By Jim Rossignol on June 16th, 2009 at 6:30 pm.
Two historical strategies in a single day? Perhaps not unprecedented, but certainly unusual. What’s particularly unusual is they both have something of a nautical theme, East India Company is particularly focused on the high seas, and offers splendid-looking 18th century sailboat gun action between bouts of management. We have to wonder whether it’ll trounce Empire: Total War’s ship-to-ship combat, or come in a barnacled second. The game is set for a July 28th release, and if you want to keep up with the design chatter then they’ve been keeping a rather detailed development blog. Now I must get back to Arma II, there be a reviewin’ brewin’.
I’ve been watching this one for awhile, there’s a lot of potential here but information’s been pretty sparse. I’m glad to see RPS keeping an eye on it as well.
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Bah to these historical ship combat strategy games. What we need is historical ship combat simulators. Like Air Buccaneers (the mod for UT2004 concerning airbourne galleons), that was good.
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“saleboat”.. heh.
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This one looks promising and hopefully it will be a better, however light, simulation of naval combat than the woeful fare offered by Empire:Total War.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that a game that requires planning on a global scale lends itself to the rts treatment (unless there’s a tb “strategic” layer, but I’m somewhat unclear on that one).
Still, it looks good, has an interesting theme and promising features, so it’s definitely one to keep an eye on.
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Hmm. I’ll stick with pikelets, thanks.
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We friendly folk at the Wargamer.com did a bit of a preview of the ship combat portion of the game. I am happy to say, we were very impressed! The RTS mode was only sea-FARE (har har) but the Direct Control mode had us enchanted. It played a bit like a more serious Pirates of the Burning Sea, with nice little realistic extras. Personally, I’m itching to see the economic sim aspect of the game, but the combat was good enough to shiver most any naval buff’s timbers.
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Of course… I could be helpful and actually provide a link to the preview:
Wargamer.com First Look at East India Trade Company.
BTW, I’m a huge fan of RPS! I check the site nearly 50 times daily!
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I’ve been waiting for something like this for a long time. Coincidentally is there any other game like this with trading, piracy and all that with battles between multiple ships? Because I’ve played Port Royale and Pirates! and the thing that bugged me the most was that I had only one ship in combat at any given time, while the enemies had multiple. Patrician 3 had multiple ships battles, but it didn’t have any meaningful piracy.
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Oooh that video gives me Pirates! vibes.
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Now we just need a picture of Hornblower of the cover.
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@Carra: Definitely. I just watched the Hornblower miniseries again, and it’s been one of the contributing factors of my looking forward to this game. Hope it’s good.
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Yay, Arma II review from Jim!
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EVE meme spotted! Jim, are you going to write a post about Kenzoku apparently abandoning their attempts to retake Delve? It looks like “the BoB era” could be officially over.
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If Son of Montfort can do it, then so can I, preview of EIC by Greg over on The Reticule – http://thereticule.com/2009/06/preview-east-india-company/
My impressions of it are more iffy, I didn’t really get along with the preview build we got to play, though it was focused simply on the ship combat. Looking forward to the other aspects though.
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Poor RPS is so abused with everyone pimping their websites. :)
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Heh I could’ve pimped the ArmA II review we did numerous times by now, I have managed to hold myself back though :p
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Jim, not waiting for the official UK release (and next patch) for your Arma II review? Did you buy the German version?
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Since it’s a game published by Paradox it’ll probably be even more addicting than snorting cocaine through a heroine straw
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“Now I must get back to Arma II, there be a reviewin’ brewin’.”
Yesyesyes.
But yeah, it does look very like Empire (perhaps with less land combat but more trade?) This could be a good thing. Whether it will be a better thing, or perhaps just a different enough thing, I guess we shall see.
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The guy in the video during the “manage” bit looks like he has to poop.
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Come to think of it, I bet colonial ministers often looked that frustrated.
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Just to make sure it makes it into the comments
“I like big boats and I can not lie…”
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Looks pretty cool but I doubt it will be on Empire’s level.
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Well, I’ll be honest about the build I saw – the RTS mode was not really “cooperative” for me. My other compatriot (we team wrote it) has had much more luck with it. Go figure! I stuck mostly with the Direct Control, because that was more fun and I didn’t stink at it.
Port Royale II was good, but piracy isn’t all that viable in the game. I don’t think piracy will be overly viable in EITC either, as the focus is on legitimate trading companies. You will be able to plunder your enemies in warfare, however.
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Nothing will beat Age of Sail 2 for me, I loved that game, despite the constant crashes.
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Heh, I remember Privateer’s Bounty, when they gave you a paddleboat in a mission. Not caring about wind speed/direction was awesome.
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