One of the victory conditions in East India Company is to control all the ports in India for ten years. But even if you're not going for this - it's not an easy task, after all - you're going to want your own little piece of India, as well as your share of the other ports that line the passage to the subcontinent. Because when you control a port, no one else can use it. And since the trade goods are limited to particular ports, the best way to control a trade good is to control the associated ports. Consider that there are eight competing nations in the game and no more than three ports for each trade good. Consider that you randomly need various goods or you'll fail your main quest and lose the game. You're going to want to grab some ports.

Your guide to invading ports is after the jump.

Unlike naval combat, seizing a port is a very hands-off affair. Simply select some ships, click the "attack port" button, then click the port to be attacked. When the ships arrive, you get a dialogue box that shows you the numbers of attacking troops on your side, and the number of defending troops on the other side, along with their defenses. You click "resolve attack", and victory or defeat happen instantly. The picture up there is all the graphical splendor you're going to get out of port invasions.

Your first port is a freebie. At the start of the Grand Campaign, your patron nation gives you five galleons full of marines. "Here," says your king dude, "Use this fleet to get yourself a starter port." I thought this was pretty cool until I realized that I had to give the galleons back after I grabbed Bombay, which will look quite lovely in Slumdog Millionaire in 400 years.

There's no information available about how many men you'll need to capture a port. So when it came time to capture a second port besides Bombay, I sailed two galleons packed with marines to an Indian tea port called Cochin. The Atlas and the Calcutta were commanded by the 42-year-old Hamlyn Griffith. As a navigator, he speeds up ships by 20% on the strategic map, which is a boon for this fleet of pokey galleons. His unsinkable ability confers a 20% damage reduction to all ships in the fleet during battle. But of particularly use to me is Griffith's skill as a conqueror. This gives him a 20% bonus when calculating the number of marines storming a port. My 200 marines fight with the might of - let me do some quick math here - 240 marines.

After 11 months, Griffith and his galleons finally arrived and attacked. They lost.

It's not really fair that I didn't get some indication this was going to happen. After all, I'd been sailing in and out of Cochin, selling steel and buying tea, for years. You'd think I've have some good intel on what it would take to liberate it from the native Indian troops occupying it. So I did what the great military minds of the 17th Century must have wished they could do: I reloaded the game.

My second attempt, with three galleons, also failed. My fourth attempt, with four galleons, failed and then succeeded when I immediately re-attacked with the survivors. But somehow the Spanish knew to immediately attack Cochin while it was undefended and take it from me. So I reloaded for my fifth attempt, which succeeded on the first try even though I lost the Atlas. I immediately started building up the fort, which I could do because I made a point to bring along a brig loaded with the necessary iron wares from London. That's one of the things you have to do in East India Company: schlep iron wares from your home port out into the wider world so you can build buildings.

So I finally have a second Indian port, and therefore secure sources of spice and tea. Unfortunately, as I'm setting up my fleets for trade, I discover that Hamlyn Griffith, who would be 43-years-old by now, is nowhere to be seen. Instead, I've got some young upstart with no useful skills in charge of my three surviving galleons. I supposed Griffith went down with the Atlas. Gee, game, would it have killed you to let me know that my most badass admiral bought the farm?

Tomorrow: How to make a million ducats
(Click here for the previous East India Company game diary.)