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Indian Ocean Trade is stated to be one of the "difficult" episodes of Trade Empires. However, the starting coins (7,000) are a little more than in some episodes, and your rivals seem to be no cleverer than average. Part of the difficulty is the complexity, which is certainly greater than in the easy episodes. As usual, you can play with combat disabled. Another aspect of difficulty could be the need to get 2,000,000 points to become a Merchant Prince.

Period, families, regions

The episode runs from AD 1430 to AD 1700. Four families compete, two based in south-west India ("Malabar"), with market names including Bangalore, Calicut, Cochin, Madurai, Mahe, and Mysore, and two families based in west India ("Khandesh"), with market names such as Bombay, Dabhol, Gujarat, Poona, and Surat. Malabar has a slight advantage in relation to numbers of some resources and buildings and the length of sea routes to other regions. Those regions link by both land and sea. Each of those regions also has a sea link to Zanzibar (which includes most of the old Tanganyika as well as the island) and a sea link to Sumatra. The other region, Guangzhou, can be reached only from Sumatra.

Zanzibar and victory

Victory points are earned from "wealth and deliveries to and from Zanzibar". Initially Zanzibar has no unique features, but after about 30 years it becomes developed with European trading enterprises, which bring western products and seek products from the east. The description of play in the "Victory Conditions" panel is partly incorrect:

  • Coffee is NOT available anywhere at the start
  • Medicine is more readily available in India than in the far east until you manage to establish markets in Sumatra and China to make use of the slightly higher number of herb fields.

Early resources

Rice is the main food (with each rice paddy supplying enough for about seven dwellings); barracks and stables also buy rice (a stable buying about as much as five dwellings buy). Dwellings require a small amount of tea too, with each tea farm supplying enough for about 15 dwellings; castles, palaces, and temples also buy tea.

Cotton is abundant in most regions, along with smaller amounts of gold ore, drugs & herbs, rubies, and wood, from suitably-named sources; all of those except wood need further processing before they produce anything that can be sold to a demand building. Guangzhou in the Far East additionally produces raw silk, which can be turned into silk cloth in any region, and porcelain clay, which can be processed into porcelain only in Guangzhou.

When the Europeans set up trading centres in Zanzibar, new resources and products appear.

Transport

Land

You can start with the reliable old 3-load mule or spend a bit extra for a more capacitous but slower camel, a good choice for moving wood. However, as soon as you and/or your rivals build roads and a caravansary or two you can upgrade to the horse (which is little better than a mule) or a faster but expensive 5-load wagon.

Sea and river

Seaports allow carracks and junks. River ports allow a rowed barge. Little value in the first 30 years.

Merchants

Merchants have much the same cost and capabilities as in other episodes. Among the first you hire may be Aibak (Seamanship), Ala ud-Din (Seamanship), Arjuna (River Pilot), Ashoka (Military Kickbacks), Aurangzeb (Famine Relief), Babur (Price Gouging), Bairan Khan (Marketeering), Bimbisara (Honest Reputation), Chandragupta (Persuasion), Genghis Khan (Leadership), Harsha (Escape Artist), Humayun (Famine Relief), and Lumagun (Animal Husbandry).

Ideas for starting

Markets

Close to your headquarters, build at least two markets. One or both should have some unencumbered coastline where you and/or a rival can build a seaport when that becomes desirable, but it's not worth including if there would be little else of value in the market radius. Including a shipyard will be good, because it buys large amounts of wood, but then you shouldn't have a timber camp in the same market.

One of "your" markets should ideally have at least one tea farm and at least two rice paddies, with many more desirable, and preferably some dwellings though they will come soon if there are none initially. If you can get those within a trading post (200 coins), it's a bargain. Let a rival expand it for you unless you see real advantage in building a larger market yourself: "Market" for 400 or "Bazaar" for 800.

The third-most important item for your dwellings is cotton cloth, obtained from a weaver, who produces one load of it for every three loads of cotton delivered. As well as dwellings, Arsenals, Barracks, Castles, Fortresses, Palaces, and Shipyards buy cotton cloth. To maximize merchant profits, keep weavers out of the markets that contain those buildings or cotton farms. If the nearest weaver is a long way off, wait to see whether a rival will build a market for one.

Other commodities likely to be available soon require:

  • medicinal plants sites, producing "drugs & herbs" (call it "herbs" for short) for sending to a medicine facility for producing medicines, which are bought by arsenals, fortresses, mosques, and temples
  • gold mines for gold ore, needing smelters to produce gold ingots
  • ruby mines for rubies;

A jeweler will convert a load of gold ingots plus a load of rubies into gold & ruby jewelry, which is bought by castles, mosques, palaces, and temples.

Any of the above will have value eventually if they are in one of the markets you build. However, your rivals will build some markets, and any merchant can operate in any market, so the building of markets gives only a slight advantage to you, perhaps a couple of years in which you have a virtual monopoly of some good routes.

Routes

Create some routes for obvious needs, such as:

  • cotton to weavers (three with a mule probably best)
  • herbs to a medicine processor (three with a mule probably best)
  • rice to large populations that have little or none growing
  • tea to markets that have castles, palaces, or temples and/or clearly a need to encourage dwellings
  • wood to shipyards

Once a few seconds of game have run, there will probably be other markets built by rivals. Study how their products and demands link together.

Merchants

Then hire half a dozen merchants and set the most appropriate on various routes. Aurangzeb's Famine Relief skill gets superior prices for food, so he gets a rice or tea route initially. Bimbisara's honest reputation gets him to the head of the queue, handy when other families are wanting to buy cheap products too. Lumagun's Animal Husbandry should give him a little extra speed, which will be best utilized if he does long trips with little or no waiting.

Merchants who reach a market so early that they have to wait for production of more than one item may find that the price goes up so that they won't make a profit on delivery. It may be wise for such merchants to be on a route that requires only one item to be picked up at first instance.

After one game year is over, rivals are likely to have built all of the markets they intend to build in the first decade or so. Reassess your routes accordingly and assign routes to any merchants who have been waiting to see which way things are going. When your rivals start building roads and depots, you may further revise some routes and may feel tempted to build another market. Do not build roods, trails, or depots; like markets, they do not count in your wealth points and give you no practical advantage.

You should still have some spare coins. Buying more merchants will give you more profit if you can use them as intelligently as your rivals can. You should be able to end up with ten or eleven merchants at this stage, costing 5,550 coins for eleven. The twelfth will cost 1,250 coins, so it is possible to have twelve only if you have built only a single trading post and no trails or other improvements, possibly not worth the effort.

Random events

Now and again you may get an unexpected message. Its full meaning is not always clear, but you should probably switch a couple of merchants to any region of interest so that they are close to the action when the meaning is revealed.

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