Morning AussieGiant!

Thanks for the welcome.

Sounds interesting. Will try today evening, when I'm out of office and conquering the world again. I thought upgrading the ports wouldn't make any sense as some of the ports in England already don't open trade routes.

I'm still searching for detailed information about trade, and trying to figure out things on my own as well, of course. This is my first successful campaign, after having a few tries at the beginning, when I had to cancel the campaign because I was about to become bankrupt. The only real difference between those few tries and now is proper diplomacy from the very beginning.

On those first tries I allied with too many countries, and when they went to war (partly between each other) I was in war with too many countries. It wasn't an issue handling their military, but through that I lost trade partners, and those new enemies started pirating most of my trade routes - always at the other end of the world, so I couldn't get rid of them myself.

I really think that diplomacy (and trade, being part of it) is one of the best ways to success in ETW - at least for GB. It's so different to RTW or M2TW, where you would earn your money in the provinces you own plus a little bit of trade. Diplomacy is so much easier now, but also so much more important.

For my current campaign I don't need to optimize anything anymore. I am already so dominant everywhere, and the cash flow is more than sufficient to keep me out of problems. I'm just collecting information to use it in my next campaign, where I will increase the difficulty to VH/VH.