Anno in-depth: Trading

Everything you need to know about buying and selling goods. The following topics will be discussed:

- Buying items from NPCs or other players
- Selling items to NPCs or other players
- Setting up both basic and advanced trading routes
- Tips and tricks

Buying an item or good

We start of with the very basics of trading: buying items and goods. Items can be bought in two different ways: by buying them through your island's warehouse or by buying them at an NPC's ark or an other player's warehouse. Both methods will be explained in a step-by-step walkthrough.

Buying items through your island's Warehouse

Keep in mind that only goods can be purchased through this method.

Step one: find yourself a Warehouse, Depot or Port authority and select it.
Step two: select the 'Trade' tab.
Step three: click on the green button 'Buy'. A list of all the goods available in the game will show up.
Step four: select the good of your choice. The good will be placed in one of the (maximum) eight trading slots.
Step five: set the quantity by left-clicking on the good. The quantity is set to half of the total capacity by default, but can be adjusted by either sliding the slider or clicking on the quantity just below the slider and typing the desired quantity. Keep in mind that this quantity is a limiter for the maximum amount of goods accepted to be bought for this island.
Step six: wait and see the goods flowing in. The little screen just about the trade slots will give you an overview of all the goods that you have bought and how credits that has cost you. You will also recieve a message in the top right corner when you have bought or sold goods.

As said before, this method can only be used to buy goods. If you want to buy items like fertilities, prototypes, etc, you will need to head out with a ship to get them yourself. This procedure will be discussed in the following section of this guide.

Buying items at an NPC's ark or an other player's Warehouse

With this method both goods as well as items can be purchased. Keep in mind that you will need a ship with a decent storage capacity.

Step one: find yourself a ship or submarine with a decent storage capacity and get it on route to a NPC's ark or an other player's Warehouse.
Step two: once your ship is within reach of an ark or warehouse, a big arrow with the credits symbol will show up. Click on this arrow to start the trading process.
Step three: after clicking the arrow, a new window will open in top right corner of your screen. This window will give you an overview of all the items this person is buying and selling: green-framed items are being sold, red-framed items are being bought. Each item will show the price per ton and the quantity left in stock.
Step four: select the items or goods you would like to buy by clicking on them in the top right window. The selected items will be shown just below this window, including the total price of the purchase. Once you're done with selecting all the desired items, click on the little green checkmark to complete the purchase.
Step five: the purchased goods will be transported onto your ship. Once this is done, return to your island and offload the goods from your ship by simply clicking on the goods in the ship's cargo slots.

Selling an item or good

Besides buying items, you can sell them as well (obviously). In this section we will explain the selling progress. Once again there are two options considering selling goods and items: selling them through your island's Warehouse or by selling them at an NPC's ark or an other player's Warehouse. Both these methods will be explained in a step-by-step walkthrough.

Selling items through your island's Warehouse

Keep in mind that only goods can be sold through this method.

Step one: find yourself a Warehouse, Depot or Port authority and select it.
Step two: select the 'Trade' tab.
Step three: click on the red button 'Sell'. A list of all the goods available to sell will show up.
Step four: select the good of your choice. The good will be placed in one of the (maximum) eight trading slots.
Step five: set the quantity by left-clicking on the good. The quantity is set to half of the total capacity by default, but can be adjusted by either sliding the slider or clicking on the quantity just below the slider and typing the desired quantity. Keep in mind that this quantity is a limiter for the minimum amount of goods which must be left in your Warehouse at all times. For example: when you have 200 tons of coal in stock and you decide to sell them and you set the limiter at 50 tons, the coal will be sold untill it reaches the 50 ton limiter. Once the stock raises to 60 tons, a total amount of 60-50=10 tons will be up for sale.
Step six: wait and see the goods being sold. The little screen just about the trade slots will give you an overview of all the goods that you have sold and how much credits you have earned. You will also recieve a message in the top right corner when you have bought or sold goods.

Selling items at an NPC's ark or an other player's Warehouse

With this method both goods as well as items can be sold. Keep in mind that you will need a ship with a decent storage capacity.

Step one: find yourself a ship or submarine with a decent storage capacity and onload the goods or items you wish to sell. after loading the goods onto your vehicle, get it on route to an NPC's ark or an other player's Warehouse.
Step two: once your ship is within reach of an ark or warehouse, a big arrow with the credits symbol will show up. Click on this arrow to start the trading process.
Step three: after clicking the arrow, a new window will open in top right corner of your screen. This window will give you an overview of all the items this person is buying and selling: green-framed items are being sold, red-framed items are being bought. Keep in mind that just about any good can be sold to an NPC, even if this good isn't listed in the trade window.
Step four: select the items or goods you would like to sell by clicking on them in the ship's cargo slots. The selected items will be shown just below this window, including the total price you will receive for them. Once you're done with selecting all the items you wish to sell, click on the little green checkmark to complete the trade.

Setting up a trade route

Setting up a trade route might be a bit tricky when you just have started playing Anno 2070, though once you have set up a couple of them, it shouldn't form any problems. In this section of this guide, we will explain how a simple trade route is set up. The next paragraph will focus on making your trade routes more efficient.

In order to set up a trade route, you will have to open your Strategic map. This can be found in the bottom right tool bar. The Strategic map can also be opened by pressing F6.



Once opening the Strategic map, you will see three main windows just right of the map. These windows will be used to create a trade route. Creating a trade route can be devided into three steps, as we will demonstrate now.

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Step one is pretty straightforward: we click 'new trading route' to create a new trading route. Once the trade route is established, you can click on it in the upper window to see the status of this trade route (such as the islands that are involded in the trading route and which ship(s) is/are in use for this trade route.

Once the new trade route is created, we will move onto step two: selecting the stations which the vehicle will pass and which goods he will either onload and/or offload. We will set up a simple trade route with one onload station and one offload station.

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First of, we select two stations (as shown in the left picture). After that, we can select the good we would like to load onto a ship: loading onto a ship means using the green icon! Select the same good for the other station where the selected good should be offloading: this is done by using the red icon! Once this is done, your window should look simulair as the one on the right picture.
Clicking ones more on a good will give you the ability to adjust the quantity of goods being either loaded or offloading at each station. Important note: if you set the limiter (when loading goods onto a ship) higher than the capacity of one cargo slot of the ship you wish to use, the ship will only take the maximum of one cargo slot. An example: the limiter in the pictures above is set to 150 tons (by default). If you are using a Freight ship for this trading route, it will only load 40 tons of the selected good (which is the maximum amount of one cargo slot for the Freight ship). If you wish to transport more than just these 40 tons of the same good, you will need to make a second trade slot in the trade window.

Step three is the final step in the process of setting up a trade route. In the bottom right window of your Strategic map, we will select a ship or submarine which will be used for the trade route. If you happen to lack a ship once reaching this step, just close the Strategic map and build a ship: the trade route will be saved automatically. Once you have a ship to run this trade route, select it in the bottom right window of your Strategic map and you are good to go.

Making trade routes more efficient

When playing a large, continuous game, you will probably encounter a huge list of trade routes which have been created swiftly just to haul one, maybe two types of goods from one island to another. These trade routes should (if possible) be combined into one large trade route. 'Why?', you ask? Because it's much cheaper to let a large trade ship run one combined trade route that letting run an entire fleet of small ships run all sorts of small trading routes. The most important advantages of having a combined trade route are:

• Lower maintenance costs. One Container ship is cheaper to maintain than (as few as) two Freight ships.
  
• Fewer fleet spaces are taken: A Container ship requires 5 fleet spaces, while two Freight ships already consume 6 fleet spaces.
  
• Easier to defend: When you find yourself in a hostile environment, it's easier to defend one ship than an entire fleet.

So how do we set up an efficient trade route? Well first of all we need to find some trade routes which are currently used to deliver a really small amount of goods. Mainly in large, continuous singleplayer games, these trade routes are established swiftly just to transport one good for one island to another, for example vegetables or diamonds. These small trade routes should be combined into one larger trade route. This, however, requires a large ship with large cargo slots. A Container ship (Tycoon) is highly recommended, however, A Cargo liner (Eco) or a Sisyphus submarine (Tech) (DLC required) can also be used.

The main criteria for a succesfull combined trade route are:

• Make sure your trade route isn't criss-crossing the whole map: always try to make a circle of stations.
  
• Try to load and offload at the same station as much as possible: loading and offloading goods at the same station takes the same time as just loading or offloading goods. Fast(er) loading and offloading is an absolute must.
  
• If you stumble upon a route which is too far away from the other trading routes, don't bother trying to fit this route into a combined route: it's better to keep these routes separate. This is because a combined route would take a tremendous amount of time to complete one round.

Tips and tricks

Through regular gameplay, I've come up with some tips and tricks which I will share with you here.

Choose the right vehicle

Somewhat similar to the last paragraph, but still a vital tip: use the right ship or submarine for each trade route. If you have a trade route which only considers the transport of one or maybe two goods, don't use a Container ship or something similar in size to it on this trade route: use a Freight ship or even a Commando ship to transport the goods instead.

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More information about vehicles and their capabilities can be found in one of my other guides:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=136264455

Choose the right goods to be transported

In addition to choosing the right vehicle, you should also choose the goods you wish to transport wisely, for example: If you produce both rice and vegetables on an Island and you transport both induvidually to another island to process them to Health food, it's much more efficient to process them first and transport them as finished goods.

Proper harbor placement

Choose the right place to build your Warehouse, Port authority or Clearance terminal: this will prevent unnecessary deviations for your trade routes. Always try to build a couple of harbors around your whole island. This will ensure enough docking spaces for all your trade ships.

'Bob the Builder' trading route

When I play large, continuous games, I often encounter a problem: playing with all three factions ensures a large palet of options considering building options, however, every faction has their own building specifications and required materials. Since you tend to produce building goods mostly on one of your islands rather than on all of them, I somewhat 'invented' a trade route which would destribute all the main building materials across all of my islands. I named it the 'Bob the Builder' trade route. here's how it works:

Let's say we want to destibute the six most-used building goods across seven islands/underwater plateaus: Tools and Building modules are produced on island 1, Concrete and Glass are produced on island 2, Wood is produced on island 3 and Steel is produced at island 4. The other three island don't produce any of these goods. A spreadsheet will show the load and offload points for these goods. We will use a standard Container ship for this trade route (6 cargo slots, 60 tons each):

Island
1	- 60	- 60	+10	+10	+10	+10
2	+10	+10	+10	- 60	- 60	+10
3	+10	+10	- 60	+10	+10	+10
4	+10	+10	+10	+10	+10	- 60
5	+10	+10	+10	+10	+10	+10
6	+10	+10	+10	+10	+10	+10
7	+10	+10	+10	+10	+10	+10

Important notes:

• The -60 means this good is leaving the island to be destributed to the other islands, the +10 means the good is being delivered to the island.
  
• Make sure you set an limiter on islands which are producing a good: this will ensure you will keep some of the destibuted good left for that island as well.
  
• Adjust the load and offload numbers untill the cycle is in balance. This is quite tricky and takes some time. All the effort will pay out though.

Silent shipping

Do you happen to find yourself in a combat area? Do you need to transport goods? Don't have the requirements to build strong combat ships to defend your trade ship? Try the Sisyphus! Due to its passive Silent Running ability, the Sisyphus cannot be seen by enemies searching for it on the surface map. The 'digital visualization' of the submerged vessel is visible only to the owning player. Besides that, the Sisyphus has six cargo hold which can hold 60 tons each, which makes it as good as a Container ship. The 60 ton cargo slots can be upgraded to a whopping 120 tons each! (Keep in mind that the Deep Ocean DLC is required to be able to build the Sisyphus).

(Ark) upgrades

There are a lot of upgrades available of trade ships, both equipable in an item slot on the ship itself as well as upgrades which can be activated in your ark. Im currently using two ark upgrades which involve trade ships. The first one is the 'Container ship haulage diversification' upgrade. This is a level three upgrade (which I developed myself), giving your Container ships 50% more cargo capacity per slot and upgrading its speed by 35%. This means you can have fully packed Container ships transporting a whopping 540 tons of cargo with the same speed as a Commando ship. Since I mainly use Container ships in large continuous games, a specific upgrade for the Container ship is really worth it.
Besides the specific Container ship upgrade, I also use a level two upgrade, giving all my ships a speed upgrade of 12%. This speed upgrade always comes in handy.
Futhermore, you can equip your trade ships with additional upgrades which each ship can equip. These upgrades can for example be bought from NPCs.

Other useful guides

Some may know that I made a bunch of other guides for Anno 2070 as well. Check them out!

Anno in-depth series:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=136264455
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=140841772
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=155377671
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=481961978

Building layouts:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=126330047
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=122329921
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=135700037
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=122995399
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=133380073
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=130203918

[clif9710]

The sell slider had me confused, thanks to your guide I now understand it selects the minumum quantity that I want remaining.

[Glyphis]

Love to hear that Krax tnx

[Krax]

Nice guides! Very helpful.

[Glyphis]

I unfortunately lost all my saved-games due to computer issues, so any seeds I used for my maps are gone :(.

[xARCHONx]

Load your map, press F10 to view your map settings, including the map seed. I used 95555 for a large continuous map, my money kinda got stuck at 999.99 million after 100 hours, and I researched all my items there.

[Eustache]

Thanks for the answer Thomas075, I'll start digging ^^ :D

[Glyphis]

Unfortunately I don't have any map seeds for you @Billoo. I guess you just have to use the trial and error method to find the ideal map. I too found my ideal maps that way :)

[Eustache]

Fantastic guides! I loved how you described the step by step for housing layout. AnnoWiki has some great design but none are done as you did. One question about the map seen in this guide, would you by any chance remember the seed number, I'm looking for something equivalent for a long run game :)

[rsirotek]

Simply fantastic guides I wish I could print them out cause my memory is not that great.

[Glyphis]

Love to hear that Abster, it gives a lot of satisfaction when you hear positive feedback like yours