Alpaca stated at the end in that 10th post:

"I play with a house rule to not allow me more than 2 spots per trade theatre so I'll always build as many Indiamen as I can. Don't use Fluyts or Galleons by the way, they're far less cost-effective than Indiamen."



I been putting 3-4 (usually 4) India Men per trade node in as many trade nodes per theatre as I can. All of the nodes in fact as I take out other nations. This is based on early game theories that more than 5 ships per node is not cost effective. I'll admit I've never ran the numbers to see what the cost value is overall, just going by what others have discovered and suggested, but after seeing that last line in Alpaca's post I'm wondering if his method would be better? Anyone else try his method and determine if its better or not?