Feel free to comment and discuss this game here. Also, if you have any useful tips or tricks don't hesitate to share them with the others! Thanks!

Review and Download (if available)

I once considered this game for upload to abandonia myself but judged it too poor to be on the site. Not sure this deserves a "5".

If you really wish to know my oppinion Picard, I think that in the last 20 games that got a 5 only one or two were deserving it.

I agree but that is a discussion for another place.

That's because Tom loves all old games, I'm surprised he hasn't given them all a 5. Of course I would probably give them all a 5 too. Especially this one, I always liked this game. :ok:

I can't get it to wrok, whenever I try to run it it says "Invalid Command Line"

It's alright once you learn how to play, but there are a few things that could have been made more clear, such as creating trade routes, and attacking pirates and rivals. This is one of those games where I've grown bored of playing after a while, but somehow kept playing anyway.

I ran into an interesting problem trying to play this game :wall:
When I tried XP it can't run graphic but got sound ok (VDM sound)
When ran in Dos Box graphic was ok but sound was screw up
So what should I do? Can I run VDM sounds in Dos box? :crazy:
Please help :help: :sniper: :rifle: :ph34r:

Try this:
-when you uinzip it just put the folder it comes in directly to your c: (and no other subfolders).
In XP it should work OK but with no sound, in VDMSound it works 100% with sound and everything (at least on my computer). If it still doesn't work try DosBox - or just check your settings.

Just so everyone knows, it says I need a 512k SVGA card to run it in XP. *Shrug* Dunno what that is.

did you ever actually try setting up the sound in dosbox?

Finally got sound in Dos Box :cheers: just needed the right settings and ports :D
Anyway, how do you get artifacts such as skulls and bones or Moses' sandals?
I tried to go to the skull symbols on the map but still can't figure out how to get the stuff. :sniper: :rifle:

Also, what is the function of the shovel icon? what is it supposed to build? :Titan:
Thanks :D

About the artifacts:
-You can't just search for them. They are at randome locations - so just go as many ports as possible - you're bound to find something along the North African coast.
-About the shovel - you build roads with it. There are some cites that have no sea acces - to trade with these cities you need a caravan (just buy some donkeys) and travel on the land. To speed up these travels - build roads (using the shovel).

I dare to say it's quite the oposite, it doesn't deserves 5 but at least 4 for sure.

I dare to say it's quite the oposite, it doesn't deserves 5 but at least 4 for sure. [/b][/quote]
We talked about such things already.
If the reviewer chooses the game - it's usually the one he/she really enjoys. So the rating is higher then others may think - it's hard to be 100% objective if oyu really like the game.
If you're doing a game you are supposed to do - but didn't even know it before the rating would probably be lower.
We're trying to put up as many quality games -. and this game has quality - maybe really not for a 5, but in my own opinion there are much worse games on the site (at least I don't like them!

It must also be said that many reviewers do not place their own rating in the review (tsk tsk). So it is up to me and Kosta to try and think how the reviewer would rank the game just by reading the text.

So if the review contains no flaws and only praise, the game will get a four or five point score.

I wish all reviewers would start to place their rating of the game in the review... :whistle:

Need help once again :wall: I lost popularity points for not spending the military budget (I got appointed general by the doge), still can't find the function for that yet :ranting: not even sure what I am supposed to do :crazy:
Also, the game seems to be very unstable in Dos Box, it freezes every 10 min or so, then have to restart again :ranting:

About the money - you must spend it on your armies. You can buy merceneries in Venice - just click on the tall tower (but they are not available until you can actually buy them).
About freezing - well it can happen (so keep saving), but I only get that problem every 2-3 hours so it's less bothering.
Enjoy the game!

This game freezes a lot :ranting: :wall: sometimes right after starting :ranting:
I tried switching music and sound off and it seems to freeze less. :yawn: Would adding memory help? I have 512 memory already and this game is 10 years old so I don't think memory is a problem :rifle:

Also, what is the purpose of excommunicate a city? :evil:

If you excommunicate a city all good christian traders will respect that and aviod it, so you have less competition (also if the city is attacked it's less likely to get help - so it's up to you to save them).
You can also punish a city that way - they'll have less influence on the politics and religion...
Like I said - this game is trying to be acurate - to follow the real events in history!

Wow, a (more or less) living board for this great game! I've always loved it. Ever since I played one-ship trading games that I loved I always thought: 'why can't you have more ships, fleets that'd operate on their own, maybe even have battle fleets and armies of your own'. So, you can imagine how high I jumped when I found this. :D

Do you guys believe in bad luck? :) Here is my story in the current game of MP I'm playing.

Starting off, I discover that Venice has its own Rum. :( Shoot, that kills such a profitable early Venice-Rum route that I could get going with that lone donkey I get. But, fine, I'm not going to restart the game just because I got a little unlucky. Sending the donkey to do the trading runs one way, while the tri explores.

Launched the first trade route between Marseille and Tunis, soon saving up enough to add the second large cog there. Just when I thought I was begining to do well. PIRATES! 4 of them against my two cogs and two heavy guards. ALL FOUR HIT, sinking the whole fleet with 8 rum and some gold onboard. Aaagh! :ranting:

Recovering... Slowly... Discovered England, and launched those lovely routes with French cities, building them up gradually.

Doge election next turn. OK, fine, managed to free up 1000 or so from my operations, bought myself a senator, rubbing hands and waiting to be appointed into some sweet little position. Next turn, the senator DIES OF NATURAL CAUSES! :eeeeeh:

OK, I can wait. So I do, using the next couple of years to build up the business in Northern Europe. Next doge election, I bought another senator. Guess what happened next turn? Yup. Natural causes...

Finally made my way across the Sahara into those juicy cities that are supposed to have tons of ivory, gems and gold. IT DOESN'T! Well, it has gems in tiny amounts, and some ivory, but there is no market for ivory in Africa and gem markets are tiny, even though profits are big.

Most unlucky game I've had in a long time. But also the most exciting. :D

******

Back on topic of Q and A, does anyone know good ways to make profit on those long haul routes, say between China and Europe or India and Europe. Profit margins are huge, I agree, but the distance is so absurdly long that I just don't see it ever paying off unless you lay roads and then do the excommunicate trick.

Any ideas for good possible (because I know a lot of the goods are random) routes on the real world map?

Hah,

My luck wasn't quite that bad (as in lots of minor incidents), although it did have moments when I got really annoyed with the game. The worse that happened was one of the time I was making a bid for Pope. I had planned this for a few turns. Buying Cardinals when I could, until I had an outright majority. I assinated the pope successfully the the next turn 12, yes 12 Cardinals died of natural causes.

A bit annoying, not only for the lose of the papacy but also all that lovely income.

The only other serious catastrophe I had was more due to human error than anything else. I didn't quite understand how the plague mechanism worked and as a result my whole North sea trade network collapsed.

On Far East trading, basically you need lots of ships, so you need a lot of capital. I haven't quite refined it yet though.

Central Africa trading is a bit easier. (imo anyway.)

I had a huge link from Timbuktu - Katsina - Cairo - Venice - Wherever close when I had surplus (rare admittedly, usually happened after a pirate attack or something).

Basically, Timbuktu produce Gems, Katsina produced Ivory. Gems were transported from Timbuktu to Katina by two galley (one large, one small). From Katsina I had three camels traveling to Cairo to pick up the gems and padding extra space out with Ivory. From Cairo I had two Cogs taking them to Venice. The other way it was Venician Glass and food stuffs, until I realised I could get silver from Buda\Pest.

I found after that it got too complicated. But auto-buying is a beauty. I only figured out how the automated trade routes worked fairly late.

The only things I still I haven't worked out are. How to open markets in cities that are closed. And what the use for mercenaries is.

TWELVE! Wow! The most I ever had was one.

I use the north central African trade all the time - it's such a huge money maker! I never bother with Timbuktu, though. In all my games it produced all the same things that Katsina did, but was farther and only had pitiful amounts of them.

Like I said, though, a lot of this goods stuff is random. In one game I had Katsina produce gems, ivory, gold AND silver! While none of the north african ports had any. :D THAT was a money-machine!

Ships to the far east?! How long does it take? I'm thinking you do this after you get all the routes set up in Europe, eh? It's definitely more efficient to move stuff between London and Paris at 20 or 30 profit per lot than to haul it all the way from China even if it means 300 profit per lot.

You haven't used mercenaries?! Man, are you going to start playing this game a lot more now! This is one of the most fun things in it, IMO. :)

OK, so you hire an army. Then it becomes just like a trade group - you can move it around, etc. When an army gets into a port, it can board ships (somehow it gets its own ships, so you don't even need to keep yours to move it). Now, when you move it into a square with another unit or city, you can right-click and it'll bring up a menu for your army or city. There, you can click "Attack!" for instant bloodshed. :ok: You can attack other armies like this, or cities' garrisons or other players' trade units. When you are attacking 'friendlies' i.e. fellow Venetian merchants or "green" cities, you are comitting a crime, and if you are caught you can lose a ton of popularity as well as have to pay fines, which could be pretty bad.

BUT, the farther you are from Venice, the easier it is to get away with the crime. So, if you want to attack over Rome or people trading there, you can pretty much forget about it. But if someone is running a trade route in Novgorod, or even better, in China or India, you have a pretty good chance of killing or capturing them while avoiding the penalties. Mind you, you still have to win against the guards, just like the pirates or brigands.

How to get access to a closed city? Well, you can take it over. :D Kill the garrison and not only do you get access, but the city becomes yours complete with a puppet government. It shows as yellow instead of red or green then. Of course, that's assuming you pick "don't give it to Venice" when the question pops up. But why would you? A boost in popularity versus YOUR OWN PUPPET CITY?! Best thing about a city you own is that you can make it deny entry for other merchants, but allow you in. Can you say "monopoly"? ;)

You can also bribe your way into a hostile city if you want. Right click and go for the "bribe" button, if I recall right. But why'd you want to when you can take it over?

How do I install this game? It's giving me a hard time when I simply click on the instal prompt. Would anyone walk me through how to do it another more effective way? Thanks.

Is it posible to setup automatic trade route?
and if it is HOW?? :cry:

After downloading prince and tried to play by clicking on prince.exe, that's it. No game, back to windows. Is there something wrong with the files downloaded cause this is honestly fairly an old game and it means it requires conventional memory instead of Xp memory. How can this be overcome? Thanks

You should download a program called DOSBox (look under utilities on the main site).
The game was made for MS-DOS and not Windows so there are some compatibility issues (that's why we have the compatibility icons included with every game). DOSBox emulates the MS-DOS within Windows, so you'll be able to play the game (but should read the DOSBox readme file carefully to learn how to use it).

I recently downloaded this game and I LOVE IT! :ok: :ok:

I do not have dosbox. I have XP, and it the game works fine. Sound, graphics, everything. Just wanting to inform you cause I heard some of you with xp were having trouble. Sorry guys, I feel for you.
:bleh: :whistle: :yawn:

Back the whole Q+A thing:

on the game start screen, when you choose you and your opponents difficulty level, what does that mean? If your rival has a level of CHALLENGE! does that mean they are extremely difficult to beat? or its difficult for them?

Also, does anybody know a quick sea route to asia? It takes forever by boat. I thought I could go through the suez canal when I first started it. But it wasnt built yet. By the way, I am a HUGE fan of the more recent civilization games. So i think of this game in a purely warlike sense, instead of the monetary sense you guys have. so its really difficult for me to get rich.

Could anybody show me the ropes on how to get rich, fast? like I said, it takes forever for me to get some money while my rivals are getting rich, and it gets frustrating. I really like this game, though.
:Brain: :Brain: :Brain: :Brain: :Brain: :Brain:

Well the best way to get rich is still through trade (rich cities...). I suggest you start by trading Constantinople (Bizatine) and Venice. Also you'll have extremely high profits if you trade with a city that was struck by the plague (but there is a certain risk there also).

There is no fast sea route to Asia. The game is historically acurate. And in the history there were only few straight transports being made between Asia and Europe. Usually they had a chain of trade routes (China - Singapur; Singapur - Ceylon; Ceylon - Madagaskar; Madagaskar - Capetown; Capetown - Kongo; Kongo - Marroco; Marroco - Venice). This is just an example. Of course you can ship stuff from Asia to the Persian gulf sea and then have caravans take it to the Mediteranian (that's the alternative to the Suez Cannal - which was not yet built in that time period).

Thanks Sebatianos, I really needed it. :ok:

By the way, wasn't the hundred years war going on during that time period? How come there isnt much conflict between England and France in the game? Its kind of a little unrealistic how everything revolves around Venice and not the other little side fights. Sorry guys, if i'm boring you with the history stuff.

:yawn:

Hey, I'm a history professor, so that stuff is far from being boring :ok:

Well the game focuses on Venice mostly and its internal politics. There were other struggles at the time as well, but the game simply isn't big enough to keep track of it all (unfortunatley I haven't encountered a game that would do that at all).
But it's fairly simple really. Venice was mostly a city of comerce, thus it did not get so much involved in the fights (except lending their fleet to various armies).
The time was also a time of the holy crusade, yet this isn't mentioned either. Mostly because even though different countries were at war at the time, they still had comertial relationship.

But since you said you're mostly interested in the military aspect of the game I can see why you feel that something is missing. It would be very benificial for the game if one could for instance become a mercenary for the Otoman forces trying to gain control of Bizantium... :butcher: :Titan:

Hi, a nice route is Venice-Antioch, is good for a large galley or 2 small ones.
Anyway, game isn´t "in history", anyway i like this.
U don´t fell that the AI left you alone some times... when u control the pope, the senators, u close the best trade cities...They only attack your reputation :tomato:

Anybody, knows why the "Merchant Prince", is aka "Machiavelli, The Prince". As far as i know, in the book "The Prince", Machiavelli looks Venice like an anti-italian republic....(i don´t wanna trascrip the justification) :eeeeeh:

Too small-time thinking there, Sebatianos. :)

Who needs becoming a mercenary for some Ottomans when you can... Take over the world! :Titan: :Titan: :Titan:

Personally, this is my ultimate goal when I play Merchant Prince. To paint every city in the world yellow and leave my competitors with nothing but their estate, church and government post incomes.

On a different note, who else thinks reputation should just be ignored if you are fairly rich?

I mean, the only thing you need it for is to get senators, which are usually 1000 fl per turn mius all expenses, like initial bribes, bribes for replacements, fees for hitmen if needed, etc, etc. So, that's your gain: less than 1000 fl per turn. But to get that you maintain your reputation, which puts a ton of restrictions.

You don't attack friendly cities you want, you don't attack your enemies trade caravans, you always worry when you do assasinations or burnings...

Meh, I say. When you are strong enough to fight on a decent scale (say three armies or so), forget reputation and go ruthless on them! The advantage of having a monopolistic access to a key city, or many key cities far outweighs that 1000 fl per turn, big as it may sound.

Mind you, this is purely theoretical at this point. I am trying a game like this right now, but didn't get very far in it yet. I'll let you know how it goes when I start being ruthless. :)

But what do you guys think of the idea? Is it really worth it to try and maintain good reputation?

click the circular arrow in red over black. Pick up the cities in the new menu and select the cargoes. And you will got you firsyt trade route



Yep, reputation is all, it is cheaper and easiest to attack someone with low reputation, the neutral party will be agaisnt you and they will hang your senators. Anyway. if you control the accusation office, with 1000fl with u maintain a seenator the CPU will bride two of them and maintain them by free.

Good that I found this group. I used to play a lot about 8 years ago, so I'm a little rusty. I downloaded this game yesterday, but trying to run it from DOS from WinXP is really frustrating. It keeps on freezing. I just went through this thread to see if someone else had this problem. I will check a solution someone gave with dosbox. I will also try taking sound off. This game is addictive :ok:

If it doesn't work I'll ask back.

It´s freeze in Dos mode...... strange, what mouse and sound controlers are u using in dos? I got more problems in dosbox that in dos. Some versions run smoothly in windows

I was made Admiral recently, so I wanted to put mercenaries into my fleet or add some ships, but that was not possible (or at least, I didn't find out how).
Do you have to hire other mercenaries or how can you increase the power of the Venice Home Fleet?

The Venice Home fleet has a fixed number of marines, anyway they can decrease by losses in battle, but resting in Venice u recover the the lost marines 1 by turn. As far as i remember there are 9 marines in the Home Fleet. When paying mercenaries is the same, u hire an army and may mantain it, if number of troops i reduced by enemy fire, u got less unkeep. The Dux(election winner) assing the post, he has to give a post to each faction with senators, only neutral faction can have more than one post. The high consel accusate senators of traison, the general manage the army, the admiral the fllet and the road builder... build roads :w00t: ... Anyway the best post is the high counsel to end with other´s faction senators, when u got enough image to assure a long life to your senator you can give the high counsel to neutrals. The other post got budgets, the dux assing tax (who go to treasure) and budgets. If u underspend budgets, u will lose image. Underspend is to cheat more of 40-20% of budget, as more image u got the more u can cheat. If Venice sacked admiral and genral lose image and treasure get back to zero.

:yawn: In short: u can rise mercenaries and u can pay them with the budget :ok:

Explain to me why you need senators at all. Like I said before, if you are not the Doge, the most you can hope for from an appointed office is 1000fl per turn. If you pump money into senators heavily and become the Doge, then you can get a max of (I think) 3000fl per turn. That's not a lot, IMO, given that you have to play Mr. Nice Guy with your competitors to get it.

You don't need to do that! It's just one of the options. The game allows you to play it from different angles. So you don't need to turn into a bad guy - playing dirty - to be sucessful, but it's usually economically more efficient to "take off the glowes".

Yes, of course, you don't have to. I just find it more efficient, like you said. Being legal and honorable just doesn't seem to pay, even though it's the first reaction. :)

U must look it like an investment. U pay senators to take over the the counsel and make a "clean" the senate of rival´s senators and expensive senators(it isn´t look like unhonorable cuz u are doing it following the "good manners"). U also must build some reputation for don´t let yuor senators to doublecross u. After that u can take over the Doge position and raise armies maintained by Venice to build your own and private empire of key trade cities. U also can liberate to Venice cities without importance for trade. Remember that the money that Venice give u from office isn´t important like income, the important it´s the army.

Finished the game gloriously :cheers: Finally the house of Roddent rules the world :D
I was able to get rich quickly using this method: Hire mercs to attack a city to boost the price of goods in that city. After a few turns of fighting, the prices get ridiculously high. I have caravans/ships loaded with goods waiting for the city to be conquered and then go in and sell :D

At the beginning I played nice, just trying to trade and make profit, minding my own "business" :Brain: When the other houses start atacking my runners and killing my senators and cardinals, I had no choice but to retaliate :D just do all the bad things to them whenever I can and buy back reputation with art LOL

In the end I got every city in the world as private (except Venice), have the Pope and all the cardinals, also the Doge and all the senators. I hire all available mercs ( have 2 pay money to maintain them throughout so the other houses won't get their hands on them). also charted the world and got the complete map (every single pixel LOL )
As for the other houses, I bankrupt them and burned all their mansions to the ground, whenever they get enough money to get a donkey from Venice, I have mercs waiting to take them out before the made it to Florence :Tom:

The game finished at the year 1398 when I got over 1,000,000 florins. :cheers:

I'm not sure I follow you. An army? The Venetian Home Army and Fleet? That's just one army! It's worth no more than 1000 fl per turn. Going the way I suggest you can ditch the whole senate process and hire yourself mercenaries. It'll cost you up to 3000 fl more per turn than it would if you were Doge, but first of all you don't have to spend money on senators, and second you don't have to worry about your reputation, which means you can kill and conquer any city you like.

Now you're talking! :D Way to go, Roddent.

"War relief scam" works nicely, but the problem with it is that you have to fight for many turns before the prices reach their highest and the city regenerates its soldiers all this time, giving you more losses. Still, it's worth it when you are in mid-game.

But when I'm later in the game, I like the "excommunication scam" better. If you excommunicate a city, it's prices will go up similarly to how they do in war or plague, but there is no risk to your traders. You can also do this more than once to a city (I think). I just love getting private rights on most, if not all, European cities, then building a road network to Asia, bringing in huge stacks of caravans stuffed to the limit with all those rare and expensive commodities, then excommunicate a city and dump as much of everything as it can hold there. Megaflourins! :D

Good job Roddent :ok:

A question, Can i sack Venice???
There is a huge loot if u pumped the tax and it can be done by barbarians if the general and the admiral got no armies in Venice and they got enough troops to win.

To conquer a city, you need more than 1 group of merc. Use the strongest group to attack first, preferbaly one with a lot of axmen at the bottom (so when they fight back the axmen can defend against their archers and arquebusiers). When the enemy is soften up a bit, use other merc groups to attack some more, taking more of them out. You should be able to take even the Southeast Asia island after 2 or 3 turns. :cheers:

and no, you can't take over Venice :tai: :not_ok: LOL

I've searched for this game for so long!!! I played a demo of it like... jeeze, 8 years ago? Something like that, but I never remembered the name, only what it was like. No one knew what game I was talking about! But now I have it!!! YAY!!!!!

Congrats, Khono. It's a great game, even after so many years.

I played this game when i was like 12 and i was really exited when i saw i could download it here att abandonia. Thing is that i cant get it to start, when i start it in Dosbox it crashes and says "DOS/4GW ERROR transfer stack overflow on interrupt 33h. What should i do?

Try by run it in pure DOS. You will need a mouse controller for DOS like the coute mouse :ok:

First try replacing the file DOS4GW.EXE with a newer version from a newer game (the version number is displayed when the program is run). This might do the trick, DOS4GW.EXE had plenty of bugs, especially the older versions.

This game rocks. Anybody who says otherwise is simply not right. :Titan:

I'm having the same problem as the Guest above.

Can somebody direct me to a game with a newer version of DOS4GW.EXE? Preferably one that's no more than 3 or 4 MB to download.

Thanks in advance!

try typing
in DOSBox
Before you run the game. Each time you want to run the game

Thankyou, that did the trick!

You do honour to your name, Data :D :ok:

So, just how do you get it to work in DOSBox.... :sos: I am totally clueless... <_<

Been searching for this game for many years, finally find a good complete version, and I cant run it cause I am not exactly computer literate :bleh:

You could have googled a bit. Here's a DOSBox Tutorial.

I know how to run dosbox, and I use d-fend.

I have tried everything suggested, in varying combinations.

loadfix -d

I updated dos4gw

I have disabled all forms of sound

I still have no idea to make this game work, the screen just stays black.

Is there any way around this? I have tried everything I can think of and nothing! It is so frusterating, it seems that very few people make a reply to people asking help, to the point of ingnoring completely, but would anyone please help me?

Thank you!

sorry, I forgot to mention that the screen loads now if I dont move the mouse at all, I don't understand that though.

Some games work better with older versions of DOSBox, or they don't work at all with the latest 0.65. I think the 0.63 can run almost any game --including this one--, while the 0.65 works most times and as far as I know handles fullscreen better. In http://dosbox.sf.net you've got supporting version and status for each game, see for this one:

http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/comp_list.ph...75&letter=M

Does anyone know how do make my dosbox window larger? It only takes up about 1/4 of my screen, and I would like to use the full extent of my large screen. Any suggestions?

Have you tried the alt-enter? Have you read the dos-box FAQ? Dos-box can be configured to "full screen".

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Japofran @ Jul 31 2006, 01:28 AM) [snapback]245999[/snapback]</div>Indeed 0.63 can while 0.65 cannot run this game.
I've been puzzling with Dosbox 0.65, compatible status and VDMS for roughly 2.5 hours now and finally when I reached your post..hehe then I found the solution which made my hair go grey from frustration.
Cheers alot!
Now finally after so many years I can enjoy this fine game once more!^^

Where can I get manual for this game?

Try www.replacementdocs.com, Elena. The downloads are down nearly more often than working, so try later if not successful.

Glad to be helpful, Arminius. ^_^

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Japofran @ Sep 24 2006, 01:46 AM) [snapback]257020[/snapback]</div>Unfortunately there is no manual for this game at www.replacementdocs.com.

Aha. Here at the Underdogs, the first link under "Documentation / Extras". Enjoy.

use loadfix when in DOSBox 0.65

Japofran, Data, thank you very much. Now I can really enjoy the game.

lolol Out of frustration I randomely did "/run" and then "Prince" and it worked!

Typing loadfix in dosbox before trying to run the program is the only way I've gotten this to work at all. Once I [finally] got it working, I found I adored the game.

I've also got a theory on why some people [myself including] can't play this with just XP; I have a feeling it has to do with the backward capabilities [or lack thereof] of your graphics card. Only hint I'd ever gotten for why it was crashing is when I tried to run it using vdmsound, and got an error mentioning that it needed VESA memory or somethin'.

Also, I found out why it likes to randomly crash.

It's apparently utterly dependant on a constant use of memory; if something disrupts it or otherwise puts the game on hold (even for just a moment), it'll crash.

Example. Start up a game. Tab out, click this window, and scroll up and down via mousewheel as fast as you can. It'll crash. [Or at least it did for me.]

Anyone ever figure out what the difference between the donkey and the camel is? You'd think the camel would move faster over the deserts, but it doesn't seem to.

Also, what's the toggle 'movement' thing for? The one that toggles between green, yellow, and red? Doesn't seem to do anything.

Camels are more resistant to (less likely to get killed by) sandstorms which occur in deserts, while donkeys are more resistant to landslides which occur in mountains. The green/yellow/red movement toggle lets you choose whether you want your units to move through the safest route, a middle case, or the fastest one. If you set a far away destination point for example at sea you'll see that if you select the green option the ship will try to follow the coastline as there are fewer pirates near it, and if you select the red one the ship will follow a straight line even though it means traversing deep sea.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Japofran @ Mar 28 2007, 01:02 PM) [snapback]285345[/snapback]</div>Ahh. Thanks.

Hi all!

I've got this game to work in DOSBox (using loadfix), and the first time I loaded it up, the sound worked. But now I can't get the sound to work - how can I change the settings to fix that?

The music is pretty good on this game.

there s a 'setsound.exe', run it and choose sound blaster

what is the point of a holy crusade?

doge is easy to gain at the start and is useful if you want to be paid to own an army you can then take over citys freely :)

The holy crusade gives ya a crusader army for your personal use... Remember of 4th crusade?

About doge, its hard to take but having at least one senator gives ya a post. I prefer to get the counsil until i build up my political faction since you can accuse too cheap/enemy senators and they will be hanged.

I have a problem with saved games. Everytime I load one of them, all the events that happen inbetween turns get repeated. For example, if in 1345 I get one of my cardinals assasinated, then move my groups, then save the game before ending turn, then restart the game & load => there's a second assasination and I lose two cardinals instead of one. Kinda sucks. Is this a known bug? Any way I can avoid it? I'm playing in DosBox 0.70 with loadfix if that's any relevant.

Papal Elections
 

What are the restrictions on the elections for Pope?

I controlled almost all cardinals and my pope died. When papal elections came up, my house was not included among the options. Anyone know the rules for that election? Like is there a limit to the number of cardinals you control? Or you cannot hold the papacy consecutively?

Too bad that game froze and I was not able to save it. I can't remember the exact number of cardinals I controlled because I just got every available one.

Thanks in advance.

As far as I remember you can not place your own candidate as a pope, but if you have more then 50% of all the cardinals you can select one of the possible candidates - and that candidate is your candidate then (the candidate of Venice - doesn't matter who the guy acctually is).

It's normal that the turn is re-run every time you load the game, it's a feature not a bug. I guess it's intended to discourage abusive loading.

If the Pope wasn't elected in your family, then it has to be because you didn't have most of the votes. Getting every available one isn't necessarily enough, not until you have got more than half of the total. Although your family can still be elected without an absolute majority of cardinals, because another power may vote for you depending on the situation. And remember that cardinals as well as the Pope himself can be assassinated, both by you or by your rivals.

WOW, Japo you mastered all the games that i like.... maybe i should kill ya

Yeah I noticed our tastes for games coincide quite a lot. This game can be multi-played by e-mail, we could see who kills whom. :D

Abusive loading? So if I can only play like an hour per day & save the game to continue some other time, that's "abusive"? :doh:

Sorry, but this feature then sucks big times :(.

The most you will lose is one turn, and, if you save at the end of the turn instead of the start, you won't lose anything.

Personally I don't like games limiting saves... If I want a challenge I can limit myself, otherwise they're taking options from me.

It's been a few months that I'm not playing this anymore, but if memory serves me well what happens is exactly what I described in my original message, that is, you never lose any moves - but instead, all events (eg assasinations of cardinals etc) inbetween two game years are repeated with accummulative effect. I.e., if you save immediately after the turn of year & reload, then events are repeated & you'll have all your moves - if you save in the middle then the moves you made before saving are still made & events are repeated & you still get to make the rest of the moves - if you save at the end, then events are repeated & you have no more moves & you can only end turn :). The problem is, if something bad happened to you inbetween the years, then this bad thing after loading happens twice! If nothing bad happened inbetween, then no problem :)!

So what I said is - if it's a bug, then OK, after all I downloaded this game for free - if it's OS incompatibility, then of course it's perfectly understandable - but if it's deliberate, then it sucks!

I've never actually seen a computer game that limits saves? :confused:

I've seen dozens, and many people here could tell you alike.

I would have done prior to you, but I wasn't in the mood for trivial negations (no animadversion on you!). Now I'm writing this inconsequent post...

build warehouses as transition points for land<->sea<->land
 

having not continued in the thread, apologies for jumping in, but i have found that creating a warehouse as a mid ship point, a terminal, is a good way to expand the ability of long routes. on the historical map it may not offer as good a result but thinking geographically the use of warehouses as midway points would still work near the Sinai in Egypt and panama imho. this makes land to sea possible.

this game is unbelievable as a hotseat game where the real Machiavellian aspect lights up -- speaking of lighting up watch those warehouses burn baby burn in the den of inequity; so watch out playing with humans i cannot recollect the computer being as wise... but nothing beats burning a warehouse when the other player is off in the bathroom or on a beer break...

also for me this game is over when the plague hits cause i am able to outsell the computer most every time... selling without care if your unit gets killed profits more in the plague than at any other time combined... the plague comes quickest to cities nearest the most battles. so too often i have not played the long trade route because the plague will profit you the most dinars and far more than the hassle of setting up those long cross continental routes themselves imho. :partytime:

ok i think i just realized i am reading a four year old post... next time i will look for anything within a couple months... ooops

Okey folks, it appears I haven't been playing enough then :). Off to correct the situation :D.

Civilization
 

I liked the first couple of civilizations then it got overly complicated. This seems to run fine as they said in a root C:\folder with vdmsound on XP just set it to WIN95 compatibility. Thats also what I had to do with Magic the Gathering card game series put in C:\magic and set that one to Windows 2000 compatibility and works beautifully also. Don't see that game up here. Pretty sure that is abandoned also and still a regular favorite at my home.

I also agree that this should be a 4.0 and not 5.0 IMHO. Way too free with the 5.0's then you can;t give 6.0 to the amazing supersweet classics like Ascendancy. Such an awesome old game, great sound, great strategy, fun space empire building - good upgrade to the old Master of Orion 2 classic, except the AI patch makes it nearly unbeatable!

Maybe make the system have a 4.5 for all those easily tossed out 5.0's and go back and reserve the 5.0's for the ones where people have really missed out on an excellent superior game if they did not play it.

The Abandonia entry for this game is incorrect. Or, if you want to look at it the other way, the download link is incorrect.

Abandonia is calling this game "Merchant Prince" while the game it points to is "Machiavelli The Prince".

Yes, I realize this game had two editions, and each one had a different name. However, they're not precisely the same, and the title of this listing does not match the edition of the game being offered. It would be like listing it as "Game v2" when you're only offering Game v1. This zipfile is strictly not Merchant Prince.

actually, this is the game that i got in th 90s that was called "machiavelli, the merchant prince" and installed as merchant prince. since i can think of several more games being called machiavelli, choosing to call it merchant prince (with the original mprince to start the game in mind) might be inaccurate, but it is practical. And i much prefer a site, and not only sites at that point, who have a practical point of view


edit: agh, i'm a newcomer? i've been downloading here for ages. plus, i posted here as guest a lot, untill that got impossible. Oh well, shame on me for not registering before

Does anyone know where I can get a manual for this game? I am asking because I want to know what I can do with my mercenaries other then just move them from place to place, and how do I do it.

I don't understand
 

Why am I constantly threatened for not spending the budget???

How the f do I spend budget if I'm not a Road Builder???

I don't get it...there's no way to spend the budget if I am Head of the Council, General, or Admiral...is there?

What is the advantage of owning cities...other than closing them up for other families? Do I get any taxes?

Can I stage a coup (turn a mercenary army, a crusade or the army of Venice itself, against Venice, and forcefully place a new Doge without election)? That would be cool.

The General and the Admiral should hire armies, of course. I don't remember about the Head of the Council, I'm not sure if he's also supposed to spend.

There's no advantage to conquering cities besides closing them for other families, and that damages your reputation in Venice (as always, less severely the farther the city is from Venice).

No you can't stage military coups, IIRC. The worst you can do is assassinating the current Doge (or Pope) while you have a voting advantage.

Meh.

Too bad that didn't work that through a little better.

you can slowly take over the world, starting far out and slowly centering on venice. If you manage to capture important trade cities like novgorod (furs) and london (silver) you can make insane profits (noone trades a good it will go up slowly. you the only one to trade there? suck on it, civilians. You the only one to take goods, prices go down.)

later on, you'll have such an insane high income your reputation doesnt matter anymore in the slightest

if you are general or admiral, you get a budget. From the AI it is standard 1000. You'll need to hire mercenairies worth at least about 800 to avoid a penalty, including your own forces. So if your army attacks and a lot of them die, you might need to hire a second army. If you have money to spare, coleoni from venice is great. Guatemale is decent as well. At tangers (i think) and novgorod you can hire fast moving land units(cavalry/horse archers), relatively cheap, ideal for land exploration

road builders need to build roads, duh, but as in a good money making game, you can skim a bit off the top. No need to spend all the 1000, 700 or 800 will do fine.

council head doesnt get a budget, no worries there. Note that if you accuse and hang a senator of a rival, he will consider you an enemy for ever, just for doing your job. Even at harder settings, the worst they will do is some slander and killing senators/cardinals

on senators: gotta get them all
most ai wont spend much on road building, but just enrich themself on the budget
you dont want them on military posts
you dont really want them as council head, but together with road builder its the least harmful post

when playing on harder settings, you need to start recruiting armies ASAP, or your enemies will do it for you

dont become pope. Any cardinal you make will be bought by someone else, crusades are not worth it. Make france or something pope and buy the cardinals yourself. As long as they last 10 years (turns) it was money well spent. If they get assassinated it wasnt a more important senator that got killed, so worth their money

and if you play it right, money wont be the problem, but the fact you can only bribe 2 senators at a time will be.

extremely profitable routes:
london - soffala
silver for gold, ivory and gems
add some metal or wool if silver is in short supply

tunis/cairo - one of those african river cities. katsina?
grain for gold, gems and ivory, depends what each city has, it tends to change from game to game slightly

half of the mediteranian - antioch
some fast large galleys to carry trade goods to antioch and bring relics back. choose kinda carefully as your list of cities grows as the relics will run out

genoa/venice - novgorod
as soon as there is a road

if the traveling time is long, dont hesitate to put several fleets behind eachother, so every turn or every other turn a treasure fleet arrives

in general, dont bother with cogs. While their hold is huge, they are prey to every pirate out there and just take too dam long to get anywhere, not validating the huge cost of the guards needed to protect these whales

galleys are more vulnerable to storms, but if you stick to the coast risk is minimal and you still get there ahead of the cogs

the marine mercenairies may seem useless sometimes, but they are great for pirate hunting

well, thats it for now, sure its not anything noone else said before



i really love this game btw

making a new post not because I had something to add to my previous, but also because I have a question

First to add: you get a huge popularity bonus for overspending your budget. So if you hired all, or nearly all, available mercenairies (mostly so noone else can hire them), even if you, as doge (naturally) set your allowance to 5000, you'll be overspending by 12 or 13 thousand. Two turns after losing 90 popularity by attacking rome, it's back to 95. Even if you don't have quite that much overspending, if you have the largest villa, it will automatically raise your popularity again. As a last remark, closing a city like novgorod from your competition is worth a lot more than whatever you need to spend on repairing your reputation. The only downside is that after the first attack, you're everyones enemy. Destroying pirates and brigands might help with popularity too, not sure.


now my question: I've had some of the AI occassionally offer an pact with me, exchanging maps, opening cities to me (the ai tends to grab one or two before I get my claws in the council), the lot. However, that hasn't happened in ages. Even when I'm having a great start and captured tripoli and florence ahead of the AI AND open them for all traders even while staying in controll, everyone still hates me and You can be sure that if they ever get an army, they will first attack my cities before ever trying one of the closed ones, even if they have access to it. I've tried continuous bribing, but that didn't seem to have any effect. So, any suggestions? I'd like to have one AI not hate me for a change.

The messages "run for doge" "run for pope"... what do they do actually? will it make the AI possibly support me?

Not sure what you mean with "messages". When you get the office of Doge you get the appoint the government of Venice and set the taxes and spending. When you get the Pope you can call crusades. Also in both cases you prevent your rivals from gaining that office, which can be more detrimental than gaining it for yourself is advantageous. The Doge is elected by a majority of senators, and the Pope by the cardinals. Both senators of Venice and posts of cardinals can be bought.

occasionally you get "Coronaro anounces he is running for pope" or something, I assume the is the option you get in the message screen where you can send messages, map info or "anounce running for doge/pope" but what does it actually do?

And does anyone know how to get an AI ally? Somehow they all hate me from the start

It means that family is trying to get elected. If they're your enemies you might be interested in running yourself, if only to prevent them from gaining it instead. Or, connecting to your second question, if you want to befriend that family, have your senators/cardinals vote for them.

There may be other ways And if you want to befriend them don't burn down their warehouses or attack their merchants, close cities to them... Of course

senator voting is anonymous, at least I never know if anyone voted for me and generally, they don't

And YES. I KNOW what running for doge would mean, what I was asking if anyone knew if it had any in-game effect, or if the whole message system is only for multiplayer purposes.

Voting & Alliances
 

I know this is a VERY late answer, but if you happen by here someday wondering if anyone ever replied to you (or if you're someone else looking for an answer to the question)...

Yes, senate votes are secret; I don't know if they make a difference, if the AI uses some intelligence to infer that it was probably your vote that put them in office or not (I suspect not). Papal votes are open, though, so the AI would see those.

I've offered pacts to the AI many times, but only once or twice did I get someone accepting it. I don't know just what does it; all I can figure is to try to be harmless, at least toward them: don't get their senators hung, don't assassinate their people, and certainly don't burn their warehouses. Also don't attack their caravans. As I recall I had sent the AI a bunch of money before trying the pact, so that probably has a lot to do with it.

I don't know about announcing your candidacy for Pope or Doge. I would assume the AI checks each computer player's opinion of you and votes accordingly (likely with a random factor added), but I don't know for sure.