Trade Route help needed

[TheSiegeTech]

I'm doing the Spanish campaign, and have tried multiple times to set up a trade route between Seville and Maracaibo. I have a WH in Seville, and a pair of production towns dumping Coffee and Cacao into Seville. I have tried Load 500 and load by demand in Seville, Sell Whatever in Maracaibo, but my fleet never picks up goods in Seville. What am I missing?

[titanopteryx]

It's possible the price for selling your good in Maracaibo is too high. When making a trade route, it doesn't pick up what it can't sell. Or that's how it's supposed to work. Go to Maracaibo and check the prices, then lower the only sell if at this price accordingly.

Edit: What's the good, by the way?

[titanopteryx]

I switched to a save where trade routes are set to automatic in the difficulty settings and ran into the same problem you did. The situation seems to be that the warehouse doesn't have a demand for the goods. I'm trying to figure out how to resolve that.

Edit: Got it. Click the 123 and it changes to a settable number. This is if you use the automatic trade route setting.

[Dray Prescot]

Take the Coffee and Cacao directly to Maracaibo, Seville is a LOT farther away from Maracaibo than Puerto Cabezas, just have the ships going from Seville to Maracaibo stop at Puerto Cabezas on the way to Maracaibo.

To get the best prices at Maracaibo for colonial commodities, including Coffee and Cacao, you want to use manual control of the convoys so that they wait to sell when the prices are good (high), which happens after the 2 Spanish Treasure Fleets leave (they always arrive around the 8th day of the month). I sold 3500 to 4000 total units of colonial goods to Maracaibo EVERY Month for over a game year (in the Beta) and made a good profit doing so ( profit of 150k to 200k per month), by using manual control of the convoys delivering the colonial commodities, AND I got 100 Experience Points (towards Fame Points) every month from the Viceroy.

Since you need a lot of Fame Points, make a point of maxing out the demand for colonial commodities by the Viceroy EVERY month. You "just" need 4 owned businesses of each colonial commodity (cotton, tobacco, coffee, and cacao), and then start delivering the production to Maracaibo. I was generating a Fame Point (in the Spanish Campaign in the Beta) about every 2 months by doing random tasks as well as the colonial commodity deliveries. You have Tasks that will eventually REQUIRE you to own those 4 Businesses in each colonial commodity, so do it quickly (instead of waiting) at the start of the Spanish Campaign Game, and start getting the Experience Points and cash profits as soon as possible. In order to finish the Spanish Campaign you are going to have to build and own even more businesses than that, so why wait?

BUILD 4 Cotton and 4 Tobacco Businesses in Seville, and 4 Coffee and 4 Cacao Businesses in Puerto Cabezas. You can do it in 6 to 8 months easily. Forget Auto Trade Routes at the start of the Game, start buying whatever colonial commodities that are being produced by AI owned businesses in nearby towns, and then start building your own Businesses with the profits. Auto Trade Routes should come after you get the colonial commodity productions established.

[Rabid Puma]

I set my trade route for commodities thus:

Everything OFF in Seville except Cotton. That is set to LOAD and 1500.
Next go to Tela. Same deal, but with Tobacco.
Next go to Puerto Cabezas. Same deal, but Cacao and Coffee
Last stop is Maracaibo, and I have it set to SELL, 5 star priority, quantity at 5 squares, and price is Whatever.

Doing this I oversell, but since it was my first game and I was just learning it didn't matter.

Now what I do is I have the convoys load it all into a warehouse in the capital, and have the warehouse sell to the city based on the price

[MeatwagonUK]

Originally posted by Rabid Puma:

I set my trade route for commodities thus:

Everything OFF in Seville except Cotton. That is set to LOAD and 1500.
Next go to Tela. Same deal, but with Tobacco.
Next go to Puerto Cabezas. Same deal, but Cacao and Coffee
Last stop is Maracaibo, and I have it set to SELL, 5 star priority, quantity at 5 squares, and price is Whatever.

Doing this I oversell, but since it was my first game and I was just learning it didn't matter.

Now what I do is I have the convoys load it all into a warehouse in the capital, and have the warehouse sell to the city based on the price

Can you actually auto-sell from the warehouse?

I find the traderoutes very buggy, often find my ship getting full and checking the town it last went to and being 4 red on items the ship has lots of...

[titanopteryx]

Originally posted by MeatwagonUK:

Originally posted by Rabid Puma:

I set my trade route for commodities thus:

Everything OFF in Seville except Cotton. That is set to LOAD and 1500.
Next go to Tela. Same deal, but with Tobacco.
Next go to Puerto Cabezas. Same deal, but Cacao and Coffee
Last stop is Maracaibo, and I have it set to SELL, 5 star priority, quantity at 5 squares, and price is Whatever.

Doing this I oversell, but since it was my first game and I was just learning it didn't matter.

Now what I do is I have the convoys load it all into a warehouse in the capital, and have the warehouse sell to the city based on the price

Can you actually auto-sell from the warehouse?

I find the traderoutes very buggy, often find my ship getting full and checking the town it last went to and being 4 red on items the ship has lots of...

On one of the warehouse tabs, you can click checkboxes next to all the goods you want to trade or sell to the town. Additionally, you can set the warehouse to buy that good from the town.

Edit: That town with the 4 red, on the trade route set up you can increase that town's priority for that good.

[Rabid Puma]

Originally posted by MeatwagonUK:

Originally posted by Rabid Puma:

I set my trade route for commodities thus:

Everything OFF in Seville except Cotton. That is set to LOAD and 1500.
Next go to Tela. Same deal, but with Tobacco.
Next go to Puerto Cabezas. Same deal, but Cacao and Coffee
Last stop is Maracaibo, and I have it set to SELL, 5 star priority, quantity at 5 squares, and price is Whatever.

Doing this I oversell, but since it was my first game and I was just learning it didn't matter.

Now what I do is I have the convoys load it all into a warehouse in the capital, and have the warehouse sell to the city based on the price

Can you actually auto-sell from the warehouse?

I find the traderoutes very buggy, often find my ship getting full and checking the town it last went to and being 4 red on items the ship has lots of...

The trade routes are interesting in the way they work. The convoy will assess the demand of the good for all ports on the route. If the priority is set evenly for all of the ports, it will save some of the commodities to sell to other ports that are demanding the commodity.

I'd like to see something implemented where you can just go by price and not demand, like how the warehouse works with a "sell until price" setting

If you need help on warehouse settings, I just published a guide about them

[IroynArrow]

Originally posted by Rabid Puma:

The trade routes are interesting in the way they work. The convoy will assess the demand of the good for all ports on the route. If the priority is set evenly for all of the ports, it will save some of the commodities to sell to other ports that are demanding the commodity.

This is good and bad at the same time.

Good because all towns get something, but how good is it really when all towns only get a little bit?

Bad, because it is highly inefficient and your convoys could make way more money if it traded more. Everything that is in a convoy for several towns is a waste of space. You want to buy and sell as much as possible in each town to maximize profits.

And if it assesses the demand for all towns, then it means the impact of the AI traders is negligible or else demand would change too much before your ships arrive.

[titanopteryx]

Originally posted by IroynArrow:

Originally posted by Rabid Puma:

The trade routes are interesting in the way they work. The convoy will assess the demand of the good for all ports on the route. If the priority is set evenly for all of the ports, it will save some of the commodities to sell to other ports that are demanding the commodity.

This is good and bad at the same time.

Good because all towns get something, but how good is it really when all towns only get a little bit?

Bad, because it is highly inefficient and your convoys could make way more money if it traded more. Everything that is in a convoy for several towns is a waste of space. You want to buy and sell as much as possible in each town to maximize profits.

And if it assesses the demand for all towns, then it means the impact of the AI traders is negligible or else demand would change too much before your ships arrive.

If you want your ship to sell all of a good its carrying to a town, you need to max that good's priority for selling at that town.

[Dray Prescot]

Many players have trouble trying to use Trade Routes to deliver colonial commodities to Maracaibo. Because large amounts are constantly being sold to it and then being picked by the Treasure Fleets, the demands and stockpiles are constantly changing, which messes up making the Trade Routes work consistently. I always used manual control and avoided having to deal with that problem.

In order to get the best prices for colonial commodities at Maracaibo it is best to manually control the convoys.

One idea that might work for Auto Trade Routes would be to build a Warehouse at Maracaibo, and then have all colonial commodities UNLOADED to the WAREHOUSE. Then when the prices are right you can have the Warehouse sell them to the town market. When you are Unloading to the Warehouse I think it is possible to tell the Trade Route to not pay any attention to demand and just unload it. That should solve most problems with the Auto Trade Routes.

But because of the 1000 Gold per Day COST of that Warehouse, you should only do this after you are able to sell a lot of colonial commodities regularly to Maracaibo, i.e. several thousand per month, or enough to saturate the Viceroy's demands which is about a total of 3500 per month or more.

While you are getting the Businesses built to produce those quantities, i.e. 4 Cotton, 4 Tobacco, 4 Coffee, and 4 Cacoa businesses, you will have to go through a stage of manual control of the convoys before it is worth building the Warehouse at Maracaibo.

[Rabid Puma]

Originally posted by titanopteryx:

Originally posted by IroynArrow:

This is good and bad at the same time.

Good because all towns get something, but how good is it really when all towns only get a little bit?

Bad, because it is highly inefficient and your convoys could make way more money if it traded more. Everything that is in a convoy for several towns is a waste of space. You want to buy and sell as much as possible in each town to maximize profits.

And if it assesses the demand for all towns, then it means the impact of the AI traders is negligible or else demand would change too much before your ships arrive.

If you want your ship to sell all of a good its carrying to a town, you need to max that good's priority for selling at that town.

I'm going to test this later, but I believe if the priority is 5 stars in every town, then it will function the same as if the priority is 1 star in every town, so it will go back to default behavior. It'd be nice to be surprised, though.

[Dray Prescot]

I started a new Spanish Campaign Game after the 1.0.2 patch came out, and the Spanish Viceroy wants/demands a total of 5846 colonial commodities per month at the beginning of the game. That is a Lot more than in the Beta, where the total was around 3500 at the start. It makes it harder to get the Experience Points, but it also means that you can sell more and there fore make more profit each month doing so.

I earned my 1st Fame Point from experience in my first month by doing a 30 point task and by delivering colonial commodities. I have already finished a 40 point task in my 2nd month which puts me half way towards my next new Fame Point from experience (not counting the Fame Point for finishing the first 3 tasks). I managed to sell 1250 colonial commodities to Maracaibo, just from AI owned businesses, in that first month, and got 21 Experience Points in the process. I already have a 3rd Task that I am working on, so I should finish my 2nd new Fame Point in my 2nd month (this one will cost another 80 Experience Points for a total of 130).

So if you start working on delivering the colonial commodities and doing the random tasks right away in the Spanish Campaign, you can start getting new Fame Points fairly quickly.

[IroynArrow]

Originally posted by Rabid Puma:

I'm going to test this later, but I believe if the priority is 5 stars in every town, then it will function the same as if the priority is 1 star in every town, so it will go back to default behavior. It'd be nice to be surprised, though.

That is what I expect too. If it does work, then it is extremely tedious to do, because 1 star is the default, so you need to manually update the priorities for each town.

[Rabid Puma]

Originally posted by IroynArrow:

Originally posted by Rabid Puma:

I'm going to test this later, but I believe if the priority is 5 stars in every town, then it will function the same as if the priority is 1 star in every town, so it will go back to default behavior. It'd be nice to be surprised, though.

That is what I expect too. If it does work, then it is extremely tedious to do, because 1 star is the default, so you need to manually update the priorities for each town.

I tested it, having all 5 stars is the same as having all 1 stars, so we can avoid that tedium

[Computer Fraud and Abuse]

One important thing when setting your trade routes to LOAD from a warehouse is to constantly check the warehouse to make sure it actually has goods. If the warehouse doesn't have the good, but there are thousands available in the local market, your convoy won't pickup anything, because you told it to LOAD and not BUY. You can set the same town twice in a row on the same trade route and have it LOAD on the first attempt and BUY on the second.

I did use a warehouse on the Spanish campaign (last time I put it in Puerto Cabezes I think) and it worked fine, but it took a lot of tinkering with the stars and prices on the trade routes (during the beta) to make it actually consistently sell in Maracaibo. Setting to 4 or 5 stars and either "whatever" or the default minimum price (one click after "whatever") worked. For Cotton it wouldn't deliver consistently, because Maracaibo produced its' own Cotton, so I set a minimum quantity too.