Help needed: Making goods distribution work in mid/lategame

[casey080 (Nightfangs)]

When you have 5-7 islands in the old world and 2-3 in the new world, the game gets quite complex. Keeping a supply of 10 different types of goods between all islands and transporting stuff from and to the new world means you have to use 20 or 30 trade routes. And even then, you have to look after them, adjust the number of ships all the time. If you use ships to transport two different goods on 2 legs of the trade route, once they can't unload any more they will travel the seas fully loaded forever and mess of your whole economy...

So, long story short, is there any way to make the goods distribution more comfortable? Some kind of AI assistance that will take some of the samey management off your hands?
Thank you so much!

[Chompman]

I would suggest you only have population on 2-3 of the islands in the old world and use commuter piers at this time.

Have all the other islands as specialized production islands where they only produce 2-3 items and only they produce it such as a island that makes all your beer and bread and another that makes all the meat and clothes or something similar.

This way the production buildings send the needed goods to the population islands and separate the population types on the islands as different levels require different needs and it's a waste of space and trading ships to fit all 5 types on one island later on.

https://anno1800.fandom.com/wiki/Needs

You cannot really do this on the new world but you can make the islands specialized also and usually you don't ship between those islands as much as shipping goods between the two worlds.

As for shipping goods in two different directions like you mention there are options to fix that in the trading route for each location and you will probably want to use the "toss extra items overboard" option to prevent this issue if you ever do this.

Otherwise as you progress you will unlock steam cargo ships and they have 6 cargo slots and can make things a bit better also.

In either case trading is important and you will get a decent amount of routes in any case so make sure you keep them working well by building extra piers on your busy ports.

[Tankfriend]

Just don't keep so many different population classes on all those islands, and don't try to supply them all with everything.
Most ressource production and basic processing only need peasants and workers, and as long as they have potato fertility available, they can support themselves locally with basic necessities. Just keep them at that level and ship whatever they can produce to your actual production island for finished goods production.

Once you reach Engineers, you unlock the commuter pier, and all your islands connected to the network share work force. At that point, you can shift finished goods production to the local islands without having to settle the corresponding population classes there, if you want. In theory, you can even supply the entire work force of your old world islands from one main residential island at that point.

[casey080 (Nightfangs)]

Thank you all for the idea with the commuter ports... did not think of this. :-)

[Profound]

Originally posted by Chompman:

I did it like Chompman suggested, but I offloaded all my farmers to a nice schnapps island, and all my workers to a nice beer island. I might even make an artisan island if I was amazing.

What I'd really like to do is figure out the best way to optimize factories and research. I feel like there should be an island for all the stuff that uses steel bars..... and maybe all the resource lines that use chatcuouac should be on the same island to make cross-continent shipping easier.

[Tankfriend]

By late-game, I tend to put all production on one industrial island. Coupled with power plants, trade unions, and the right items, the extra efficiency is pretty nice.

[hashimoto4life]

Why can’t we build commuter piers in The New World?

[Chompman]

Originally posted by hashimoto4life:

Why can’t we build commuter piers in The New World?

With only two types of citizens they must had figured it wasn't worth it.

[Martian]

^^ Yeah but it would make sense in New World too. Cause of the scarcity of land to put all the farms in. This depends on the difficulty options, mostly - island size, island fertilities.
I know that this can be partially overridden with using items in Trade Union etc. to boost production of coffee for example. (necessity in higher difficulties)
I would definitely like to have them. It would be better for management too.