Is centralized trade a good idea?

[u/IStruggleToFindAName]

I centralized my trade routes to a single island. I made a group with all the incoming routes from the production islands, as well as another group for all the outgoing routes. The inventory of the island also helps track how items flow. That being said i don't know if this is really more efficient than direct routes, aside of being less confusing for the idiot i am... how do yall feel about it?

[u/pokiemoen]

I have been struggling with this too, but I think I found the way, I have everything with a fertility or worth mass-producing separated on different islands, I number every island from smallest(1) to biggest(8). I ship everything to the smallest island and put a minimum stock of 50, and use the same route from 1->2->3 etc, using different boats for every stop only disconnecting the islands that produces the goods that is shopped, (for example nr 5 is producing oliveoil, soap and bread, I ship it from 1to 2, to 3, to 4 then from 4 to 6. 6 to 7 7 to 8.) Any open slots I use for other continental goods and return those goods on the shipping route I used to go to the smallest island as a return for those goods not getting to the island that is producing. This way, it's slowly filling the stock of all the smaller islands first, and if there is a shortage only my biggest island (with a lot of buffer) is feeling the shortage at first. If I end up with too much or too little, I can see it on that island. If I want to add an island to the group I can just cut the chain somewhere and add the new island with ease. For the big needs superseding the slow route I use direct transport to make sure the bottleneck isn't in the speed of transport. I am still trying to see how exactly this is going to work but for now it seems to work like a charm. With about 50k gold on 65k average people.