Official Website:
@Navynuke99 mentioned this game in a thread a while ago, and I’ve been eyeing it for some time.
Does anyone else play it? What do you think? The game seems like a fantastic concept. Their website includes this ever-vital factoid:
Or you can be a Pirate. Pirates can attack each other and that changes
their mechanics compared to other nations. Pirate mechanics are in
development and might improve or change in the future.
And uh- relevant:
Every time I looked at it, it was still too immature for game time. Looks like it’s come quite a ways, though.
It’s been a couple of months since I last played, but I was still stumbling around trying to figure things out. One of my best friends and former tall ship sailors just got back from a cruise (he’s chief mate on tankers on the west coast), so I might see about talking him into giving this a shot some evening.
This reminds me of Total War naval battles, but with humans. I wonder how much grind it takes to reach this level…I’d rather skip the fun and just enjoy 45 v 45 style battles.
So, bumping an old thread- while I don’t have access to my gaming rig, I’m running this one on my (painfully underpowered) laptop. Anybody else play this one at all and interested in showing an utter newby (Midshipman, 125 XP total) the ropes? I have no clue whatsoever what I’m doing, but I somehow I think (?) managed to sink an enemy ship once for a mission. I’m sailing out of Charleston at the moment, but could change homeports- I think.
I had the game from early doors and its gone through some interesting changes. Personally the game has some of the best strategic and fun multiplayer engagements.
The game comes in two parts.
Open world, where sailing is sped up and simplified in order for you to not spend weeks crossing vast distances.
Battle instance, when you catch or if caught in open world another ship or fleet, then you are dropped back to real time with more complicated sailing. Starting positions are based off of positions when captured. You have to use the wind and be conversant with manual handling of the sails or you will get stuck trying to turn against the wind.
Open world map is a host of ports over massive area and depending on which country you sign up to you and your country have to attack or defend your ports to gain or stop losing territory. Its geared around online play and be ready to loose ships.
There is rpg element where you have to level up to get to other bigger ships as well as crafting.
This game encourages team play and joining a clan, for this will give you best results however there is nothing wrong with loning it.
Not played for a while after they brought in warping to help with long distances but was looking to pick it up again.
Thisgame does need some invested time, but is very fun in battle
A bit more depth chat about combat as this really is where the game shines.
Ship customisation.
Firstly there are a host of ships from starting small ships, to trading vessels to 1st rate behemoths that are your ships of the line. A captain can pilot any size ship at any time. However the RPG element of your characters rank will determine how many crew you can have under your command.
Piloting a ship above your crewing level will obviously mean your ship will be under-crewed, thus reducing its effectiveness. I.e. slower to raise lower sails, trim sails, reload guns, repair, damage control etc… You can micro manage your crew and shove more men into a certain area like sailing, but these extra men will be at a cost of taking them from somewhere else, but you can reorganise on the fly whenever you need it.
You can craft ships yourself (once you have materials and blueprints plus skill level for making it) or purchase them from others selling them. Ships can be made in various attributes and finesse of crafting. You can tailor a ship for speed and agility for example.
Guns play an important part and there are a few to choose from. Guns can also fire different ammo. Eg. Grape shot for taking out crew leaving no damage to ship hull, but can also wreck sails.
Onto battle choose wisely,
Your initial jostle in open world is important for placing your ship in the best possible position for attack or escape when dragged into a battle instance. Try to get the wind advantage, or position yourself in the most likely place to stop your enemy’s escape. The initial jostle can be a game of cat and mouse especially against pvp enemy who have a “net” of enemy ships around you
But be careful. Once a battle instance has started, there is a limited time for anyone to jump into battle. E.g.I have been in a fleet attacking an inferior pvp fleet, but they were the trap. Once in battle the enemy had a superior force drop in which made it very hard for us to turn tail and run. If you do run and manage to get back to open world, its not over. You do get a breif period on invisibilty when you get back to open world, but open world is a single world and the enemy will be back on your heals. Good pvp’ers will cast a net of ships around the instance waiting to catch you again when you pop out.
Real world tactics of the era actually work here and battle lines and formations offer advantages, though the key always will be wind and you position to it in relation to the enemy.
So the fighting has started and there are a few things you can do. Penetration and deflection is modelled. Shots can bounce off of armour so hitting a target area square on will offer best results. Do you go for the sails to slow them down, maybe even demasting them? or straight for the hull to rip off their armour?
Armour is modelled on front back left right, plus integrity of sails plus amount of crew lives. Stripping the armour on one side will leave the hull open to damage and leaks. Penetration of shots will cause holes in the hull and can cause flooding. Shots can hit above or below the waterline causing more or less flooding. However holes above the waterline can be submerged under the water (flooding) if your ship is listing enough.
Listing also can be a help/hinder when firing. Depending on your ship and how much sail you are running, you can get quite a large list or angle of bank. Cannons can only elevate a certain extent, so you may have to adjust course or sails to get a shot off.
Not only can you sink ship but you can capture them too. Obviously you wouldn’t take on a ship with 500 crew with you little boat with 20 crew. But if you have inferior crew numbers, you can attack the enemy depleting their crew to give your self the upper hand in a boarding action.
Boarding is achieved when two ships are in close proximity and both ships speed is low. You can then grapple the ship and that commences the boarding action. Boarding is a basic tool run in rounds. You have a set of actions to choose from, the other guy chooses an action and then its rock paper scissors. However the loss of crew will be affected by things such as difference in crew numbers, if there are marines n board, and any upgrades to the ship or crew that assist in boarding. Be warned though, whilst boarding is a great way to get a new ship to keep or sell, do it at the right time. The war is still raging on whilst boarding and there is nothing stopping other enemy sliding up to you and blasting you broadside whilst you are effectively a sitting duck.
So, my ship is smaller than theirs, this game sux…OR DOES IT.
Size and type of a ship all have strengths and weaknesses. A first rate ship with a squizillion guns will mutilate a small ship broadside to broadside (but lets be honest, you let a hulking oaf of a ship broadside you, then you deserve it). But its horribly slow in speed and in turn. Get them into wind and they are terrible.
Smaller quicker ships can easily sit on the stern of a large ship that is either poorly or non defended. You just plink down their rear armour, maybe taking out the rudder and then deplete the crew with grape shot. But its not easy and takes time, one missed opportunity or bad sailing though and you could end up facing those big guns.
So what am i saying. There is a place for small ships and big ships and ones in between. And its good to field them all in a battle.
Loosing a ship. Depending on the ship (it might have changed) but ships had up to 5 durabilities. Which meant that if it was sunk 5 times, the ship is gone forever. Durabilities cannot be replaced.
So if you buy your dream upgrade ship in the configuration you wanted at a pretty penny and get ganked upon leaving port, whilst you will be peeved, you got 4 more lives on it.
Advancing your character in the world. Your fleet and you.
It did when i played, take some time to rank up, which is not a bad thing. Things were expensive too so money is always an issue. So expect time between rankings, especially in the latter tiers. There are other ways to make money. by looting shops you have killed, or selling ships you have captured. Trading commodities, even setting up factories or mines. You can even be a crafter making and selling items
These extra activities mean that high level players won’t always be in uber ships. Quite often they will be in trading vessels which have poor or no armourment moving their goods about for sale or craft.
Also scouting plays an important part and small starter ships are ideal. Cost nothing to replace, are fast, nimble good harassers.
So you have open world conflicts, or you can choose to warp into a small or large scale pvp event.
Onto the real battle, taking over the world. All ports aside from neutral can be captured. Capturing a port will usually see humongous battles and gigantic fleets crossing large distances to wage war. Taking a port is a very strategic affair and hard to do and will utilise a scout force, blocker force, main attack force. It start with money raised to purchase a flag (used for capturing a port and not cheap) then the organised attacking force needs to get their main attack force with the flag to the enemy port. There may be a few battles to get to the port if the enemy are organised. Once the flag is planted, then the actual port battle will begin.
Its a fun game, a little hard to initially pick up but very very tactical and enjoyable when you get into it. There are a host of manual sailing techniques in the interwebz which i recommend you pick up and look at before you dive into it.
I have not played for a while, but i will download into the brittish royal navy once more and see how it is.
Do they have f111’s in the square sail days?
HOLY WALL’O TEXT BATMAN!
But seriously it was a pleasant read…
Forgot to mention pirates and factions.
Once you start, you can choose neutral, english, spanish danish etc.
Lots of people have neutral alternate characters to move stuff around. Unless you really want to just do trade routes with slightly less risk, the i personally would avoid neutral. No other nations should attack neutral unless attacked first, but you are still open to pirates.
You cannot attack anyone of the same faction unless you spot them carrying contraband, then they are fair game. Attacking a clean player of same faction will strip you of that faction and raise the jolly roger on your stern for ever more (or until you make a new character)
Pirates were very popular when i was playing and that forced coalitions to form between various coutries.
If you have stored ships in port and it has been taken over by an enemy faction, you can loose them all. Also it may come as no surprise that if logging on whilst inside an enemy port, you may have to run quite a gauntlet of enemy as you try to make your way home.
NOT so much text this time @komemiute
There’s also a sharp lack of 
I just wish that there was a single player mode where you could choose to sail the open world properly. Zipping around at Mach 2 kind of killed it for me.
PiratesAhoy has mods for all of Akella’s pirate games- most of them can be found on Amazon, and the original Sea Dogs is on GoG now. In at least Pirates of the Caribbean, there’s a mod to allow real time sailing between islands.
I’m actually thinking about giving Age of Pirates 1 and 2 another shot, because I’m that much of a glutton for punishment.
all i remember from sailing out of Charleston in that game is that the wind always seemed to be coming up the coast making it a pain as i’m no navigator, but keeping the coast in site and moving into the wind at all times was painful 
Was one of those that got in on it super early, i enjoyed it a lot more when it was just a mp room, didn’t sink too much time into it after the open world came about
Well just had a quick foray in the game after a very long absence and had a battle. The battles are still very enjoyable.
However (and this is my personal opinion). They have nerfed more the realism of the open world and gone for accessibility rather then engaging game play.
I just trundled a fair distance to enter a combat mission that I undertook whilst in port. Once the mission was over I was asked to enter back into open world or teleport to a nearby port.
Teleport to a friendly base, really? Where is the sailing challenge and navigation challenge. I understand the old teleport that you can use once every four hours for when you get lost out at see. But more teleports, and teleports from home bases to other bases.
OMG what did they do to this game whilst I was away?
Don’t get me wrong, its a fun game and the battles are great, but they have killed the open world portion of it which I enjoyed IMO.
Uninstalling and disappointed. I guess those that enjoy a game don’t moan whilst those that don’t like difficulty in a game whinge and get catered to.
I’ve been occasionally checking-in on NA’s development progress and it seems like it’s going to be another Early Access flop from how reviews are trending.
@Bogusheadbox- your review kinda confirms this. Chalk up another casualty to scope creep and indecision between being hardcore/accessible?
Capitalism.
ROI.
Greed is good, and all that.
Whoa, was not expecting that. Was the fact that they gave you the option to teleport what killed it for you – that seems like a player choice you could make, like clicking “Finish Mission” in Rise of Flight before actually landing your aircraft – or was there more?
Also
is my new favorite word. I promise not to whinge too much about it, though.
Yeah. Its just that I played a lot of the game in early development and I liked the way it was going. There was a reason to sail vast distances for exploration and expansion.
I.e. If organising a port battle, you would have to organise a meet up point and sail there, risking discovery or blackades on the long journey. Now you can just park ships in neutral bases around the map and just pop out and battle. Its hard to explain in words, but its not what it used to be.
It also takes away from the one world mantra. You could see a battle, you could lay a trap and wait for them to pop out and start the hunting game of wind positioning and guessing which direction they are going. That is all gone now.
Maybe I am weird, but I enjoyed the purpose of sailing the open sea. Not teleporting willy nilly to bases from either inside a port or open ocean or from a completed fight.
Like I said, I was happy with the one teleport which had a 4 hr timer. you could only use it if you were not engaged and no cargo in your hold and you couldn’t exploit it by spamming it. It was a get out of jail card if you were lost in the middle of the ocean.
Ahhh nevermind. The ship battles are still excellent. Its just I had my heart in this game a long time ago and I was sorry to see it move this direction.
Just as an edit, as i don’t want to come off the wrong way here.
I think the game has a lot of fun in it, and would be enjoyable, if you like ships. I have spent quite a lt of hours in the past and the sea battles re definitely fun
@Bogusheadbox, I appreciate all the time you put into the tips and tricks above- it’s helped clear up a few things for me, but I’m still undecided if I really like this one or not. I’ve owned ALL the Akella pirate games from first release, so it’s obviously a genre I’m fond of.
…and on a related note, a quick trip over to Pirates Ahoy! told me that the entire Akella Sea Dogs Series (Sea Dogs, Sea Dogs/ Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales, Sea Dogs/ Age of Pirates: City of Abandoned Ships) are now available on GoG for download. The first one was wonderful fun in its simplicity but depth of storyline, and the latter two were released with some bugs that rendered them almost unplayable (especially the second one), but the wonderful mod community has salvaged them. Stand by for pictures and details when i get them both installed, modded, and running properly in a few days.
Necromancer magic happens
Soooo anyone still playing this?
I’m thinking about starting NA this weekend, as soon as I’m home…