So clerks can do two things:

1. allow you to buy/build production buildings, those buildings would have two effects and cost an upkeep every ten days ( so be careful to have enough money on payday as it can be quite high). The first effects is that it produces the given quantity of good ( if you have the materials required or have auto-buy) every day and puts it in your warehouse ( you can the press at auto-sell and it would every day during the early morning reset of goods give you the money of all your products sold in the bank). The second effect would be to produce, i have found out, the given quantity of goods *10 in the market place, hence reducing the price of the product in the marketplace in this town.

To note that due to this the auto-sell would give you less in this town per unit the more of the same production building you have. But the fact that the price of the item on the marketplace drops the more of that building you have makes for very interesting trade routes.


2. Allow you to have trade routes; you would need two clerks, each in a different town, and a fleet in one of those two towns ( i would advise a large fleet with big cargo space, fully repaired/crewed/full ammo, and the last upgrade increasing cargo). Go to any of your clerks in any given town ( even a completely different town for those two, as long as the clerk works for you) and in the town where your fleet is buy what is cheap and that the other town would not have.

Then go to you want to transport goods between your warehouse option with the clerk, go on the town that has your fleet, change the destination of the convoy to where you want it to go ( on the right, really important) and put all the ships you want to send on the right. click next and put all the goods you want to send on the right.

Now do whatever you want and when you will receive the little note ( bottom left of your screen with the other messages like X of kingdom of ... has been defeated but .... ) that says that your convoy has arrived at the town you sent it to, go back to your clerk, go the the i want to buy goods and sell what you brought and buy what's cheap here and that the first town doesn't have. Afterwards send your convoy to the first town with the new goods.


You'll have to redo it every time so it's micromanagement and a bit annoying ( yes we do really want an auto trade option limited by trade skill ), bu in the end worth it. Be careful to not be at war and have good forces in your convoys or they'll be attacked.



To repeat:

1. buy production building, gives your goodies and creates more goodies in the marketplace so goodies cheaper.

2. Buy goodies in a town, from any clerk in the map, send by convoy to other town, go to the buy goodies option, sell what you bought before and buy new cheap goodies and come back to do the same.


Any questions ?



Usually silver if you create a lot of production sites in the towns are a safe bet to make decent amount of money in towns lacking silver.


The town producing silver as far as i know are in the south:

Caracas
Santa Marta
Cartagena
Nombre de Dio
Portobelo
Bluefields


For me good trade routes i do are as follow:

Caracas ( silver, coffee and maybe jewelry) -> Santo domingo ( tobacco, cotton, sugarcane)

Santa Marta ( silver, coffee, jewelry) -> Providence ( cacao, salt, other stuff you decide )

Cartagena ( silver, coffee, jewelry) -> Cayman island ( cacao and i think cotton or flax and sugarcane)

Portobelo ( silver, jewlery ( here build a max of jewelry stores since there's enough silver mines, wood) -> Bonaire ( coffee, bananas)

Nombre de Dio ( wood, silver, iron, iron-goods, jewelry ( depends on what you build) -> Puerto Caballo [under Belize] ( salt, cacao, coned beef)

Bluefields ( silver and i don't know what cause i haven't done this one since 5 is already a lot but i know there's silver here) -> i'd say Belize cause it's not too far but not too close and next to the coast for the whole trip.



So my advice would be to;

- send your convoys not too far away because that just increases the danger, but also not too close or there wouldn't be a day that passed and then stocks wont be refilled so your convoys would just sit around.

-send your convoys to go near the coast because it means that half of their close by area would be filled by land and as it reduces by half the surface from which pirates ( or other enemies ) can spot them and attack them from. ( not exactly half if it's a character on land and close to someplace he can "put to sea" but better than the open sea)



So those trade routes are simple examples, and the advice are your to follow or not. I would also say use large and small fluyt as they're easy to find, upgrade them with the extra cargo space ( in extension click on the images to choose among several extensions and choose the last one for cargo). And build a lot of productions buildings of the goods you intend to buy and none of the ones you intend to sell.



One thing i haven't checked is if building a manufactory for example a jeweler where there's no silver, would increase the price of silver in the town. If such it would be a great trade route to have a town with only silver mines and the other only jewelry to sell your silver at ( and place some silver in your warehouse to auto produce jewelry and come back with it to sell it where you have your silver mines ).