Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Cool start, though I wish it was a bit more in depth. I was able to take a lot of territory at the start, making it a bit easy. I don't like that critical hits are instant kills though. I had an enemy sloop take out my galleon in one hit.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Easiest way to win is to rush the enemies, build merchants, and keep your front lines stocked behind your losses (if that ever actually happens because the AI is dumb as hell). The losses you suffer at the end were off as well. I didn't lose any forts and only lost 2 ships and came up with 1 fort and 10 ships. You build up your ability tree way too slowly as well, and the Military side of the tree is way more powerful (almost essential) than the Civil side. I barely managed to unlock the Galleon the second time through (and didn't even come close the first time). Forts are under-powered, overpriced, and almost pointless. Critical hits are just an instant kill and completely random, which is silly and sort of annoying. The AI, even on hard, doesn't understand focus fire or ship placement in combat, and doesn't seem to have a real attack or defense strategy out of combat. I think this game needs some serious rethinking, but I can see it being really fun with a little bit of streamlining.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Hmmm......the game needs some tweaks to the difficulty as well. I just did a Blitzkrieg run in 9 Turns. My starting choices were Holland, +2 Maps, and Hard difficulty. I focused my research on acquiring Galleons (although all of my territories adjacent to the last 2 enemy territories had 6 ships at the start of the final turn, so I didn't get to use them in the turn I got them) and only built war ships, specifically the biggest and baddest I had the gold for until every territory adjacent to the enemy had 6 war ships or I didn't have enough gold for even a Sloop. I did lose one battle, which might be the reason it took 9 Turns instead of 8, maybe. The higher difficulty needs tweaked more to better encourage building forts and merchant ships (yes, it takes 6 turns for them to pay themselves off, but if it's expected to take 20 or 30 turns on Hard difficulty they'd be a vital investment).
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
A quick win here would be an exp system. For example units that survive a battle will gain a star up to five stars. Each star will increase the effectiveness of the unit.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
This is the beginning of a really great game- almost like a naval Risk, with more complexity- but it needs a lot of fine-tuning before it gets there. The random events, for example (storms/pirates) don't add much. They just happen and make you lose ships, which is more annoying than depth-adding. Likewise the treasure hunting; it's not much more than an occasional bit of extra gold, since they don't appear often and they're not very challenging to solve. The diplomacy is pretty simplistic; I had Spain make peace with and declare war on me in the span of one turn, for no apparent reason. The combat AI isn't great either, with AIs sending single-sloop 'fleets' against ports defended by five ships and a fortress. Aside from that, the game is pretty bare-bones, but I know it can be really awesome if there's more things to do and better mechanics.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Tenth: To repeat what chunkymonkey99 said, there needs to be a means of getting rid of lesser tier ships (retire, sell off, 'give to [your nation]'s pirates', destroy) so they can be replaced with higher tier ships other than suiciding them against the enemy.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Ninth (continued):...but 1 Frigate only needs to get a single attack in on one of those 6 Sloops to successfully board all 6 of them, even with the moral penalties, if both either do or do not have the extra crew tech (of course to attempt that boarding endeavor the Frigate needs the enhanced movement tech but the Sloops can't have it, otherwise it'll never get close enough with the difference in speed and the square attack ranges of the ships). Heck, it takes at least 3 Sloops, if not a full 4 or 5 if any of them have taken an attack, for Sloops to capture a Brigantine, and that ratio never really changes through the ship ranks.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Ninth: The crew values between the different ships don't seem very well balanced. It is nearly impossible for a lower 'rank' ship to successfully board a higher 'rank' ship, unless there have already been a few failed boarding attempts, and the greater the difference in 'rank' the more pointless it is. Yes, a group of 6 Sloops can be a pain in the ass for a group of 6 Galleons to deal with, what with a difference of 3 in base speed (if the Sloops use good hit-and-run tactics they can actually take out a Galleon or two before they get eliminated, maybe even three if there is a sizable tech imbalance in their favor)...
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Eighth: Why is the Attack (or Cannon) stat displayed as 10/10? Unless you're planning an update where as a ship takes battle damage it looses cannons, and thus has its offense strength decreased, it doesn't need to be displayed in such a manner. This almost looks like you copied code from somewhere else and forgot to clean it up before using it first (which might explain the error mentioned in the Fifth improvement suggested as well). If you are planning on doing such an upgrade then I am greatly looking forward to it, as it'll greatly alter the way combat feels and works (it'll give players an incentive to focus on using their stronger ships to weaken enemy ships instead of focusing on eliminating enemy ships, not to mention it'll make it easier for the weaker ships to be of use in the late game).
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Seventh: You have a significant 'crew' stat for the Fortresses, but the player can't send in a landing party to assault the Fortresses. Again I label that a significant flaw, as I haven't seen a single attack in the game do more crew damage than 'structural integrity' damage. Yes, I can understand some crew, most likely because you have it coded so that all of the direct combat elements have to have some crew, but you could probably drop it to 75, or even 60, and not be in any danger of it running out of crew. Not to mention it could be highly beneficial to capture a fortress so you don't have to build a new one from scratch after the battle.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Sixth: The critical hits need to be better balanced. Yes, if you hit the powder room in those old ships you have a good chance of blowing it sky high, but unless the wood was extremely weak no shot is going to make it that far through a Galleon that hasn't already taken battle damage, and Frigates aren't that much more vulnerable to it either. Not to mention, a properly designed fort typically had walls nearly as heavy as the outer seaward walls around the powder shed, and it was still standing off by itself, to make it as close to absolutely impossible for that to happen as possible.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Fifth: Tweak the movement display in the ship info panel, because once you get the movement bonus tech it starts to read things like 6/51, instead of 6/6 or 6/5+1. Yeah, unless you focus on getting that tech as fast as possible it doesn't have a significant impact on the gameplay, but it does look rather messed up. Personally I'm more in favor of the second correction there, but again this isn't something that is necessary for the game to make 5 Stars.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Fourth: If possible tweak the game code so instead of having a square range to target you cut out the corners. I don't know if that change is doable or not, and the game can still make 5 Stars without it.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Third: Include an option to have ships retreat. It doesn't make any sense at all to sit there and just fight it out to the bitter end when you attack with 6 Brigantines and the enemy has 2 Galleons, 2 Frigates, 1 Brigantine, and 1 Sloop (not to mention 3 Merchants and 3 Fortresses that are actually well placed). Obviously your ships don't stand a realist chance (well, they might be able to play keep-away with the Galleons until the cows come home, and if the enemy doesn't have the mobility upgrade for their ships but you do possibly even take them down with hit-and-run tactics, but those Frigates have your number and then some, and all they have to do is pin you in a corner with the Galleons closing in and you're ass just got served up on a silver platter).
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Second: When pirates attack you in a region you should get a full battle sequence so you can attempt to defeat the pirates. Loosing 4 Brigantines to a single pirate attack, in a region with 5 Brigantines and a Sloop, on only the 5th or 6th turn is more than a little extreme. Unless those pirates had a pair of Galleons, about 4 Frigates, or some combination thereof they shouldn't be able to pull that off unless you're making the claim that the ships were ambushed on patrol, and what commander worth they're salt would send out single ships to patrol when they're region is at max capacity?
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Okay, there are a few things I've noticed that could really be improved upon in the game. As it is I give it a 4 Star rating, but with these improvements it's easily a 5 Star game.
First: A successful boarding action should allow you to capture the ship, instead of just destroying it, and at the end of the battle you get to choose which ships to keep and which ships to sell/release to pirates (do remember, the start of the Age of Piracy was governments giving Letters of Marque to ship captains, essentially giving them free reign to attack ships of foreign nations on behalf of their nations navy, and to keep most of the spoils for themselves).
(Rest to follow, the comment was to big.)
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
@Desideri0: The biggest benefit of the higher speed on the smaller ships is that it allows them to perform hit and run attacks against fortresses. The fortresses have a base range of 4, while all ships have a range of 3, so if used right a single Sloop can actually defeat three fortresses. It'll be a really long battle without some of those astronomically high crits, but anything with a speed of 4 or more can use the tactic (of course a Frigate is essentially a floating fortress to start with, so against a single fortress it can actually just go for a straight up slug match and expect to win if it gets the first hit). One thing to remember is that the dev used square ranges, so it's 4 vert and horz, not 4 vert plus horz.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
This would be a great game with some modifications and upgraded graphics. Such as : Insta-kill system deleted, selling ships, bigger map, 40 moves per game/duel, retreating from a game/duel.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Nice idea, below average execution. Just went hard on England with 6 galleons, 3 of them got critted down by fortresses, remaining 3 were also critted down by sloops and frigates.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
I enjoyed it..don't get me wrong but PLEASE fix enemy ai I played on normal (skipped tutorial so why not) my strategy was: build big ship move ship to enemy full offense all the time
aka I was the orks from warhammer
...i lost 16 ships before I won
problems I noticed:
1 damage table....is just random? yes bigger ships seem to do more but not by a consistent amount and the random crit instakill ruins that
2 the enemy ai...why does it seem afraid to board you? it boarded one of my ships once despite I often had engagements where I had no chance if it just charged shot and continued until it could board (like having 2 smaller ships against one bigger one)
3) enemy ai...why does it obsess over building merchant ships? not only is a 6 turn investment to balance it's buy value
4) want to know what killed most of my ships? The random pirate attacks...literally something that has nothing to do with me beyond RNG
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Nice, a Brigantine 1 shot criticalled my fortress. The whole critical instant-kill system, along with the inability to retreat from a fight I started or being able to wait out an attacker that doesn't want to actually attack, makes this very unfun.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
upvote for visibility
Bugs: if you researched something in the last game, it'll still research and activate in the next game, even if it's not reached in the techtree yet (but it's nice to steamroll enemies with day 1 Galleons). You need to send ships away before a territory receives ships, because if you do not, the ships cannot leave after the territory had an incomming fleet. If you send ships to an Ally he becomes your enemy, even if you clicked cancel (ok, you did click yes to the he is an ally message). After boarding the markers where you can sail and cursor may disappear. Sloops onehitting Galleons seems unrealistic. AI is just "move at random" or worse. Difficulty should be named easy-easier-still easy. Only one map, on which every Nation has fixed starting Points. Take the extra treasure-maps, it's the best starting option.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Too many bugs- ships not displaying in the correct coordinates, cheaty computers, random gold deficits, OP crits. With work I would love it. As it is, I do not love it.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
This game has a great concept but feels nearly broken while playing :( too bad. No retreat or even better auto battle slow the game to a crawl, battle could be described as a roll of the dice at best, small enemy ships can one shot or board much larger galleons, bizarre wins/losses make the strategy seem moot. Plus the as advertised "20 territories and 14 technologies!" are really nothing once you get into the game, 20 and 14 are bare minimal to even be playable with this type of game. More maps, more depth in general, auto battle/retreat, and a massive amount of balancing and bug fixes could make this game very very nice, but it is very very bad as it sits.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Nice little game that needs improvements. I should be able to keep the ships that I boarded. Merchants should have some cannons, nobody was sailing without cannons those days. Ship building should take some turns. I should be able to defend to pirates. Critical hits should do double damage.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Nice game, i really like the feel of it, but the problem is that the AI is a bit too simplistic, like wandering around randomly in battles and not buying better boats in the late game even with a lot of money.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
OK update to my previous comment so far 5 turns in pirates have destroyed 10 of my ships at least on a turn and in a couple of turns 3 and 4. Yes really fair this games suck so bad.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
Game sucks duet to the random events that impact you. My second turn I lost my whole fleet to a pirate with nothing I could do about it. Really just horrible programming and game play. Go back to school and try again.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
I really like games like this, I tend to play a lot of strategy turned based. This is a simple bare boned game. I enjoy the skill tree and believe it is fair. I would like to see some improvements on this game that would possibly make it a great game.
1. Add Auto-Battle Calculator and Skip Animation to speed up battles
2. Add new ways to gain capitol (money) as far as a maybe a barter system. Also i noticed it costs me money to make a treaty with the AI but it doesn't cost them anything, i believe a parley should be put in place here similar to trading properties in Monopoly, an agreed amount that you think is fair for a treaty.
3. Do not get rid of the mass critical, i believe that could be a game changer for you or your enemy. It keeps you on your toes.
4. the pirate attacks should be viewed as battles that you have the chance to win or lose.
If i can think of more i would put them but these are the best ones to come to mind at the moment.
Keep up the good work!!
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
The "tutorial" isn't actually a tutorial, it's just a series of instruction pages. An actual tutorial should be something playable where the game walks you through the various features and controls.
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
If you guys are unhappy that you cannot speed up, skip, or retreat, then rate it a zero until the developer meets our demands, lots of devs really don't care enough anymore about it's players. +1 to keep this seen!
Under rating threshold (hideshow)
bug in the game: my ship was on the left edge of the map, and I got boarded from the ship sitting on the RIGHT edge of the map :)