I played EIC over the weekend. It seems to be a pretty interesting game, but I found some wierd things with it (Excuse me if I use the $ instead of the £ symbol, my keyboard doesn't have it. Sorry.) Most of my games only lasted about 20 years or so. Reasons below.
1) Without doing anything with the diplomacy end, I started to get random offers from the other companies. Usually something like "Dutch EIC wants to trade you $157,000 in exchange for 10,000 gold bars worth $185,000 in your Home Port". Which is a total no-brainer. They're going to give me $30k? Why? I haven't done anything with them at all. I'd think since the game was about out-profiting your rivals, you'd keep the unneeded giveaways at a minimum, but these seemed to be happening with regularity.
2) I was never attacked except by pirates, does the AI ever actually ambush you? In my last game my galleon port capturing fleet was about to take the third spices port, sealing my monopoly in that good. I'd have thought the other powers would've gotten anxious before then. I really think the AI should be more aggressive.
3) I'm mildly of the opinion that Schooners are either too fast or hold too much. Conversely, I think it's possible that Fluytes and Galleons either don't hold enough or are too slow. I watched my 5-Schooner fleets do laps around my Fluyte/Galleon fleets.
4) I think taking ports is way too random. I took the same 5-Galleon fleet with an admiral that had +20% storage (to carry 120 marines) and +20% port capture as well as +20% boarding (Figured it might be a good skill, might also be redundant), and I would get, without fail, one of three random outcomes:
- I'd win, losing ~60 marines, and some random amount of sailors, all ships intact.
- I'd win, but lose ~120 marines, two ships.
- I'd lose, losing 3 ships and quite a few marines.
I'm not sure what could make this more 'fun' with the 2-3 weeks left before the game ships, but maybe something like the original colonization game's battle (Similar to chess or stratego).
5) I think we should be able to plunder auto-resolved fleet battles, even if it's a fair bit less. (say 40-60% less). Naval combat is fun, but there's no time compression and catching your enemy's war fleet with your war fleet when you're doing 1.1km and they're doing 1km is mind-bogglingly tedious. You could probably read a book and wait while catching up. I solved this by just firing chain shot until they were out of range, letting them flee and re-engaging before they could get to port. But it shouldn't be this way.
6) We should be able to do multiple trade routes with a single convoy. Ie, "Go here and back, then here and back, then here and back". Or alternatively, "Go here and fill up with this cargo only, then this port and get their cargo", etc.
7) We should be able to flag cargoes to be picked up from/stored at warehouses. For instance, all ports need iron tools. But your trade fleets will pick these up and sell them on you if you aren't careful. It'd be nice to put a flag on a port, or all ports saying "HEY! I NEED THOSE, DONT SELL THEM!". Or, "Hey, if you're coming over here, bring me some tools!". This keeps the micro-management down.
8) I don't understand the point of the diplomacy missions (Take this letter/person/thing to this port). They seem to just be free money (I know it's wierd that I'm complaining about this), it's actually pretty annoying. Especially for how little money it usually yields. Although I suppose it helps in the beginning.
9) When you add ships to an existing fleet, the fleet stops what it was doing. Very fustrating if you already have several, and you can't remember if this was your third tea port fleet, or your spices fleet. Also, they don't stock up on cargo when leaving port. Apparently they only do that while entering, so you also have to double-check that it's hull is full.
10) There's no easy way to reconcile the levels of the various ports other than the ambiguous star-level. Also, there's no way to check the warehouse contents for each port, and there's no way to switch between ports other than backing out to the campaign map and going back into the port. Which for some reason takes awhile to load/load/load. (Maybe better caching is in order?)
11) There ought to be a way to automatically assign ships to trade fleets at your home port. When you build a ship, you can tell it "Join up with fleet X when it comes into port".
12) Do pirate cities ever become available for taking over? I suppose the alternative is to have a warship fleet patrol the pirate ports on aggressive, but that seems kind of annoying because...
13) Damaged ships/fleets should have an option to completely restock/repair when going to port. Every port has repair/crew/ammo buying facilities, and ports you own with barracks/garrisons have marine recruiting facilities so whey can't we automate this? It's almost as mind-numbing as the warship vs warship fleet in #5. Almost.
14) I think Captain/Admiral levels should be finer. There's about 10 slots for skills, I think it'd be alot more fun if there was 10 levels so you got one skill per level.
15) It might also be a good idea to have some sort of Admiralty type building in your home port so you can pre-recruit good admirals before they leave (They do leave if unhired, don't they?). I'd been using sloops to keep them, but it seems sort of kludgey.
I'm sure with more playthroughs I'll find more things to suggest. It's really a fun game, but as-is I don't think I'd buy it for the $40 USD I saw it for on GG today. It's just missing too many bits, and too many are unpolished, and some mechanics (anything to do with entering a port more or less) is just too tedious. Anyways, good luck!
1) Without doing anything with the diplomacy end, I started to get random offers from the other companies. Usually something like "Dutch EIC wants to trade you $157,000 in exchange for 10,000 gold bars worth $185,000 in your Home Port". Which is a total no-brainer. They're going to give me $30k? Why? I haven't done anything with them at all. I'd think since the game was about out-profiting your rivals, you'd keep the unneeded giveaways at a minimum, but these seemed to be happening with regularity.
2) I was never attacked except by pirates, does the AI ever actually ambush you? In my last game my galleon port capturing fleet was about to take the third spices port, sealing my monopoly in that good. I'd have thought the other powers would've gotten anxious before then. I really think the AI should be more aggressive.
3) I'm mildly of the opinion that Schooners are either too fast or hold too much. Conversely, I think it's possible that Fluytes and Galleons either don't hold enough or are too slow. I watched my 5-Schooner fleets do laps around my Fluyte/Galleon fleets.
4) I think taking ports is way too random. I took the same 5-Galleon fleet with an admiral that had +20% storage (to carry 120 marines) and +20% port capture as well as +20% boarding (Figured it might be a good skill, might also be redundant), and I would get, without fail, one of three random outcomes:
- I'd win, losing ~60 marines, and some random amount of sailors, all ships intact.
- I'd win, but lose ~120 marines, two ships.
- I'd lose, losing 3 ships and quite a few marines.
I'm not sure what could make this more 'fun' with the 2-3 weeks left before the game ships, but maybe something like the original colonization game's battle (Similar to chess or stratego).
5) I think we should be able to plunder auto-resolved fleet battles, even if it's a fair bit less. (say 40-60% less). Naval combat is fun, but there's no time compression and catching your enemy's war fleet with your war fleet when you're doing 1.1km and they're doing 1km is mind-bogglingly tedious. You could probably read a book and wait while catching up. I solved this by just firing chain shot until they were out of range, letting them flee and re-engaging before they could get to port. But it shouldn't be this way.
6) We should be able to do multiple trade routes with a single convoy. Ie, "Go here and back, then here and back, then here and back". Or alternatively, "Go here and fill up with this cargo only, then this port and get their cargo", etc.
7) We should be able to flag cargoes to be picked up from/stored at warehouses. For instance, all ports need iron tools. But your trade fleets will pick these up and sell them on you if you aren't careful. It'd be nice to put a flag on a port, or all ports saying "HEY! I NEED THOSE, DONT SELL THEM!". Or, "Hey, if you're coming over here, bring me some tools!". This keeps the micro-management down.
8) I don't understand the point of the diplomacy missions (Take this letter/person/thing to this port). They seem to just be free money (I know it's wierd that I'm complaining about this), it's actually pretty annoying. Especially for how little money it usually yields. Although I suppose it helps in the beginning.
9) When you add ships to an existing fleet, the fleet stops what it was doing. Very fustrating if you already have several, and you can't remember if this was your third tea port fleet, or your spices fleet. Also, they don't stock up on cargo when leaving port. Apparently they only do that while entering, so you also have to double-check that it's hull is full.
10) There's no easy way to reconcile the levels of the various ports other than the ambiguous star-level. Also, there's no way to check the warehouse contents for each port, and there's no way to switch between ports other than backing out to the campaign map and going back into the port. Which for some reason takes awhile to load/load/load. (Maybe better caching is in order?)
11) There ought to be a way to automatically assign ships to trade fleets at your home port. When you build a ship, you can tell it "Join up with fleet X when it comes into port".
12) Do pirate cities ever become available for taking over? I suppose the alternative is to have a warship fleet patrol the pirate ports on aggressive, but that seems kind of annoying because...
13) Damaged ships/fleets should have an option to completely restock/repair when going to port. Every port has repair/crew/ammo buying facilities, and ports you own with barracks/garrisons have marine recruiting facilities so whey can't we automate this? It's almost as mind-numbing as the warship vs warship fleet in #5. Almost.
14) I think Captain/Admiral levels should be finer. There's about 10 slots for skills, I think it'd be alot more fun if there was 10 levels so you got one skill per level.
15) It might also be a good idea to have some sort of Admiralty type building in your home port so you can pre-recruit good admirals before they leave (They do leave if unhired, don't they?). I'd been using sloops to keep them, but it seems sort of kludgey.
I'm sure with more playthroughs I'll find more things to suggest. It's really a fun game, but as-is I don't think I'd buy it for the $40 USD I saw it for on GG today. It's just missing too many bits, and too many are unpolished, and some mechanics (anything to do with entering a port more or less) is just too tedious. Anyways, good luck!
