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[Fikes]

First of all, I got this game for 10 bucks, hoping to stave off my desire to get Dawn of Discovery.

The scenarios it gives you are enough to make the game worth recommending. It walks you through all of the demisions of the game with ease. I probably have 20 hours in it already, pretty good deal.

The reason for this post, however, is to ask for help. I know that at some point in the game you want to start doing most of your money making through trade routes. When I leave everything on Captian trading the trade route always ends up costing me money. He'll buy meat for 360 (a good deal) and sell it in some town for 365 ( a bad deal).

Is there any way to make auto trading smarter, sort of the 10,000 click process required to design an entire trade route yourself?

Anyone else have thoughts on the game?

[andrea]

no idea... i usually get profit from automated trade routes.
i try to make very long routes which include all the types of cityes, so maybe that is the problem. also, you might want to earn money by building buildings, and selling to the city itself. profits can be good if you don't overdo it.

[Ampersand]

He'll buy meat for 360 (a good deal) and sell it in some town for 365 ( a bad deal).

How is that not a profit, if small?

If i buy something for a dollar, and sell it for a dollar and five cents, I have made a profit.

[Sensei]

He's saying the margin could be far wider.

[andrea]

but , even if little, that is a profit that takes no time. this applies only if he is actually loading other things, of course.

[Fikes]

The upkeep cost on the ship getting from point a to point b is greater than 5 gold.

You setup routes with everything on automatic buying? The captian doesn't just sell the goods at the first town he finds?

[Yanlin]

Okay, for all you business-illiterate folks, here's an equation.

Profit = Income - Expenses

Expense = Buying + Production + Transportation + Marketing + Salaries + Tax

Income = Selling the end product

To make a profit, income has to be higher than expenses. In this case, the transportation costs are too high with such a low income. So the only thing to do is to decrease expense where possible and it increase income if possible.

"The goal of industry is making the best goods possible at the lowest cost possible while paying the highest wages possible."

[Puck]

I'm not entirely sure, but I think the automatic trading captains sort of "learn" from you what kind of profit margins you're going for.
Also, IIRC, if there's no better option to sell that meat before the trade route ends, captain will sell it for that 5 bucks more.
Might also be that his trading experience is just a little too small. Give it some time until he gets better, maybe full functionality will be reached.

Failing all that you just picked a crappy route. Yes, that can happen, too.

Personally I ALWAYS use the same route. In the parentheses is what I'm producing there (later):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Port Royale (Meat, Ropes)
Cayman (Cocoa, Cotton)
Cancun (Coffee, Sugar)
Havannah (Clothes, Rum)
Charlestowne (Dye, Corn)
Turk Island (Wheat, Fruit)
Isabella (Bricks, Wood)
Santiago (Tobacco, Hemp)

First Captain that can automatic trade gets this route assigned, second one same route in the opposite direction. Since it contains ALL the goods of the game there will always be profit. I stick to that route in the beginning of the game so I can pull up my own industry in those cities asap (build up "Trade success"). Might be a quicker way to do it, with more goods in some places, but I like it that I only got 2 goods in each town. Keeps everything manageable.

Once I got my industry up, I get two convoys with automated trade routes. Usually each of those is 10 of the biggest cargo ships. I assign the first two captains I had to those, since they tend to have the most trade experience. Actually, one of those convoys doesnt need experience all (the collector convoy, that is).

Before I start explaining how the convoys work, I'll explain how you have to set up your warehouses:
Each warehouse on those islands sells woods and bricks to a minimum of 60, price doesnt really matter, this serves a different purpose    Make sure you check "protect minimum amount from trade routes". Or however it is called in english.

Each warehouse that needs ANYTHING for production gets the same trick applied to whatever resource they need, be it corn, hemp, sugar, cotton or just tools. The minimum amount, however, tends to be around 120. (Except tools, but it all depends on the volume of your production.)

In Port Royale you set the warehouse to buy spice, wine and tools to a maximum amount of... let's say 120, at a reasonable price. (I try to stay below 600).

Now let's talk about the convoys:
The collector convoy just follows the route and you set it to load AND unload the maximum of every possible good in the according city. Means: woods, bricks and whatever that city is producing and ALSO the resources that city needs. Remember, minimum stocks are protected. Also the "unload" order always gets executed first. That way you can make sure the cities are ALWAYS stocked with the right amount of resources/building materials. I also forbid every other good for trading on the collector convoy. Yes, that convoy will therefore cost you quite some money to run, but it MORE than works out in the end.
Oh, and once the convoy reaches Port Royale again, it unloads EVERYTHING it has and then loads up 120 of wood/bricks/tools.
You dont need to load sugar/cotton/hemp/corn iirc, because the order of the cities makes sure the producing governor towns ARE already stocked with resources.

The distributor convoy:
Load up, lets say 100 of each good, for a start, in the warehouse of port royale and distribute it to the cities in the mentioned trade route. MAKE SURE tools are on auto trade, you dont want to touch your stocks of tools. You NEED that for production  The ideal amount of goods it should return with to port royale would be 1 of each, btw. Depending on the amount of production facilities you have you might notice you're producing more than those cities can use up. In that case you just create another distributor convoy that sells stuff to other cities.

Soon you will be swimming in money, so much that every crewman can wipe his arse with gold coins, should he choose to.