3 docks with 6 active import routes for sugar and yet ships bring almost none

[NewbieOne]

As per title. I can't even keep two distilleries supplied. My waters are crowding with ships, but almost no sugar is brought. I also have a single import route or sometimes two routes for hides for my tannery, and it also does bad, though somewhat better.

How can I force the docks to, like, actually buy all that sugar?

I also have a warehouse set to store sugar, but none ever arrives there.

Some ships seem to be just visiting the docks to say hi — not buying or selling anything.

Or in some cases they sell like 5 units. Literally 5. The usual scenario is that I permanently have around 80 units of rum in the dock for months if not years, with none being added or removed. And I have plenty of teamsters.

[Kunovega]

Import routes are a fixed amount over time, having more docks is meaningless for imports, it just splits up the delivery into smaller units.

The only reason to ever use more than 1 dock is if you have so many of a single export that it's going over the volume that the dock can store (10,000 of each export). ~ but again, that's nothing to do with imports.

Having more import routes for the same import is meaningless, they will only service one of each type until complete. The only reason to ever contract for more than 1 import route of a specific item is if you see one that's at a really good price and you want to que them up sequentially, they will not be completed simultaneously, ever.

Having a warehouse set to store sugar is worthless if the industry building needs it, it will never go to the warehouse first, only if everything else is full. You are wasting your time trying to put sugar in a warehouse when it's better off being sent directly to the industry building to be used or left sitting at the dock until needed. Even if you raised your production of sugar beyond what your industry buildings could use, that means your plantations are producing more than you need and you would be better off either building another distillery to use it or simply letting the docks export the extra. You won't have extra if your industry is using it all, so there won't be anything left for the warehouse.

Warehouses in general are meaningless unless you are trying to store more than the 10,000 of a specific item beyond what a dock can keep in storage all by itself and the only reason to do that is if you have a solid long term plan in place to use it later. (for example I'll start saving up leather during the cold war knowing that I can release it to directly make clothing in the modern era ~ or if you are using market surges to manipulate prices you could save up something like jewelry, surge the price and then sell off what was in the warehouse. 99% of the time you will never need a warehouse unless you understand how to manipulate the market and/or are preparing to move from one era to the next and are saving up for a specific new industry surge.

What you are trying to do is guaranteed to fail as it's simply not designed to work that way. Importing anything to feed an industry will typically just barely stock one factory and you only need 1 dock and 0 warehouses to do it. If you want more than one of any industry building you will need to be producing what it needs yourself. (pirate loot raids can also help, but that's all it's doing is supplementing)