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

[Yskonyn]

The thread started with the disclaimer that I already have the TW games. I was looking for something else, that was the point. ;)
So they are not a glaring omission. :)


Nevermind, it did not. Must have been in my head when I posted it, though. :D

I like ETW modded... a lot!

[Skoop]

If you guys are still looking for a pirate sailing trade type of game and can't find age of pirates 2, check this out.  http://store.steampowered.com/app/293010

Looks like it's based on the mount and blade engine.

[Nefaro]

If you guys are still looking for a pirate sailing trade type of game and can't find age of pirates 2, check this out.  http://store.steampowered.com/app/293010

Looks like it's based on the mount and blade engine.

Hrmm.. could be interesting.  Will still probably just feel like an M&B mod but we don't exactly have a lot to choose from in the genre these days.


I saw another indie Alpha thing not long ago, with the same focus but what looked to be more modern gfx.   I must have the link saved on my laptop because I can't find it in my bookmarks.  >:(

[the potty 1]

Caribbean! looks interesting, I was tempted by Mount and blade, but resisted. I may not be able to resist this. Although perhaps they used horses as the basis of their ships, aargh, please no. Look, if I push shift I can make the ship rear up :p

I didn't try any naval battles in Napoleon, probably because my last save is near the end of the Egyptian campaign. There was one English fleet defending Cyprus, but it was huge. I think I should finish off the campaign and see what the third campaign holds. However I expect far more land than sea battles, as Napoleon cements his position in Europe. I assume I'll also have to make some sort of suicidal march on Moscow? Probably only the final campaign contains mostly sea battles. To quote Wikipedia: In the words of Admiral Jervis to the House of Lords "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea".

I don't have fall of the samurai, and given how my laptop's handling Shogun 2, I think I need an upgrade before going anywhere near it. The shogun 2 sea battles are not grabbing me so far, but given the ships resemble shoe boxes with oars, this is unsurprising.

[Gusington]

^I am the same way with standard Shogun 2. But the naval battles in Fall of the Samurai really rock. Once you upgrade I definitely recommend it, especially since you can get FotS for like 4 dollahs now.

[the potty 1]

I loaded my last Egypt save, looked around, and started a new game in campaign 3, which is loads more fun. On land I beat up the Austrians, and am taking a bit of a drubbing from the Prussians. First off, this is on the hardest setting for both campaign and battle. Land battles behave about the same as Empire, in that with a good general and some cannon, you can wipe out an army 50% larger than yours fairly easily.

However, let's talk about the sea battles. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, but Empire battles were brutal. Entering a sea fight without a hefty advantage was asking for trouble. In desperate times it was possible to attack a single big slow ship with a small fast ship, destroy their sails, decimate their crew, and board, but a fair amount of luck and lots of patience were required. So far with Napoleon, I've played 3 fights against the English, all with a 50% advantage, but it feels like they've gutted the AI. Three times I equipped grape shot, set my line of ships to board their line of ships, and pretty much watched the fight resolve like I'm doing up a zip. Perhaps I better set up an even fight and see how it goes.
On that note, my Pirate empire is stuck on a monster sea battle, although both fleets are pretty evenly matched, but I should try an immediate board of their admiral with my biggest ship.

[the potty 1]

Turns out I was playing vanilla instead of Darth Napoleon, so I restarted 

This time I dropped difficulty to hard on both campaign & battles, and it works out pretty similar to vanilla on very hard, but with added interest, because the British have sent a full stack of troops to invade France three times so far. I find this difficulty to be the best so far.

Back to Darth Empirates on max difficulty. I eventually retreated my ships back to port, repaired the lot, gathered two full stacks led by uber admirals, and attacked again. I bet if I auto-resolved I would win, because the relative power indicator is 2/3 in my favour. Unfortunately in practice I'm still getting massacred. Anything less than double the number of troops will fail a boarding attempt. 

I'm continuing to try in case my tactics just suck, and it feels easier than restarting on hard difficulty. Hm, perhaps if I attack the admiral with lots of small rubbish boats first, one will catch fire and blow up. Then whatever survives can come face my main fleet 

[the potty 1]

I got Commander: conquest of the Americas, and it's pretty similar to EIC. Sea battles are identical, apart from an extremely nasty bug which has stopped me from boarding entirely, as this typically results in the ships colliding and both sinking.

Another peeve with both games is how easy it is to destroy a nations economy. I declared war on the French, captured every single one of their boats, then made peace and allied with them in return for about 300k worth of resources. This is ridiculous. In the civ games, or the total wars, the declaration of war changes your entire game, in my case often for the worst. Here it just means you don't have to search the sea for pirates, you can camp outside the french ports and wait for them to load up a fleet with resources. Actually, when I stole their final fleet of 8 ocean going warships, they had sneakily loaded them with 160 soldiers instead of gold, a fairly dirty trick. However, because the coastal ships are loads stronger than the ocean going ships, I managed to scrape a win with 10 coastal traders loaded with about 120 soldiers.

Now, 5 years later, France have managed to build 3 ships. This is one case where I think a small amount of AI cheating is called for. Like if a country hits rock bottom, you shut them down if they're at war with the player, or slip them an invasion force after 5 years, but if they're at peace, you slip them some cash and donate them a fleet of trade ships after a year. It's not as if the AI isn't cheating already, because both French ports have garrisons loaded with 500 soldiers. If I'd blown the cash on garrisons and then transported 1000 troops from Europe, I would probably have run out of cash and lost the game.

Anyway, its entertaining enough for now, until Age of Pirates 2 arrives  :D

[Gusington]

Is Age of Pirates 2 comng soon? While waiting you may want to try Assassins Creed Black Flag.

[Nefaro]

Is Age of Pirates 2 comng soon? While waiting you may want to try Assassins Creed Black Flag.

Isn't Ass Creed mostly oriented towars action/3D-platforming?

[Gusington]

In Black flag players get to.control their own pirate ship in the Caribbean.

[Yskonyn]

What is this talk about 'When AoP 2 comes' ?
That game has been out for ages, has it not? Or is a western re-release confirmed?

[the potty 1]

Sorry, I mean I finally crumbled and forked over the equivalent of about $40 to import AoP2 from Amazon America (which is the last place on the planet with any stock). Gimme a break, I haven't paid over $10 for a game since I bought Doom 2 in 1995  ::)

EDIT D'oh OK except for Baldur's Gate 1 in 1999.

Yup AC4:Black flag is currently top of my steam wishlist, currently $40 less 40% because of the steam summer sale. Seeing as I've played all of the PC Assassin's creeds, I WILL be getting this one in the next year or two.

[Gusington]

Shop around for Black Flag...the prce you have above is excellent but you may be able to do slightly better. I got a physical copy of it from Amazon for about 20.00.