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Speaking of achievements, I think each should bring a small positive or negative modifier with them, to make them something more than just a 3rd place Youth Soccer trophy on your shelf. For trade related achievements, you could add +1% to the Warehouse hold, or +1% to price of sold goods, etc... For an achievement like Deceiver, you could add a -1% to Diplomatic scores as being a Deceiver should make you less trustworthy in others eyes...
 
Repost from its own thread:

So, to my idea. Along the left screen border, from top to bottom would be an icon for each MTI I am importing (determined by the trade route the fleet is coming from or going to). Arrayed next to each MTI icon is an icon for the Fleet assigned to that MTI. The border of the Fleet Icon would be Red for Going To the MTI Port, and Green for Coming Home. This way I can quickly see: A) What I am importing, B) Where my ships are, and C) What coverage of all MTI's I currently have. Changing the MTI for a Fleet would be as simple as dragging the fleet icon from one MTI and dropping it on another. A nice addition would be to "delay" that order for ships bound for the Home Port until they unload, re-load, and set sail for India.

Thoughts?

I'm thinking that this might be better done on a trade route page to be tabbed alongside diplomacy, trade info, statistics, etc. fleets could be listed by MTIs and ports with an indicator whether they are going to/fro and current/max capacity, and more information possibly.
 
Win/Lose announcements

Kim,

Another tiny annoyance I'd love to see cleaned up.

When you are attacked and flee, no matter what the circumstances, you get the same message that you get when you get your fleet killed. The reverse when you let a enemy escape, you get the "win" message.

Shouldn't it be reversed? If you successfully flee you've "won" your objective. When you let someone escape you've "lost" your objective.

Thanks,
 
Just a quick message from GDC / GamesCon.

I see you guys are productive when it comes to ideas!

There is good stuff here, I'll go through them with time after I get back at the office.

So here we are hard at work and you are on holiday ? I always thought you would be faithful.....oh, Kim....how could you !!! A GamesCon and you didnt take us ???:rofl:

Now back to work....

51. I know all sailing games sink ships, but it is quite wrong. Wood floats. Damaged ships sink in rough weather. After a battle, the winner gets all out of commission ships and makes a bee line for his nearest port before he loses his prize money. Many ships were lost at Trafalgar not because of the battle but because of the weather afterwards.

52. Ocean Rollers is the name given to large repetitive waves like in the game.
If you have lived through these then you probably still get a tingle in your gut to talk about them. 20m high, though in the Antartic ocean they can reach over 30m high, if they are too closy spaced you will be swimming. Waves like in the game (3m rollers??) do not exist. The sea does have a direction to its waves, but this is usually confused by the wind, producing a choppy sea.

53. Someone posted that the sea state in the game is correct. I strongly disagree. I have some experience myself, and to attempt to fight in the games usual 3m and up swell is impossible. Navies at the time did on occasion out of hatred attempt to kill each other in such seas but it ALWAYS ended as a farce. They had more chances of hurting each other by shaking their fists briskly.

54. The reason ships sailed alongside each other to fight was so you could shoot and hit something. After the first shot with black powder you were firing in the dark. If there was a strong wind, then the smoke would disipate but then you are left with the previous argument, too strong a wind and the sea picks up.

55. The experience of crews for gunnery varied enormously. If the French and Spanish had of been able to practice their gunnery at sea instead of being in port all the time, the British may not have ruled the waves. Some experienced crews could load a cannon with only enough powder to just go through the enemy hull, causing the maximum number of casualties through maximum splintering. Some cargo ships had ex-navy sailors, so there cant be a generalising of warship versus cargo ships. It varied more by ship then class.

56. What happened to bow chasers, or smashes, and stern rakers ? Ships did not just follow a retreating enemy, the battle continued from both sides. Sometimes these few (often only two) cannon would decide the issue (if they hit).

:)
 
55. The experience of crews for gunnery varied enormously. If the French and Spanish had of been able to practice their gunnery at sea instead of being in port all the time, the British may not have ruled the waves. Some experienced crews could load a cannon with only enough powder to just go through the enemy hull, causing the maximum number of casualties through maximum splintering. Some cargo ships had ex-navy sailors, so there cant be a generalising of warship versus cargo ships. It varied more by ship then class.

56. What happened to bow chasers, or smashes, and stern rakers ? Ships did not just follow a retreating enemy, the battle continued from both sides. Sometimes these few (often only two) cannon would decide the issue (if they hit).

:)

There is an overall unreality (gameplay?) that haunts every Age of Sail game. So much so that I keep looking for the fire control radar :rolleyes:

Even with 4x speed a real life chase could take hours. I know I don't want to sit watching the screen for that long. So where to compromise; in this case range and accuracy. I can live with it.

I think that fore and aft guns should be modeled. Carronades and swivel guns are I think already in the calculations for broadside damage. (Are they Kim?)

One issue I have is that it seems player ships have a much narrower cone of fire than the AI ships. In a battle last night a single Xebec was able to hit three ships with a single salvo while the five galleons could not return fire. This seems overly playbalanced. Throw weight does matter. 9 light guns against 20 medium guns will lose every time if the Captains are even roughly equal.
 
There is an overall unreality (gameplay?) that haunts every Age of Sail game. So much so that I keep looking for the fire control radar :rolleyes:

Even with 4x speed a real life chase could take hours. I know I don't want to sit watching the screen for that long. So where to compromise; in this case range and accuracy. I can live with it.

Your point is valid but I was suggesting starting with reality and then designing the game. Without a reason to sail in line why would you do it ? If you dont sail in line, how do you "cross the T" and duplicate Nelsonian tactics ? Further to that, if it is so dangerous to sail at the enemy because of increased accuracy, then boarding, the main way of taking a ship, will be curtailed. It was very dangerous to sail at the enemy, because the enemy could rake your ship from bow to stern, causing more damage per shot.

My main point is care should be taken when programming accuracy but I would like to see forces at work that make you duplicate the tactics of the time.

57. If it is decided to incorporate ports and tactical battles in ports, dont forget fire ships. These caused the Spanish Armada to panic and cut their anchors which is probably the main reason for the English stoping it.

:)
 
On cannons counted separately for left and right broadside:

- Instead of let's say 40 cannons on a Frigate had 20 left and 20 right
- Show them separately so you know if you damaged cannons on left or right side
- Obviously damage cannons only on the side that's under fire
- A few lucky shots could even "go through" and damage a cannon on the other side but I don't know if this engine permits "critical shots" at all
- When one broadside is too damaged to shoot even one cannon show it in red
- Allow players to see which side of target ship can't shoot so for example before boarding player would line up at the weaker side of the target not at the stronger one.
 
- A few lucky shots could even "go through" and damage a cannon on the other side but I don't know if this engine permits "critical shots" at all
- When one broadside is too damaged to shoot even one cannon show it in red
- Allow players to see which side of target ship can't shoot so for example before boarding player would line up at the weaker side of the target not at the stronger one.

Critical shots would be a nice feature if they are not already there somewhere in the engines bowels. Steering, powder explosions, loss of individual masts having individual effects...

I dont know if they would be able to see much of the gun deck...whilst they certainly had officers with telescopes, the cannon balls were about the size of a fist. Not all that much was visible unless the ship only had one deck. In which case the best possible and most expensive would be to graphically represent damage.
 
- There should be two types of alliances. Military alliance would ensure mutual help in an event of war and also deter potential attackers. Commercial alliance would allow buying in each other's ports. This way players who would gladly have an ally or two could still do it without this ally ruining their carefully timed at 1800t convoy arrival times.
 
One issue I have is that it seems player ships have a much narrower cone of fire than the AI ships.

I think I have seen where this can be adjusted...narrow, normal and broad...I dont have time to check now but I think it was a key shortcut for when you take control of a ship personally. I hope I got that right.
 
Gun firing arcs are explained in the tutorial and in the manual...

On AI:

- AI is RUINED because it upgrades its forts and garrisons and doesn't upgrade trade posts. Upkeeping high level forts later in the game makes them unable to invest cash in pretty much anything else and they quickly fall behind the player. I play on Hard to 1700s... and see AIs having like 15-20 ships each and unable to rebuild fleets after wars due to gigantic upkeep costs.

- Fleet composition is bad. AI should put more warships in its convoys, 2x Brigs and 3x Flutes when Pirates use SOL90s isn't that good an idea. I believe ratio should be 2 warships escorting 3 trade ships per large convoy. Also more modern ships, Frigates and SOLs are so rare in AI fleets that I hardly saw a few in my whole career.

- AIs should learn to abandon ports they don't need. They take Canaries, upgrade all buildings to level 4 and pay hundreds of thousands pounds for upkeep while they don't profit from it at all. What's worse, this AI is Spain so it doesn't even need freaking resupply station in that place.

- AIs are very ineffective in getting the right Pacts. Every AI company later in the game has its ships slowed down to crawl somewhere cause they failed to cover all "hops" and their ships can't resupply at some part of the world. The route should be divided into 5 hops and AI should try to have at least one open port in each of them (hops: 1. Marocco area (useless for Portugal and Spain, CRUCIAL for Denmark and Sweden who always crawl to their home ports from like La Manche area) 2. whole Ivory Coast with St. Helen 3. South Africa including Angola/Kongo 4. Mozambique/Madagascar with Port Louis 5. India itself including Matara for far-away Silk ports).

- AIs aren't aggressive enough towards the player. Having a Pact signed with all of them is pretty easy to achieve, so is keeping them all happy. I think there should be a limit of three Pacts max so player has to choose his friends and can't make everyone happy so easily.

- AIs should be more hostile towards the top dog. If one company is getting much richer and powerful than others (not necessarily player's company) other companies should have increased chance of ganging together on that one.

- When you are the top dog, other companies should envy and hate you. Every diplomatic option should be more costly by a percentage based on your relative company power compared with average power of all companies. It would mean they are aware of your domination and want to challenge it.

- When you are at war with one company, others should see it as an opportunity and have an increased chance of attacking you. This way declaring war on someone would mean that someone else is very likely to attack you very soon. And wars should have snowball effect. The more wars you're involved in, the more attractive a target you are.
 
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I would like to see upgrades for battles fought on auto resolve. I enjoy strategy not micro managing battle scenes where I do a poor job. Under current rules, my "navies" never gain experience or upgrade from auto resolved battles. This is very poor. In games like Rome Total War, EU3, Empire Total Wars navies and armies gain experience in battles whether auto resolved:eek::eek: or not. This would make a great patch improvement for patch 1.07 or later for this great and challenging game. Paradox, you guys are the best. Keep up the great work!
 
I would like to see upgrades for battles fought on auto resolve. I enjoy strategy not micro managing battle scenes where I do a poor job. Under current rules, my "navies" never gain experience or upgrade from auto resolved battles. This is very poor. In games like Rome Total War, EU3, Empire Total Wars navies and armies gain experience in battles whether auto resolved:eek::eek: or not. This would make a great patch improvement for patch 1.07 or later for this great and challenging game. Paradox, you guys are the best. Keep up the great work!

I feel exactly the same. As a long time Paradox fan I'm here for the strategy and not the tactical battles.

I haven't gone through this entire thread, so forgive me if this has already been mentioned before, but as far as autotrade is concerned I miss the detail allowed in Patrician III which was/is a fantastic game. For those of you not familiar with Patrician III you could go to all the ports you wanted on the trade route, and you could for each individual product set buying and selling prices in each port.

Patrician III also allowed you to hire a manager in your warehouse. He could also be set to buying and selling each item at the price you desired. That would save me having to look in my homeport each month to see whether they have produced silver and Silverware (not quite sure what it's called, but you know what I mean), as I could just ask my manager to buy it for me. These are by far the most profitable export items I have met so far in the game, so they are important to my economy, and that makes me look each month since they seem to disappear after just one month if I don't buy them.

I would also like to see immediate price fluctuation, so I can't sail in with a huge convoy and sell the whole load at a high price and then the price won't change until the next month. It should change with each bought or sold item, which would make it a lot harder to make a profit. Again I'm inspired by Patrician III on this point.

I hope some of these points will be taken into consideration.
 
I agree with everything you wrote except for:

It should change with each bought or sold item, which would make it a lot harder to make a profit.

It is only to make a game harder that there is or would be more price fluctuation. Three ships set sail from England to raid the Spanish. Due to weather only one returned but it had enough rare goods on board to pay for all three ships and give a return of over 600% to the investors. This amount was equal to the entire personal annual income of Queen Elizabeth. They were cheaper if you found these goods just floating around inside a Spanish ship rather than if you had to buy them, but they didnt cost that much to buy. The selling price in Europe was driven by a huge demand and because of irregular availability, especially in the early days, it was common to sell an entire cargo at one set price. Remember we only have a limited sea trade. These goods have to disperse through Europe.

:)
 
I agree with everything you wrote except for:



It is only to make a game harder that there is or would be more price fluctuation. Three ships set sail from England to raid the Spanish. Due to weather only one returned but it had enough rare goods on board to pay for all three ships and give a return of over 600% to the investors. This amount was equal to the entire personal annual income of Queen Elizabeth. They were cheaper if you found these goods just floating around inside a Spanish ship rather than if you had to buy them, but they didnt cost that much to buy. The selling price in Europe was driven by a huge demand and because of irregular availability, especially in the early days, it was common to sell an entire cargo at one set price. Remember we only have a limited sea trade. These goods have to disperse through Europe.

:)
Allright, but the game doesn't seem to reflect that right now as the price will drop a lot at the change of the next month. So the price will drop, but you get the chance to sell your entire cargo at the high price.

Even if the game reflected the mechanism you mentioned there should still be a limit to how much cargo you can sell at the high price. Demand isn't the same for 50 spices as it is for 2000. That would also limit the profit from making few huge deliveries instead of a steady supply. Right now if you have sufficient cash to wait you can just fill your warehouse and time your convoys right, so they arrive in the same month, and then you make a fortune, however if a ship arrives one day into the next month it will make considerably less. That just doesn't make any sence.
 
Allright, but the game doesn't seem to reflect that right now as the price will drop a lot at the change of the next month. So the price will drop, but you get the chance to sell your entire cargo at the high price.

Even if the game reflected the mechanism you mentioned there should still be a limit to how much cargo you can sell at the high price. Demand isn't the same for 50 spices as it is for 2000. That would also limit the profit from making few huge deliveries instead of a steady supply. Right now if you have sufficient cash to wait you can just fill your warehouse and time your convoys right, so they arrive in the same month, and then you make a fortune, however if a ship arrives one day into the next month it will make considerably less. That just doesn't make any sence.

Yes, I agree it is not right the way it is. The supply and demand of spices would require the ever increasing total amount of spices delivered to Europe by all ports to be taken into account and matched against a ever increasing demand. At some stage, (1700 perhaps ??) the supply will start to catch up with demand and the price will begin to come down. The concept that English ships provided spices for only the English demand is not historical. If a French trader was waiting on the English docks, all the ships spices could be bought for Germany. Tea and coffee would have more variation in price, whilst other goods like porcelain, furs and ivory would follow an even more fluctuating demand. Metals would price peak during war and arms build up. Local weather wouild affect wool at one end and the demend for cloth at the other. The price modelling used is very simplistic and unhistorical.

Whilst not detracting from your point, there was considerable effort to time a ships arrival, to benefit from a primitive futures market which didnt really succeed till the age of steam. The Venetians were particularly good at timing ship arrivals to match caravans, though that was in the easier to manage Mediterannean. Galileo stole the idea of a telescope so he could, from the tallest bell tower in Italian ports, indentify the ships on the horizon and sell their goods at a higher profit by guaranteeing their delivery within a week. As a quick aside, whilst waiting for ships to be seen by moonlight or in the early morning, he turned his telescope upwards and started a life time passion.
 
Galileo stole the idea of a telescope so he could, from the tallest bell tower in Italian ports, indentify the ships on the horizon and sell their goods at a higher profit by guaranteeing their delivery within a week. As a quick aside, whilst waiting for ships to be seen by moonlight or in the early morning, he turned his telescope upwards and started a life time passion.

I didn't know that, but it just goes to show what great inventions greed can lead to:D
 
Hey all, first time poster, but I've been playing this game for a few days now, absolutely love it, but I was apprehensive at first. anyway, the one thing I think I would definitely like to see in a patch is the ability to produce multiple ships, in one ship yard in parallel. 1 ship at a time seems unrealistic to me. and I hate having to wait nearly 2 years to get a new invasion force out of the harbor. maybe like a level 5 shipyard or something? My thinking is, 1 frigate, for example, is 100,000 pounds, if you opt to build 2 in parallel, you'd pay to the order of 120,000 a piece, or 240,000 for the order. if you opt for let's get crazy here, 4 in parallel, you'd pay 280,000 or maybe even 300,000 a piece, we can apply an exponential curve to the cost. yes, you pay more, but you expedite the shipment date, and I think people should be given that option. If you have the money, and need a fleet ASAP, why not? :)

And I would love to see the West Indies done in this style game play in an expansion of sorts.


excellent game guys!