Port Royale 3 vs Patrician 4

Kneemon · 05-06-2012, 12:39 PM

I am considering getting into a trading game and i cannot decide which would be better. From what i understand they are pretty close to the same.

Anyone own both and able to comment?

Stollen · 05-06-2012, 01:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kneemon

I am considering getting into a trading game and i cannot decide which would be better. From what i understand they are pretty close to the same.

Anyone own both and able to comment?

They are both VERY much alike. It's obvious that the same team that did Pat4 also did this. The UI looks the same. The sound effetcs are the same. Industry management are also the same.
The main difference seems to be that Port Royale takes place in the caribbean instead.

Port Royal to me seems a bit flawed. Being a "new" game with not much new to offer that wasn't done already in Pat4. Instead however, they seem to have removed some of the things I actually liked about Pat4.

I think Pat4 might be a bit deeper in the mechanics. As with many games now a days they are dumbed down. which is noticeable in PR3.

What to choose then?
They are basically the same game. Port Royal might be easier getting started with though.
Don't go expecting any epic battles though. They both are most about building industries, trading, and some minor political things to play around with.

EDIT: Also, I made some further explanation of my opinion of PR3 here (post no 5):
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=2685888

Obiwan · 05-06-2012, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kneemon

I am considering getting into a trading game and i cannot decide which would be better. From what i understand they are pretty close to the same.

Anyone own both and able to comment?

I own P4 and the xpansion, i have been monitoring PR3 very closely ... one thing that irks me about PR3 is they are not allowing the Stewart (Admin in P4) to buy stock meanin ur gonna have to MANUALLY run your own productions ... i foresee this bein hugely tedious and it bothers me ... i also think the entry price is tbh farsical and i suspect it is due to the inclusion of MP ... the thing is they are not runnin their own servers or stat tracking from what i understand meanin the MP doesnt justify a price increase when the likes of Anno do everything i mentioned + more for the same price.

Bottom line ... P4 is established and from a trading perspective definately more solid that said if PR3 makes the changes i would definately look at it ... tho i suspect it will be on sale via steam not too long from now due to low sales.

Dunwich Horror · 05-06-2012, 03:06 PM

I haven't played Patrician 4 but I never saw any mention of the game having two paths through a campaign storyline to play the way PR3 does (in addition to having the usual free-play mode).

It's interesting the people who complain and whine about PR3 the most completely neglect this fantastic feature when for someone like me, it's the very reason I've finally found a strategy game that features a somewhat compelling reason to slog my way through the repetition that EVERY strategy game struggles to avoid and doesn't bore me to death after a few hours.

I'm 16 hours into the trader campaign and feel like the game is still carefully introducing and teaching me aspects of the game and I genuinely want to see more of it. I've played a lot of strategy games in the last twenty years and while I'm not calling PR3 the greatest strategy game of all time or anything ridiculous like that, it certainly features what I consider the pinnacle of a compelling tutorial to the overall game. The sense of power and progression I've made in all those hours has been sublime.

So in that case, if someone was new coming to the genre and trying to decide between PR3 or P4, unless some P4 player can come in here and say P4 had a far better tutorial and story, I'd say you're cheating yourself by playing that game instead of PR3.

That's my 2 cents, anyway.

Bryaxis · 05-06-2012, 03:48 PM

Compared to Patrician IV (and even Port Royale 2), I think that industry is a bit simpler; I haven't seen anything as elaborate as stockfish production, for instance. Also, no pesky need for tools to produce cacao or dyes or whatnot. I'm a few hours into a sandbox game and it feels somewhat faster-paced in terms of building up your commercial empire.

That might be because missions from town administrators give a lot of money once you've gained a few ranks. I imagine that this will be re-tuned in a patch before too long. I got 100,000g for bringing 23 units of food (i.e. 23 units of fruit, bread, and/or meat in any combination) to a town on the verge of a famine. I just sailed to the next town, bought out most of their food, and sailed back to the almost-famine town. It makes raising capital for building plantations and so forth very easy.

One very welcome change IMO is how buildings are laid out. Every town is on a very chunky hex grid. Most buildings occupy one hex, while farms occupy up to five (one farmhouse and up to four adjoining fields). There's less potential for the AI merchants to waste valuable land by placing buildings haphazardly, and I don't have to wrestle with weird auto-roads like in Patrician IV.

bushviper336 · 05-06-2012, 04:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stollen

They are both VERY much alike. It's obvious that the same team that did Pat4 also did this. The UI looks the same. The sound effetcs are the same. Industry management are also the same.
The main difference seems to be that Port Royale takes place in the caribbean instead.

Port Royal to me seems a bit flawed. Being a "new" game with not much new to offer that wasn't done already in Pat4. Instead however, they seem to have removed some of the things I actually liked about Pat4.

I think Pat4 might be a bit deeper in the mechanics. As with many games now a days they are dumbed down. which is noticeable in PR3.

What to choose then?
They are basically the same game. Port Royal might be easier getting started with though.
Don't go expecting any epic battles though. They both are most about building industries, trading, and some minor political things to play around with.

EDIT: Also, I made some further explanation of my opinion of PR3 here (post no 5):
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=2685888

i have played pat4 but having played pr3 it may be easy but its sooooooooooooo f'in boring.....i mean all u do is trade.....i hate the combat the ships never att the ship i want them too its all w\e they want n end up gettin sunk cuz the ai ff on one ship......

must say i regret buying this.....

deadwulfe · 05-06-2012, 05:10 PM

I bought Patrician 4 and liked it a lot, despite being a big change from P2/P3. I love PR2 and was so tempted to buy this.

HOWEVER, after months of Kalypso collecting bug posts from players on their forums, I posted a question about potential patches. They've been great about trying to help people with their problems, but there are still bugs in P4 that can't be worked around; they need to be patched/fixed. I was completely ignored on my question of if or when a patch would be issued for people's problems. I even posted again, months later, bringing my question back up and have had no response to it.

I am not buying PR3 based on the fact that Kalypso will NOT fix any bugs unless it's part of a DLC they're going to sell. They'll try to help you play the game, but they will not be fixing their own errors.

bushviper336 · 05-06-2012, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by deadwulfe

I bought Patrician 4 and liked it a lot, despite being a big change from P2/P3. I love PR2 and was so tempted to buy this.

HOWEVER, after months of Kalypso collecting bug posts from players on their forums, I posted a question about potential patches. They've been great about trying to help people with their problems, but there are still bugs in P4 that can't be worked around; they need to be patched/fixed. I was completely ignored on my question of if or when a patch would be issued for people's problems. I even posted again, months later, bringing my question back up and have had no response to it.

I am not buying PR3 based on the fact that Kalypso will NOT fix any bugs unless it's part of a DLC they're going to sell. They'll try to help you play the game, but they will not be fixing their own errors.

sigh well can take them off my devs not to buy list..........

Obiwan · 05-06-2012, 09:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dunwich Horror

I haven't played Patrician 4 but I never saw any mention of the game having two paths through a campaign storyline to play the way PR3 does (in addition to having the usual free-play mode).

It's interesting the people who complain and whine about PR3 the most completely neglect this fantastic feature when for someone like me, it's the very reason I've finally found a strategy game that features a somewhat compelling reason to slog my way through the repetition that EVERY strategy game struggles to avoid and doesn't bore me to death after a few hours.

I'm 16 hours into the trader campaign and feel like the game is still carefully introducing and teaching me aspects of the game and I genuinely want to see more of it. I've played a lot of strategy games in the last twenty years and while I'm not calling PR3 the greatest strategy game of all time or anything ridiculous like that, it certainly features what I consider the pinnacle of a compelling tutorial to the overall game. The sense of power and progression I've made in all those hours has been sublime.

So in that case, if someone was new coming to the genre and trying to decide between PR3 or P4, unless some P4 player can come in here and say P4 had a far better tutorial and story, I'd say you're cheating yourself by playing that game instead of PR3.

That's my 2 cents, anyway.

I don't like your tone one bit ... "It's interesting the people who complain and whine" pretty much stopped reading after that because you attitude stinks ... did you bother reading the thread title before you came in here to spout off with all your experience? if you have not played P4 then honestly you should have kept quiet because not only do you come in here with the superior attitude calling people whiners, but you COMPLETELY miss the context of the post.

The split path is not as profound as you think and if you had played and experienced P4 which basically melds aspects of both you would have understood this.

sp23hagbard5 · 05-07-2012, 01:45 AM

so what features from P4 got cut in PR3?

"I think Pat4 might be a bit deeper in the mechanics. As with many games now a days they are dumbed down. which is noticeable in PR3."
PR2 was a "dumbed down" version of P2, this however, seems to be pretty close to P4 from what i've heard

Obiwan · 05-07-2012, 07:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sp23hagbard5

so what features from P4 got cut in PR3?

"I think Pat4 might be a bit deeper in the mechanics. As with many games now a days they are dumbed down. which is noticeable in PR3."
PR2 was a "dumbed down" version of P2, this however, seems to be pretty close to P4 from what i've heard

Personally i think the most criminal cut is that the Steward (Administrator in P4) cannot BUY stock he can sell it but cannot buy it meaning you have to manually shift produce to keep your production active. There is a full thread on the official forums dedicated to this omission and no one who is close to either series understands it.

Bryaxis · 05-07-2012, 07:52 AM

I don't think that PR3 has PR4-style shipbuilding either. So far at least it looks mostly like in PR2, where ships are imported from Europe; large shipyards just sometimes have ships for sale. I just started upgrading a few small shipyards to large ones because it felt like slim pickings. On the bright side, you can apparently buy each faction's "special ships" like war galleons and carracks and so whatnot, which you couldn't in PR2.

Bryaxis · 05-07-2012, 01:12 PM

Update: I spoke too soon before about the need for tools. Dye and tobacco plantations don't consume tools, but coffee plantations do; I don't know about cacao yet. At least you can make your own tools.

thorrium · 05-07-2012, 02:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kneemon

I am considering getting into a trading game and i cannot decide which would be better. From what i understand they are pretty close to the same.

Anyone own both and able to comment?

Okay so I got both games and as most of the people before me has said or at least hinted, the games looks very similar.

I bought the game because I hoped (in lack of information and stupidity) that the game would bring something fundamentally new, it did not.

If you want a trading game, then I would choose Pat(IV) as it allows you to establish an administrator that works, and as I find it much easier to establish automatic trade rutes there.

I will still put some 20+ hours into this game as I used (to much) cash to buy it, buy if I was you I would go after Pat4.
Especially considering there is special offers once every now and then.

LoneGunman · 05-12-2012, 11:35 PM

I've got both (I've been buying these games since they started the Port Royale series and since Pat 2). Just a disclaimer: I actually love the trading stuff a lot and don't mind complexity in the trading game.

At this stage, I feel like Pat4 is better, ignoring the locales and time periods. As mentioned, for some weird assed reason the devs decided to toss out the admin/steward's ability to buy goods if the price is right. Looks like they're trying to force you to use your ships to maintain stock which is just stupid. Worse still, you've got to go in and configure EVERY product if you enable selling of goods. In Pat4 you add buys and sells to a list and define the params (min goods to keep in the warehouse and lowest price to sell/highest price to buy). So much easier to manage.

Meanwhile, they "dumbed down" the ship building as someone mentioned so that you can't even decide what to build. You're basically hoping the game engine decides to spit out the type of ship you want.

Production isn't really that much different, though PR3's building placement's a lot simpler.

On the flip side, PR3's ship combat, while flawed (way too many sandbars if you're sailing a deep draught ship...it's ridiculous really), feels a bit better. Pat4's ship combat is terrible. The ONLY way to capture ships is to wipe out the other fleet (you have to reduce them to a single ship, then reduce that ship's sailors to zero and ship health to 25%). It's this sort of weird automatic hard-coded bar...like they ran out of time when building it and just hard-coded some constant somewhere.

Pat4 also has this "bug" (might have been intentional but it's sort of dumb) where some mission offerings, training prices and other missions are tied to the size of your wealth even if artificial. For example, I was offered a 1 million gold loan by my home city (you bet! I'll take it!). Next thing I know, training costs 200k (up from 20k) and loan missions for towns went from 200k loans to 2 million gold loans. I feel like they should've tied it more to rank than that or maybe at least net wealth.

In the end, I guess if you're looking more for a "broader" game with more cities, the various country factions to work with, and a better chance at capturing ships and/or living like a pirate, PR3 might be the better choice. Personally, I prefer Pat4 despite the combat issue mainly because the administrator isn't broken so the trading game is easier to manage (but still complex of course). You'll get less at-sea missions and pirates are harder to defeat but you'll get more of a sense of "ownership" from planting roots in your home town, building out supply lines and production bases and building out your empire.

Of course, if you really love both environments (North Sea vs Caribbean) then just get both. You can deal with the issues in either one and when you get bored with one, you can switch to the other for a while, then switch back. Plus, I'm hoping the devs will wake up and fix the one or two issues that are bugging me in PR3 (admin buying and those sand bars, along with adding some more interesting neutral missions beyond finding lost relatives) making the game just as fun as Pat4. Win-win.

05-06-2012, 12:39 PM	#1
Kneemon Join Date: Oct 2009 Reputation: 0 Posts: 4	Port Royale 3 vs Patrician 4 I am considering getting into a trading game and i cannot decide which would be better. From what i understand they are pretty close to the same. Anyone own both and able to comment?

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05-06-2012, 03:06 PM	#4
Dunwich Horror Join Date: Jun 2010 Reputation: 13 Posts: 31	I haven't played Patrician 4 but I never saw any mention of the game having two paths through a campaign storyline to play the way PR3 does (in addition to having the usual free-play mode). It's interesting the people who complain and whine about PR3 the most completely neglect this fantastic feature when for someone like me, it's the very reason I've finally found a strategy game that features a somewhat compelling reason to slog my way through the repetition that EVERY strategy game struggles to avoid and doesn't bore me to death after a few hours. I'm 16 hours into the trader campaign and feel like the game is still carefully introducing and teaching me aspects of the game and I genuinely want to see more of it. I've played a lot of strategy games in the last twenty years and while I'm not calling PR3 the greatest strategy game of all time or anything ridiculous like that, it certainly features what I consider the pinnacle of a compelling tutorial to the overall game. The sense of power and progression I've made in all those hours has been sublime. So in that case, if someone was new coming to the genre and trying to decide between PR3 or P4, unless some P4 player can come in here and say P4 had a far better tutorial and story, I'd say you're cheating yourself by playing that game instead of PR3. That's my 2 cents, anyway.

05-06-2012, 03:48 PM	#5
Bryaxis Join Date: Jun 2010 Reputation: 0 Posts: 27	Compared to Patrician IV (and even Port Royale 2), I think that industry is a bit simpler; I haven't seen anything as elaborate as stockfish production, for instance. Also, no pesky need for tools to produce cacao or dyes or whatnot. I'm a few hours into a sandbox game and it feels somewhat faster-paced in terms of building up your commercial empire. That might be because missions from town administrators give a lot of money once you've gained a few ranks. I imagine that this will be re-tuned in a patch before too long. I got 100,000g for bringing 23 units of food (i.e. 23 units of fruit, bread, and/or meat in any combination) to a town on the verge of a famine. I just sailed to the next town, bought out most of their food, and sailed back to the almost-famine town. It makes raising capital for building plantations and so forth very easy. One very welcome change IMO is how buildings are laid out. Every town is on a very chunky hex grid. Most buildings occupy one hex, while farms occupy up to five (one farmhouse and up to four adjoining fields). There's less potential for the AI merchants to waste valuable land by placing buildings haphazardly, and I don't have to wrestle with weird auto-roads like in Patrician IV.

05-06-2012, 05:10 PM	#7
deadwulfe Join Date: Mar 2010 Reputation: 4 Posts: 81	I bought Patrician 4 and liked it a lot, despite being a big change from P2/P3. I love PR2 and was so tempted to buy this. HOWEVER, after months of Kalypso collecting bug posts from players on their forums, I posted a question about potential patches. They've been great about trying to help people with their problems, but there are still bugs in P4 that can't be worked around; they need to be patched/fixed. I was completely ignored on my question of if or when a patch would be issued for people's problems. I even posted again, months later, bringing my question back up and have had no response to it. I am not buying PR3 based on the fact that Kalypso will NOT fix any bugs unless it's part of a DLC they're going to sell. They'll try to help you play the game, but they will not be fixing their own errors.

05-07-2012, 01:45 AM	#10
sp23hagbard5 Join Date: Apr 2011 Reputation: 12 Posts: 93	so what features from P4 got cut in PR3? "I think Pat4 might be a bit deeper in the mechanics. As with many games now a days they are dumbed down. which is noticeable in PR3." PR2 was a "dumbed down" version of P2, this however, seems to be pretty close to P4 from what i've heard

05-07-2012, 07:52 AM	#12
Bryaxis Join Date: Jun 2010 Reputation: 0 Posts: 27	I don't think that PR3 has PR4-style shipbuilding either. So far at least it looks mostly like in PR2, where ships are imported from Europe; large shipyards just sometimes have ships for sale. I just started upgrading a few small shipyards to large ones because it felt like slim pickings. On the bright side, you can apparently buy each faction's "special ships" like war galleons and carracks and so whatnot, which you couldn't in PR2.

05-07-2012, 01:12 PM	#13
Bryaxis Join Date: Jun 2010 Reputation: 0 Posts: 27	Update: I spoke too soon before about the need for tools. Dye and tobacco plantations don't consume tools, but coffee plantations do; I don't know about cacao yet. At least you can make your own tools.

05-12-2012, 11:35 PM	#15
LoneGunman Join Date: Dec 2009 Reputation: 0 Posts: 33	I've got both (I've been buying these games since they started the Port Royale series and since Pat 2). Just a disclaimer: I actually love the trading stuff a lot and don't mind complexity in the trading game. At this stage, I feel like Pat4 is better, ignoring the locales and time periods. As mentioned, for some weird assed reason the devs decided to toss out the admin/steward's ability to buy goods if the price is right. Looks like they're trying to force you to use your ships to maintain stock which is just stupid. Worse still, you've got to go in and configure EVERY product if you enable selling of goods. In Pat4 you add buys and sells to a list and define the params (min goods to keep in the warehouse and lowest price to sell/highest price to buy). So much easier to manage. Meanwhile, they "dumbed down" the ship building as someone mentioned so that you can't even decide what to build. You're basically hoping the game engine decides to spit out the type of ship you want. Production isn't really that much different, though PR3's building placement's a lot simpler. On the flip side, PR3's ship combat, while flawed (way too many sandbars if you're sailing a deep draught ship...it's ridiculous really), feels a bit better. Pat4's ship combat is terrible. The ONLY way to capture ships is to wipe out the other fleet (you have to reduce them to a single ship, then reduce that ship's sailors to zero and ship health to 25%). It's this sort of weird automatic hard-coded bar...like they ran out of time when building it and just hard-coded some constant somewhere. Pat4 also has this "bug" (might have been intentional but it's sort of dumb) where some mission offerings, training prices and other missions are tied to the size of your wealth even if artificial. For example, I was offered a 1 million gold loan by my home city (you bet! I'll take it!). Next thing I know, training costs 200k (up from 20k) and loan missions for towns went from 200k loans to 2 million gold loans. I feel like they should've tied it more to rank than that or maybe at least net wealth. In the end, I guess if you're looking more for a "broader" game with more cities, the various country factions to work with, and a better chance at capturing ships and/or living like a pirate, PR3 might be the better choice. Personally, I prefer Pat4 despite the combat issue mainly because the administrator isn't broken so the trading game is easier to manage (but still complex of course). You'll get less at-sea missions and pirates are harder to defeat but you'll get more of a sense of "ownership" from planting roots in your home town, building out supply lines and production bases and building out your empire. Of course, if you really love both environments (North Sea vs Caribbean) then just get both. You can deal with the issues in either one and when you get bored with one, you can switch to the other for a while, then switch back. Plus, I'm hoping the devs will wake up and fix the one or two issues that are bugging me in PR3 (admin buying and those sand bars, along with adding some more interesting neutral missions beyond finding lost relatives) making the game just as fun as Pat4. Win-win.