From the mid-17th century to the mid-18th century, there was a breed of entrepreneur that profited from exploiting the competition between the eight respective trading nations. East India Company: Privateer, published by Paradox Interactive and developed by Nitro Games, brings to light what it was like to be a privateer on the African and Indian trade routes. This is an expansion and requires that you have East India Company installed. Since I had tried and reviewed East India Company, I wanted to see what was different.

As the owner of four ships, I had a set time period and needed to survive the cutthroat business of being a privateer. You do this by wheeling and dealing with the eight nations vying for the riches of the African and Indian continents. Your home base can be any one of these, but I chose England, which is a well-located area on the map. There are three scenarios starting you out as neutral. The main objective of the game is to become wealthy and survive until the end of the game. The first two scenarios run from 1630 to 1750. The third scenario runs from 1600 to 1750 and is a “sandbox,” allowing you to do as you want for 150 turns. Turns are monthly in an real-time strategy format. Turns can be slowed down by a timer or sped up as need be.

This time as a privateer, you must work with all eight nations and the various ports under their control. These ports support various buildings, such as garrisons, shipyards, trading posts and forts. None of the ports are upgradable in the expansion version. Instead, you must smuggle your way into each of the minor ports. Of course, you can enter any of the eight nations as long as you are on good terms with them.

Purchasing goods at a port is still very simple. You click on what you want to purchase from the available items and fill up your hold, then off you go. The difference, now, occurs on the price and profit columns, depending on which port desires them. This makes it a bit easier on where you can deliver the cargo. Where the meat of the game happens to be is in the jobs being offered by the eight nations. You can take transports to spy missions. These offer the most profit, but you must complete them in a set time period. If you fail, you lose standing with the nation that offered the job.

One thing that I found was that you have to micromanage your fleets, as you can’t set up trades routes. This makes watching your traders all the more important as you don’t want them sitting idly after having reached that port of call. Setting up automatic trade routes was a nice function that was simple to implement. This way, you could concentrate on other things.

Fleets can still be made up of one to five ships, and of course, I still recommend that your trading fleets have one or two warships as escorts since they are able to carry more cannons. Don’t mix and match smaller and larger ships as the slowest ship dictates how fast they will move.

Combat hasn’t changed from the original East India Company. Everything is of the same as that game except with the added feature of hiring specialists who can enhance certain aspects of gameplay, whether in or out of combat. There still are the same forms of combat as well: RTS mode and direct command. The captains themselves basically don’t differentiate much other than the skills you select.

Diplomacy is different this time, with you starting out neutral with respect to all eight nations. As you accept missions and complete or fail them, this causes the individual nation to look favorably or unfavorably at you. You can accept or decline missions without any ill effects, but failing to process them by the completion year will cause the diplomatic changes to occur. War can be looked at as destroying a fort, or capturing a ship, or even the whole destruction of a fleet.

Statistic panels stayed the same, except for the “mission availability” one being added. The main difference being that the mission, diplomacy and statistic screens will get a working over. Diplomacy is clear and concise, and the stat screen shows what you have done in the transporting of merchandise. The graph screen shows your profit and losses plus who is ahead in wealth and strength.

The graphics details in East India Company: Privateer have not changed from the original, with the combat sequences still just as detailed. Music was appropriate for the period and was pleasing as well. Gameplay is still easy, but the actual mechanics are a bit harder to jump-start than in the original. Since the missions seem to be geared toward bigger fleets, starting with two warships and two traders makes completing some of them hard to almost impossible. Unless you spend heavily on increasing the size of your fleets, you’ll get bogged down early in the game.

Privateer can still be just as repetitive as the original East India Company, but it is still entertaining. I thoroughly enjoyed playing this expansion as it had more to offer with the mission system. If you have the original game, you might want to try out what it’s like to be a privateer instead. I still would recommend it for the naval enthusiast or anyone looking for something a little different in the RTS genre.