I love the Age of Exploration and Age of Sail games -- from New World exploration and settlement building to piracy -- as long as there's a naval combat component.

What are your favorites... or that you'd recommend?

(and since GOG doesn't have a lot of these games, please don't limit yourself to what's available here)

Many thanks for your thoughts!

Running list:

Age of Empires III

Anno 1503

Anno 1604

Colonization

Corsairs

Sea Dogs: City of Abandoned Ships

Sid Meier's Pirates

Just for plain ol' fun?

Sid Meier's Pirates!. Either version, though I prefer the 2004 ever so slightly beyond the 1987 (despite nostalgia).

Aside from Pirates!, the other Sid Meier game that comes to mind is Colonization.

Age of Empires 3: has water / naval maps and all civs get naval units. Its primarily a land-based RTS but does feature good naval unit variety. Doesn't have dedicated naval campaigns or new-world campaigns so you'll have to play standard game / skirmish vs AI or MP.

Anno 1503 and 1604 seem to be in the correct time period and have naval combat. Anno 1404 is set a few years before and seems to be about exploring the east. Don't know about the depth of the naval combat though. IIRC it is real time at least.

Imperialism series. Don't know much but its turn based and also an economy sim.

Expeditions: Conquistador is a new-world exploration RPG. Same with Greedfall but it also has magic. Both aren't strategy games and don't have naval combat.

Sea Dogs: City of Abandoned Ships - it's slightly junky (not as much as older titles from the series though) and has quite a learning curve but after getting used to becomes very rewarding and atmospheric pirate RPG. Recommended to play with mods that add new content and many fixes.

Thanks. Yeah, haven't played that game in forever Thanks. Will take a look at Colonization. Had never heard of it before. Age of Empires III looks interesting. The naval warfare is a bit odd IMO, but think I'll probably pick it up on a sale

How is the Anno series?

I've looked at it a few times. Yes, love the Sea Dogs games, but haven't taken the step of modding... although I certainly will!


Has anyone played Tropico II or Port Royale series?

Gentlemen of Fortune is basically only mod you'd need.

But if you could spend 12 dollars you could also buy Maelstrom Engine which allows playing several modded Sea Dogs games on updated and more stable engine with better graphics. You don't need own these games, just engine and then install free modules (City of Abandoned Ships code was open sourced years ago so there isn't anything shady about this port).

See here: https://chezjfrey.itch.io/gentlemen-of-fortune-maelstrom-engine

Have you played Akella's earlier games... Age of Sail and Age of Sail II?

Hello kai2 and everyone else!

My favorite 'age of sail' game propably is "Pirates of the Caribbean" (aka "Sea Dogs 2" from 2003), closely followed by "Corsairs Gold" and then by "Sid Meier's Colonization" (original DOS version) and the first "Patrician".

Each of the other Sea Dogs iterations that were released in th West had some likeable aspects, incorporating more realism, details and more roleplaying elements, but none could replicate both the 'simplicity', the handcrafted and the 'adventurous feel' of the second game in the series, which got Disney's licence slapped on only late in development.
For instance, newer versions did improve technical details of the water simulation or ship models in the StormEngine, and improved on the not so common control scheme. However, only "Pirates of the Caribbean" (Sea Dogs 2) left a more 'romantic' impression with its composition of the water shade and reflections together with the color choices (and lighting of the sky(boxes) both at day- and nighttime) and background music. Although, it features less islands and settlements, each one of those are more detailed, distinct and interesting, giving incentive as well as providing actual rewards for exploration!
My biggest disappointment in the whole Sea Dogs series is the fact that trading is implemented like an afterthought and not really a viable option. Sooner than later the player always have to rely on capturing other vessels!

"Corsairs Gold" ("Der Korsar" in German) is an intriguing mix of "Sid Meiers Pirates" on the sailing map view with a realtime strategy mode for boarding action and fort conquering. The atmosphere and design of the top-down sailing map view is outstanding mimicking an old paper map that you uncover piece by piece. It also incorporates a convincing enough 'simulation' of sailing with wind direction and strength influencing the ships.
Unfortunately, technical issues can render the game almost unplayable on certain modern hardware combinations.


Regarding both "Colonization" and the merchant-oriented "Patrician 1" it is hard to explain why, but I still prefer the original DOS versions instead of their newer versions or sequels. For me, their skillful use of the lower pixelated graphics, subtle animations, great musical melodies and sound effects stirr much more my imagination. And the intro sequence of "Colonization" is unforgetable: welcome to the new world!


"Sid Meier's Pirates!" is a really iconic game, nonetheless, I learnt to appreciate the highly improved sailing map with other ships and storms moving visibly on it in his own remake from 2004. However, its gameplay loop gets repetitive and boring rather quickly, especially in the 2004 remake, since it simplyfies a lot of aspects and rehashes too much assets--hunting treasures and infamous pirate captains becomes quite trivial in the remake.
And, it seems that I am belonging to the minority who actually misses the original's implementation of sextant and sun position reading for determining ones location (longitude) on the map.


What I do not like in the majority of 'modern' games set in the 'age of sale' or 'age of exploration' are the lack of scale and over-populating their game worlds! I mean, you as a player do not get to feel the vastness and loneliness of sailing to the seas. Developers tend to cramp too much into too little of the virtual space in order to keep players 'close to the action' or 'on their heels'. Combined with an in realtime updated automap and the all-seeing compass for map markers those take away all sense of distance, time passage and discovery. "Pirates!" had a fantastic idea of rumors and logbook entries with dates of actual sightings of other ships, fleets or pirates as lead to follow on.
I do understand the benefit of fast travel and/or better time acceleration options within such games. But sometimes I just want to get lost in experiencing the actual 'sailing' instead of being bomarded with quest markers, pop-ups or battle encounter every few minutes or seconds...

Kind regards,
foxgog

P.S.: One game I am looking forward to hopefully be released here on GOG.com in the future is David Evan's "Sail Forth".

Well, if you're into naval combat...have you ever played "Broadsides"? The 1983 game from SSI?
[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadsides_(video_game]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadsides_(video_game[/url])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0QvnG_7BiM
I loved that at the time.

-"Conquest of the New World"
-"Imperialism" series specially the second one,
-The Pirates! like "Cutthroats"
-"The Seven Cities of Gold", the game has two versions being the second a remake.

And there was another oldie from Impressions Games I do not remember the title. A very focused new world exploration game in the vein of Seven cities of Gold.

EDIT: a couple more I can remember are Tai Pan! the commodore or Spectrum version. Focused in the piracy and trade in China seas during the 19 century.

And maybe East Indian Company. Similar to Port Royale or Patrician

I'm playing Port Royale 3 these days. Port Royale series are really good in the genre and they don't have much of a competition. I have many frustrations with some of the game mechanics, especially the battles, but I've played hundreds of hours. It's just so much fun.

In the strategy realm, Empire: Total War and Napoleon: Total War are among the best. In naval battles aspect, they're the best compared to what I've played.

Imperial Glory is also good. The naval battle is good, much better than Port Royale's. It's like older Napoleon: TW.

Sid Meier's Pirates did so many things right. I dream of a mix of Port Royale's economic management with Pirates' naval battle mechanics.

Empire: TW has global scope and set in 18th century while Napoleon:TW set in Europe (not including North Africa, unlike Imperial Glory) during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Era, just roughly two decades of 19th century. NTW is a slight improvement over ETW. The looks are much better.

You haven't mentioned Anno 1701. I like it. I think it's an improvement over 1602 and 1503. As for naval battles, in Anno series, they're not the good aspect of the series.

I haven't played Cossacks III, but I'll buy it in near future. I've played the first and the second. The second is focused during Napoleonic Era. I liked it, but it's glitchy and there are serious bugs that makes some part of the game unplayable and it's been abandoned, no more patches. I loved the first, it's like Empire TW in terms of scope but it's a RTS and a bit too old for me to come back to the game. The naval battle in the second barely covered, the ships just a sideshow of the land battles, like in the role of coastal bombardment. The naval battle of the first game is good for a RTS of the Age of Sail. Cossacks III is like the remake of the original Cossacks.

Rise of Venice is very similar to Port Royale 3. Same developer and publisher. But it's not as good as PR3. Set in the Mediterranean, it combines sailing ships with galleys, roughly in the time frame as PR3.

Age of Empires III is very good for a RTS of the Age of Sail. Not much to say, it's popular. Many already knows it.
They added new nations with the remake, the "Definitive Edition". I haven't bought it. Don't have the system to run it comfortably.

Commander: Conquest of the Americas is like Anno series, Port Royale series. The naval battle mechanic is closer to Port Royale series, but less casual than PR3. It's not as good as Anno or Port Royale or Total War games, but if you're looking for variety or in a thirst for economic management with real-time naval battles set in the New World during Age of Sail, try it.

Since you are including even oldies of the genre to this list you can add this Koei series to your list. I played the two Sega Genesis entries.
I wasn't going to say anything because from what I've seen they don't add anything that hasn't been surpassed later, but might be interesting for fans of the genre (which I'm not) or there could be new and interesting stuff in the games I didn't even know existed.

^
what he said.

"more stable" is like calling the Pope "somewhat religious". Where COAS became a more and more nasty crash-fest the longer I played (with/without mods) Eras2 did not crashed once. + great additions overall.

It still has the sucky Akella landbased controls but one get used to it after a short while.

Warning: super-DRMed, subscription-based/microtransactional massively-multiplayer online-only game (where you can't equip your stuff if your subscription lapses and all your stuff deteriorates over time)...

But Puzzle Pirates was actually a great game that would be so much better if it'd be turned into a better-monetized game. Its ship battles -- especially the massive ship battles ("blockades") are super fun, and one of the few implementations I've seen where scaling with huge number of players works nicely.

But even the solo play parts are good. (But, alas, gated behind "pay as you want to do things" badges now.)

(Artemis was similar, non-persistent-online, but still mandatory multiplayer game, in space. But not as good -- probably just due to maturity.

Do you want board games? Because there are a lot of great board games in the theme of myriad genre.