Trade Routes are an important aspect of success in Anno 1800. It is essential to find AI players who want to buy what you produce, and who are selling the things that you yourself cannot make. You also don’t want to spend all your time dealing with your ships, as you need to focus on other details of your city. Thankfully, we can set up Trade Routes that will take care of all this for us.

It should be noted that Trade Routes are different to Charter Routes. To take advantage of Charter Routes, be sure to check out our useful guide.

How To Create Trade Routes

The first thing you need to do is find other AI players. To do this, explore the sea in your boat and try to map out some of the other islands. Two NPCs are automatically willing to trade with you, but you will need to perform quests for most of them to build up Diplomacy and earn Trading Rights.

You need to find the AI Harbour to be able to trade with them, as this can only be done Harbor to Harbor. To then set up Trade Routes, you need to click on the “Routes” button just below the map on the bottom left of the screen. Now, follow the below steps.

  • Click on “Create Route”
  • Select the “Trade Route” option.
  • Choose the ship you wish to use, more than likely your flagship in the early game.
  • Click on your main island as the starting point of your route.
  • Click on the “Load” button and pick what you want to load onto the ship.
  • Select the island you wish to send to the good to.
  • Click on the “Sell” button and choose the volume of goods you wish to sell.
  • You can, if you wish, choose an item to buy at this new Harbor, should it sell something you need.
  • Accept the Trade Route to being.

Trading is limited by how large your ship is. Large ships can carry more cargo, so can ferry more goods between different Harbors. It is also important to note that you can make Trade Routes are complicated as you like, moving goods between multiple Harbors if you so wish. It is also a good idea to name your Trade Routes, as later in the game you should end up having a lot of them, so giving them easy to remember names or names that include all their destinations is a good idea.

It is also essential to send the right goods to the right places. If you want to find out what people need, seem to hover the mouse of them in the Trade Route screen, and the items, and quantity, that they are looking for will pop up for you. If you set up your Trade Routes correctly, you can take an item to a Harbor, sell it, then buy a new item to sell at a different Harbor. You also want to regularly check your Routes to ensure that the needs of the people you are sailing to haven’t changed.

It is a little complicated, so I would suggest starting with simple routes in the early game, then getting more complicated as you gain a better understanding of them.