#Port royale 4 pc manual#
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Population satisfaction accounts for a lot of factors, and it’s an interesting challenge to manage producing enough commodities without angering the population and keeping enough happiness-inducing areas to keep them there. Though I spent more time trading, I enjoyed the management of towns the most of any mechanic. Even when done manually, it can almost entirely be boiled down to seeing which towns have fewer green bars for certain commodities and selling to them.' 'What I don’t like about trading is its simplicity and repetition. At a certain point, you can speak with the relevant viceroy and buy the right to be the administrator and take over all town responsibilities, which encompasses keeping residents happy, growing town populations, and avoiding problems like plagues and overcrowding. All towns allow you to build sites for production of different commodities, both increasing the supply of that commodity in the town and employing a set number of workers.

#Port royale 4 pc free#

Towns around the area are each under the purview of one of the four major powers of the time: Spain, England, France, and the Netherlands, one of which you affiliate with before each campaign or at the start of your free play. It’s certainly satisfying to watch your cash increase as you sit back, which you’ll have to do a lot because of how slow the default fast forward options can be, but it’s little more than watching a number climb.Īlso part of your managerial duties is the oversight of towns and local businesses.

#Port royale 4 pc manual#

There’s little nuance and little to truly manage, and even though you are finally allowed to set manual prices and could probably spend hours tinkering with prices and quantities to optimize trade routes, default buying and selling values are almost always enough to make a profit. Even when done manually, it can almost entirely be boiled down to seeing which towns have fewer green bars for certain commodities and selling to them. What I don’t like about trading is its simplicity and repetition. You can have as many of these going at once as you’d like, and once you find profitable routes, they become gold mines.

To ramp up your trading, you can set up trade routes for your convoys of ships, automating and expanding your trading capabilities while forcing you to be mindful of the impressive dynamic wind cycles that slow down or speed up your ship’s movement.

Trading is straightforward enough, but being the best way to profit, it’s easily the most important and fleshed out mechanic. 'On paper, it’s an intricate set of systems to keep yourself and your country on top, but in practice, it’s too often a slow, repetitive journey whose long stretches of downtime overshadow sparse exciting moments.' Any more than two and they want to sell any fewer than two and they want to buy. If a town’s supply of a commodity has two green bars, they’re at an optimal level.

Though there are some deeper systems at play, this mechanic is not particularly complicated. Towns that have higher supply, especially those that produce a commodity, will sell it at a lower cost, allowing you to buy and sell at a profit. In the classic economic idea of supply and demand, the lower the supply of a commodity in a town, the more that town is willing to pay for it. First and foremost, you are in charge of trading commodities between towns. In the end, Port Royale 4 is effectively a business simulator, so your goal is to make money and keep your entrepreneurial dreams alive.

After a long-winded set of detailed tutorials, you’re given free reign to begin a campaign or create a sandbox free play world. On paper, it’s an intricate set of systems to keep yourself and your country on top, but in practice, it’s too often a slow, repetitive journey whose long stretches of downtime overshadow sparse exciting moments.Īs the head of your 16 th century business, you play as a god hand over the ships, convoys, and towns in the region. You’re in charge of trading, managing towns, and even navigating countries at war and naval battles to ultimately make your business as successful as possible. Now take all of that responsibility and transfer it back 500 years to the colonial days of the Caribbean, and that’s where you find yourself in Port Royale 4. You never know if a risk will pay off, and if it doesn’t, you could be financially ruined. There are long hours, financial risks, and a lot of bumps along the road.