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

[Yskonyn]

Lately I have been getting is 'East India Company' itch again, after watching a fine documentary about the more technical aspects of the creation and operation of a pretty famous Dutch EIC vessel called the Batavia.
I wonder if you guys know games where these vessels play a big part in gameplay in this era.
For example; Europa Universalis is a game which features the era, but as its Grand Strategy, the ships are just icons, and a 'tool' if you know what I mean.
I am looking for a game where there is much more interaction with these massive ships of old.

So either a simulator-like game where you command such a vessel and its crew, or more a wargame-like experience is fine.

[Gusington]

Have you played the East India Company game? It didn't quite live up to expectations but it isn't terrible either.

[Anguille]

Did you take a look at Patrician 4 or Port Royal 3?

http://www.patrician4.com/en/index.php

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

You might also want to take a look at Age of Pirates 2.  It's a sort of RPG/trade/ship combat simulator.  The ship combat, trading, and crew management portions of the game are all pretty good (and the water and weather effects during ship combat are great) but the RPG portions (especially hand to hand combat) are tedious and difficult.  The UI is somewhat cumbersome at times and, as the dev team were Russian, there are some issues with translations and a fair number of bugs. 

[Yskonyn]

I have never played EIC, Gus. Didn't even know it existed! :) Thanks.
After reading some reviews I don't get particularly warm for it, though. :S It seems like the game had some great ideas, but was hampered by some nasty bugs. Also, there seem to be several different versions and expansions around. Could you elaborate on which package I should aim to get if I want to play it?


I have Patrician IV with the expansion. It's nice, but doesn really give you the 'sailing nation' feeling.

Age of Pirates 2.. isn't that a sequel to the older games called Seadogs? The vessel simulation was always very nice, but in Seadogs most other elements of the game were severely broken.
I might try to find this somewhere.

[JasonPratt]

Port Royale 3 (same basic engine as Patrician, both are ultra-detailed spiritual sequels to Sid Meir's Pirates) definitely has more of a sailing nation feel than Patrician.

While I haven't played PR3 yet, I've heard decent things about it; PR2 wasn't especially broken (any more than Pat3 was), and was DEFINITELY MILES BETTER than Sid's own remake of Pirates (which in a way it probably inspired him to remake since for the longest time PR was the modern version of Pirates. Still is I guess. :) )

[Gusington]

I enjoyed East India Company more than most people did. Since you are interested in the subject matter like me, I would suggest getting the complete pack if you can...it's available new on Amazon for as low as four dollars! IIRC the complete edition includes patches that fix some of the bugs too.

I did think the campaign part of the game was weak, but this was countered by the solid naval combat and may have been beefed up with patches.

[son_of_montfort]

Port Royale 3, as others have said, it really the best way to go. It is not perfect and the piracy aspect feels a little tacked on in comparison to the trade portion. There are several DLC packs that added on some stuff, so you might try to get a bundle. IIRC, Port Royale 3 was part of the Spring Sale over at Gamersgate. You might check it out.

[Gusington]

Is there a complete version oc Port Royale 3 available somewhere with all the DLC?

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Age of Pirates 2.. isn't that a sequel to the older games called Seadogs? The vessel simulation was always very nice, but in Seadogs most other elements of the game were severely broken.
I might try to find this somewhere.

It was a continuation of the series.  I think after Seadogs came Pirates of the Caribbean (originally to be Ssadogs 2 but then Disney bought the rights and renamed it to tie in with the movie).  Then came Pirates of the Caribbean 2, then Age of Pirates and finally Age of Pirates 2. 

Age of Pirates 2 removed the central narrative RPG elements from the previous games and opted for an open world sandbox style with AOP2.  You select a profession (merchant, naval officer, or adventurer) and then a nationality (British, French, Spanish, or Dutch) and then you're pretty much free to do as you like.  You can build a trading fleet and try to manage an empire.  You can sack a town and set yourself up as governor. You can get a letter of Marque and go be a privateer. 

It's mostly historically based but they obviously wanted to keep some of the Pirates of the Caribbean influence in there because there are side missions involving cursed treasure, the undead, the Flying Dutchman, and so on but you can ignore all of this if you wish.

[Nefaro]

Port Royale 3, as others have said, it really the best way to go. It is not perfect and the piracy aspect feels a little tacked on in comparison to the trade portion. There are several DLC packs that added on some stuff, so you might try to get a bundle. IIRC, Port Royale 3 was part of the Spring Sale over at Gamersgate. You might check it out.

To be fair, EIC's pirate & privateer expansions were also pretty "tacked on". 

PR3's business/trade side of things is more detailed than EIC, too.   The only pro for EIC is the better ship combat graphics but I also have complaints about it's ship combat - namely the ridiculously low ammo amounts.  If it's gonna be somewhat arcadey, as they both are, I'd rather it have the Pirates-style ship combat that PR3 has.

[Yskonyn]

Age of Pirates 2 does interest me. I've had some good moments with the original Seadogs, as that title really gave you a feeling you commanded a powerful vessel. If AoP 2 is effectively the 5th title in the series, its bound to be a lot more solid now. I'll have a look, thanks for pointing it out!

As for PR3, isn't Pat 4 regarded as the more in-depth game (both are similar, save for the area of operations)?

[Bison]

PR3/PAT4 is really more the flavor you want.  Overall the game mechanics are the same.  PR3 has a few newer options as it's the newer of the two games.

[JasonPratt]

As for PR3, isn't Pat 4 regarded as the more in-depth game (both are similar, save for the area of operations)?

I may look into AoP2, too. To. You know.

Between Pat3 and PR2, I would have said PR2 was by far more in-depth; the piracy aspects of Pat3 (and Pat2, the sequel being a light update basically) were quite clunky, although I was willing to overlook that as inadvertent flavor of the time and place. Pat2 had more of everything, especially pirates, being a more direct remake of SM's Pirates.

Having not played the new two iterations, I can't compare. I know Ascalon tried hard to polish the ship combat by virtue of at least two games before Pat4/PR3 where the action piracy aspect was practically the whole game.

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Age of Pirates 2 does interest me. I've had some good moments with the original Seadogs, as that title really gave you a feeling you commanded a powerful vessel. If AoP 2 is effectively the 5th title in the series, its bound to be a lot more solid now. I'll have a look, thanks for pointing it out!

As for PR3, isn't Pat 4 regarded as the more in-depth game (both are similar, save for the area of operations)?

The ship combat is quite good as is the trading and the crew management.  Unfortunately, you have to wander around the towns in 3rd person mode and that is where the game really suffers.  The graphics are rather dated, the controls are clunky, and the game forces a lot of combat on you and the combat is very unwieldy and very unforgiving.

There is a very good mod group called Pirates Ahoy! and they put out a couple of massive mods that added a tonne of new ships, new textures, and features as well as expanding items that you can trade and cleaning up a lot of bugs.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/gentlemen-of-fortune

I did find a multi-part video (23 parts, i think) of a guy playing AOP2 with the mod on YouTube.  The guy is incredibly annoying and his PC runs the game quite poorly but it does give you an idea of what the gameplay is like.  (I linked to the first video in the series but you can probably skip ahead 1 as it's just the host gobbing off like an idiot and taking forever to select his character).