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116.9M Points. Buying everything below $55, sell to any above $55, take no risks -- stockpiles are good. Last shipment, buy tea at any price -- time is the limiter not funds.
When you only have one or two ships, pick ports close to the bottom, unless the top has a great deal: $80-90/crate, 20+ crates.
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I wish there were more games about trade like this, but this one has lots of problems. It feels like you're just waiting you fail. Like other people said you can't keep any of your profits. There are no upgrades to invest in, and you can't sell your ships when you want. I rarely send more than two ships at once so after that they're useless to me. Britain demands more and more tea and at the same time conditions get worse XD
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I always begin to play this game because it is good ART and well formed, but I CAN'T sell Opium to people. I'm not a virtual drug-dealer. I can't do it!
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ATTENTION - "Plus" this comment to keep it alive. Here's how the scoring works: Multiply the # of Opium crates sold by ten. Then mulitply that by the # of Tea crates shipped; that will be the final score. So: (Opium crates X 10) X Tea crates = Final Score. Although, it doesn't do any good to keep track during the game as there's no total so far in-game. The obvious thing is to buy as much as possible. It works best when the prices get below 20; a disaster of some kind can drive it below 10. >:D When that happens buy the sh*t out of it nonstop, trust me. I have to admit I got 2 or 3 disasters that drove prices down below 20 a couple times and below 10 once. Here's a screenshot (cropped to make my red text bigger) of my final score for those who might want a visual aid. I even lost by not being able to make my last shipment. Can you blame me? It was 720 crates of tea; you'd have to click buy x30 nonstop the whole time and that's almost impossible. http://imgur.com/h2aFgNZ
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Ok, just a quick follow up to my last comment: it's actually better to go broke and lose the game than it is to keep Britain waiting. I got almost 10k more points losing without fulfilling the last shipment and having almost nothing than I did doing so and having a ton of money.
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Yeah, I have no problem at all winning, but it seems like every single time I finish I wind up with 65 mil and some odd change. Never more, generally never less. I sort of wish I understood what I was getting points for and what I wasn't, cause this time I felt like I did way, way better than last time and finished with almost 2x the amount of money (~50k), yet I got a worse score. On the other hand, I did keep stupid old Britain waiting for its tea for a little longer, but again, I have no idea what kind of an effect that has on score. Plus I'm not all that big a fan as it's still way too luck based for my tastes, especially when you factor in the dumb risky ports, which of course by the end is pretty much half the available ports...
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Unlike what others say, this game is neither rigged nor impossible. You have to have patience and think critically. After failing my first game because I took one too many risks, I realized what needed to be done and got the Hard badge the very next attempt. This is a fantastic game that takes a decent amount of strategy and attention-to-detail. I would certainly play another game of this series.
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You mean that the English just couldnt take some tea plants and plant them in India to avoid losses and such? What has happened to them?
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A good way of beating the game: set realistic goals for your opium/tea prices. If you know the price will stabilise around 30 silver coins, buy as much as you can. Don't expect the prices to go any lower than that (except for the market crashes). Took me few tries and got the hard badge.
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retarded unbeatable game.
was doing so well in the beginning was upto 50k coin had tons of tea..etc.. in the end, all were "Risk" ports, lost everything at every route, tea went upto 95 each only needed 30 more tea to beat the game, price wouldn't drop, ports kept busting me so i couldn't sell opium to get the last tea... rigged game?
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kind of bs that as soon as you buy opium for cheap order prices cut in half instantly. price seems to be inverse of your stock, meaning demand has absolutely 0 to do with sell prices. if opium is so big in china, as well as so hard to get, how does it make sense that sell prices would take such a sudden hit?
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I appear to have single handedly addicted 3/4 of china considering that in 1839 4108506 chinese people were alive and I addicted 319 million and I have compitution everyone in china must be high on opium right now
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I've slayed dragons...conquered worlds....destroyed many alien civilizations.Now? Now i'm a drug smuggler!!! EXCELLENT!!!
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this game have horrible scoring system. I tried to play the "correct" way so I win at the end with around 40x mil of both tea and opium and I got 77mil score. The next game I go brainless opium selling and LOST me the game but I got 100mil score with 360 tea and 552. winning the game should reward a player for a huge score bonus or there is almost no point to "win" the game
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I figured out how to get the hard badge, and scored 125,000,000. You get a ton of points for the more people you addict to opium for some reason!
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sudden price spike in BOTH opium and tea, as well as a dry spell as far as opium selling prices are concerned right at my final order, keeping me 2 orders of tea away from winning? absolutely unfair.
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Pretty good game, I like the way its based about England for once.It is also good because nearly all games I have played are about America.Also it's based on something that really happened.
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Dang this badge is tough. For rankings like "master smuggler" and "a wealthy retirement awaits" you think the score would be closer to 80 Million. My best so far is only 41 though. Britain needs to stop drinking such expensive tea. Oh well guess I can try again.
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To get hard badge you need to balance everything quickly. The formula for your score = [(# of opium crates sold) * (# of tea crates sold) * 10] (tho early in game scoring is different). So tea is important too & b/c the game ends due to elapsed time it's best to not let Britain's mood drop much b/c that wastes time that in turn will prevent you from shipping tea for the score multiplier (if you're fast enough, Britain will request a shipment of 720+ tea). Note: if you ever forfeit your ship, you forfeit its crates too & that is usually the real loss. The cost of paying is half your silver so I found that if I needed to get risky w/o a bribe card it's best to do so only when I had just over 1000 (you need 1k+ to pay). Save up ~100 opium before 1832 when prices rise. Try to avoid deals w/ 1-9 crates; otherwise you're increasing port's risk factor w/ little to show for it. Having big stockpiles of opium seemed to give me better offers. Hopefully this will help make you a master trader!
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@Ashyen They do pay you for your work with new ships and then eventually faster ships which you get to keep if you should win. Might I add that ships were not real cheap back in the day and still are not :P
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How tasteful. You're a drug dealer. The object of the game is to get as many people addicted to opium as possible, causing conflict, several revolutions and decades of Communist rule ! Maybe you could make a sequel where you play a Colombian drug baron or an Afghan warlord ...:-/
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idk why but i dont get nothing in the badges... i sold 1000's of opium chests but the counter didnt move, same with shipped tea
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The only bad thing about this gaem is the fact that constantly the only reason I lose is due to the fact that I can't buy fast enough, even if I have the money to buy at maximum price
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The hard badge wasn't too bad. I just started buying tea in excess all the time from the beginning. If wait for the order to come in you won't have enough time. Work ahead, you know it'll be used.
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For people complaining about the luck aspect or how hard the game is....SOME of it is luck. But not as much as you'd think. Most of the same events and trends start happening around the same time.
DO NOT PANIC IF YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TEA!!!!
The 'mood' meter always starts at 'good mood' and slowly sinks. Get 'close' to having enough tea and stop. Use this time to build up money or opium THEN buy your last round of tea before the britts get angry.
If you buy same thing repeatedly when super cheap, you'll jack up the prices. Alternate between buying opium and tea (if you want lots of tea while it's cheap but Opium is expensive, for example, buy 30 tea then 5 opium before you buy more tea). This will help keep you from 'flooding' the market.
Points come from moving product. Don't make smart moves. Don't make the best moves. MOVE AS MANY CRATES as you can even if the trade doesn't make sense..you'll be surprised how much money you always have this way
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Hard badge wasn't so hard. Got it on my third try. Just learn when the opium or tea markets will crash on the timeline. Also buy a ton of tea and opium, even if there is no order. I suggest buying tea and opium if it's under 50 coins.
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Nice quick game! Played it through twice for both badges. A few tips - there are some times that are deliberately hard to weather ('The price of tea has been at record highs'). Go for bulk trading and keep a high income flow when all is going well. Especially towards the end, you have to start buying tea before they even give you the numbers - any time you have excess cash and the price is even halfway reasonable, just buy.
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I enjoyed the game until I started hitting long periods of time when no potential opium sales materialized and I eventually lost because it was impossible to sell then buy tea. Also, twice I had my first ship impounded without the opportunity to pay my way out -- game over. Not worth a serious investment of time and strategy if the game intermittently guarantees failure.
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It's a pretty good trading game, but in my opinion, I feel that too much of the game is luck-based. You have to hope that certain events go in your favor and that prices are low at the right times to win and I feel like there's way too much luck involved for it. But it's still a nice, small strategy game. 4/5
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Yes, surprisingly fun. This game does a great job of balancing frantic risk and abandon - with cautious resource management and restraint. I was at 690 of 720 tea and the deal for my last 30 was 90% done when my game ended. My score was almost 82 million and I lost by 1 second. :P~ One change request though. The popup messages from the British captain (when you're given a new ship) obscure the ports at the bottom of the screen. Can you add a pause + OK like the other info messages, or reduce the popup window size?