Map

Vara Del Rey said:

Is the playing map going to include just the coastal areas of Africa, Oman, India, and Indonesia. Or is it going to include the possibility to colonize inland in those regions?
Also will there be more than one city and port per region to develop?
Can one develop a monopoly if one controls all the ports in a region ?

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I dont think so. The early East India companies did not really colonize. Trading posts and local fortresses would be limited to coastal regions. For instance the Dutch did not start colonizing Indonesia after 1820.

Some screenshots that are around show Europe too, which puzzles me. Why include Europe...?

Digby_Chinless said:

Some screenshots that are around show Europe too, which puzzles me. Why include Europe...?

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Well that is home isn't?

Verhoeven said:

Well that is home isn't?

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Yes and the place where you will move the cargo to so you can sell it.

It is but surely an irrelevance in a colonial game? You could serve the same function with a marker on the edge of the map called "Europe".

Unless, once your spices, silks, cotton and tea are sent off to Europe you then have to trade in them at home as well?



Hm, now what can we glean from that map? The home ports have wharves shown so its obvious there is ship movement around Europe...

If you go here

http://www.eic-game.com/?page=screenshots#

and click the right hand screenshot of the top row in the 9th December section, you'll see a close up of the eastern coast of India. For some reason it won't let me link direct to the url. Hehe, I do love screenshots like this that the devs hand out, you can tell so much from them!

Looks like there are regions that deal with different commodities. There's a mini-map bottom left and you can see regions of the foreign world are colour-coded to different luxury goods. West Africa has ivory, modern Angola/Namibia region what looks like gold, South Africa has er... fish...? I think? Or it could be a sack of something... salt? Sugar? East Africa has animal pelts. I can't see what the Arabia commodity is, though it might be carpets/textiles? Then in the Bombay region we have spices, the Madras region, tea and the Calcutta region cotton. Something else is in the Port Blair/Aceh region, it might be Chinese ceramics though - looks like a plate and a jar to me.

Down in Ceylon we have grey boxes and barrels... gunpowder? Saltpetre?

Political correctness I think has dictated we have no slaves in the game.

So no 'provinces' as we think of them in the way the Total War games have provinces but 'ports' which we can see from the map deal in the commodity that the region specializes in, company flags over some of the ports imply ownership or maybe a monopoly in that port while other ports have no flags, maybe they've not been claimed yet or several companies are trading there and none is in overall power?

There's a map in the 27th August section showing part of East Africa and the island of Madagascar has two pirate settlements on it so it looks like we'll have to defend our cargoes from corsairs and such like which I guess are a ninth faction, probably not playable.

I also see on the top control bar an egg timer with + and - buttons next to it. That implies this isn't a turn-based game like the Total War series but real time. A calendar nearby shows us its April 1700.

The personalities bar at the bottom is interesting too, nine people are shown with only four highlighted. One of the greyed out ones is the man commanding the squadron that's selected and we can see it has four large ships in it that look like Indiamen plus a sloop or schooner. One of the big ships is the flagship. Next to these are buttons for anchoring; setting waypoints; a global map(?); a compass or targeting thing(?) and a theatrical mask which might give information on people....? Dunno.

Finally on the right hand side the box with the messenger pigeon over it shows two documents which are probably missions you've been given by the company or the government. Or they could be just messages.

As I said, I *love* these types of screenshots, lots to investigate and think about in them!

Digby_Chinless said:

It is but surely an irrelevance in a colonial game? You could serve the same function with a marker on the edge of the map called "Europe".

Unless, once your spices, silks, cotton and tea are sent off to Europe you then have to trade in them at home as well?

Hm, now what can we glean from that map? The home ports have wharves shown so its obvious there is ship movement around Europe...

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Perhaps there are possibilities for trade within Europe. If you have a total monopoly on a good you might want to trade to the rest of Europe rather than flood your home nation and in doing so kill your profit margins. Or if you are completely locked out of the region for a certain product you might want to buy it from other companies in order to meet quotas.

And in the event of armed conflict you might want to blockade an opposing factions home port, so you would need a location for it.

Well I think European seas were a battle ground for East India Companies.
Especially the Dutch. There returning cargo fleets had to pass the English who would try to block them or force a salute. Many fleets had to round the north of Britain to get home. In some cases they had to fight there way home. But I agree that Europe as a continent has no real value in East Company affairs.

The East India Companies technically had no remit to make war. They were simply trading bodies enacted by acts of parliament or royal decree within their own nation and usually given a monopoly within their home nation to conduct business within a foreign region.

Of course armed conflict did come into it as we all know but this was a side effect of trading and was usually a defensive measure.

Wars between colonial powers were usually conducted by governments and royal navies sent squadrons out to foreign stations to protect their trading companies. In the mid 1700s in India it was the royal fleets of France and Britain that fought battles though on land company troops had developed from small policing and protective units to larger forces and began to fight each other. I'm not aware that company ships and squadrons fought each other at sea, though Indiamen could be attached to Crown squadrons as back up.

Within European waters while there was some interference with homecoming East India fleets this was not something that happened in peace time. However of course in time of war any enemy shipping was fair play.

But that would be a war between states, not war between companies. If the game alows combat in European waters between company ships then that would be rather weird.

I wonder if states of war and peace will be in effect between home nations? And if so how these states would come about?

I agree Martin. It depends if the game also lets you handle navy ships. Than it would make sense, but the game would than also go further than just East India companies Personally I have no problem with that.

Merchantman ships were occasionally the target of privateers.

Sure, piracy is fine.

(That sounds rather odd.)

Of course the state would sanction piracy (privateers), but the pirate flags I've seen over settlements in one of the game screenshots I'd hope were an AI faction, much like Rebels in the TW series.

I agree that having, say, one or two Royal Squadrons at your service to back up your trading company would be nice, and would overall make a case for some bigger warships. I guess in game terms they could be assumed to operate alongside the company strategy so in effect the two become one entity. Perhaps that is the logic the devs have applied?

Digby has really dug into the screenies!

Answers in random order:

- Only ports in coastal regions are depicted.

- There are always 2-3 ports that produce specific Main Trade Item (MTI). As long as the port is native controlled, anyone can visit there and trade freely. If port is taken over by one of the companies, then as a default other companies no longer have access to it. Companies with a pact can use the port as supply point, refreshing their fleet's range. Allied companies can in addition do trading there in normal fashion. Single company can take over of all the silk ports for example and so prevent everyone else of getting any silk at all.

- Europe is included. Each company has its Home Port. London for the british, Göteborg for the swedish and so on. Logic in trading is that you have to ship the MTI's to your Home Port and then sell them there. And naturally buy export items for on the way to east indies.

- MTI, area, number of ports
Ivory, west africa, 2
Gold, west africa, 2
Diamonds, south africa, 3
Exotic furs, eastern africa, 3
Coffee, arabia, 2
Spices, western india, 3
Tea, south india, 3
Silk, east/north india, 3
Porcelain, port blair/aceh, 2

Those grey crates indicate that the port has no MTI, but only generic items.

- Flags indicate who rules the port. Ports with pirate flags are pirate strongholds that launch pirate fleets. If you are feeling strong enough, you can attack the port in order to put an end to that.

- Strategic level (=the map level) is indeed in real time.

- Different coloured outlines on fleet commanders indicate what kind of orders their fleet is on.

- The area with the pigeon is mailbox: you get all kind of communiques there, from notifications that some other company has taken over some port or missions or trade offers from other companies etc. etc.

Thank you Kim! That really helps!

Ah! Diamonds and coffee. Makes sense. And of course silk instead of cotton... also makes sense. But cotton was a hugely valuable commodity too?

So if other powers have taken control, say, of all the tea trading ports I assume you are at the mercy of those nations to buy tea from in Europe at the prices they set or your other option is to go to war with one of them and wrest control of a tea port from them?

The generic trading items... how do they work? Is is 'generic trade item' another commodity but of lower value?

I really like the idea of a real time map. It was the turn-based map of the Total War series that I felt was one of their weak points.

One other thing I noticed was all the screen shots show a year of 1700... now my over-active mind is thinking this is the starting year of the game. Is that correct?

Digby_Chinless said:

The generic trading items... how do they work? Is is 'generic trade item' another commodity but of lower value?

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How I have understood from the posts that I have read. The generic trade items can be found in any port. They are most likely some more common trading commodity that was also shipped in the time period. Also it might be possible to buy for example coffee from a port that doesn't have it as a MTI, but you could not buy as at much than in a port that has that MTI and it might not get it again for a long time. There also might be some other trade items that are never MTI in the game but can be found on some ports as generic trade items.

It looks like the East Indies (Indonesia) are not part of the game. Makes me a little sad, they were also one of the most important regions to trade spices for textiles and were dominated by the Portuguese (pre-1600) and later the Dutch (post-1600).

Yes, and possibly they have been omitted for that reason? There was no volume of trading competition out there - much like South America was a Spanish and Portuguese playground and no-one else got a look-in.

India and Africa were up for grabs by anyone, so a game based on those regions is more interesting from the competitive aspect.

Well there is Aceh as a trading place and last time I checked its part of Indonesia so there is at least one port in there.

Wezqu said:

How I have understood from the posts that I have read. The generic trade items can be found in any port. They are most likely some more common trading commodity that was also shipped in the time period.

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Quite like that, yes. They include stuff like dyes, precious stones, luxury items, bronze and saltpetre.

Kim_Soares said:

Quite like that, yes. They include stuff like dyes, precious stones, luxury items, bronze and saltpetre.

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Nice. Back in Europe these are all traded under the generic heading I take it and not as individual named goods?