Caravans: How To Make Money?

[SkyShadowing]

I've been bouncing some of these questions around in the Tips thread, but I see enough people in other threads having the same "problem" as me, so I figured a new thread for everybody would help everybody.

First, I have no clue how to make money. I don't have a Trade Patent yet, and I'm not selling expensive goods. Even the cheapest goods lose money due to me not getting my initial investment on the caravan back. I get a message of "Your total profit is 400 gold", but I only get back the 400, not the couple thousand I laid down on the Caravan.

Anyone have any tips? Things to look out for?

 

[Cyrgo]

I have'nt  used the caravans yet, all my trading has been done by myself, so I can't give you any advice on caravans.  But I can give you a tip on trading product:  one of the products that has been profitable to trade is Tools bought at Koenisberg (price around 150-200) and sold two cities away at 380.

 

[Greenfur]

What ive been doing is opening the good window in a city and checking if they have any good stuff, anything that would normally swing widly in price from city to city(spice,iron,velvet,oil... not food )if a city has one of these i hit asses local prices (you need at least 1 point in trade I think) if the goods you saw in the trade window appear in the assess then makea  caravan for that city with those goods.
Your going to need about 6-10k to start doing this mind you, but so far ive doubled my money on every trade, with one velvet trade costing me 10k for the caravan and selling for 78k

A quick edit, I noticed in my version(steam) the tax from expensive good was actually given to me rather than taken away so I made more money before i got a patent

 

[GunnersMate]

I don't have a trading permit yet, and I have made about 130,000 profit from 3 caravan runs.  Its confusing at first because there is very little information as to what the numbers mean and how everything is calculated.

The number next to the good is the price of the good at the city you are in.  The caravan cost seems to have a fixed cost of somewhere around 3,000 just to have a caravan, and then an added variable cost for the goods.  Nowhere is profit listed in the mayor screen.  You have to figure out where the most profitable routes are, similar to how trading has worked in every previous M&B game.  However, the caravans allow you to buy large amounts of the very expensive/profitable goods that in previous games might only have a couple units in the market. 

Focus on the expensive goods (velvet, spice, etc.), and find cities where they are cheapest.  Then just send a large caravan with the good to a city where the goods sell for many times more.  I forget which city, but I found one near Krakow that had velvet at almost 60 a unit, but you could find multiple cities buying velvet at nearly a 1,000 per.

 

[ilikemilkshake]

I found one near Krakow that had velvet at almost 60 a unit, but you could find multiple cities buying velvet at nearly a 1,000 per.

You're a legend 
I found plenty cities wanting velvet, but could never find anywhere selling, gonna check around Krakow now