it the next time it's on sale. I also crumbled and forked over a wad of cash to a company to import Age of Pirates 2 from Amazon America, which really seems to be the last place on the planet you can get it from.

EIC was by no means perfect, one of the main problems I had with it was the captain upgrades. I'm kinda OK with the passive upgrades, but the active upgrades really break immersion. I generally take all of the passive abilities, apart from repair hull and repair sails, which are so brokenly good that I can't resist them.

That said, if you're running out of shot, you probably need a bigger boat, or a warship rather than a merchant vessel. Frigates were my favorite, fast, with a hefty punch. I never sink anything, I always destroy the sails, decimate the crew, and then board. Every ship that surrenders drops the morale of all of the others. Eventually I'd have trading fleets composed of 4 Indiamen and a 90 gun SotL, because they had the same speed, and attack fleets composed of 46-gun SotLs & frigates, plus a Cutter or Xebec to catch any that try to run away. Attack fleets & SotLs are loaded with marines, so don't transport goods.

Regarding trading, You want to let the price of a good rise in Europe for a couple of years, then load up all of your fleets with the same good, and dump the lot in one go. Repeat with the next good. If you keep supplying all goods constantly, the prices will drop and you'll lose cash. Also don't take over too many ports, and certainly none in Africa. You may have to 'liberate' it from other European powers and then 'free' it.

Watch the costs of those port defence upgrades, they get huge fast. Often it's better to defend the area with a fleet than upgrade port defences, and it may be better to get your captain the buy and sell abilities than take over the port in the first place. Trade fleet captains need to spend some time in warships so they can get at least the buy, sell, speed, and capacity upgrades. You need to start training a replacement captain as soon as one of your existing ones hits around 50 years old.

However, spending some time in Empire total war will show you that EIC is just a toy. The Darth mod reduces the chances of your ships sinking or catching fire, but with or without it, the first time you see a magazine explode ... wow.

[mikeck]

Just FYI...I found the naval battles in Napoleon Total War to be even prettier and more fluid than empire. If naval battles are your thing, might want to check it out

[Gusington]

The naval battles in Fall of the Samurai are my favorite. Most streamlined, most fun to play, cool technology and a lot of exploding magazines. And they look great.