East India Company - Updated Impressions :: Tacticular Cancer

At the beginning of a new campaign you get to select the usual knick-knacks. Though it was not functional in my preview build, the Select Campaign option indicates there will be different types of campaigns. Available factions: Britain, Netherlands, France, Portugal, Denmark, Spain, Sweden and (this is now confirmed) the Holy Roman Empire. For unknown reasons, Nitro did neither deem the Italian city states nor the Osmanic Empire worthy for inclusion, which is a disappointment. You also get to choose campaign difficulty but what you set for tactical battle difficulty doesn't matter because it can be selected before every battle.

The first thing the game presents you with is your campaign mission, which is composed of several primary and secondary goals. The difference is that primary goals must be achieved but you don't have to fulfill all of the secondary objectives. The inclusion of company assignments seems a good idea to me. Because to be honest, hauling goods only for profit could become a bit tiresome in the long run. On the other hand I find it somewhat gamey that if you fail objectives, the game will end abruptly. Wouldn't it be possible to continue the campaign and accept to be punished in other ways? Or why not even include the option to become head of my company one day, so I don't have to obey anyones orders anymore?

In my first campaign, management wants me to import 2000 tons of tea quickly and bring at least four Indian ports under my command. At the beginning I already have two towns, which means the other two have to be procured somehow. This means capturing them, which we will talk about later.

Campaign map

There are lots of towns in this game, but they come about as rather generic with not too much to set them apart. Basically a name, owning faction, main and secondary trade items, and buildings is all there is to a town. No one expected this to be like Sim City, but would it hurt to throw in a little bit more detail like populations and such? What about some historic background text, politics, religion, personalities? I could think of a lot of little details that would make the map more enjoyable, as it seems a little generic and I hope this will not hamper my interest.

Apart from that there is not much to gripe here. The design of the campaign map is absolutely logical and everyone should feel right at home from the start.

One of the first things to learn is that you will have to calculate your expenses and port arrivals in advance, otherwise you will soon have periods where you're run out of money. What will happen in that case is that some fleets will have to muck about for several months because you don't have the cash to buy new goods. As in EIC you neither have a bank nor parents that you could bum for some money, you'd better plan for the future and always leave yourself a buffer.

Another thing to learn quickly is that you will need every ton of cargo space that you can get. It is for this reason that the right construction orders matter a lot. It appears the East Indiamen will be a first choice, because it offers the best ratio between cargo space and price. Ships of the line will be useful as escorts (firepower and hitpoints seem to be everything in battles). Separate privateer fleets of Frigates and Brigs could lurk around straights and capes. As to the smaller units, I don't know if they are of much use. With the battle engine in its current state everything seems to boil down to hit points and cannons, so the small vessels will be dead meat.

Remember what I already said about the generic-ness of towns. Unfortunately the same principle is at work with ship types, as all members of a ship class will always have the same hitpoints and such. Which is disappointing, because in my opinion the point of unit stats is not only to have numbers, but also to allow for a little bit of identity, slightly different characteristics and such. Right now ship classes are rather uninspired templates, meaning ships of the same type don't differ at all, there is no upgrading, aging, etc.

I you need additional ships they can be built in shipyards under your control. These are no Liberty ships, i.e. construction will take several months, which is a very accurate period of time. This makes ship construction very strategic, because you will have to plan orders long in advance. But then I find it bewildering to see that repairs are completed instantaneously, with a single mouse click. Wouldn't it be more believable if ships had to spend a little bit of time in the dock for repairs? Same for hiring crew, buying guns and other things, which all seem to be in limitless supply. If sailors were a bit harder to come by, and you wouldn't begin every battle with a full complements, it would make the battles much more interesting than they are now.

Trading

The trading part in EIC makes a good impression. You will get to see all kinds of mundane and exotic wares, with prices and availability varying realistically between geographic regions. The choice and number of trade items shows a lot of thinking and solid research. Also, getting your hands at the trade goods is very straightforward. You select a fleet, set waypoints and sail into any port (but only if it's not controlled by another company), and once you're in you can load cargo from your warehouses or buy directly from the local market.

Which brings us to a big problem, the trading interface. I was of the opinion that transaction interfaces can be implemented very efficiently with slider widgets or plus/minus buttons. But some bright spark apparently thought it would be great if this was done by drag & drop instead. The resulting procedure is frustrating, error prone and leading to an unnecessary workload. While this was somewhat alleviated with hotkeys (hold alt while dragging to buy 10 items, shift to buy All items) this is still one of the most annoying things I came across in the whole game. Especially as a single click, once made, cannot be undone and a wrong order can easily cost you a couple hundred thousand gold pieces (hold shift in the wrong moment and you have accidentally purchased 400 tons of tea, for half a million florin). Buying and selling goods is the heart and soul of this game so I think the interface should have been better thought out on that part.

As should be expected, there are huge price differences between Europe and India. Meaning if it's done right, trading will bring in huge rewards. The way prices work appears absolutely logical to me.

For every item in the trading screen the game always shows the profit in your home town, which is nice for beginners, but also a little bit too much hand holding for an experienced player. In addition you can construct warehouses, which allow you to trade goods all the time, even if you don't have ships in that port.

I didn't get if prices change according to supply and demand. If I bought hundreds of tons, even when another company was mooring in the same port, prices would be more or less unaffected. This could be something not working in the preview build. On the other hand I often had to find out competitors had just bought out all the profitable wares before me, which is exactly what I would expect in a trading game.

Naval battles

I did not see any noticeable difference to the battles since the first preview, and I am becoming a bit worried that the "simulation" mode is in fact already more or less final. If that is the case, everything (cannon range, damage, reload times), as well as initial engagement distances will need a hefty dose of modding.

And as in the first preview I stick to my opinion that the commanders abilities are rather off the mark. The passive (permanent) skills should actually work, but the active ones (like the one that increases cannon range by 20% for 10 seconds, every 25 seconds) are complete rubbish.

The huge number of destroyed ships is all the more incomprehensible as on the strategic level, ships are extremely valuable assets, so it seems Nitro still needs to dovetail the two parts.

Port Attacks

One of the things that were new to me is that port battles are auto-resolved.

Compared with the rest of the game that feels a little sobering. There are good examples how to implement auto-resolve without the whole thing looking like a damn income statement. As it is now, the only way to succesfully attack ports is to bring in superior numbers. You have the option to recruit marines but even then port battles are risky and bloody affairs.

Conclusions

I will not mince my words: I am disappointed. I envisioned a deep historic strategy game that combines the atmosphere of Shogun Total War with the visuals of Silent Hunter III, realistic naval battles from Age of Sail 2, and an unrestricted sandbox mode. If you also had hopes EIC would be a deep and accurate simulation of renaissance seafaring, it might be time to put that idea out of your mind.

But let's be fair. The developer never said they were making such a game, and stated they were aiming for compromises in gameplay. EIC fits that bill perfectly. The game falls right in the middle.

For my taste EIC is too streamlined and spreadsheet like, and a couple of design decisions are even bizarre. But I still got the impression that in between the numerous superfluous features and the flurry of the battles, there is an engaging strategy layer and potential for more. All the missing things can come by with mods, patches and (hopefully) addons.

The developer seem to have done a good job with their first title and they have a lot of potential: a modern engine, beautiful visuals, a great concept. All that needs to be done now is a lot of fine tuning of the gameplay.

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