Ikariam Commerce and Trading Guide

Commerce and Trading is one of the two ways of making your Empire grow strong and expand. The other is Pillaging. To trade with other players you first need Cargo Ships, which you can get at the Trading Port (17 logs to build a level one). Each ship can hold up to 300 units in total, which could be made of just one resource like 300 wines or a combination of them, like 100 wines + 50 crystal + 150 Marble. The speed at wich you can load /unload goods from/to Cargo Ships is given by Trading Port level. The starting speed for a level 1 port is 10 resource units / minute. Each upgrade after that will get you better loading speeds. However, keep in mind that if your city falls under pillage from an enemy, the total amount of loot he will get increases with your Trading Port level! See the following table for more info:

 

We can see how important it is NOT to upgrade past level 1 your Trading Port if you happen to be in a hot spot. Back to trading, before you can have colonies, you will need to do a lot of trading with the surrounding cities. You will probably offer your trade good, or luxury good, whatever it is in your island (Wine, Crystal, Marble or Sulphur). If you are not mining that resource from your island yet, that should be your first priority, see How to Start Gathering Your Resources in Ikariam. Notice that there is no point in having a Trade Port or Cargo Ships until after you have started mining your trade good. Doing so before will only help your enemies to loot more stuff from you.

Cargo Ships

Cargo Ships don't have an upkeeping cost, and they can not be attacked or looted while on their way. (However, if they arrive at at port which is suferring a blockade, the attackign army will gain control of the cargo ship until it unloads the goods at your enemies port) You can build Cago Ships in the Trading Port if you have enought Gold. The price you have to pay grows with the number of ships. the first one will be very cheap, and then the price will start rising quickly. Check the table below to see whats ahead:

 

Ikariam: Distance Between Cities

Even thou your Cargo Ships don't have an upkeeping cost like your troops do, it is still not advisable to trade with cities far far away. Distances from cities may be anything from 40 minutes up tp 15 or 20 hours, in case you are in trading with someone in the complete opposite corner of the world. The best way to trade is to send in-game PMs to the people in the island nearby. They are close enough to make trading worthy. Try to be somewhat selective, don't send PMs asking for wine to people in a sulphur island. Also, try not to PM as much people with a Town Hall level smaller of 1 or 2 since they may not even have reseached Wealth and therefore cannot mine their trade good. Also, people will a high level Town Hall city will usualyl have colonies and not be so inclined to trade. However, when in doubt, send more PMs until you get answers. Try not to trade all your inventory with the same player, but diversify your tradings, there are meny benefits for this: you get to know more people around you, and have better relationships with them, which means minimizing the chances of beeing attack by someone close to you. Also if the player whom you normally trade goes inactive or even leaves the game, you can still trade with other people as usual. It makes you less dependable on other players. Your Empire will grow strong and independant, influencing those around you to favor your Cities and your Alliance, if you were to found one.

Ikariam Trade Good - Trading Rates

It is well known that a wood unit costs 4 golds. To be accurate, to produce wood is free, but since each worker in the mill is one less citizen that can pay taxes, the net result of having someome working the in mill is that we dont make those 4 golds.

For Trade Goods (Wine, Crystal, Marble and Sulphur) the calculations are more complex. For starters, you need double the amount of workers to produce 1 unit of those resources. In numbers: 100 workers in the Mill produce 100 logs in 1 hour, however, 100 workers in a wineyard will produce onyl 50 wines an hour. Thats gives a start price of double that of the wood: 8 golds. Trade Wine, Crystal, Marble or Sulphur for less than 8 golds a piece and you will be loosing money. However there is more to take into consideration: Wood can be produced in every island, while on the other hand Trade Goods can not. The ratio is 1:4 since thare are 4 different trade goods. Four times 8 is 32 golds, which is a number that looks more like the final price of a trade good.

There are some final considerations. Different Trade Goods or Luxury items will have a diferent price based on the stage at which your world/server is at. At the beggining, Wine is king and Sulphur is useless, since most people will be growing populations and upgrading buildings instead of fighting each other. At a later stage Marble takes the lead beeing the most sought-after resource because to upgrade most buidings. It also depends on your own situation, if you are in a hot spots battling many enemies, you will problably be starving for Sulphur, but if you happend to be in a quiet area, then Sulphur will do you no good.

Finally if you trade goods for goods, normally a 1:1 ratio is the norm, unless you can find someone whose development is beeing halted so much because the lack of a particular resource that it will push him to agree to deal with a 3:4 or 2:3 or even 1:2 and 1:3 ratios.

The Trading Post

The Trading Post can automate some of your business. You need to research Wealth to unlock the Tradgin Post, but since it should be your first priority you should be able to build that already. The Trading Post allows you to buy and sell tradeing goods (Wine, Crystal, Marble and Sulphur) with your neighbours automatically. You can leave offers and wait for someone to accept them, or you can acept someone's offer, either way Cargo Ships will automatically go and fetch the goods for you. You can upgrade your Trade Post to rise your business range by trading with people farther away.