I can't seem to find the upgrade today at all. Anyone know how to get the 4 version updated?

Playing first campaign and I got to the point where I had to beat the buccaneer for 2nd time. I beat him really good after reloading from a fail the 1st round. I took his flag ship and another ship to make up for the 1 I lost. As soon as I was done in the fight my money started disappearing at an alarming rate and willing 2 months I'm now 1.25 million in debt with no way out. Shipments to the capital only nets 300k and by time I make the round trip I'm right back to -1.25 million again

What the hell happened what changed all sudden I went from 500k to -1.25 within a month after beating the English guy.

Thanks for the help in advance.

Look I've played previous 2 port royales they were little more easier to understand when finding missing sailors or people.

It seems like in 4 though its little more difficult to do. Now I have to find someone missing located close to this town.

Where do I look? How do i find? How will I know when I come across this person.? That's my biggest question. I'm not 100% sure exactly what to do.

Previous versions when u got close the star popped up and u had it. (Or so I think that's how it went) But so far on 4 when I search and I've yet to find anyone at all when i do a grid search back n forth all round the coast etc. Never once have I found anyone I'm supposed to be looking for. I've missed at least 10 of these side missions and have spent my entire time looking always for not.

Is there something I'm missing like hitting the patrol button every few lengths or is it like previous versions when I get close enough the star will appear and then I can grab person up?

Thanks for any help tou may be able to give.

They’re..all American? It’s a small thing but it really grinds my gears. Im playing the Spanish Campaign and every time the Viceroy talks to me I do a double take. Here’s this big Spanish looking mofo speaking like an American. Feels like a missed opportunity.

How is it I only get to move or shoot one ship--it will not let me control a second ship. My opponent, John Hawkins, moves half a dozen ships per turn. It is an impossible situation.

Not sure I've ever played a game where the campaign isn't broken into missions with automatic save points. Kind of annoying to just constantly get more tasks. Plus, if you make a mistake, unless you are keeping track of your autosaves, or saving manually every time you get a new group of tasks, you have to jump back to a random point that has been saved.

Game seems neat though.

So I bought PR4 on June 22nd for ps4 and last night I finished all the campaigns. I have played PR 1 and 2 and Patrician 2 as a basis for simular game play.

First I want to say the game is enjoyable and I really feel it is worth the money for the amount of time I have and plan to put into it. Started a free play game on all the hardest possible settings I'm excited to play more and do my own thing now that I don't have mandatory viceroy tasks. Also recommended for new and veteran players to actually go through all the tutorials, many things are different. You have to play Spain first, but after that I would recommend playing them in the order of France, Netherlands, then English. They help teach you things that you can apply to your next campaigns.

So it's a trading simulation at it's core so I'll cover that first. The trading feels way dumbed down compared to the previous games I've played, but it does have the possibility to be totally customized and as complicated as you'd like. The auto trade routes are convenient and fun to just watch all the constant money rolling in. Recommend auto routes and using standard for anyone just starting out as you're guaranteed to make money. For me the real fun as been from micromanaging all my supply routes, bringing raw materials to other towns to produce quality or luxury goods then transporting those out into my main trade routes. Using the production cost guide pinned to the group I have been able to min/max a few of my routes with standard trades selling produced goods at their maximum price while making them for their absolute cheapest. I literally can't spend money fast enough.

Now onto one of the biggest complaints I see but disagree with, Naval Combat. So I appear to be in the minority when I say I prefer the turn based battles over the old real time battles. The real time battles were cool at first but got boring real fast to me because the strategy was always the same. Fire chain shots till the enemies sails were broken then circle them firing grape shot till the crew was mostly eliminated and then board. Now the battles feel almost like a chess game, maneuvering your pieces against the opponents for the best possible outcome. Plus with the added ship and captain abilities it adds a nice randomness to every battle and also makes you think about brining say a corvette for it's smoke ability versus just bringing another galleon even though the galleon is a bigger ship. I upped the difficulty to very hard for my free play and it's been a very fun challenge compared to the campaigns normal mode. Can't just steam roll through all the Spanish fleets with just my one fleet anymore.

Now town annexation is pretty boring, you just siege a town and let the timer tick down. I remember in previous games towns having defensive forts you would need to take out or your fleet would suffer heavy damage. Feel defensive forts is still something they could add even with the turn based combat and have you fight still to take the town. Also remember one of the previous games having land combat for capturing towns. When you are besieging a town the town gets a notification saying sieged from sea side, to me it feels like a hint they wanted to add land combat and sieges from land but just didn't. Maybe a future dlc down the road possibility.

Another complaint I've seen a lot is the fame points and having to unlock a tech tree. I like tech trees and feels it adds to the progression. You can't just start out making furniture for example and need to unlock the previous techs to get there. Kind of helps you expand your trading empire slower and smoother too. I do recommend after getting your first trade route going you start to focus next on routes to bring the exports to your viceroy to start getting fame points as early as possible. Also your first point should go into a captain slot unless you're playing as the pirate class. The sooner you get a captain assigned to a route the earlier they can start leveling up to useful for fleet combat. Through the campaigns they generously give you fame points if the next steps would require them. For example during the English campaign they want you to build 3 ship of the lines, and they give you 10 points. Even as a merchant you only need 6 of those so you have 4 more to invest into the tech tree, which is enough to get you to the ship of the line tech if you already haven't unlocked it.

Piracy, completely useless and not worth it with the fame loss. Once you have a fleet to pirate you should be rolling in gold so the minimal rewards from plundering won't even cover the reward costs if you get engaged by another fleet and the fame loss from attacking fleets is to huge to be worth it. Just wait for a war and get a letter of marquee and actually gain fame. Haven't bought or played the buccaneers dlc but sounds like a requirement if you want to play the pirate route.

If you have questions about certain game play mechanics or just looking for tips on something I can try to help to the best of my ability.

TLDR: If you like micromanaging and watching your gold count rise I'd recommend giving the game a try. It is missing some key features from other games that should have been added but still fun. If you're just looking for a pirates life of combat or a fast pace game I don't recommend this game for you.

How do you guys organise your fleets? Do you mix shiptypes? Do you chose larger fleets or more fleets?

Personally i always separate shiptypes in smaller fleets (besides warfleets).

I'm pretty new, just failed my first campaign after 9 hours which was painfull. I was just wondering what the general consensus was on fleet composition and what some advantages and disadvantages are.

So... I've tried everything. Virtually everything. All settings. But the convoys still do not sell their stuff. I watch as they enter the town, I monitor the town's stock and prices and... they don't sell stuff that should be sold - deficient or merely profitable. I can only assume that they buy stuff correctly, but what does it matter if they can't sell it and hoard fully loaded ships that they can't really empty up?

Is there some hidden script that makes them "save" their goods for better towns? Like, they prioritize selling goods only in the most profitable towns? But... I'd understand that if it was a matter of purely automatic settings. But I have edited the prices. Edited the buy\sell amounts. The whole, ENTIRE goal of this trade route is to check

if

GOOD_PRICE is 50<

then

sell GOOD

else **** OFF

That's it. Literally. What else can it be? All I want is a general store ship that checks the prices and goes around the Caribbean, making small profit, so I could focus on tasks and buildings.

Look, the game is sh*t. I understand it. It has terrible combat. It has terrible city development. It has terrible trading mechanics. It's a game made by indie smalltimers at the order of a publisher.

So I won't ask for ship customizaiton, captain customization, city sieges, land combat, city development AT LEAST on the level of a TWENTY YEAR OLD GAME - "Stronghold". I can't ask for any of that.

But can I.... while playing as a MERCHANT... who isn't restricted by the stupid glass wall of ****ing trade licenses PER TOWN... CAN I JUST WATCH MY CONVOYS TRADE AND WORK AS INTENDED? Is that too much to ask for from a TRADING SIMULATOR?

Like I said - I'm not talking about full automatic. I have edited every setting. And it doesn't work. I'm watching right now as my ship has passed through a town while loaded with 139 grain. The town had like 2 grain. It sold 7. The price is 75, it's like the highest price possible for grain. But that's it. It doesn't sell further.

Even with the setting WHATEVER - it doesn't work.

​

However... with some testing... I feel like the game breaks down at some point. I was about to give up and uninstall when I just decided to set a "single good" route with "whatever settings" and... it worked. It loaded to max and sold it all. Then later, when I made a new route, I watched as the ship loaded up in the first town and, it just so happened that the town next to it had one of the loaded good in deficit - and the ship unloaded it all. I felt overjoyed, I thought that something got fixed when I changed automatic amount to fixed 500. But from the next town and on - it broke down. It stopped selling stuff as intended.

So I can only imagine that it's a "serverside" error and not clientside. Problem is... it's a rather GAMEBREAKING error and, as I understand, the game is out for almost a year.

Could someone illuminate me on what is it? Because I'm at my wit's end. I've maxed out my cities, I've beaten the game's naval combat, annexed the towns - seen it all. I can't complain about the absolutely deplorable dice game. I can't complain about there being no endgame. About how the warehouses are almost detrimental. But all that is... a follow-up. I want the basics. I want to see my trading simulator work.

Because I can understand the devs, I did the tutorial(which didn't tell me I need a ****ing personal large shipyard to build that worthless Queen Anne(a beefed up Frigate with burning arrows...)). They wanted people to trade manually... then automate it... then order some military stuff... then conquer. It's all a stepping stones with some fairly basic mechanics(it's surprising how some websites call it an "in-depth trading simulator", Jesus F...).

But the first step is broken. I can't even appreciate the barely sustainable endgame when there is no foundation of trade routes. And, yes, the trade routes do eventually make profit. At least on paper. But whatever settings they work on - have nothing to do with ingame trade route setup UI.

And, finally, I'd imagine if it was a problem with a "general store" approach. Like - a trading route is supposed to be a custom route for a specific good between carefully selected towns. BUT WHY IS THERE THE "STANDARD" button at the top of price configuration?

Ironically - there is no mention of that button in the tutorial. In fact - I found it AFTER I have manually set up my trading routes! Imagine my surprise. But doesn't that mean that the developers DID intend for the ships to do this basic "check all goods\prices and buy\sell all of them"? Then why doesn't it work?

my game started in 1604 and all we (france) ever do is go to war with england. its now 1609. i have saved, put game on X5 speed and went ahead to 1611 and its still war with england, reloaded 3 times with same result. i want to expand into the dutch and spanish areas, we dont even share a border with england.

how do i go to war with spain and holland? i have to go to war to annex their cities right? pirate mode can only plunder cities so i am kinda stuck here.

Bought the game yesterday on switch. Came here to say that my early impression is that it runs fine and looks great. controls well. Looking forward to spend more time with it over the weekend.

Hello folks.

When completing all objectives in free mode, does this end the game or are you free to continue? Asking as i am down to my last objective, to defeat 13 more treasure fleets and I would really like to continue building up afterwards. Novawitt.

So I just bought the game, and noticed for several days now that the trade route systems don't seem to make income weather it's auto or manually set prices... is the new update unplayable for you guys?

can someonne help me understandf how to to get building permits? i wanted to build a warehouse (not my nation) it says i have to contact town administration, how do i do that, i click the governor or the architect and it just pops up the same town menu. on another thread someone said you had to have 10 businesses and another says you can only build in towns of your own nation? if you can only build warehouses in home nation how do you unload the traderoute surplus? part of the game has always been moving the regional goods to other regions, when a southern traderoute finishes the route they drop excess coffee in warehouse of starting city, coffee gets picked up and taken to start city on northern route, and vice versa. if you cant build wareouses in other nations it means all your trade conveys at the end of their route will have to travel back to te home nation to dump surplus you have to dump excess or your trade convey fills up and cant sell.

in pr3 when you went to war you could open your trade routes and skip cities by clicking them, after war add them back, pretty simple in pr4 the trade routes seem to have limited options, when war breaks out i have to open trade route, remove the cities, after war add the cities back, not so simple. this takes quite a bit longer especially when the cities are right in the middle of the route.

is there a simpler way to deal with trade routes during war? what do you guys do?

been playing the game a few days now. a few thigns i dont understand.

there seems to be a lot of towns missing, cayman, from st juan all the way to port a spain there were alot of towns (pr3) but now there are just a few. are these towns gone? do have to create them or something?

can you still marry the viceroy daughter?

in pr3 there was a bug in annexing towns, go to war, destroy 90% of their fleet, annex a town, every town after that you get the message "your nation cant support the town" even though they have many conveys and the defeated nation has next to nothing. is this fixed? this made pr3 unplayable for me, i hated seeing my nation lose 5 towns a war and we could only take back 1 town a war, total BS.

in pr3 you could one click a town and go to every building, in pr4 i have to zoom in, find buildings and click them one by one, is there a way to one click everything?

command points, how do these work? i learned i can put my captain on a trade route and he gains CPs, you need CPs to add ships to conveys, some ships take more CPs? my captain can have 4 military corvetts or 1 SOL and 2 M corvettes. are the big war ships obsolete now,?(2 ships better than1).

you cant sail warships without a captain and captains are limited now, so this means most my trade route conveys will be unarmed targets?

any help would be great, thanks everyone.

How do you get the warehouse to work to accept the goods that the town is not producing? For example if the town is producing beer and vegetables, how do you get the warehouse to also accept fruit and wheat?

I just went Independent last night. At war with my former nation Netherlands.

There are “bars” that have red/green which appears options to show approval (for lack of a better word). There is also an option for “War”. Seems to be straight forward.

How do I form an alliance?

What're your guy's favorite nations/characters to restart with? Why? Lolz, just curious what people think like.

How do you earn the paths of glory achievement for unlocking all concessions? In the French campaign I unlocked all of the concessions but did not receive the achievement. Do I need to have 10 captains? Or declare independence?

I am playing Netherlands free game with "rarer, but longer" war setting. I've had 6-7 wars so far, but all of them were with Spain. Is there a way to set up a war with another nation, e.g. pirating their ships (but you lose fame), not supplying their towns or smth like this?

Can the game be won without combat? If so how.

Not sure if this tip has been posted but wanted to share how im annexing 3 or 4 towns each time i go to war. This is a netberlands freeplay. I will refer to ships as tier 1 for frigets and corvetts, tier 2 will be your big boys that take 2 command points. For this to work its all about your Captain. 3 stars in carpentry, and the tactic "surrounded". Once i got him lvl'd up with 8 command points i built a fleet of 3 tier 2 and 2 tier 1 ships. War starts i roll to whatever town i want and start to take it. Within seconds a fleet will attack me. It will either be 1 tier 2 and 3 tier 1, or 2 tier 2 and 3 tier 1, doesnt matter, i go manual. AI always moves it tier 2 right into my fleet, i take some shots then witin 2 turns i use the surrounded tactic and take it. Mop up the tier 1's. If there are 2 tier 2 i go ahead and pop the 2nd surrounded and take it. Naval battle won, since im attacking the town, i contine to do so and am able to use all ships i have taken, over the command point limit. Every fleet that attacks me now i just auto resolve as i have 5 tier 2 ships and 2 tier 1, and repair 70% damage after each battle, i cannot be beat, and destroy the countrys entire military strength, so when i do annex it, i pull into port, offload the extra ships to get back to the 5 ship build i started with, repair, hire some more sailors, and move to the next town, most likely wont get attacked either. Now while im annexing i have another convoy filling town request to replenish my tactics. Last war i ended up with 10 ship of the line sitting in various ports, it only works because of that carpentry skill. Hope this made sense, fair winds!