The series has always been a hybrid of war/trade, not a pure trade empire only game. You don't have to fight, though. You can let them plunder you (they take a small %) and route your trade mostly around the enemy. There are no major consequences in free play (choose economic goals instead of military or mix) for doing this. The campaigns are what they are.

If you choose to embrace the war aspect, it is very profitable to capture and sell enemy ships and to annex towns (free trade license and building permits).

They need to make the AI Nations with towns and fleets run on the same economic and support basis as a Human Player controlling the same assets. Otherwise human players will give up on the game a lot sooner.

I want AI players that do not have to be given huge advantages to be able to compete with me. I also want AI Players that develop and build a Trade Empire for me to compete against. That was my biggest complaint of PR3 in particular, but even the Patrician series and Rise of Venice did not have much in the way of competing Trade Empires that played well.

As I have said on other occasions, Game designers should FIRST design an AI program or routines that play(s) well enough to feel almost human, and then design the game to include ONLY (or mostly) those things that the AI routines can do well.

The problem is there is no fun in fighting, because it's boring and repeating.

Example : Whenever I try to annex a town, I have to fight against 6 or 7 fully fledged fleets, until the timer made a turn.
It's very annoying to make all these sea battles right after another, despite the fact that you lose a lot of your own fleets crew. So this is getting really tricky in the end.
But if you keep annexing more towns before the war ends, there are just a few attacks by weak fleets. But at that time I'm so bored of sea battles I can't continue and quit to desktop.

Thank you for your feedback.
If you have further suggestions for improvement on the subject of war, it would be appreciated if you could share them with us in the suggestions and ideas forum.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1024650/discussions/4/

-cheers

I agree with Saul.
when you want to annex towns, the enemy AI sends its ENTIRE ARMADA against you causing you to face 20-30 battles in a short timeframe. This is again very profitable (each fleet is worth 1/2 million money or more) but it gets tedious.
There are two PROBLEMS as I see it is that the FRIENDLY COUNTRY SHIPS do not contribute. You can have 3 fleets capturing a town and your country's armada is all parked at one town doing nothing, they never come over to help you out. If they would run a little interference and take out, say, even 50% of the enemy it would be much less frustrating. The second problem is that THE ENEMY REGROW 20+ SHIPS INSTANTLY in the short peace before war happens again. That means TAKING OVER 10 or so towns requires killing well over 100 CONVOYS in my experience -- typically I get 2-3 towns per war, after killing amost 100% of their 20-30 convoys.

An unrelated suggestion would be to have the AUTOMATIC combat attempt to use cannister shot and capture vessels (attempt at 75% chance or better) as the go-to strategy. The auto combat is about useless -- you lose ships (I almost never lose a ship manually) and never gain any (I usually gain 4+ per fight). The auto combat may as well not even exist.

*Saul, if you capture ships, you should actually net profit sailors too, replacing the dead ones and staying topped off.

** A combat for me typically lasts only 4-5 rounds, and I usually capture 2 ships on the first round so its quick but, even quickly resolved, it s still a chore after a while.

Jonnin, I know, the game shows +250 but I just don't have them on my ships.
I'm pretty sure it worked some other time.

Originally posted by Saul:

Jonnin, I know, the game shows +250 but I just don't have them on my ships.
I'm pretty sure it worked some other time.

I second this... It seems like the sailors on the captures ships doesn't transfer to your convoy if you sink their ship. That's my theory at least, cause I don't feel, that I get more sailors as I conquer ships even though the post-war stats say, I gain sailors.

They do not if you SINK. They do if you capture. OR they did, I haven't dug into 1.1.1 yet, took a break... I rarely have excess ships to sink. I do a train of fight, capture, go to town to drop and repair with fast captain and move fighting captain to other fleet, repeat, usually with 5 fleets or so..

I made a couple of posts on this topic in Suggestions & Ideas section of this forum... battle hexes too small topic and fame points for capital ships.

The first post is specific to battle and too long winded to repeat here, but my second post was about reality of warfare lacking in this game. Specifically, when two nations declare war, their navies should engage each other and not flock off to a safe space and do nothing. If they engaged, then they would deplete their numbers and take time to replenish. If they engaged, there would be fewer fleets hitting you every time you siege a town. If they could even patrol where the war is would be a good start.

Originally posted by jonnin:

They do not if you SINK. They do if you capture. OR they did, I haven't dug into 1.1.1 yet, took a break... I rarely have excess ships to sink. I do a train of fight, capture, go to town to drop and repair with fast captain and move fighting captain to other fleet, repeat, usually with 5 fleets or so..

Well I just had a battle just now with 9 ships on my end against 6 of theirs. I boarded them all. After the battle I had gained 250 sailors according to the post-war screen and a total of 1500 sailors.

I didnt have full sailors on my current convoy before the battle, so I decided to only keep 7 ships after the battle to make sure it had a maximum crew. And I sunk the rest of the ship. Right now I'm looking at a convoy with 7 ships and 709 sailors. And not around 1000 or whatever the maximum is (says 1k).

So the sailors have gone poof as I sunk the remaining ships.

Another battle with 9 ships on my end - I board and capture all the enemy vessels and lose 0 ships myself. The post-war screen says I now have over 1000 sailors. I remove 3 damaged ships from my convoy and I add 2 ships from the enemy giving me a total of 8 ships. And now I have 741 sailors. Something IS wrong with this game mechanic.

Seems as if sailors are bound to the ships they are on and do not move over to next ship if you destroy a ship to fill up existing ships that is missing sailors to that ship max crew capacity. Perhaps there should be a crew slider to transfer sailors <-> in the "destroy ship frame side" so we have a chance to get them that way to the ships on the "keep ship frame side".

Originally posted by DaneX:

Another battle with 9 ships on my end - I board and capture all the enemy vessels and lose 0 ships myself. The post-war screen says I now have over 1000 sailors. I remove 3 damaged ships from my convoy and I add 2 ships from the enemy giving me a total of 8 ships. And now I have 741 sailors. Something IS wrong with this game mechanic.

happens quite often actually

really annoying.