I just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of dissatisfied customers. I loved EIC and rushed to purchase Privateer. It's unplayable. Now I can't even play EIC because I get the DC from Steam whether I want it or not.
This is the worst release I've ever played in... cripes... 28 years of gaming. The game crashes constantly. After about 30 minutes of playing any campaign (usually involving several restarts), save games become completely unusable and the game starts crashing as soon as they're loaded.
Even when the game isn't crashing the gameplay has become a total joke. Naval battles in the middle of the ocean seem to have an 80% chance of taking place among a small cluster of islands. Enemy ships hurl themselves onto the nearest island and destroy themselves as soon as a battle commences, perhaps to avoid being captured (but more likely due to pathfinding so bad that a programmer too young to get past a COPPA screen could create a replacement in a couple of days). Even in the strategy map ships drive straight into land and spend a month or two of game time grinding themselves against the rocks.
This is the worst release I've ever played in... cripes... 28 years of gaming. The game crashes constantly. After about 30 minutes of playing any campaign (usually involving several restarts), save games become completely unusable and the game starts crashing as soon as they're loaded.
Even when the game isn't crashing the gameplay has become a total joke. Naval battles in the middle of the ocean seem to have an 80% chance of taking place among a small cluster of islands. Enemy ships hurl themselves onto the nearest island and destroy themselves as soon as a battle commences, perhaps to avoid being captured (but more likely due to pathfinding so bad that a programmer too young to get past a COPPA screen could create a replacement in a couple of days). Even in the strategy map ships drive straight into land and spend a month or two of game time grinding themselves against the rocks.