Patrician IV, henceforth known as "Patty IV's" is in something of a niche genre, in that it is a Renaissance trading simulator set around the Hanseatic League in Northern Europe. Doesn't sound like the most riveting game now, but when I rephrase that as TIME TRAVELLING DOSH SIMULATOR 1420 EDITION it starts to sound ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dank. (Note to self, make montage video with that title)

Patty IV's behaves something akin to a sandbox, and the main campaign introduces you to the core concepts in a really intelligent way rather than simply throwing a standard tutorial at you, whereupon you start with modest resources as a simple hemp smuggler operating out of Lubeck aspiring to grow his empire until you control all the booze and kush in Denmark.

The difficulties in the true sandbox mode work pretty well too, they basically make more bad things happen the higher difficulty you select, like pirates stealing your ♥♥♥♥ or bad winters freezing ports over as well as ramping up the costs of production, so that in order to maintain a decent profit margin you actually have to spread your goods out intelligently. Because of this, on the higher difficulties you truly end up as a wicked beer baron, having to ship your product all over Europe to find enough people keen for your booze and bud (Stockholm can't get enough hemp for some reason).

Once you've gotten enough dosh behind you from your 'legitimate businesses' you can move into the world of protection, racketeering and exploitation. You can create fleets of pirate vessels or hunt the pirates that menace your trade. You can be 'elected' in charge of a town and pay off the local authorities to leave you in peace. You can build 'schools' where the goal is to design bigger guns for you ships or ways to grow danker kush.

Have I mentioned that it doesn't stop there?

WELL BUCKLE UP KIDS

IT EVEN HAS A ♥♥♥♥♥♥ CO-OP MODE FOR TWICE AS MUCH DOSH.

Because by know you're already clicking add to cart I'll discuss the DLC now, so you can wrap it up in one easy purchase.

The expansions adds some pretty legit content, so if the gold edition is an option go for it, but the game isn't fundamentally handicapped by missing it out. I even managed to drop about 50 hours into the full edition before finding the key feature of smuggling booze and 'exotic spices' overland that the DLC introduces. It seems like there were a lot of little tweaks that were added with Rise of a Dynasty too, including some fixes with the aforementioned co-op mode, however, so I would recommend picking up the pack if possible.

This is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ wicked game, potentially the best game to play while you're browsing the net or whatever at the same time, which is ironic due to it not being terribly casual. The reason it has a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ metascore is because all the reviewers are cowards that don't want to put any effort into learning how the systems work, which are relatively easy to understand and smooth to operate. Dorks are too busy giving 9.8's to on rails shooters to learn how to run a criminal syndicate, uh, I mean 'trading syndicate'. I wouldn't say the game is immaculate, but it's challenging and interesting in a fun way, and I don't regret sinking plenty of hours into it. The ship combat is a little dry too, but that's not the focus of the game.

If you like simulators or relaxed strategy of any kind I'd say it's a must buy.

Overall I'd give TIME TRAVELLING DOSH SIMULTOR 1420 EDITION 80/100.

This game has advanced considerably from the original Patrician in 1993. Various advancements came along with new versions until this 'Rise of a Dynasty' was created in conjuntion with local players.

Trade, build, store, exchange, transport and sell are all in a day's work. Fight a pirate, pay off a Prince with tribute and carry out the requirements of the Hanseatic League Alderman.

Rise to Mayor, Lord of your own town/city, Alderman of the Hanseatic League.

New towns , land routes and wagons, such a wide area of trade.

One little problem, don't lend money to Princes, because they do not pay you back.

Otherwise play and enjoy this for the next year or two or three.

Fighting pirates/: If you have a crayer, upgrade to 2nd level and add 70 sailors. Try to lead the pirate vessel/s and turn toward the fastest point, cripple the fastest pirate by firing at the sails, do this to the next fastest until all pirate sails have been destroyed, now change to round shot and destroy the fastest. If ithe last or only one is a cog or crayer make sure you reduce the sailors to nil before reducing it to about 10% when it should surrender.

Eventually you research the hulk which is a faster vessel and carries more cannon.

Happy hunting.

I bought this game and have no conection with the producers

I have actually played Patrician IV for many hundreds of hours since 2010 that were not logged on the Steam application (as I played them on the CD).

Patrician IV is an overhauling upgrade to Patrician III; so if you have not played the previous games in the Patrician series, starting with IV is really all you need. Also, the game of Patrician is very straightforward and addicting, so playing previous versions won't offer you anything unseen in Patrician IV.

The game plays upon a fundamental capitalistic principle: "buy low, sell high." Patrician IV colors this principle in a video game set in the 14th Century North Sea and Baltic Sea. (Sure, this concept could have been done in any setting: 17th Century Carribean; 4th Century BC Mediterranean; or something after the Panama and Suez canals were both in full operation. But those have all been done already; who ever took the time to learn about the Hanseatic League...? Rich history there.)

There are three phases of Patrician IV: (1) auto-trade, build ships, and make (more) money; (2) build businesses, expand into other cities, and build more businesses; and finally, (3) perform city management as a mayor, Hanseatic League management as the Alderman, and optimizing your production/selling operation (to include manual "expeditions" down in the Mediterranean Sea, which is more of a "side quest").

As with everything, there are things that I like and dislike about Patrician IV. What I like are the music; the ability to build my own economic empire, learning from my mistakes; and the addicting genre of constantly trying to think my way through the most optimal uses of my growing economic empire. What I dislike are three: (A) you can't expedition out to the New World, like in Patrician III; (B) the voice acting of your competitors is some of the worst you will ever hear in all of video gaming history; and (C) the game has been developed/published by Kalypso Media (Gaming Minds Studios), a German company, whom I think do a poor job in supporting their games and respecting their customer base. (Most non-American studios or publishers seem to be clueless on how to treat people, in general, such as UbiSoft and Paradox. Of course, EA - an American company - at least learned from their mistakes.) On that last point, there are a few glaringly obvious bugs that they have openly stated that they will "fix in Patrician V." (Meaning, they are aware of them in P4, but will not fix them.) These bugs are things like: disabling the terrible voice actors - you can't, even with the button saying you can; clicking on a convoy on the Convoy List - you sometimes can't without a work-around; and the inability to sell all your cargo during Expeditions, thus coming back with amounts of what you are trying to get rid of! (The developers think this has to do with overall population in the Hanseatic League during your game, but they are unwilling to explore this further and correct it. I relay this information to you based on the responses to my bug reports on their game forums.)

The Rise of a Dynasty (RoaD) expansion to Patrician IV made the game better. There is more to do than in the original, including developing inland cities and establishing overland trade routes. And heck... having 8 more cities on the map is just better (totalling 40 possible). Of course, the whole paradigm of "withhold content intentionally so that we can charge extra for an expansion pack" has everything to do with RoaD. But like I said, it made the game better. Would it have been nice to be offered in the base version? You bet. But you know how developers/publishers are nowadays, as well as undisciplined gamers, too.

The other thing that I dislike about the RoaD expansion, specifically, are the overland trade routes and the wagons used for transport. While I like that they added 8 more cities to the map, the trade routes to them must be unlocked - there is no way around this. This might sound like "something interesting to do," but the way to unlock them is to please all the hegemons (princes and dukes and whatnot) of the European regions by way of doing them favors: give them a lot of money; give them goods tributes; and/or sabotage others (whom you are trying to keep happy, as well). The problem with that is that the opportunities to please them are not easy to come by when you need them the most, thus extending the time frame to do so almost completely stupid. But then, once you unlock all the European overland trade routes, you must then build Wagons to transport the goods. Now, you can build ships that hold tens of thousands of goods (10,000+) that can be carted all over the sea to coastal towns. The wagons, on the other hand, only hold 100 goods each. So if you want to carry 1,000 goods from an inland town to somewhere else, you are building ten wagons. But 1,000 goods is dinky by that stage of the game! So you'll have wagon trains of 71 wagons just so you can carry 7,100 goods (which is similar to 3 Hulks and 3 Caravels, which carry a total of 7,110 goods). That is just asinine. But even worse is what happens to your game's performance with that many wagons in a train - get ready for crashes.

The last thing that I dislike about Patrician IV is the multiplayer offering within it. Basically, it is only cooperative (a.k.a. "co-op"). You cannot have your friend log in to his game, and you into yours, and then start developing the Hanse in competition with each other - which is really the only friggin' way to play multiplayer on this type of game! Instead, you both own the same business; so you basically only compete against the computer opponents. I guess it could be fun having each other develop their own cities; but pulling from a common pool of money and essentially trying to ignore what the other one is doing (so as not to step on each other's toes) is quite lame. The fact that this is the only way to play Patrician IV multiplayer is also asinine.

In all, the very nature of the gameplay is why I recommend Patrician IV: it is addicting and makes you think, think, think - learning from mistakes and pondering how to make things better. (Yes, you will think about this game while you are not even playing it. You might even create your own spreadsheet, like I did, in an attempt to optimize your operation.) There will be times where you will actually turn off the game and feel like you accomplished something worthy and important, as if you are smart or something. It's kinda funny to look at yourself in retrospect, ha ha. But I also recommend Patrician IV because modifying it is not too terribly hard (if you have the RoaD expansion pack - you cannot modify it otherwise). You can figure out how to set up each city's resources for trade, which ones pop up with the corresponding research, and a few other things about the towns and computer players. I really like customization, so that is a step in the right direction.

To close, I would say that Patrician IV (with the Rise of a Dynasty expansion pack) should be bought for $7.49 or less.

At the beginning Patrician IV is a simple little trading game--buy low, sell high. As you become wealthier, it instead becomes a game in logistics. Successful players will find themselves creating spreadsheets calculating distribution of goods among their many towns. This uncommon feature at this stage of the game makes the game worthwhile for those who like challenges that make you think.

I've put a lot of time in this game and now all of a sudden I need to create an online account to play. You should feel ashamed of yourselves Kalypso, this game is over 7 years old why do I need to build an account now?

Most of the negative reviews have little to do with the experience of this game.

It is a trading/economy sim, at it's core, and it's a pretty serious simulation, taking into account the production and transport of goods throughout most of northern Europe. The political simulation element does feel a little tacked on, but it does serve as a sort of tangible demonstration of your achievements.

It's largely a sandbox simulation--nobody is there to hold your hand and tell you what to do next, and there isn't going to be very much help in game telling you where to buy and sell your goods.

It is a slower-paced game; about strategy and planning. It rewards you for long-term planning.

For those familiar with the series, it is a very faithful recreation of PIII, with numerous interface tweaks and some additional content.

It's not for everyone. But for a trading economy simulation, it is the finest of its kind, and you'll enjoy it.

Added an un-skippable log in page post-purchase. Now I am locked out of the game unless I agree to hand over my Data. Scum move!

Sent for refund as developers have now stopped me playing the game I bought.

Played it years ago, really enjoyed it. Now I'm being forced to sign up to things I don't want just to play the game I paid for. I'd ask for my money back if I could.

I bought this 7 years ago with my money. And now it says my product key is in use. I bet kalypso know about this yet doesn't care a thing about us, neither do they verify our claims nor investigate about it. Shame on you kalypso, taking our money yet wants more of it.
They just want to bleed us of our money for developers to earn without any sort of reasons. Because they can Just create one new game with similar game play but named it "patrician 5" or even worst, +1 to the "version" to every bad reviewed game they have to patricians in future. And in turn they solve not only having no bad reviews yet they can make people who are fresh to this genre to buy this game which have been there long ago, yet the older customers are left to be silenced by who? By whoever manages this thing because they have allowed it yet the bad reviews doesn't do a dent to a patrician 5 or patrician 6 because they just +1 to the "version" every time and forever. Because from this game was the second time i was dealt with this card, "developers sucking blood yet with a +1 to the [version], all bad reviews was erased because they made the 1st version free, which in turn makes the reviews gone" because a free game doesn't need reviews right?

*Update from 4th Aug 2022* so what Kalypso does now, to me at least, is to make my Kalypso account invalid. Basically, whatever games that i bought on Kalypso from steam are all unable to login from Kalypso, talking about being unreasonable. So what i presumed is that they are not happy about my review and they use direct actions to pay back without even communicating with me AT ALL. So i cannot submit a ticket to them now (which some did, after reading the reviews of others) to let them rectify my problem which is just some rounds of clicking for them yet they are not even giving me such a chance. Well, such great customer service must be shown i guess is to further worsen situations and on their road to getting more bad reviews, i guess? They could have reacted to my review on steam since it's their product yet they chose not to. After all, reasonable people would change their reviews if they are compensated accordingly but Kalypso simply wages a never-ending feud war with the seemingly bad customers. Well, this review will always remain here and forever be a thumbs-down review when my Kalypso account is forever gone & Kalypso being very unreasonable. They could have taken appropriate actions like just forbidding the user to play specific games that they feel are being shortchanged but that seems not the case. Kalypso to me now is a petty company that does things they FEEL is right and being revengeful is part of their actions/tactics.

Note: I copied a good portion of this review from my review of the base game. I'll be adding on some stuff for this DLC towards the end. Also, for the people thinking of buying this game and is just checking out the DLC too, I recommend getting the DLC with the base game. Rise of a Dynasty adds a lot: Land based trade routes, treasure hunting(by collecting map pieces), Online/LAN Co-op, and lots of Graphical improvements, among other things. So it's definitely worth getting both.

Patrician is a great nautical trading game. You buy low, travel to another city, and sell high. As you gain more money, you buy more ships so you can carry more goods. Then you can start a second Convoy(a team of ships basically), and assign it a route. A route tells the ships which cities to go to and what order to do it. You can tell them what they should buy and what they should sell in that particular city. And they'll do all that without any more input from you, and they'll be earning you money in no time.

You can even start producing goods yourself, and have dedicated ships to deliver it to another city either to sell high, or give it to another goods producer you own so they can make more complicated, and therefore more valuable goods to sell. You gain favor in a city by selling them goods that they are low on, which makes them like you more. Once they're happy enough with you, you can start buying buildings in their city, and producing goods unique to them.

You can also take up Contracts/Missions/Whatever at the Pub. This ranges from delivering a certain amount of a specific good, or even hunting down a specific pirate or rival.

One thing it's starts losing quality on is sea based combat. Most of the time, you'll just want to let the fighting resolve automatically rather than take control yourself, since it's rather boring. Once you start getting more well known in the game, your ships will be attacked by pirates more often, and sometimes not even towards you specifically. Sometimes they'll park their boats outside a cities port, attacking anyone who comes or goes. Most of the time, if you lose, they'll just take a large amount of your goods, and sometimes a ship, and let your convoy go. To counter this, you can assign specialized boats with armor and weapons to fight, protect, and even scare off pirates on occasion. You can even put cannons on your merchant boats, however, this subtracts from overall storage space, but it's worth it if a specific convoy gets attacked a lot. Sometimes though, they're just a pain in the ♥♥♥, and you'll have to send your own specialized combat convoy to take them out permanently, since no one else will do it.

There's a lot of trading to do in this game, and the DLC will add quite a bit more. I'll need to write up a review for 'Rise of a Dynasty' too, but later.

I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys trading games,