Hello everybody,
I have recently been playing the Paradox game East India Company, and on it's forum it is often compared to this Patrician 3 game. The EIC game is there considered as a simpler version of Pat3, with some seabattles added. Therefore, when I found Pat3 for about 5 euros earlier in the week I did order it. While waiting for the box to arrive I have searched for an active Pat3 forum. This is the most active forum I did find, so I hope to be able to exchange experiences here.
My first question is, how about patches? I cannot say what version I will receive, but are there patches somewhere to add to the basic release?

Welcome aboard Nemo. My first post here too, normally a lurker. I bought this game a few months ago and have enjoyed it. Only played a few hours but planning to play more. Other games here and elsewhere keep delaying me.
I don't know if there is another active site. The site I visited often was the forum at drunkenscotsman.com It was active with some helpful Patrician veterans last time I looked a few weeks ago. Just tried now and it seems to be down. I hope it's not permanent. There is a German site with an English sub forum. http://patrizierforum.net/ It doesn't have any recent English posts but someone there may respond to your inquiry. The Germans there seem active.
The GOG version has the latest official patch which is 1.1. Is that what you have?
BTW: How do you like East India Company?

Thank you Frugaldude. I have also tried the drunkenscotsman.com, but I did only get an error. I will try later, perhaps it will wake up next week or so.
Thank you for the german site. I have been working a lot in Germany, so I can read german pretty good and write it passably, so I will try to use the german part also, not only the english.
There is then a patch for version 1.1, I will check my version when the box arrives some time next week.
The East India Company is a good game, I have played it some hours each week since last October, but now I feel that my interest is slowly going down.

The box with Patrician 3 has arrived today, and I have installed it. It is the english version as expected, and in the main menu lower right corner it says v1.1. Then I must not think of getting the patch. I have just started with the tutorials, it looks promising.

The Drunken Scotsman got hacked a few years ago (Denial of Service, I think). Patricianworld suffered something similar.

I actually really like EIC, but I like it specifically for the sea battles. I wish there were more games with battles like that, only more detailed and realistic.

In every other way I'd say Patrician 3 is better.