East India Company Review - What is it?

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Dear Developers.

In the description of the game you said

In East India Company, players will enjoy building the World's most powerful trading empire and engaging in fierce battles in both single player and multiplayer modes, all within a breathtaking cinematic environment.

Which in reality is

In East India Company, players will enjoy washing dishes, going to a coffee shop while leaving their multiple fleets in AFK mode or waiting to catch up with a pirate, because game has no time control in ship battle. Players will not need to be thinking about expanding the trading the empire, as the computer will do everything for them in autotrading mode.


Were you trying to be everything to everyone? Why? Why from the first game?. Empire total war had a so-so ship combat with amazing graphics, but they had more than 8 years of ground war strategy games behind their belt.

Remember - who defends everything defends nothing!

EIC- if it is a trading game - kill ship combat untill you get trading interesting.
EIC- ship combat (CS of Ship combat) - kill trading until your ship combat is best in the market!

Otherwise you get a mediocre product which suck in all directions.

Now details

Trading simulation - is it a simulation?
Has anyone played EVE online, Capitalism, Imperialism, Or even Sid meyer Transport tycoon or railroads. There is trading there.. interesting addictive and beautiful.

EIC trading = build 4 schooners - put on auto - forget about them. WTF!? In eve online you have to spend hours searching for products and traderoutes - which makes it exciting.. In EIC you send you autofleet to go from london to goa - youll make money if AFK mode. Even pokemon has a better trading component. I expect a trading simulator to be more simulating (and expect trading myself to be more profitable than trading in AFK mode)

Fighting simulation - no words
At least better than trading. but only a little bit.

First Battle size - whats up with the 5 ships maximum? Is it EIC Online where you have to limit the instance bandwidth and lag? I have 8gb ram and best video card on the market - gimme beauty and polygons. I want to enjoy the potential to have the trafalgar in the indian ocean.

Controls. I cannot overview the battle and pause it before battle start? Why is that?

Ship placement. Why sometimes you split my ships in 2 groups? 3 on one side and 2 on another? Am I a crazy sick with malaria commander? Who in old time would split a battle line?

AI - Stupid - why attack a fleet of 4 schooners with 1 cutter?

Colors - all battles are kinda greyish dont you think?

Wind - Triangle sail good against the wind, square sail good in the wind. Why this is not simulated. Why galleon and xebec have same wind angles?

Overall - the game lacks grandeur and by 1750 feels like tedious boring work with constant pop up of ship battles while you sit and watch how your money account goes up.

Could have been a great game if you guys focused on 1 side in the beginning and made it either a ship combat or trading game first.

 

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Could have been a great game if you guys focused on 1 side in the beginning and made it either a ship combat or trading game first.

I read this from a preview of the game (dunno if they had the same code as in beta or not):
"East India Company manages to position itself between the whimsical trade-or-die clickfest that is the Anno series, and the militaristic strategy of the rather excellent Total War franchise. And yet, it's vastly different to both, preferring to concentrate on the concept of an autonomous trader out to fleece the wealth of entire nations, primarily through clever hoarding of resources and beneficial barter between budding economies."
here's the link:
http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/pc/games/158212/previews/133402.East-India-Company/

This is pretty much what I'm expecting from the game. I've understood that the concept of the game IS to balance between trading & fighting - not to be either trade or battle simulator. I like games where the game mechanics itself are quite simple (not too many things to micro manage) but where the game itself is challenging enough to be interesting.

We'll see in less than a week if the game succeeds in this or not.

 

[Spoony]

I agree with you in some points, especially when it comes to the trading simulation, which is a bit generic. There is no real simulation of a the 17th century EIC. Basically you can't really build yor own trade empire, because you an't build up your own trade ports or inland expansions, which for the original EIC was cruicial. So, yes, the EIC team should have given a lot more emphasis on the economic/simulation part of the game.

But I would't be that harsh, it's still a decent game and a lot of work went into it.

And I really do have to counter your following quote zasov:

Ship placement. Why sometimes you split my ships in 2 groups? 3 on one side and 2 on another? Am I a crazy sick with malaria commander? Who in old time would split a battle line?

Arguably one of the best Admirals of all time, Sir Nelson himself, used to split his fleet on several occations and was quite succesful in it, notably the battle of Trafalgar and the battle of the Nile.