automatic trade routes ?

[qmuddy]

how hard is it to set-up automatic trade routes ? easier in patrician 4 ? thanks

[AlP]

I think the P4 system is less convenient, and harder to figure out.

[heervandering]

P3 or P4? I prefer P3 because it is more balanced, in P4 for instance, you can continue building brickworks and wood mills to build houses, for these production buildings you need workers, who need houses to live in, so you need more production buildings.... About automatic trade routes, I forgot if there is a difference between P3 or P4, I suppose not, you can find how to do it in my guides, otherwise, you need a captain and start from your hometown, fill in the town of your destination and what you want to buy and sell over there or just deliver what the town needs, you can also make a complete trading route with multiple towns to make money, especially in the beginning, for instance Lübeck-Stettin-Danzig-Thorn-Malmö-Lübeck, don't forget to unload everything that's left again in Lübeck. As I said, more info in my guides, have a nice day!

[Jambie Lionheart]

I actually think that P4 trade routes area lot easier to set up, in quite a few ways. But it's not really that hard to set them up in P3 to begin with :)

[Thorn Jackson]

Setting up trade routes is one of the most fun things to do in this game for me, actually. I always save the game after I complete one because they are a lasting change in your game. I have made a few for short periods (like to buy brick or pitch or to sell huge surpluses or random goods) but in general I use them for keeping warehouses stocked with the big four, as well as salt, hemp, and iron goods.

I've had to learn time and time again that in order to survive and thrive, you have to be constantly selling iron goods to towns that are running low/out. Of particular importance is the town grouping of Riga, Reval, and Novogorad- they produce the most skins/furs and are conveniently located all in a row on the east side of the map. Of all the towns demanding iron, these are the three that I attempt to over-saturate with iron good sales. Keeps the production of skins up which puts the price way down. I am never consistent in selling iron/buying skins so I always automate it and in my last game I'm not even producing skins and I have way more than I even know what to do with.

But one of the bottom-line truths of this game: you must be constantly selling iron, even if you aren't producing it yourself (you eventually will have to). I used to find it incredibly stressful to meet profit margins each week until I heavily automated this task. And until you can afford it, I would suggest only picking up and selling/buying and selling iron and not randomly picking up cloth, skins, wine, and any other high priced goods along with way. The captain will keep buying these high-priced luxuries even if you have a surplus already and you will see your bank account nose dive into danger territory as a result.

When your bank account begins to tank, the first priority is to make sure that you have enough warehouse space so that you aren't being charged through the nose 1g PER BARREL (10 per package/packet) multiplied by ALL of your stocks. I was still acting like I was too cool for responsible storage. Upon building enough storage space I saw 200k in costs vanish within a week. The same effect would happen when I disabled the gathering of luxury trade items destined for my home port. I would advise people to try these two options before selling property or ships.

As far as creating automated trade routesI like to try to double or triple my trade route length just so I don't have to be hearing bells constantly- I just make the route than copy everything a second time to make it longer. Make sure that the convoy/ship regularly stops at an developed shipyard at least one or two times throughout the rotation, even if no transactions take place. This will generally be your hometown since that is probably where you built the most ships.

Another thing that you can do when selling iron and nothing else on a trade route is to just keep buying and selling iron rather than dumping it off in a warehouse. If you ship becomes filled to the brim with iron it isn't a problem because another good isn't being crowded out. And once the ship is full it can't keep buying iron that you don't need. Later in the game I will use this same method to sell production towns the salt, hemp, wool, timber, and pig iron that they regularly need. I'll often have crayers buying pig iron from one town and selling it to iron producing towns down the line so that I can be assured cheap and plentiful iron for that and other convoys.

Once you have enough iron selling ships making the rounds regularly then you can start to splurge and work out the details of what your town needs. Send a group of crayers to Cologne and back so that they have regular wine shipments (or have them pass by Gronigen, Bruges, and/or London for closer options).

Here is an example of a route that I would make if my hometown was Luebeck:

1) Luebeck: Dump all goods except for iron which is set to load/buy.

2) Rostock: Sell iron (buying possibilities: salt, pottery, honey, hemp)

3) Stettin: Sell iron (buying possibilities: not much, mainly sells big four goods)

4) Gdansk: Sell iron (buying possibilities: leather, meat, wool, PITCH, beer, grain

5) Stockholm: Buy iron (few buying possibilities, generally whale oil and pottery)

6) Visby: Sell iron (great source of honey and pottery, cloth and wool if you have the $$$)

7) Riga: Sell iron (possibly buy skins, salt, honey, pitch, fish, timber)

8) Reval: Buy iron (possibly buy skins, they would love it if you brought them fish or timber from RIga, up to you)

9) Ladoga: Sell iron (possibly buy skins, hemp, wool, fish, pig iron. Novogorod is notorious for having shortages of grain and fish so maybe pick some up, hemp is needed for Novogorad, Reval, and Riga for producing skins and nearby Stockholm needs it for fish and whale oil production. Not a bad idea to pick up pig iron for Stockholm and Reval on the return route.

10) Novogorod: Sell iron (and hopefully sell them fish and grain while picking up beer for Ladoga, Reval, Riga and Stockholm. Leather and meat also available, which Ladoga can't seem to get enough of.)

11) Ladoga: Sell iron (pick up fish/hemp/pig iron to sell to Reval if desired)

12) Reval: Buy iron (sell pig iron, hemp, beer, timber, etc.

13) Riga: Sell iron (can buy skins, honey, fish, pitch)

14) Visby: Sell iron (possibly buy honey, pottery, wool, cloth)

15) Stockholm: Buy iron (possibly buy whale oil, fish, pottery)

16) Malmo: Sell iron (possibly buy leather, meat, cloth, wool, skins)

17) Oslo: Sell iron (few buying choices here, mainly pitch, whale oil and skins, and PIG IRON)

Repeat. It can be made much simpler (and profitable) by skipping everything listed in parenthesis. Some stuff, however, becomes a pita if you aren't producing it so it is good to know where to pick up essentials like hemp, pitch, and salt as well as highly demanded goods such as whale oil and wool.

It takes time to set these up buy you may play a game for weeks where these routes are continuously being used so it is definitely worth the time investment. I often even have multiple iron-selling convoys that overlap- if one area is saturated with iron the ship just continues on to the next like the Energizer Bunny. This allows you to do missions, take orders, move supplies to building locations, etc. without having to be constantly trying to keep your trade company out of the red.

I often make the mistake of trying to cover big four needs across the Hanse rather than focusing on what is profitable- the continued sale of lots and lots of iron goods.

[AlP]

crimbertjones a écrit :

As far as creating automated trade routesI like to try to double or triple my trade route length just so I don't have to be hearing bells constantly- I just make the route than copy everything a second time to make it longer.

That's unnecessary. You can disable the bell, by adding an "empty" town to the top of the list.

I made this example in another topic here:

http://i.imgur.com/n03BQKa.jpg

The first "Luebeck" stop has no orders, it just prevents the bell from ringing.

[heervandering]

A trade route with 17 cities is to much, you can do it in an later stadium, when you have a lot of other trade routes, I usually do not sell base products like iron, bricks, wood, hemp, salt to cities, I deliver them to my offices in the cities where I have buildings that use them. In the beginning I have some trade routes to make money, buy and sell what I can, Lübeck-Rostock-Stettin-Danzig-Thorn-Malmö, or the furs trade route to the Nord (Lübeck-Riga-Reval-Novgorod and unload in Lübeck again, eventually a stop in Visby, Malmö or Danzig. With 17 cities you also need a large fleet, because at a certaim moment your ships will be fully loaded with goods you can 't sell or need. After a certain time you will have offices in other cities and buildings over there, than you can assign a ship or convoy from Lûbeck to each city and back, deliver and load, sell and buy.