Problems Setting up Trade Routes in Early Game

[Zen Creador]

I am brand new to Anno 1800. Love it!

But I am struggling to get past the early-early game when I am trying to expand to multiple islands. Everything I am finding on Google/YouTube is way later in game to help me with the basics.

I am on the campaign and have claimed 16 islands. All seven empty large islands, 8 of the small islands, and my main island. I have my main island built up to where I just got a few Artisans. It has a positive income producing Work Clothes, Schnapps, Sausage, Bread, and Soap.

The two basic approaches that I have tried are:

1. Have a circular trade route that passes one good from one island to another.
2. Have a central hub that brings all goods from the one island that creates it, and distributes to others.

But when I build up more than a couple islands, the circular trade route takes to long and each island starves. And the central hub clogs up with too many ships, dramatically increasing the travel time, leading to island staring.

My third idea that I haven't fully tested is to make each island produce as many goods as it can. And only have a few trade routes to pass missing products to them.

Most people seem to talk about trade hubs. How can you make them work with more than 20 ships hitting the same harbor?

Is it better to produce Schnapps on only one island and distribute? Or should basic items and Schnapps, Work Clothes, Fish, Timber be produced on every island and save the trade routes for the bigger items like Bread, Beer, Canned Goods, etc?

The most important question... How many trade routes can an island/harbor handle before it clogs up and delays travel time with loading/unloading?

Thanks all for any feedback!

[Chaosium]

You need to build more piers, or better if you own the DLC, a Dockland with modules that increase loading speed and ease up the traffic

Basic stuff like farmer and most worker needs can be produced locally on every island, that will save you a few headaches

But IMO the most important thing is this: building up multiple islands as population centers is very challenging and you'll have an easier time focusing on only 1 big island, with other support islands to handle the vulgarity/heavy industry stuff, another for farms/cattle to save space on the main island, etc.

If people talk about it later in the game it's because it's an appropriate time to consider expanding into multiple population islands where you have more tools (cargo ships, commuter piers, specialists)

[kmmacman]

All are sound plans for trading but are you using piers? They are under the artisans shipyard icon. You can place them in any body of water around your islands. The ships will then go to an unoccupied pier to unload. You can place them in a row with a few spaces between them as a load/unload area and place some of them on the side the delivery ships are coming from.
I always set up an Industry Island, Beer and Schnapps island (both on one), Canned Goods, etc. in order to get all manufacturing off at least my Main island.
Smaller islands are good for wood, iron, coal or items like that.
Set them up for what works for you.
Use commuter piers to spread your work force to unpopulated islands.
With 8 large islands you really only need to fully populate the big 4 with the oil wells the others could be your supply islands.
As for setting up a central hub i have done this in the New World and found it to be OK but i much prefer the loop type of supply, Try the hub out with a few items it may be best for you.

You can/should search YouTube for some excellent videos on trade routes that will be really helpful.
Hope this has been of help. The game is a constant learning experience. You'll find your method of playing. Enjoy

[Quickie]

I do more of the chain approach. So island 1 has only tier 1 residents and produces tier 1 products (shirts, schnapps, fish). I then ship any overstock to island 2 which only contains tier 2 residents and produces their needs. (Sausage, bread, soap). I then ship any overstock of all 6 goods to island 3....and so on. The final island is my capital and all overstock is sold from there. Have each island specialize for their level resident is much easier to control/track. It's easy enough to open the production tab and hit control and select island 1 & 2 to be sure island 1 is producing enough for both islands....and so on. I essentially end up with 4 inhabited islands (tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 (becomes my industrialized island) and then the final island is capital with tier 4+). Make sure to plan out the islands so tier 2/3 have oil on their islands. Once you unlock the worker pier the rest of the islands just because resource producers that provide to your producing islands.

This is where piers comes in handy. Ships will always use the shortest route which allows you to mostly setup so an island has incoming goods on one side and outgoing on another.

[ElPrezCBF]

Trade is not rocket science in this game but there's a learning curve to mastering its mechanics. There's no one-size-fits-all answer to every situation imo but I'll try to give some useful pointers.

Circular trade routes take too long, so avoid them unless you have airships that move much faster than ships but these only come much later in the game with high upkeep. Bear in mind that it's not just how much you transport but also how long it takes to transport from one island to another such that demand is still adequately met at the destination by the time your ship gets there. So it's often better to have one destination rather than several. I think the time ships take to deliver goods from one island to another is shown in your production (or is it finance?) tab. Say your destination island consumes 10 tacos a min and your ship takes 5 min to reach there, that means it needs to transport at least 50 tacos per trip. But you also have to consider the time taken for the ship to return to the source island to reload and multiple ships may be assigned to the same route. So it's not just a simple calculation and instead of micromanaging a spreadsheet, I just occasionally check if any stocks are decreasing at the destination and adjust the amount transported if that happens.

A central hub might work on a small scale but as your source island's population grows, destination island pops would be competing more and more with your source island for the same goods unless you intentionally restrict demand for certain goods on the other islands. Basically, if any island has the fertility to make a certain good, do not shift production elsewhere for that good unless you're already making the island specialize in say production of high-value luxury goods for trade and space is so limited that you can't afford to expand production of another luxury good despite having the fertility to do so.

Which brings me to the next point. It's often a good idea to make some islands specialize in producing building materials or intermediate goods needed for more complex supply chains when other nearby islands (e.g. your main island and other major pop centers) lack the fertility/mine resources to produce such goods but need them to produce complex final products for their pop. Moving building material production to another island would also free up manpower on your main island and other major pop centers to produce more complex/high-value products. Certain specialists can also give a production efficiency boost for certain goods or reduce manpower requirements to produce them.

You could also make some islands specialize in producing goods mostly for trade rather than consumption to make a hefty profit. These tend to be luxury goods due to their relatively high trade value. Be careful about trading necessity goods since pop will leave if supply for such goods no longer meets demand adequately. Whereas only happiness will decrease should the same happen for luxury goods.

Do not claim too many islands too quickly. Until you get commuter piers allowing multiple islands to share their workforces, you'll end up incurring additional production upkeep costs to meet the needs of all pops on each island. Early on, focus on building up a few islands so that they can adequately support one another and develop mature trade with NPCs since islands with larger pops would be capable of sustaining a much higher trade volume and value than those with low pops.

[Quickie]

Taka has some really good videos on youtube and help a lot.
This one will explain how to calculate trade times so you know how much to produce.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjUt1pWzENU

[caseyas435943]

Like they said you need to produce more than you need to cover travel time. You may be making 4 bear you need but you'll run out if you are only making 4 beer because of travel time.

Once you get steam Cargo ships it helps a lot. Wind doesn't slow them down.

In this playthrough My main island is into the wind. So, it much slower. When I got stream cargo ships it became insane easy. No slow down and I didn't have to make a much stuff.

[Zen Creador]

Wow! Fantastic advice! Thanks all.

Piers was the key I didn't know about yet. In a previous run, I had 6 ship going to a hub smoothly and all products moving efficiently. But when I updated that to 18, it clogged up the whole system. Sounds like Piers would totally solve that.

I've got the next two days off work and will be giving your each of your advice a try.

Will report back on my progress in a few days!

[POWER WITHIN USER]

The "centralized hub" approach is great for cross region trade where 1 large ship transfers 6 things at the same time across an ocean, not so much for local trade involving dozens of schooners per island.

[ElPrezCBF]

The great thing about this game is that you're free to set up trade routes any way you want according to the scenario, island resource availability and distribution, and your play style, just as long as demand adequately meets supply or trade value exceeds production cost for the traded good. I also think this game is quite forgiving in that unless you screw up so badly to the point that you can't practically salvage the situation without restarting, there's a lot of flexibility even if your trade route setup is not the most optimal for the situation. And I say this after completing the Pride and Peddlers scenario, which is a more challenging trade scenario imo since residents don't provide taxes to offset upkeep, must import costly black market goods to get "black market tax", resource distribution and availability is very limited and negative events happen at random regardless how well or badly you're doing.