I've stopped playing this game, because the economy is way too simple and limited.

• Goods never change prices.
  
• Demand is always 100% for everything.
  
• Imports are limited to 3k of any one type per year.
  
• The most expensive good in the game (Boats) is the earliest available & easiest to produce.
  
• Relations can be easily "bought" through trading.

Those are just some of economic downfalls of this game. Boats is an economic model which can be implemented on literally any map -- even the Pirate King island supposedly bereft of life.

You might as well be playing with unlimited money every time.

My suggestions, then, are to address the above points.