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Just started playing the game for about 6 hours now and I'm at 1630, so I'm ready to start again having gained some ghood learning lessons, however I really want to make sure I have the best auto trade routes with effect fleets set up as early as possible so my cash flow can support everything I need.
I'm sure someone may have posted an answer earlier somewhere but my questions is:
Does anyone know if there is a thread or link to somewhere that list the best and routes and best way of doing them ?
I havent been able to find one...perhaps everyone is too busy playing to do one yet. Perhaps if I tell you my general strategy that may help?
I trade with Africa until I can conquer an Indian port. The I go big quick with my ships. As soon as I can I get the bigger ships to increase profits and defend against pirates. Spices and Tea are the most valuable as you probably already know. Avoid an early war if you can...if they get lucky and sink enough of your ships you will be in a serious hole. Having said that, an early war is also a good way to increase your fleet rapidly...if you get lucky (or skillful at tactical battles).
Pick on the little guy, especially if he has valuable ports. You may weaken him enough for others to attack him too. Ideally capture a port straight after some one else has captured it. The garrison will be weaker and so will the company who attacked it. You might be able to take out their fleet too.
If you see an enemy fleet full of marines, follow it. It is probably in port attack mode.
I hope this helps, but I didnt want to take away too much from you learning your own ways.
Thanks for that, I must admit I was doing sort of that but hitting India immediatly which with the extra distance and lack of funds to get any good quatity it was a problem, with the initial Africa trading I would think it's good.
Just off to start again now after that initial practice so I'll see.
First I conquer 2 african ports, atleast 1 gold. To prevent the other countries get them, and during war with them, you are not be able to resuply at those ports. That would dramaticly slow the ships down.
Drop all the gold in your warehouse, and do every 10 years or so a speedtrip to get the gold to your mainport, and sell it when the price is right. I found that the best autoroutes are the spices, and second tea.
On Hard I don't trade with Africa at all until 1680s or so and even then I do it cause I need resupply stations for my convoys and military fleets, goods themselves don't earn crap. Profit per ton there goes negative even if I use small ships, not to mention big ones. Seriously, even a single Cutter hauling 10t per trip can't make long-term profit on Ivory. A bunch of Brigs can hardly squeeze something from Exotic Furs before they go negative per ton... and Coffee hauled with 5x80t fleets is always like 20-50 pounds profit per ton (with a good captain!). Gold and Diamonds I would have to stockpile for a few decades investing millions and millions of cash into them to earn a few hundred thousand eventually. Complete waste of cash and time unless you have 30 mil. and want to hide it from shareholders.
So I trade mostly with India. 2x Spices ports, 2x Tea, 2x Silk with huge fleets (1000t per 4x East Indiamen + SOL46 trip with approx 200 pounds per ton profit with a good captain in the 1700s - possible if you time their arrival so they buy when port has 1800t, very easy when playing Denmark) and Porcelain and Coffee with small fleets (Brigs escorted by a Frigate). Trade Post level 4 everywhere as soon as possible.
For the rest of ports (like Africa) I usually send junk and spare Schooners to haul generic goods but they hardly earn their living. And I dont' care much if they get sunk.
I wish devs responded in the thread in the mod forum where we're asking how to increase demand so African goods earn steady profit delivered at a reasonable rate. If a Cutter can't earn its upkeep on Ivory there's something wrong there. Even on Hard.
The problem with the African trade goods is that the automated routes all buy/sell there so there is a constant trickle coming in to your home port. It would be better if the auto routes only bought MTIs from their destination port. You make more money running two fleets in opposition one in home port one at destination crossing paths near Natal and being filled manually. Of course if you want to lower the price of a good quickly you can always dump a bunch in that port.
If I capture a bunch of export goods near Europe I sell them there because it is pure profit and it increases the ports virtual supply. They may not actually be resold by the port but they do affect next months price. Similarly you could sell captured MTIs in India or Africa. The extra price gained from carting them across the map is not worth the time.
Or so it seems to me.
Basically trade routes are time savers and profit killers.
OK, So I spent about 8 hours playing around with the trade routes and different ways of making things affective.
Thanks for all you comments so far aswell.
So I found that initially a few scooners going to Africa will easily get you say 100k and then a couple of to India and within 3-4 years you have 300k and enought to unlock the Gallion and build the first one which can also be sent immediatly to India, building more as and when you can, this is great up to about £1.5million and unlocking say a Frig, this is where things start to go wrong !!!!
The bottom falls out of the market on many goods and the supply disapears because of not keeping other companies in check and everyone is selling everything everywhere !!
So someone mentioned manual trading instead of autoroutes, I followed the same initial approach to get some cash and as soon as I could get two fleets of Gallions I started manually sending them to India and scouting round all ports on the way back to fill with the best goods, this works well and by the time you have one fleet full and set on a return route you can start using your other one, sometimes dropping goods at other ports to affect the market.
Caperturing Cap Town as early as possible and droping of some supplies to upgrade it with some defences and ship yard is important for a nice mid way repair / ship building facility and of course setting a battle fleet there and picking of ships that are returning from India, diving in the port for repairs is a great way of hitting the other companies hard.
So in conclusion at the moment it's a sort of mix between the comments so far.
