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City Builder

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Jun 20, 2008
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Hi,
Couple questions regarding EIC.


1. It seems that trade routes are very simplistic, like I don't get to choose what products will be bought and sold. Is there a way to change this?
(I figure that maybe I just havent' stumbled across how to accomplish that yet).

2. I have a warehouse, but what is it's purpose? I mean, why should I buy stuff in my port and put it in my wharehouse? And finally, when i do buy stuff and store it in my wharehouse, how do I get any of my automatic trade route ships to pull stuff out of my wharehouse and use that instead of the stuff that is found in the trade building? Basically, I'd like to do the buying and store it in my wharehouse, and have the automatic trade route fleets that visit my home port to take the product out of the warehouse and go and sell that at the port that I set them up to trade at, how is this accomplished if at all possible?

3. I figure that theres got to be more to this game than meets the eye, I keep feeling that I've not done more than scratched the top of the soil with regards to the economy in the game, but I see no other options to really dig into the games economy and really feel that I'm making a difference. Seeems all that I do is set my fleets to auto trade route, wait for the money to come in, buy more ships, attach them to my fleets and sit and wait for more money to come in, then rinse and repeat until there is no more room in my fleets for new ships. Obviously I must be missing the meat and potatos of this game, so what is that?

Thanks for your time.
 
1. Game does the planning for you in this case. MTIs are almost always the most profitable and hence your captains always pick them over other goods... since buying something else instead would be wasting your cash. If the game notices something else is more profitable though, it will pick it instead of MTI, you can often see convoys from Africa coming back with Stone instead of Ivory for example if the price of Ivory falls too low. So the automatic system is set to maximize your profits. If you don't want that, you will have to trade by hand. :-|

2. This game doesn't have an active warehouse Patrician/Port Royale style. Here Warehouse isn't an automatic tool of purchase and sales at set prices but rather a normal storage unit where you put stuff you will need later. One of many simplifications of EIC that makes this game more playable for people who aren't hardcore fans of the genre.. but also pretty disappointing for hardcore ones.

3. I agree it's pretty boring to watch your convoys sail back and forth on autotrade with occasional auto-resolve killing of a pirate. You should play on hard where prices are horribly skewed against you. Fiddle with building prices to minimize costs of running a company, time your convoys to arrive when target port has 1800t of their MTI (or other max. amount for non-Indian goods), train your captains RPG-style... and fight AIs all the time. This will be quite a ride and due to constant sea battles you won't get bored of watching your convoys. Oh, and do ALL the missions they give you no matter how weird they are (attack your best friend for example) and never ever save&load to maximize the risk and make it more interesting at the same time.
 
So, then if I understand your #3 above, then really I should just keep setting up my convoys for auto trade, AND setup another fleet for myself to control and use that to actively pursue pirates or other nations that I mgiht be fueding with?

If I play on hard, and still have auto convoys, won't they still always pick a profitable item if it's available, thus it might slow down my income, (prolonging the game I suppose) but still they are going to make a profit if one is available. Will they ever buy stuff that is not profitable in the auto trade convoys?

You mentioned to fiddle around with building prices, I guess I've not gotten that far, heck I've not even discovered how to take over a port city (without force) yet, and my home port is apparently already upgraded all the way, so how does one fiddle with the price of buildings, what does this do in the game? (if this is in one of the tutorials let me know and I'll replay it cause I must have missed it), Does fiddling with the building prices some how lower the quality or quantity of service that they can supply or demand etc?

I don't know what's up with the captains but since there isn't much fighting, they usually just die before it's time to upgrade them and I get stuck with another worthless captain at the helm of my fleet, who I then replace with atleast a level 1 with atleast one extra option that I think is the best of the choices provided to me when hiring on a new captain. Im not sure how many trade runs a captain has to make to get promoted levels, but it isn't happening in my game with them on the trade routes thus far. And all the auto resolve battles that I've fought in (not that many since Im just starting out) all produce the same outcome, which is my fleet gets destroyed, or at least half of my fleet is destroyed in the auto resolve battle, which I suppose is a good thing since it gives me something to do with the mass quantities of gold that the game keeps pumping in.

I've skipped all the missions that they've sent me down the line thus far. Why? Simply because they don't pay well enough to do them. I mean heck if I can pull in a huge amount of coin by auto trade (or running a fleet of my own trading), then it didn't make much sence or give me much thought that I might enjoy doing the bizarre mission request only to earn something like 20k. To take one of my fleets off of auto trade (so that I can command it) to go where ever I need to actually go (im not fluent with where the ports are located and there doesn't appear to be a simple way of selecting a port I wish to go to out of a list in the game) to, seems a economical mistake since I could make more money simply by keeping my fleets on their existing auto trade routes. Perhaps I will feel differently if I keep a fleet on standby just for myself.

However, I really don't care much for commanding the battles myself. Thus far my opponents have been able to bombard me with cannon fodder while my cannon (balls, chains whatever, everything) can't even reach their ships, seems a bit akward to me. Maybe it's because my captain doesn't have much if any experience? I would hope that the game would have the same distance of fire for ships that are both the same, unless there is a way to upgrade ships in the game that I haven't yet come across.

Thanks for the information and suggestions. I am going to try some of your suggestions, however it seems to me that they just sort of forgot to include about 50% of the game in this one. I really would have liked to see much more on the economic challenge that could have been in the game, and auto resolve be less a random dice roll after the calculations were worked out and more of a true battle of AI against AI. Obviously if the fleets are severely mismatched then the random dice roll would not be needed, but if the fleets are pretty evenly matched, then it would be so much better if it was the AI vs AI and be less random that my fleet of 2 or more Gallions and 2 other Xebecs or whatever they are would have a higher chance against a pirate fleet made of of 3 xebecs. However I understand that captains skill must come into it, but when every captain is only level 0 or level 1, theres not much fun in that, not much fun at all. Anyway, I'll try the suggestions you gave in an attempt to find the other 50% of the game.
 
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AND setup another fleet for myself to control and use that to actively pursue pirates or other nations that I mgiht be fueding with?

Exactly what I do.

I don't know what's up with the captains but since there isn't much fighting, they usually just die before it's time to upgrade them

You can either mod the amount of experience they get from trading (it's 1 point for each 500 000 traded in vanilla game) or train them in combat while hunting pirates and competitors. Each fight (or two in extreme cases) seems to give them a new level so 5 combats and they are elite. Most of my captains reach top level before 30 and then are moved to my main convoys replacing older captains. This is what I meant when writing about the RPG aspect. By the way, you can train ship crews the same way to be better in sailing (by traversing world map) or fighting (by dealing damage in combat). This can make your fleets up to 50% faster and deadlier.

You mod experience from trade in \East India Company\Data\AI\misc.txt. There's a line there called" experience_per_money", change the value to 4.0 or 6.0 so your captains get 6 points of experience for each 500k traded and advance faster. Max experience is 100 but you need only like 50 to reach the max level.

And all the auto resolve battles that I've fought in (not that many since Im just starting out) all produce the same outcome

There's no experience from autoresolve whatsoever. None for your captains and none for your crews. There's a thread down the forum called Auto-resolve feedback where you should post your results. Myself I don't use it at all. I like ship-to-ship combat too much too pass on it... plus it trains my crews and captains.

while my cannon (balls, chains whatever, everything) can't even reach their ships,

They are three types of cannons and three types of ammo. Best range you get with solid balls shot from a heavy cannon.

only to earn something like 20k

Rewards get higher the longer you play, provided you have the patches installed. Those 20k rewards seem lame on Easy, silly on Normal but on Hard can be real lifesavers.

I could make more money simply by keeping my fleets on their existing auto trade routes.

I have a separate fast fleet to do special jobs like missions or trading gold and diamonds. Usually composed of boarded AI ships I didn't bother to sell yet and some lame 20 years old captain whom I plan to train in close future.

However, I really don't care much for commanding the battles myself.

This way you're intentionally missing on the half of the fun in this game. :-|

they just sort of forgot to include about 50% of the game in this one

There's an add-on coming. Maybe they will add the other half in it? :)

I really would have liked to see much more on the economic challenge

So would I, seconded.

and auto resolve be less a random dice roll

They said they are working on rebalancing it a bit...

I understand that captains skill must come into it

Also crew experience. Ships with good crews are 50% faster, manouvre better and are far more accurate. It's a difference between 150 damage per shot and 15 damage per shot for a Frigate... just by having a good crew. Same for captains, Unsinkable, Feared captain can basically make whole armadas surrender to him. But you need to fight ship-to-ship yourself to get that experience, there's none from autoresolve (at least in this version).
 
Once you have a route established, you put it on auto and forget about it.

You need one small ship in your capital, or doing a trade route somewhere close (like ivory), that you can use to deliver "diplomatic packages" and such, if you get a mission like that.

You can add ships to your auto routes as you build them, but you end up moving your eyeballs all over the world so it's hard to catch a fleet when it's in town.

Later, you build a fleet and start pirate farming in order to increase your captains' skill levels so they are faster, carry more, and buy and sell more cheaply.

You'll also need a stream of galleon fleet that you use to take ports.

A lot of the game is about juggling fleets that aren't on auto.
 
I don't know what's up with the captains but since there isn't much fighting, they usually just die before it's time to upgrade them and I get stuck with another worthless captain at the helm of my fleet

Make a small galleon fleet, and use it to capture a Xebec from pirates. Then another one. Now dump the galleons and use the xebecs to capture more xebecs. This fleet is your experience factory.

You put a young (< 30 years old) guy in charge of this fleet. It's great if he has no skills, probably the best way to go.

You use this fleet to fight pirates. If the pirates run away, fight them again. If you run away, fight them again. If you kill them, find more and fight them. Your captain won't die unless his ship is sunk. Don't use him to attack towns.

In a short time this new guy will be level 3. That's 4 skills. The 4 skills you want are navigator, organizer, salesman, and haggler. This captain suddenly has everything needed to run a trade fleet, so put him in charge of one and bring in another young noob to train up.

The difference between having loser trade captains and level 3 trade captains is huge.
 
Does the no experience for auto-resolve apply to attacking ports? For some reason, I was under the impression that my captain was gaining experience from it.

One thing that wasn't specifically mentioned about the wharehouses: you'll need them to store iron wares in ports oustide of your homeport, in order to make improvements.
 
My captains never got experience from attacking ports. Rather the opposite, losing crews and having to replace them with fresh recruits meant losing ship experience. That's why I have a separate fleet and captain just for this task, I don't want to use my normal combat fleets and lose their experience.