#Port royale 4 ign review full#

The overall map of the sea will show off the location of all of your ships as well as the route they are running. Early on you'll probably be controlling a ship by yourself just to give yourself a better chance to make a better profit. This level of automation helps to create a playable game that would be pretty tough to manage later in the game when you have close to your max number of ships. Complex trade routes can be established for each of your convoys, even allowing for shore leave and repairs to ships.

It works surprisingly well even if it is frustrating when you get aced by some damn computer controlled trader. You'll often see prices change as you sit there trying to decide what to buy because some other ship came in and either bought or sold goods while you were waiting. And if that wasn't enough, there are plenty of other trade ships floating around the sea.

#Port royale 4 ign review full#

Supply and demand is in full effect here, so the more you sell, the smaller the demand and smaller the price. The trade system means that prices are constantly in flux, even when you're selling goods. Your job will be to find the best trade routes for your ship convoys and set them to gathering the and selling the goods. At the same time, luxury goods that are scares such as pottery, isn't going to have much of an effect. For instance, a shortage of food in a city will have a dramatic effect on the people that leave there, prompting them to leave, which will screw up the economy. Food, commodities, colonial goods, and imported goods area all up for trade and all have different effects on the populace due to their nature. There are several types of goods that are available for trade in several different categories. The economic system is a good one that will have players racing from port to port to catch that next good deal. The beginning of the game will find you trading more often than anything else as you build your empire. As you begin your game, your main goals will be to gain money to increase your fleet, and gain reputation with one of the four nations in the area to attain the final goal of becoming Governor. Thankfully, controlling such a vast fleet of ships isn't quite as confusing as you might think, but will take a little bit of time to get used to, but I'll get more into that in a second. An armada of 100 ships for a merchant and hopefully a Governor (which is as high as you can go) isn't too shabby. Eventually, if the game progresses far enough, you'll be able to have 10 convoys of 10 ships each. This one ship will be the beginning of your dynasty that could take a long time to finish. There are choices as to what kind of ship you'll begin with and how much money as well.

Each game begins with one ship and a sum of money. Of course, depending on which nation you choose to be a part of for each of these periods, you'll have a different difficulty level depending on how powerful your nation is at the time. Each player will be able to start at any point in this history as the ownership of many towns will be different and the presence of each of the four nations will be in different proportions. The game plays out from 16th century when the Spanish were largely in control of the area until the English, French, and Dutch had begun to take more control over the area in the 17th century and begun kicking the Spanish out a bit more.

Port Royale brings players into the heart of the high times of the Carribean and Gulf of Mexico, when the major European nations had begun colonizing the area as fast as possible and little towns and forts were springing up all over the little islands and coastlines of that sea.