Port Royale 4 – Captain’s Log: Update 1.2
Hi everyone,
My name is Moritz, also known on Steam as ‘Lord MK’, and I am the Producer of Port Royale 4.
In our second Captain’s Log for Port Royale 4, I would like to talk to you about the next step in our journey: Update 1.2.
There will be a lot of design adjustments arriving soon – the majority derived from those suggestions from the community via the ‘Suggestions and Ideas’ sub-forum on Steam, as well as messages we received on social media and emails that came through to our Support team. I’d like to introduce and explain four of those adjustments in detail – namely, changes to town governance, the trade route editor, the trade menu and the mini map.
Governing a town
In Port Royale 4, you always start as the governor of a town, but the game does not force you to take care of that town’s citizens. This will be updated. Moving forward, the people of those towns you are governing will take note if you are regularly supplying them with commodities. If you fail to deliver enough wares, your citizens will become unhappy and complain to the viceroy, resulting in you continuously losing fame until this is remedied.
Trade route editor
The trade route editor will receive multiple enhancements based on feedback from the community, including:
- Choosing where your convoys are repaired
- Having the option to ‘unload all’, if you own an empty warehouse in a town, before new goods are picked up
- Being able to see the name of the trade route when editing the towns associated with that trade route
- Having the option to automatically skip a town if you are playing as the trader and you are at war with that town
Trading
The trading window will receive an optional compressed version, allowing you to trade any commodity without having to scroll down.
We will also add hotkeys, allowing you to cycle through the filling levels of a town’s stored commodities. By default, this will be bound to ‘A’ and ‘D’, but these keys can be rebound. This should make trading much more streamlined.
Mini map
With Update 1.2, the mini map will now default to show the nationality, not the diplomatic stance. Towns will be colour coded according to their nation, and player-controlled cities will receive their own special colour. The diplomatic stance option will still be available as a secondary display mode for the mini map.
Additional changes in Update 1.2
Update 1.2 will also come alongside many other improvements and bug fixes that we will not dive deeper into today. There are, however, two more improvements that might be of interest to some that we would like to highlight, since these topics have been discussed a lot in the forum. These are:
- The Piratess will receive a 50% reduction in upkeep for sailors but now herself, runs the risk of being attacked by pirates
- An additional speed option will be added to allow players to further increase game speed
Closing words
We are aware that there are other important parts of the game that you would like to see iterated upon, including improvements to the turn-based combat system, politics and city building. While these did not make it into Update 1.2, we will take a closer look at these topics in future updates, so please keep the feedback coming!
We would also like to invite you to join us in our sneak preview of Update 1.2 via our Port Royale 4 livestream on Wednesday, 21st October at 19:00 CEST on our Twitch channel.
Stay safe and thank you for sticking with us on this journey,
Your Port Royale 4 team