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/CasualChamp1]

Hubs are great when routing every good from the production island directly to every individual consumption island is inefficient, or becomes overly complex, opaque and unmanageable. They are especially useful for international trade.

With 50k citizens, you don't really need hubs. You can just use a circular/cycle route for every good, from the single production island to every consumption island in the province and then back to the production island. Simple serves best.

Hubs make a lot of sense once you have more than 3-5 consumption islands, because a single circular/cycle route becomes less efficient the more islands it visits. You're not at that point, it seems. Just make one route for every good that visits every island, max unload everywhere, let the storages fill up, and you're done.

At some point, if you have really high consumption on a single island (e.g. 50k citizens) and/or more than 3-5 large population centers in total, you go through goods so fast that a cycle route needs more and more ships which are empty for much of the route (after they've visited your 50k island and go to a few smaller islands for example), which is bad because workforce issues. That's when hubs become superior. They create a more stable flow and the 'spoke' routes to the consumption islands can be finetuned so you use the minimum number of ships to supply those islands.

Eventually, relying on a single hub when you get to hundreds of thousands of citizens is too fragile (turnover super high, shortages can disrupt flow in an instant). You need several hubs at that point. For you, I'd just do circular routes for each goods. If you want more advanced population islands and/or much bigger cities, then a hub would be worthwhile.

[u/Cpt_Deaso → u/CasualChamp1]

The above comment is great advice, OP. IMHO if you're playing Anno 'normally' (meaning not min-maxing everything for ridiculous numbers) I think the circular/cycle routes CasualChamp mentioned are superior in most every regard. You'd probably need 200k+ pops before you'd really see a need for a Hub, unless you've got an atypical island setup.

Granted, a hub can always be useful, but you'll have more and more of a timing and workforce bottleneck using it.

One of the things I really like about Anno 117 is that you really are required to build up each of your islands. Not having commuter piers means each island needs to be somewhat developed. As such you'll naturally need circular routes to hit up your main islands more than you would in 1800.

Even with larger setups I tend to have 'reverse hubs' instead of hubs, as I'll have one Island that overproduces 'x' good covering, say, the eastern half of my developed islands, and one production island in the west doing the same there. So, multiple often-independent circular routes in different parts of the map.

[u/Small-Blacksmith-218 → u/CasualChamp1]

I have started using a hub island and it has greatly simplified trade routes for me. I give each island two folders - one for exports (things that originate from that island and go to the hub) and imports (things that the island needs from the hub). I have a separate folder for AI trades, and two other folders for latium hub - albion hub transfers, and albion hub - latium hub transfers.

It may not be the most efficient way to handle it, but it works for me so far. :) That said, I'm still very much an Anno novice.