I have over 1k hours in Patrician III, and hopefully I can share my knowledge in this guide to help you automate your game and ascend the ranks very quickly too!

This guide will be a reasonably extensive guide that includes a lot of what you need to know including my own experience and opinions.

In this guide I will include:

• Good initial automated routes
  
• Trading posts done right
  
• Trading routes done right
  
• Other tips regarding automatization

I will be adding sections as I have time. Hope you find this useful !

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Starting location: Stockholm
Year: 1300
Easy profit goods: 1. Iron goods + 2. Skins
Total profit of this route: 32K gold per run
Difficulty: Hardest, high demand.

Trade route: Stockholm -> Riga -> Gdansk -> Stettin -> Rostock -> Malmo -> Visby

Overall, adding an adminstrator gets you:

• Cheaper prices
  
• More quantity to buy (and therefore more to sell)
  
• Automatic

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Buy: Stockholm and Tallin
Sell: Everywhere else

Sell Quantity: 15-40 per town (avg 30).
Buy Quantity: 30 average quantity x 6 towns = 180 roughly

Without administrator

At the very beginning of the game, you can buy Iron Goods at around 330 per barrel, and sell them for 350-450 (avg 380) per barrel.

• 30 barrels x 380 sell price = 11400
  
• 30 barrels x 330 buy price = 9900 (without administrator)
  
• Profit = 1500 roughly per town

Profit per run = less than 18k

With an adminstrator

Trading office - Order your adminstrator to buy up to (6 towns x 15 or 30 =) 90 or 180 Iron Goods (set as needed) at a maximum price of 300. In my experience, the average barrel ends up at a cost of 280. This is much better as he will buy whenever there is abundance guaranteed, so when you arrive you have your goods ready to go.

Trade route - Pick up 'max' Iron goods from stockholm, sell at 350 'max' in all other cities.
The amount you pick up will be the amount you decide to buy, set in the trading office.

• 30 barrels x 380 sell price = 11400
  
• 30 barrels x 280 buy price = 8400 (with administrator)
  
• Profit = 3000 roughly per town

Profit per run = 3000 profit/town x 6 = 18.000 per run guaranteed

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Buy: Max possible at Tallin and Riga.
Sell: Set to sell in all cities except Malmö (receives skin imports, so you won't sell there). In the last stop, Stockholm, set your trade route to deposit 'max' amount of skins. Sell your skins with your adminstrator at your trading office, not your ship!

• Buy price: 600 - 850 (avg 700)
  
• Sell price: 950

• Sell Quantity: ~5-10 per town (Avg: 10)
  
• Buy Quantity: 10 x 6 towns = 60 roughly

Without administrator

• 10 barrels x 950 sell price = 9500
  
• 10 barrels x 800 buy price = 8000
  
• Profit: 1500 per town

Less than 15k profit.

With adminstrator

• 10 barrels x 950 price = 9500
  
• 10 barrels x 650 price = 6500
  
• Profit: 3000 per town

With initial route:

3000 profit/town x 5 = 15.000 per run guaranteed
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TIP: Make your main town your ''supply center''. Everything you produce will go there and then re-distributed from there. This will make your life so-much-easier.

Providing consistently what your main town needs is the #1 way to reach town mayor fast. So how should you do it?

Step 1 - Setting everything you need in your town

-Get an adminstrator.
-Set to sell everything except the resources you need for production or for goods that your town produces (you might want to set to buy those)
-Set everything to 1. This will help you realize what your trade routes are gathering and what you are selling. Every time you run out, you'll see a 1 and remember ''oh yes my trade route should get a bit more of this''.
-After you begin producing in your town, sell the resources you produce too at a reasonably low price (above the cost) - (wool in visby sells well)

For example: You produce Iron Goods in Stockholm at 300 initially. Sell for 320 instead of 350 for non-producing towns. Also, never sell Iron Goods in other towns that produce Iron Goods.

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Step 2 - How much to sell or buy?

In the beginning you're going to need to buy every good your town needs with your ships as you don't have trade offices in other towns yet. Try to create an automatic trade route.

Use the town's building to see how much consumption of a good there is.

If consumption is 20 of a good per week, then be sure that the town has 2 weeks worth of goods in the town (40) and some extra in your storage.

Remember that for things like grain, hemp and honey they will demand more in winter and overall there will be less production. So make sure to stock up in those goods.

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Step 3 - Trade routes + Trial and error

Making the perfect trade routes is hard. The population will keep increasing in towns so you'll need to constantly re-adjust the amounts in your trade routes. Overall, try to keep it so have a 1-10 goods left by the time your trade route comes back.

Usually, try to keep trade routes as simple as possible. Around 6-8 towns is good.

TIP 1: When you start producing things like Grain or beer, have 1 ship going between 2 towns only.

TIP 2: Have 1 ship for your main export and call it ''Iron Goods Clockwise'' to make your life easy. But you have 2 of them, 1 going clockwise and another going anti clockwise going through the same towns. This will help you reach every town as usually you don't fill up your ship to sell to everytown and 1 town ends up having excess and the last one in the trade being empty. Then I have a general convoy for everything else.


TIP 3: Disable sound notification for automatic trading routes.