TRADE

Trade is the key to profitability. Check the Empire Map early in your assignment to discover what your trading partners will buy, and develop that industry quickly. Once you're earning trade income, you can turn your attention to improving your ratings.

Opening a new trade route always costs denarii, but the “lowest cost” isn't always the cheapest trade route fee. If you need a customer for oil, for instance, and either Tarraco or Syracusae will buy oil, notice that Syracusae is a sea route, while Tarraco is probably a land route. If you haven't yet built docks, it might be cheaper to pay a couple of hundred extra denarii to trade with Tarraco than it would be to build docks, a new warehouse and roads to connect them so that you can open the “cheaper” route with Syracusae.

By the same reasoning, if you need to import food or commodities, it might be better to open one expensive trade route with a city that will both sell you imports and buy your exports, than to open separate (but cheaper) trade routes for exporting and importing.

When you build docks, always build a warehouse very close by to speed the loading and unloading of trade ships.