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Did you ever play the old Port Royale (now discontinued) series? Trading (and factory ownership) in the golden age of piracy Caribbean. Think they made 3 games, I forget which was most interesting in terms of trade. They had a Sid Meier Pirate style plot/combat thing, but automating trade routes and production lines was way more fun.

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Nope. Worth going back? If so, which one / which version? I notice there's a very recent Port Royale 4.

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Yeah, I didn't know there was a 4 until just now, and I haven't played that one. I think I remember 2 being the one with the best economics, but it was a long time ago. The reviews on Steam seem to imply that 4 tried to recreate some of the good features from 2. It should be available on GOG. The specific memory I have of the game is being thrilled that I captured a ship in a dramatic battle because it was the perfect size/speed for my Tortuga to Nassau beef supply run. Probably a let's play youtube would give a good idea of whether the gameplay would be fun.

Not sure it's worth going back to to have fun, but if you're interested in mining the past for economic/trading gameplay features, definitely.

Other games on my list in that category, before I had kids:

Patrician series (think by same developers as Port Royale)

X series (probably X3 Terran Crusade)

Tropico series

Offworld Trading Company

Mount And Blade

Sid Meier's Railroads

Sid Meier's Colonization (original or remake)

Sunless Sea

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Fun review! Economic/trading simulators are an underappreciated and under accomplished field, in my opinion. A really good model of how goods and services move around and people build cities and civilizations based on that could be a lot of fun to play in, from a number of different angles.

A game I rather liked in this genre, though I never finished, is "Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale." The premise is you are the daughter of an item store owner in a typical JRPG world, and your parents die after apparently developing a huge blow and hookers habit that left them massively in debt to a loan sharking fairy corporation, and the debt carries over onto you. The corp sends over a fairy to help you run the store in an attempt to pay off the debt (or manage the monthly payments) or else they are going to take the store and your house. Hilarity ensues. There's a lot of focus on negotiation (without going too far) and the choice of items to sell, what goes in the display windows, and what décor all determining what sorts of people even come in to buy and what they want, then inventory management and surplus/shortages messing with prices, etc. It's fun and light hearted, and a bit hard not to cry "Capitalism, HO!" with the protagonist as she overcomes obstacles.

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Ah yes. Capitalism, HO! It's great. Except that over time it gets boring pretty fast as you grind things out over and over, and the basic premise is that you need to be time-efficient on your rocket to the moon because of the debt payments so if you grind 'wrong' you end up restarting.

It's also one of those cases of a lot of focus on the wrong stuff, in an important sense, because your fate is mostly determined by being willing to grind out a ton of value in the dungeon and then quickly turn it into cash, and in knowing how to do various unlocks to keep things moving forward.

But yeah, was still good fun while it lasted.

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I found I spent very little time in the dungeon, just because it wasn't terribly interesting. I wonder if that helped or hurt my play mostly-throughs. I did somewhat rage quit when I missed a payment and realized I hadn't saved for like 5 hours, but generally it was pretty fun till then. The time pressure was a little... pressing... but I don't know that I would like having it removed entirely. I might have enjoyed it a lot less if I kept going and found I had to spend all my time in the dungeon instead of haggling with housewives, and hating little girls. Because they are they worst and need to stop coming into my goddamn store.

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Right. So the issue is that opening the store takes time, and haggling is valuable on the margin but only so valuable. Meanwhile the payments are coming, so what you have to do is go into the dungeon to get valuable items and then sell them QUICKLY, then repeat, if you want to win. Otherwise the payments will get you. Often in such games you 'start off ahead' and it looks like you have plenty of time but you don't because the real test is coming later and now you're behind.

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Ahh ok that makes sense. I was thinking I had screwed up by trying to look into the upgrading system too hard and wasting time/resources, but if I hadn't been in the dungeon enough I might have been unable to hit that hurdle almost regardless. I might have to try another run if I get more time... or just let my kids play and let them figure it out.

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That was the exact game I was gonna come and comment as a lovely example from same genre. Having sunk way more time than is really appropriate into it via several playthroughs, I feel like the overall tradeoff between lighthearted accessibility and strict economic fundamentals is worthwhile. Plenty of my gaming friends from that era hadn't ever played any sort of merchant sim game, but for awhile, we were all memeing Capitalism, HO! There's value in that approach. (Many also appreciated the company's laissez-faire attitude towards pirating. Exemplifying the values you preach and all that.)

You need to do dungeons *a little bit* because it's a prerequisite to unlocking some higher-value trades and features, especially in the beginning when you're short on options and don't have the reputation to negotiate more aggressively. That first end-of-dungeon item, the Expensive Vase or whatever, is a big deal for setting up early timetable success. After that the utility drops off fairly quick; it's an interesting and quirky side aspect of the game, but no longer necessary. I also really hated how bone-backwards it was to force better equipment on the adventurers. Just let me *give* them better weapons directly, geez. Shouldn't have to wait until they randomly decide to go shopping for unrelated reasons...

On top of that, the (irl) time investment for efficiently grinding out dungeons gets higher and higher. Even moreso if one "invests" in the character development and other fluff stuff, which does eventually tie in to resolving the "story" after the last dungeon (no spoilers, but it's both clever and disappointing). So characterizing it as a grind is correct, you really just wanna keep using <s>the most effective adventurer</s> Charme and ignore everyone else. Gets boring fast, it's hardly an innovative roguelike or whatever.

But anyway, you can beat the game without doing dungeons much. Strong fundamentals serve you well throughout; by the time you get access to vending machines, you're pretty much just printing money entirely. Also helps deter the Little Girls cause they can buy candy without bothering you on the margin, just like in real life. It is still worth losing once though, the Game Over screen of being homeless in a cardboard box is just kind of adorable.

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Good to know. I certainly didn't have much desire to keep going into the dungeon all the time, so perhaps I was overtraining on the early game - I didn't make it all that far. I still mostly found the rest of it pretty grindy after a while, as well, so I'm not tempted to pick it back up.

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Seems fun; added to my (maybe) queue.

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> take spices from one port and ship them to another port. No ship for you. You own a cart. So you take less exciting goods that aren’t spices that you buy in one town, and you ship them to another town. Where you sell them.

Yes, but while I'm busy handling all these spices, when do I get the wolf goddess?

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I did say the game was missing key elements.

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I just bought the game earlier. Your review, and the current ridiculously cheap sales price, convinced me to give it a shot.

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