This is a solid trading and economic strategy game. It gets a bit repetitive at times, but it's an interesting take on the genre. If you enjoy this game, take a look at its spiritual sequel, Commander: Conquest of the Americas; both games are very similar, but take place in different geographical areas.

This game was just ok. I think I played it for a couple of days before the gameplay got old. You have limited options and complexity. Trading is simple, combat is simple. I was really expecting quite a bit more from this game. If you are looking for something like the Patrician and Port Royale series, you will probably be disappointed.

I spent hours playing this game, addicted to the buying and selling. However, after some time it becomes very repetitive, which is only underscored by the "penalties" of success. The biggest problem, I think is the price fluctuations of various commodities -- at first, the major goods of the East are high, but sell only a few tons, and they lose value quickly. I found that I had to limit my ships' capacity for ALL goods, which also limited the amount of profit.

At some point it becomes unsustainable, as your own government asks you to build grander and grander structures at your owned ports, which cost huge amounts of money to upkeep. Frustrating to say the least.

Also, I thought that there could be a better system of keeping track of ships and the trade routes they serviced. (A table would have been nice). Instead, a bit of paper and pen sufficed.

Having played the original game and also the upgraded version, I liked the visual effects of the original, (the sea, for example), better. However, the upgrade that comes with this collection makes it MUCH easier to get into the ports and conduct business.

This could have been a really great game if it weren't for the very weird economics.

However, it's still a fun game to play now and again.

At first I really enjoyed this game and the great amount of detail put into it but it soon became repetitive and I completely lost interest. However it is a very good game overall and if you are especially interested in this style of game then you should definitely give it a go.

I was really looking forward to this game but, after hours of struggling with it, it's completely unplayable.

The lag time is ridiculous, and in fact is so bad I can barely get past the first screens to even get the tutorial started then, when I do, clicking just the "next" button for every section of the tutorial takes at least 2 minutes before it even moves to the next screen.

Then I tried to start a game and EIC just crashes. And yes, my system is much higher than what's demanded for the game, I've updated my video cards and I've put the graphics on the lowest settings. Nothing works so I finally gave up and deleted it from my computer.

A pity as it looks like it would have been a great game but, unfortunately, I'm having the same problem as did many people across the internet. :(

This game reminds me of a more complicated version of 'Colonization'. Another Paradox game that has a steep learning curve, but a little simpler than most. If you're a strategy fan and like the colonization of the Americas era, this is the game for you.

A good game involving trading and sea warfare set in the 17th Century. The game focuses on escalating your East Indian Trade company (There are 7 to choose from) to the top dog. This is done by taking over trading ports and using them for yourself, or just doing it better and faster than the other guys. You also have the option of attacking the other companies vessels(some excellent RTS naval sail combat here) and lowering them through that method. The overall scope of the game is good and sound, yet after so many hours you will find yourself simply doing the same thing again and again. Once the worm turns, it becomes too easy. It requires more depth on the trading aspect. I give it 4 stars simply becuase at USD 5.00, it's worth the 10-20 hours you can get out of it. Otherwise, I would have given it 3.

AN incredible game!! It has way more depth than thought at first and has a great era look to it. Kinda similar to the Total War series games but quite different in the shape and content. Get it if you like historical and strategic games!

East India Company is a game that blends trading and sea war. The graphics of the tactical sea war is great and it is interesting to command your fleet rotating, selecting ammo, aiming and firing. You can change the view of the camera during the tactical war. The drawbacks of this game are listed as follows: first, the AI is not smart enough that you can defeat all your opponents easily. Second, this game is lack of variation and strategic depth. You will get boring easily after playing the game for a while. For example, different country should have different products and different cost to build a certain ship. When you have controlled all the ports that produce a certain product, you should have a monopoly of that product. Third, you can not directly command your fleet and marines to attack a port. Fourth, you can command only 5 ships in a sea war. There is no join attack, which makes ally useless. Fifth, your ship may be stuck on the southern coast of the Arabia peninsula.

This is a solid game, giving exactly the experience you expect from it. Trading overseas? Check. Naval battles? Check. Expanding your fleet? Check. Quite fun, with ship fighting not too complex so you can sink into it right away. The graphics are good too, and running smoothly even on my not-the-top-spec laptop. And this is the collection, so it contains all the goodies the title has to offer. If you fancy long sea journeys and adventure, this is the game for you.

This in an interesting game, and easy to understand and manage. I think that a newer version should be a bit more challenging, and have more options and events. Graphics are very beautiful and naval battles are a challenging task. However, the game is simple and to play it a little repetitive task. A good game for me, I´m expecting a new version.

Hi there,

the game is good fun. I liked it and probably would buy it again.

There is a slight annoyance to the end of the game.

You mostlikely have already conquered every interesting city in east india before the real ships can be built (ship of the line). I conquered everything with galleons and frigates.

By that time you probably hold two full fleets of warships and your economic empire is that huge that you are able to import that much wares into your homecountry leading to a major drop of prices.

Since the game (at least I havent found out how) doesnt allow to sell at other countries harbours, you can only trade with their companies. Problem is they prolly are not very happy trading with you at all, either because they just cant get over you capturing every ship and town of thiers or because they simply dont have any money left ;-). So the fun stopped kind of early for me not having built a single SOTL *cry*

This is a very good game, and well worth the time spent playing it. The addons and free patches brings this game to where it should have been upon its release. Any earlier review of the game before the addons, needs to be revised upwards with at least an additional star and a half. If you are a fan of this genre, then don't hesitate. Just get the game, it's worth it.

The East India Company Collection is a trading strategy game where you sail your ships around Europe building up a trading empire and have sea battles. Trading in the game is simple where you sail from one city to another buying low and selling high but it does not really expand beyond that and so it gets old very quickly. The standar map view where you spend probably 80% of your time does not look that great and is plain but the Sea battles are fun for a while and do sound great and once you get a hang of the controls are fun. If you ar looking for a great trading strategy game I would recommend Patrician 4 Rise of Dynasty which I think is a blast and keeps your attention for quite some time.

A very enjoyeable ecenomy/trade game. You lead one of seven East India Companies to domminate its rivals, while making a nice profit - The main goal of the game is to fill the companies coffers. The price of each product changes over time dependng on how much of said product is availeable in europe - if everyone is importing furs then its price will start to drop rapidly. The most profiteable trade items can be found in India (Spices and Silk always make a huge profit).

You can also fight battles at sea if you end up in war with another company (unavoideable if your rich or own many ports), but these aren't the mein focus of the game. Still they can be very fun - if you play the battle in real time and capture enemy ships, then you can loot there cargo (if you auto resolve then there no loot).

Another big point of the game is capturing independent ports (with auto resolve) - these can later be developed with different upgrades (buildings).

A campaign can be won several ways: either play until 1750 and be the richest/strongest company or conquer all ports in India and keept them for 10 years or drive all other companies into ruin (sink there fleets, conquer there ports outside of europe - in short make them run out of money).

All in all a good trading game with battles and some diplomacy. I would advise it for players who like economy centered games. Its also a worth it if you like 16-17th century Naval Battles even though its not one of the strong points of the game.

Hours of gameplay! Very good game! I like trading games and this one fits me perfect. The Addons in this pack make it more attractive for those who want to play a pirate carreer or those who like seafights. One mod is only about seafighting, where you have to control a huge fleet in a true 3D battle.

East India Company is very enjoyable for what it is - a trading game. Never forget that's what it is. The point of the game is to make money trading from your home port in Europe to Africa, Arabia and the East Indies. Everything else, fighting naval battles, taking over ports, diplomacy, missions, etc, is all secondary to that goal.

EIC follows the history of the English East India Company very well. Starting in 1600 (actually a year before the Royal charter was granted) and ending in 1750 focuses the action squarely on the Company as a trading outfit. After 1750 it was more involved in taking land in India and fighting wars with the natives that actual trading. This is the earliest part of the Company's history, and by 1750 in-game you will have taken enough land in India and elsewhere to see why and how the Company changed its focus.

As stated, the point is to trade. In campaign play you have goals to meet, quotas of goods to bring back from the exotic ports around the map, and you'll find this is often a frantic scrabble to get enough of each commodity to meet these goals. Along the way you'll take over ports, because ports taken by rival companies are closed to you unless you're on good terms with them. You'll need to secure access to kep ports to meet your import goals, and just to have somewhere to resupply your fleets. If your ships run out of supplies they slow down to a crawl till they can resupply, and that can kill your business. Taking ports also denies the rival companies the use of them, limiting their access to trade goods and supplies, and that can kill *their* business.

There are a few ways to win. One is to destroy the other companies. Sink all their fleets and they're out of business. Another is to take over all twelve East Indies ports and hold them for ten years.

A very good feature is over-supplying a commodity. The market in Europe only needs so much of any given product and you can sell only so much before the price drops. Concentrate on, say, ivory and after only a few hundred tonnes have been sold in Europe you'll see the price drop. Let it drop too much and you can't profit from that commodity until the price rises again, which it does over time as long as you're not selling it. The same goes for every product, and it's very easy to do with diamonds or gold, as these are sold by the kilogram, not tonne. A ship can hold a lot of those two commodities, so you can easily glut the market and not trade in them for years afterwards.

The trading aspect is very well done, among the best I've seen in trading games so far. The other main aspect, naval battles, is also good. One niggle that was finally addressed in a DLC pack for the sequel to this game is the bow and stern chase guns that sailing ships had. No ship in EIC (or most other age of sail games I've ever seen) has chase guns. Very annoying when you're trying to run down enemy shipping - with sailing ships, a stern chase is a long chase.

Battles look good, graphics are excellent, with animated crew moving around the deck and rigging of the ships, which are themselves well detailed and accurately modelled. It usually doesn't take long for the two sides to close to gun range and the carnage begins. Ships have three damage attributes, Hull, Sails and Crew. Each one is damaged to a greater or lesser degree by cannon fire, and cannon loads can be varied between round shot, chain shot and grape shot, to maximise damage to the various attributes. If a ship loses all its Hull points it sinks, if it loses all its Sail points it can no longer move, and if it loses all its Crew points it surrenders. You can load marines on board your ships in place of cargo, and they use their muskets to shoot the enemy crew if you're close enough. This won't damage the ship, so its handy if you want to take it for yourself. You can also board enemy ships, but you have to get very close to achieve this and will probably defeat them with gunfire before needing to. Marines are very handy in boarding actions though.

Direct command mode is very good fun for naval battles. Assign your other ships a target, let them get on with it and jump to direct command. Use keyboard to turn and raise/lower sails, present your broadside and fire your guns. In direct mode you can widen or narrow the field of fire, making your guns more effective as the situation demands, and you have the fine control needed to get close to board an enemy ship.

I highly reccomend East India Company for anyone interested in the period, in trading games or age of sail warfare.

The game is extremely similar to Commander. However, East India Company is in many ways a better game – both in terms of gameplay as well as in terms of setting. The collection offers a good deal as should provide you with plenty of gaming content. If you’re a fan of this genre and enjoy a bit of trading and naval combat, then East India Company is definitely worth looking playing.

The only downside we found is that the game doesn’t offer a lot of variety or new gameplay elements as you proceed through the campaign.

However, with the expansions in this collection you get the variety the original game lacked and some of it is pretty enjoyable. We did find it a shame that the developers didn’t work a little more on the levelling and experience aspects of your commanders, or added more upgrade abilities for your (existing) ships. That could have added extra depth which would have made the game just that little bit better.

Given that you can pick up a copy of this game relatively inexpensively now, there’s no reason not to do so if you’re a bit intrigued at this point.

We rate this game 7/10.

If you liked EIC, you simply can't miss this Collection. An innovative game becomes deeper and more enjoyable, with new campaigns, enemies and flavor...

Of course, you should not expect an Europa-style game. That was never the purpose of the EIC series. You should rather expect a deep trade and diplomacy simulation...It is certainly interesting!

First of all it is a very good game i think.

If you like games where you will have to trait a lot, and if you also like games with ships, this is just the game for you.

In this game you will have a company to run, make it bigger and bigger by getting money from trading with precious cargo from Africa and India. You can play this game for many hours, but after that it gets a little bit boring, because you have become a great company with a lot of ships on auto mode, so you aren't doing so much by your self anymore.

Although it is a great game that i would like to recommend to you.

A couple weeks ago I bought EI Complete ("Designer's Cut"). It took me a while to get into it. At first it seemed kinda awkward and hard to figure out. However, I did eventually get the idea of how the game is modeled and for about the past week, I've been playing this one way more than I really should have been.

This is one of the best games I've ever played.

The strategic level is engrossing and well-balanced, despite being quite simplified. The way the tactical battles, captains, and ship types interact in the operational and strategic level dynamics are absolutely brilliant and one of the best modellings of 17th century colonial relations I've ever seen. This is all the more amazing given that the designers did not just take the "Civ" approach and try to include very single conceivable detail that could have been included. They instead modeled that which was truly salient to the colonial trade wars aspect of this period in history, and left the else as "assume parity and therefore not included in the model." I think my slow development of interest in the game had to do with this design feature; having played so many games where nations are modeled as multiple province/tile elements with complicated cities, complicated social policies, etc., my first insinct I think was hesitation with a game like this where each of the colonial European powers is represented as "one port." The fact is, this was one of the most ingenious game design decisions I've seen in years. All that other "Civ-style" or EU-style detail is irrelevant for the key focus of this game: developing the East Indian trade empire and fighting 17th century naval trade war.

By focusing the design, and articulating the strategic level trading, conquesting, building, diplomatic, and naval elements with the tactical engine, this game creates a feeling of the political processes at the time that I have imagined based on reading and movies. The game recreates that aspect of the period in history amazingly well.

Of course the tactical naval battles are the best part: the best tactical naval engine I have ever seen.

This is the game that I so very much wanted when I finally had played Pirates! way too much and had to stop. Pirates! was a fantastic game, but I think EI Complete is even better.

I have yet to even try the additional expansions that came in the complete package (Pirate Bay, Privateer, Battle of Trafalgar).

Please Nitro and Paradox: MAKE MORE GAMES LIKE THIS ONE!!

This is a great game for a while, then it becomes tedious to keep track of all the moving parts. I've seen more than a few AI flaws in pathing as well.

Being a history and business tycoon sim fan, I thought that EIC could join these two themes together. However, the game is just not deep enough...after a while it becomes repetitive and boring. Graphics wise it looks very nice and the tactical level ship battles are nice...perhaps port conquering could've taken the same approach and make the player play in tactical level. 5/10

The Designer's Cut version of this game is much better then the original. The loading screens from entering the ports are gone.

This game is awesome. The add-ons make the game even more interesting because you now can play as a privateer or pirate.

At first i thought this was a great game, but after 10 hours op playing I feel bored. Trading is to easy, the battles are no fun at all, I always auto resolve. This is not my kind of game. 2/5 stars.

East India Company is a new kind of comercial-strategic game. This game can be played for 3 kind of users because, if you enjoy a simulator of eighteen century naval battles this is your game. If you enjoy colonial strategic games and conquer new ports or you enjoy economic and comercial games you will enjoy this game a lot. I like this 3 thinks of this game and i play every day. And now we can play to all addons with this Collection. This game deserve a 9/10.