Poll Your favorite era of play?

[Bathtub-pirate]

Out of the six eras available in Build:


Early Explorers

The Spanish Main

Golden Age of Piracy

Colonial Powers

Revolutions

Napoleonic


... which one is your favorite to play? Or if you don't want to be that specific ... do you prefer the early, middle or later time periods?


I am not completely sure which era I prefer. But I have sort of an issue with the latest two eras. They might provide the most ship types ... but only quantity-wise. What utterly lacks is diversity imo. Mostly because there are a gazillion types of fregatts, which all feel pretty much the same. They only differ in size and firing power but their maneuverability is pretty much the same. Also it is very noticable that there are barely no pirates around. I think outside of ship-hunting missions I NEVER encounterd a pirate vessel in my ongoing Jack Aubry Play .... which is fine, since it is historically accurate - but it shows in gameplay.

Also the ships in the earlier to middle eras look far more distinguishable. Often you will see them from far away and will immediately tell what kind of ship it is. But in the later eras the ships look kind of "samy".

I think Golden Age of Piracy and Colonial Powers provide a good amount of various ships with great diversity. The best of both worlds if you will.

The early two eras may have the least ships available in total, but they are not without merit. As there are some ships that you will find in no other era, like the awesome caravelles or the carrack.


BTW - I think the carracks in the game are WAY too small. From what I know carracks where bigger than many galleons. Basically they where floating castles for boarding action with great tonnage. Carracks usually had roundabout 1000 tons tonnage, which was still double the amount that many galleons had. The only ships to realisticly "outcarry" the carrack would be the manilla galleons and the treasure galleons. Not sure about how it should compare to pinnace and fleuyt.


Just my 2 Cents so far.

 

[Hylie Pistof]

I prefer the early to middle eras best. They were more the age of exploration and were a real free for all with everyone stealing from everyone else. There were no good guys.

The later periods were more of the age of consolidation with most of the treasures looted so the area was settling into an agrarian society not worth fighting over.

 

[Bathtub-pirate]

True that. Is it just me or do the waters seem quite a bit more frequented in these eras than in the later ones?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Amount of ships should not change per period.

 

[Bathtub-pirate]

Then it probably is because I am a trader now and slow as hell. More opportunities to spawn. Also I play a personal nation for the first time and have no bad blood with anybody. In other games I always would battle against anyone but my own fraction and have them probably running to the hills, before I even saw them.^^

 

[DavyJack]

In real life, I prefer the "Early Time Period or the Early Explorers" because you'll be the first to see something new or something that haven't been heard yet making a great opportunity to become a legend if you have successfully and or luckily discovered something out of this world making you a part of history.
And practically speaking, there are less bad/infamous guys or people to worry about yet and not much competition in making a name which is really good.

Now for game life, of course I prefer the "Golden Age of Piracy" as there is much competition and adventure making it harder to make a name but once you did, it'll make you really scary and or intimidating which makes the game experience a lot harder and more fun!More infamous people to target and more things to do as there are a lot of competition now making the game less or not boring. Also more things to find that are hidden or left behind by the early explorers, past infamous battles, legends and others. And more job offers because of the crazy pirates roaming around adding, again, more adventure and gameplay experience. And a lot more but i'll end my statement here.

 

[Schalkepirat]

@Davy Jack
This is the Smilie world record in just one post

Back to topic, my favorite era is of course Golden Age of Piracy

 

[Skyworm]

Cheers mates,

I am very undecided about the periods. Each has aspects I like, and some I don't like.

The eralier eras feel more adventurous and the ships look nicer - which is just a personal opinion of course. I just like the look of the old galleon-like ships.
The major setback of these periods is that most of the ships are very slow, which severely cuts into my fun because as a direct sailor, speed and sailing point make a big difference in travelling time between islands.

The later eras provide the much faster ships - I love smuggling with something schooner style. On the other hand, as it has been said before, most ships look terribly alike. While I consider frigates very very beautiful ships, and there are some very fine and detailed models, it is somewhat boring because they are so inflationary in these eras.

At the moment, I'm playing both early explorers and spanish main ... never ever played spanish main before.

 

[Green Jacket]

1740-1750 era's (aka jack sparrow & tales of a sea hawk).

I just love the ships of that era, but just find the dare not play Hornblower just in case it's an era full of ships that are too big for my liking.

Don't get me wrong i like larger ships, but enjoy playing a game dominated by frigates which should be the main "big ships" you should fear.

I'm thinking about trying an earlier era seeing many of the merchant fleets I see have quite big ships.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I am very undecided about the periods. Each has aspects I like, and some I don't like.

Well, that IS the general idea. They should be all as different as possible and none of them should be "better" than another.

 

[HellSailor]

Greetings,

For me, i have played all the eras (except the spanish main), and each one is very special from the others. But for me, i just like most the Golden Age of Piracy, my best era, and then, well, i can say maybe the revolutions-napoleonic eras, and i took these two together because these two don't have so many diferences.

Golden Age of Piracy mixes the old and arcaic ships from the XVI century with the barroque and "superheavy" man of wars of the XVII century, which are amazing. It also puts some ships from the Colonial Powers, which is nice, because some of the ships of that era i like very much, but not the era instead. For sum it, let's say it have a great variety of ships from the XVI to the XVIII century, and what i like very much is varietry of ships

The Early Explores era looks like going back to the old school. It has nice looking ships, althought the variety is very low, so that's why i dont like too much this era. No tier 1 ships on the era; French ships take ships from other countries, specially Portugal and Spain; England has only around four type of ships; and there are ships that are from a future century, like the Light Fluyt, which shouldn't appear on that period if i'm playing the Devlin Opera storyline. For the first things i must admitt that only Spain and Portugal dominated the Caribbean, so that's why the variety of those ships is higher than on other countries.

And finally, the revolutions-napoleonic eras have a huge amount of variety on the ships, and they look very modern, with also powerful cannons on them. Furthermore, i love those eras as there were so many ideological and techonological changes on the world that it simply shows the progress of the man kind.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

For me, i have played all the eras (except the spanish main), and each one is very special from the others.

From my side, especially that is great to hear. Making each as unique as possible was definitely one of our main intents.

Indeed the lack of content for Early Explorers is a bit of a shame, but I hope that the complete overkill of Spanish/Portuguese influence managed to make it worthwhile in a different way.

How does it work out with the occasional steam frigate in the last two time periods?
Do they show up? Does that make for interesting potential that wasn't there before?

 

[HellSailor]

For me, i haven't played with steam ships yet, but for what i can found, it is very interesting and somewhat it seems "out of world" on this game, due to being a XVII century pirate game on its stock game. It's an amazing and important feature to have on this mod, and i'm happy to know you could acheive that goal

Do they show up? Well... as far as i have played on those eras, the answer is no. They seem to be a bunch of very very rare ships to encounter, as for example, the Fragata Latina or the Naval Ketch "HMS Nonsuch" on the colonial powers era. In the napoleoinc era, it should be more of these ships sailing on the caribbean, more than on Revolutions era, because of historical moments of innovation.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Indeed the steam-frigates are set up to be a bit more common in the Napoleonic age.
But even in Revolutions, they should occasionally show up for the Americans, French and English.

 

[Nightmare]

I like the Napoleonic era because of the steam frigates and the uniforms and that the have Americans and since i play Mount & Blade Warband Napoleonic wars its like playing it but in the caribbean.

 

[llewelyn ravencroft]

I love the colonial powers as There are not many peices of filth called pirates thanks to good old Woodes Rogers and the paint job of the royal navy ships

 

[Pieter Boelen]

I think the number of Pirates are not very different between the time periods.

 

[Grey Roger]

For me, it's probably "Spanish Main" or "Golden Age of Piracy". Both feature a mixture of older types (the Fast War Galleon is still around in "Golden Age", and the English Revenge versions are still around in "Spanish Main") and newer types (early frigates and some of the big battlewagons begin to appear), leading to a great variety of ships.

But I tend to prefer storylines to free play, so all that is irrelevant because the period in which I'm playing is, of course, the period set by the storyline. The fact that most ships in "Napoleonic" are variants on a theme of frigate (even the merchant ships are frigate variants) doesn't stop me from playing "Hornblower".

 

[Heinz-Fiction]

Does a list of what ships are available in every single time period? I play gold age for a long time now, and didnt encounter any tier 1 ships, not even in big military convoys

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Does a list of what ships are available in every single time period? I play gold age for a long time now, and didnt encounter any tier 1 ships, not even in big military convoys

This here is quite up-to-date: PotC - Ship Data Extraction Tool

There should be Tier 1 ships in Golden Age of Piracy, but only ever for French, English or Spanish fleets.
They're quite uncommon though, until you run into one of the MASSIVE DirectSail/WorldMap encounters.