Quote Originally Posted by Monsieur Alphonse View Post
Indeed. I had almost a monopoly on spices and ivory when France decided to attack me. At first my Spanish galleons were able to keep the French fleet away from the trade nodes. But after a while a French squadron slipped through and annihilated my monopoly. After that I had one galleon on each node but a surprise DoW from Savoy caused me to loose an other node. At the moment I have 9 out of ten ivory nodes and five spice nodes. The strangest thing is that I only started to sent in Indiamen from turn 10. By then I had destroyed the pirates, but strangely all the nodes were empty.
All the nodes were empty because of fighting between the pirates and the starting trading fleets. + by turn 10 you knocked out the pirate fleets by taking their territory. I have seen that happen a few times.