Port Royale 4 – Captain’s Log: Update 1.3
Hi everyone,
My name is Moritz, also known on Steam as ‘Lord MK’, and I am the Producer of Port Royale 4.
Today, I would like to go into the details of Update 1.3, which will feature the option to declare independence from your player nation as well as multiple adjustments and improvements to other parts of the game.
1) Declaration of Independence
Once you have unlocked all available concessions in Port Royale 4 and you own 10 military convoys with captains, you can choose to declare independence from your parent nation. This will allow you to create your own nation that replaces your player flag. You can then choose a custom name for your nation and all cities previously under your administration will be absorbed. It is important to note that you will lose your trading and building licenses as well as all of the buildings found in the remaining cities of your former nation.
Even if you took all of their towns with you into independence, your new nation will start amidst a vicious war of independence with your former nation. Your new nation will be on neutral terms with all other nations.
As leader of your own nation you will have full control of the diplomatic relations with other nations. You will be able to declare war, request peace, as well as accept other nations’ peace treaties at your discretion.
Your nation will send out their own automatic treasure fleets to Europe so to exchange colonial goods for fame. You also won’t need a letter of marque anymore, as you are now sailing under the flag of your own nation.
2) Economic Shocks
Another new feature arriving with Update 1.3 is economic shocks, which can be switched on in the game settings before starting a Free Game. Economic shocks are meant to shake things up and disturb the balance of the economic simulation for a while, bringing some winds of change to the Caribbean.
When the feature is enabled, economics shocks can occur once the player’s company value has reached 1,000,000 gold and there has been no ‘economic shock’ active within the last 100 days. For the ‘shocks’ themselves, we split the world into 8 geographical regions. A shock can hit one or multiple regions, or even a specific nation.
One economic shock that a player might encounter if this option is switched on is a plague of locusts. This can last for 80 to 100 days and will reduce the production of corn and grain by 50% in the affected regions. Locust plagues can lead to famines and will also interfere with the production of certain goods like beer and meat that require these resources in the production process. With the plague of locusts, the player has the challenge of supplying the missing goods if they’ve personally invested in the well-being of the towns and production chains. Alternatively, they can simply exploit the situation for extra gold through the shortage of the affected goods.
Economic shocks can also be positive, bringing forth changes such as increased prices for beer and rum, for example, due to a church wanting to decrease the consumption of alcohol.
In Update 1.3, we will be including a limited number of shocks to start so to gauge the community’s interest. If players enjoy their inclusion, we’ll certainly consider adding further shocks in future updates.
Important: please be aware that all numbers mentioned in this Captain’s Log are subject to change until the update is released.
3) Combat Improvements
In Update 1.3, we are also planning to introduce multiple improvements to the turn-based naval combat system. One such example is a changing the damage inflicted on sailors by canister shots to a relative value rather than an absolute value. This should decrease the chance of a successful boarding attempt and also makes things a bit more realistic, as a canister shot will kill more sailors on a full ship rather than one with only a skeleton crew on board.
We are also introducing prize money for ships that players capture but don’t add to their convoy following a battle. This prize money is a little less than what you would get when selling the ships in the shipyard, but it is still extra profit. A third new feature for naval combat that we’re currently looking into is ‘special tiles’. If a battle takes place in shallow water, there can be sandbars that slow down ships and cliffs that may need to be navigated around. In deeper water, combatants will need to deal with these hazards that impair the movement of ships, such as the aforementioned sand bars, whirlpools, and even carpets of algae that can damage the hull of a ship when it is passing through.
4) Additional Changes in Update 1.3
There will be even more features and adjustments arriving with Update 1.3. Here’s quick look at what is to come:
- Male Pirate and Trader as player character choices (female Buccaneer and Adventurer will follow in a later update)
- Town management improvements, including a drag and drop function for buildings
- Adjusted number scaling (capped prices for licenses and required fame in the late game)
- Adjustable war frequencies
- …and more
Closing words
We have been hard at work on Update 1.3 and all of those features and improvements it brings on board and we are excited to share them with you soon and hear what you think.
We would also like to invite you to join us in our Port Royale 4 Update 1.3 live stream on Friday, 20th November at 19:00 CEST.
Thank you for your support and see you on the seas!
Your team behind Port Royale 4