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What is trade?[]

Trade is the exchange of goods between

Trade is an essential activity in Anno 2070. Trading can provide goods if you're in short supply or provide access to currently unavailable ones. Trade can also provide a lucrative source of income by selling excess goods to other players or NPCs. To find most profitable trading goods and routes see Exporting Goods.

Trade is possible between islands or Arks by ships or via an NPC's Shipment ability. The usual place of exchange is either at an Ark or Warehouse. NPC Arks also have ships which occasionally visit warehouses to purchase any available goods on sale, or sell Goods to you if a Buy order is set up.

There is a maximum number of ships the player may field in a game, regardless of population size. This unit cap of 85 also applies to aircraft. This cap may be exceeded lightly by calling an auxiliary fleet from a third party through diplomacy, and may be necessary on large maps where the player owns many active islands. (Note: as of patch 1.02, the unit cap has been increased.)

It is possible, through the use of research items and Ark upgrades, to mitigate the effect of the unit cap on trade on large maps, by expanding the cargo capacities of all ships in the sector.

You will make more money when Traders come to you; if you go to them you'll make less profit.

On the Trade tab of your warehouses you may set up to 2/4/8 types of goods (at warehouse level 1/2/3) to be sold and bought.

  • Trade settings universally apply to all warehouses/port authorities on the island.
  • The first page includes a listing of Goods by quantity. Set up orders to Sell (Red background icons) and Buy (Green background icons) by clicking the respective icon, choosing a type of Goods, and setting the target limit for your storage. Merchants will not trade beyond these limits.
  • The second page is accessed by clicking the red Trade Price icon on the top right corner, here you can adjust the individual prices per type of Goods you are dealing in, allowing you to set the price of Goods at a Credit/Ton value. Higher prices will provide better margins but NPCs will not trade as many goods.
  • NPC ships will fulfill your orders when they visit your island depending on trade preference (for example Rufus Thorne will buy/sell concrete but not wood, while Yana Rodriguez will deal in wood but not concrete).
  • When making their rounds, NPC ships will visit the warehouse of every island once, so setting up at least one Goods to be sold on every island will maximize the gain from each NPC trader ship.
  • NPC Ships usually have a set timer of 45 minutes for a round trip. If the trip to your warehouses and back to the ark takes 10 minutes, then the ship will do a new round trip in 35 minutes for a total round trip time of 45.

Trade Routes[]

There are three ways to establish Trade Routes in Anno 2070. You can choose which type of Route you want to use by clicking the icon next to where you name the trade route.

Continuous Routes[]

The default setting, a ship set on a continuous route will attempt to pick up or drop off whatever it can before resuming its path. If there isn't enough space for all the cargo to be dropped off, the freighter will hold on to it and resume its route. If there is nothing to pick up, it will continue on with an empty cargo (or with whatever was left from an earlier failed delivery). Continuous routes often travel with minimal cargo load and are prone to being attacked by roaming hostiles due to their 'always moving' travel pattern.

Ships set to make continuous routes should not pick-up/drop-off more items than it can hold to prevent 'jamming', where undeliverable goods prevent neccessary pickups from being loaded. A light freighter with three slots set on a continuous 2-point route could deliver three items, or deliver two items and return with a third.

"Smart" Routes[]

Ships set to make Smart Routes will wait until all route supplies are loaded or offloaded before moving on to the next destination. This solves the 'Continuous Route' issues with travelling empty, failing to deliver everything, and making numerous transitions, but creates multiple problems requiring careful consideration and manual control to circumvent:

  • The default 'pickup' quantity of 60 will cause any ship with a smaller hold size to never depart. This 'pickup' quantity will need to be lowered to or below the ships' capacity.
  • A ship set to pick up multiple item types will wait until all items are loaded to the designated values before departing. This can mean that high-volume, high-demand items such as Vegetables have to sit and wait for a slower-producing product to arrive in the hold. This can lead to production chain breaks if route quantities are not carefully matched to the islands' production capacity.
  • A ship will sit and wait until all goods set to be delivered have been unloaded. If shipping multiple item types, it will not make a return trip for high-demand items until all the low-demand items have been delivered. If a deliverable is already at maximum capacity, the freighter will not resume its route, likely causing a production chain break.

Many of these issues can be alleviated by careful planning and establishing sale orders and sale routes along with Quotas to ensure that no deliverable supply is ever 'maxed', and meticulously tailoring the pickup quantities to match production rates.

One-Time Routes[]

A ship set on a One-Time route will behave just like a Continuous Route, but will automatically pause after it has completed all its tasks and returned to its original port of call. This route can be reactivated by unpausing the idle ship.

Underwater Trading Routes[]

With the Deep Ocean expansion, you can also create an underwater trading route. This means your submarine travels as much as possible under the surface. In a harbour or near an ark he will surface. You can activate underwater routes by clicking on the dive symbol next to the trading route name.

Setting an Island Minimum[]

It can be useful to move excess items around while keeping a certain stock level or necessary to keep some amount of an item on the source island while transferring the rest for production. For example, if you are producing pasta on one island with an excess of vegetables but also need those vegetables for health food on another island or have extra coal on an island with a coal power plant but want to move your excess to your steel / iron island. 

To set an island minimum, you can open your warehouse (not the trade menu, the actual warehouse) and right click on the goods you want to set. The green slider allows you to set a minimum to maintain at that location. The game will not let your own automated trade routes pull goods past this minimum. It will, however, allow NPCs to do so! To prevent this, make sure you set a higher level in the 'Trade' screen when selling those goods to NPCs.

Another benefit to this is not having to micro manage drop-off / pickup levels as closely from the trade screen if you are willing to accept a certain amount of inefficiency for ease of use.

Selling tactics[]

The price for buying and selling various goods and items vary greatly depending on who the other party is. For instance, Yana and Rufus will buy consumables of their own faction at a reasonable price. Usually selling products produced by a faction to someone from that faction will be the highest price a player can get for those items (e.g Carbon by techs to dr Devi).

Computer Players will put desired goods on display: select any warehouses or Arks to check what they have to offer (goods they want to buy will be outlined in red). The wanted goods will change with the advance of the sector. Human players can set up a similar system, informing AI and other players of what goods they are willing to buy and at what price.

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