No way to pause while working on trade routes and other things?

[Tungsten Whitmarsh Cadow]

Is there no way to pause the game while working on things? I know you can go to settings but you can't do anything while in settings. Also, it seems like there should be lots of shortcuts, both built in and programmable.

On another subject I tried chasing around some pirates and I'm glad I had a save before I tried this. I passed them often very close but only got an encounter and battle once. Even then the pirate fled while badly damaged and I was surprised to see him making five knots while back on the world map with less than 15% health. Another thing that happened while chasing pirates was that they'd disappear and reappear. I'm guessing they put up their regular flag but as a regular trade ship they were also invisible.

I also thought I'd try being a pirate but I never got the button to be usable. I thought I was out of sight when I tried to hoist the flag but I guess not. How does switching to being a pirate work? What do I have to do and what do I require to get that button?

Finally, I thought someone should make a game that is just about auto trade but starting simpler and working up to greater complexity, sort of a prerequisite course for Patrician 3. The first mission would have five ports with 8 different types of goods each. You wouldn't need ships at all or any of the city building. The cities and the goods would be like Pat. You'd just set up the auto trade routes using a similar system and get it working and then future missions would have more cities and more products. Once you got through a few of these gentle missions you'd be familiar with the buttons, prices and locations of various products and you'd be ready to play P3 without fear so get to work you early access people and build this for me.

[pdoan8]

There is no pause for P2/P3. You can only run at slowest speed (slowdown) which is enough for me. Remember to slowdown before battle.

P3 ships have very bad radar. They can lock/see only 4 ships at any given time. The pirate ship could slip in/out of radar lock and you can't target it. Need to chase it to some where less crowded. Badly damaged ships should not sail at 5 knots even when it says so on the map. I think the world map will show every ship/fleet travelling at 5 knots.

Try to change flag near the corner of the map like far north of Stockholm, or far west of Bergen.

For me, auto trading system is quite simple and effective. It gets complicated when I have more towns to take care of and more goods to trade/transfer.

[Jambie Lionheart]

Like Doan8 said, you can't pause whilst plotting the auto-trade routes, but you can put it on slowdown. I reckon that way is pritty effective too. Before planning auto-trade routes, you should try and familiarize yourself with the towns you visit plus their goods and prices, what they often can sell at goood prices plus what they're frequently in need of.

Stockholm is good for whale oil, meat and leather but requires a lot of salt, frequently runs short on beer and will also run low on pottery and honey pritty often, amongst other things, of course.

Requirements for setting turning pirate are the same as those for starting a convey with just one exception. You must be totally out of sight of any ship in your immediate vicinity. If you can see another traders ship on the sea, then they can see you too. Near stockholme there is a spot a ittle north east that you can use to turn pirate since there aren't any traders that need go up that way. There's also a good spot north west of Luebeck, inbetween the mainland and those dotted islands between ripen and Malmo. There's alost one more spot directly north of Edinborough.

Remember to change your ships name when using pirate mode and try not to spent too long in pirate mode. The longer you are in pirate mode, the more chance of getting caught.

To attack a pirate you have to right click on that ships map icon as it travels the sea, the same way you'd select a port for your ships to travel to. If you're having trouble catching them, then you can try getting a crayer or snaiiker on the scene. A cog won't catch a fleeing snaiika but a crayer or another snaiika with a good captain might.

[Tungsten Whitmarsh Cadow]

How many towns do you take care of. I'm probably not doing this the best way but I go all over the map sometimes. Other times I just take care of the towns east of the peninsula. I'm probably 35 hours into this game. In a normal game, frankly, the game would be over. Only in GalCiv2 have I run into games that can go on for a couple of weeks playing many hours a day. I don't build much outside of about 6 towns but I do send ships out for things far away and sometimes I get caught up on those town hall missions.

Can I ask what you fellows do for a living? I'm retired but I did some sales type jobs and factory work long ago. I took a course in acounting many years ago and studied the stock market on my own at times - business stuff.

[Jambie Lionheart]

No business degrees on my end, unfortunately. Just a local school caretaker. Learnt more about maths and business through gaming than actual school though, go figure >.>
Though games and real life rarely function the same way.

I don't actually remember how long into this particular game I am, but the game date is October 1302. (So almost two years, game time wise) and I don't often use the speed up function... easier to avoid pirates in early game stages (loaded snaiikas never stand a chance in combat).

Currently, in that game, I'm a travelling merchant, have three trading offices (four if you count the new one I openned in Malmo) and have businesses in Pig Iron (Oslo) pitch (Luebeck) and Honey (Rostock). I build slow and steady. I usually take a more aggressive approach to the game but this time I wanted to go pure trader :3

I do go all over the map, just as you say, to get various supplies that aren't in my local area of the map, though, I think our main difference is that whilst you try to take care of a lot of different towns, I'm focussing more on where my immediate trading offices are located.

I'm a casual player though, not hardcore like Aip :D (500ships, foook off! lol. would drive me nuts). Oh, in my current game I have 5 ships total and a balance that's approaching 200,000 and an steadily growing empire worth 700,000. :3

Though I'm thinking of restarting... made the monumental mistake of not saving BEFORE accepting the propsal, so now I have a pretty but useless (though apparently rather productive ~.-) wife <.<

[Tungsten Whitmarsh Cadow]

Productive? Wives do something besides bear children? Or is that what you meant?

I just captured my first hulk in a real nail biter of a battle that took the hulk down to 0 health but still floating with the same number of crew as me - 19. It'll cost a fortune to fix but its still probably a half price hulk that will be ready quicker. I was shocked to find I could save in the middle of battle! I can't think of any other game that lets you do that when you have this kind of system. If that really works it would make the game quite a bit better, I think.

A little while ago I sold out again. I think it was 20% for about 650,000 so I became quite wealthy and moved up in status. I also built about five merchant houses and maybe ten businesses. Been dabbling with the auto trade but so far it hasn't done what I want except it will go back and forth between the towns I select. I want it to bring large amounts of lumber from Aalborg to Leubeck. I dragged it to the top and set it to pick up 24 timber from the office in Aalborg and then I set it to deliver to the office in Leubeck. They have the timber but.... well, I've just got to see it do a run on its own.

I'm down to about 450,000 now. It takes so long for those businesses and homes to finish and then to start making money. Once you have 15 ships, if you're doing it manually it seems like a week in game time can take five hours in playing time. It just seems to long, too slow.

[Jambie Lionheart]

Originally posted by SugarySnax:

Productive? Wives do something besides bear children? Or is that what you meant?

I just captured my first hulk in a real nail biter of a battle that took the hulk down to 0 health but still floating with the same number of crew as me - 19. It'll cost a fortune to fix but its still probably a half price hulk that will be ready quicker. I was shocked to find I could save in the middle of battle! I can't think of any other game that lets you do that when you have this kind of system. If that really works it would make the game quite a bit better, I think.

A little while ago I sold out again. I think it was 20% for about 650,000 so I became quite wealthy and moved up in status. I also built about five merchant houses and maybe ten businesses. Been dabbling with the auto trade but so far it hasn't done what I want except it will go back and forth between the towns I select. I want it to bring large amounts of lumber from Aalborg to Leubeck. I dragged it to the top and set it to pick up 24 timber from the office in Aalborg and then I set it to deliver to the office in Leubeck. They have the timber but.... well, I've just got to see it do a run on its own.

I'm down to about 450,000 now. It takes so long for those businesses and homes to finish and then to start making money. Once you have 15 ships, if you're doing it manually it seems like a week in game time can take five hours in playing time. It just seems to long, too slow.

Productive in that she produces plenty of kidlettes, but useless in that she provides zero political infuence what so ever, local or otherwise. A boost in influence from the (Ingame) wifey is actually quite stark and useful. A few extra votes in your favour (for free), can also aid towards advancement in career and if you're lucky the town citizens will like 'er too, which helps... a LOT. Think elections :D With out either of those benefits though, she really is just a baby producing bunch of pixels >.> (don't worry, Im not quite so cold in real life) haha. It actually pritty accurately reflects the political nature of many high class marriages in that respect!

Hulks are great capture targets :3 they're so slow and bulky that you can just sit ahead of them and fire away, the turn around for the capture, dodge the first volley (if they have cannons left) and they don't stand a chance. Try not to damage a hulk beyond 50% though, cuz they are very expensive to repair and do actually takea really long time unless you've used your local shipyard a LOT.

I never saw much point in selling out though. Why share the profit when I can keep it all for myself :D I think that was more of a multiplayer feature, now that I think about it.

Are you producing sad timber, or are you having your office manager buy it to supply your conveys with? You can rearrange the order in which supplies are taken from a particular town by rearranging the order list. For example, if you place Timber above meat, your trade convoy's captain will fill up on timber FIRST and only fill up on meat with the space they have left in the convoy. Tis a beautifully made feature :3

They do take a while sometimes to build, but if you plan it and have some capital in the kitty before you start the build project then you'll easily, and rather quickly make your money back. Remember not to build housing for the profit. You'll want to build that to shut out compititors and kinda stake your claim on a town. Housing can also make back for you what you'd normally spend on an office manager. (with that meager slice of profit).

Me personally, I'm always doing something whilst waiting for the my ships to move about. I had one convoy on auto trade and just either tweaked that or dabbled about in one of my towns. There's always something to do, or something that needs tweaking becaause the ingame enviroment is always changing.

[AlP]

Originally posted by }P.B{ CtMurphy:

I'm a casual player though, not hardcore like Aip :D (500ships, foook off! lol. would drive me nuts). Oh, in my current game I have 5 ships total and a balance that's approaching 200,000 and an steadily growing empire worth 700,000. :3

It was someone else that used 500 ships :) I had around 200 once I think.

If you play until the "end" (maybe fully build all cities, reach max population), one playthrough can last for hundreds of hours. Back then they made games to last a while.

[Jambie Lionheart]

Originally posted by AlP:

Originally posted by }P.B{ CtMurphy:

I'm a casual player though, not hardcore like Aip :D (500ships, foook off! lol. would drive me nuts). Oh, in my current game I have 5 ships total and a balance that's approaching 200,000 and an steadily growing empire worth 700,000. :3

It was someone else that used 500 ships :) I had around 200 once I think.

If you play until the "end" (maybe fully build all cities, reach max population), one playthrough can last for hundreds of hours. Back then they made games to last a while.

AYE, they did make games to last!!! I miss them days... most of the games now are pritty hollow in comparison not many games are that investable, personal interest wise anymore. I tend to keep it lower key though :D 50-100 ships is usually all I wanna handle even with the auto trade on :D

[Tungsten Whitmarsh Cadow]

The best thing would be for vast improvements in auto trade and city planning. For instance lets say you need a merchant's house in three different cities and some businesses here and there. Somehow, maybe by just clicking on a proposed merchant house button the map shows you possible sources for your projects and then you just select the routes to gather stuff and then bring it to the various locations. Maybe the game could automatically start building your que as soon as they get the materials if they have the cash. You'd need to be able to do all this without all the drop downs and city selection forms that to me are just tedious game killers and hard work.

I think time slows down way too much for me since I'm not an auto trade wizard. I get about 8 ships and things are very slow and getting slower with each ship and also the memory demands on my brain get to be too high. Its the computer that should be doing this heavy grunt work not me. The game should turn me into an organizational genius with all the planning programing it has but intstead it makes me feel slow and dumb when I'm not even too far into it.

I wonder at what point in real life did the merchants stay in their offices and turn into planners instead of traders? With the dangers from storms and pirates I'd have got off the ocean as soon as I could.

I played Thief 2 for about ten years with all the fan made missions that came out. I never tired of it. The stealth was so good. Knocking out guards and exploring seemed so natural. They went out of business too. We gamers are not rewarding the right people sometimes.

I remembe when Pong came out. We'd go to the bowling alley and play some Pong. Somebody said that video games would be taking over. Bowling and pinball would become extinct. I thought Pong was pretty good but I couldn't imagine it eclipsing pinball. Seemed like it would be very complicated to program a machine to paddle a little dot across screen and get hit by another paddle. Its incredible what games have become. They say look at planes in 1910 and what they can do now but games have improved many times more in comparison.

I remember in the eighties going to video arcades and playing "flight simulator" type games and they said you'd be able to buy better things for home use soon. I pictured Atari and NES and I couldn't imagine the kind of games we play today.