Shipping and Trade

Build routes, carry containers to the demanded town and respond to the changing market.

Place and move Navigation Points

Each sea hex can hold at most one Navigation Point. Town and company ports cannot hold points. Plain-sea placement costs 1 credit; a sandbank costs 2. A rock cannot hold a point unless you have the Navigation Expert investment, which raises its placement and movement cost to 2 credits. You need at least one share in the point’s company to place its point. Pay the placement cost from that company’s treasury, not your own.

The 2-point action can combine placing and moving points. Only that company’s CEO may move its points already on the map. The company must have enough treasury to pay for each placement. A company without a CEO cannot move its existing points.

Set Sail

Take one free sail from your current port to one destination port along a continuous chain of occupied sea hexes. Points can belong to different companies. For each point used, pay its owning company 1 credit unless your shares cover it: each share you hold in a company covers one of that company’s points during this port-to-port movement.

Each Set Sail action is one focused port-to-port movement; do not backtrack or loop within it. Entering a port ends the movement and resets the share coverage and toll calculation for another free sail. A port with fewer than two ships must be used as a stop. If it already holds two ships, you may sail through but cannot stop there or reset the calculation. A ship may never end a movement at a full port. The designer clarified these movement limits in the FAQ.

Ships begin with four cargo slots. The Cargo Space investment upgrades your board to six slots and keeps any cargo already aboard.

Load and produce

At a company port, spend one time-costing action to load one container from that company hex into an empty ship slot. The Loading Upgrade loads up to two per action. A company hex may hold no more than six containers.

Spend one time-costing action to produce a container by drawing one from the bag and placing it at its matching company. The Production Upgrade produces two at a single chosen company for the same time cost; do not split the production between companies. A color absent from the bag cannot be produced. The designer says to refill the bag once it is empty, but the answer does not specify the refill contents; see the FAQ.

Deliver at a town

When your ship is at a town port, deliver all containers aboard that match its current Demand Marker as a free action. You cannot split one color across deliveries. Receive the current market price per container into your personal funds, then add the delivered containers to that color’s market row.

Adjust all four container prices based on the counts in their market rows: the most common color or colors drop by one; the least common color or colors rise by one. A color with no containers is least common. Ties move together. When a price rises while already at 4, its company’s stock rises one. When a price falls while already at 1, its company’s stock falls one. If a price falls to 1, discard every container in that color’s market row; they do not return to the bag.

Finally, replace the town’s Demand Marker with the leftmost marker in the queue, shift the remaining markers left, and put the replaced marker in the rightmost slot. This can create another delivery opportunity at the same town. The designer confirmed that consecutive deliveries are allowed in the FAQ.

Container production

When the first player reaches the halfway point or Start, move the count-specific containers from the production slots to their matching company hexes. Then refill the slots from the bag for the next production. A company hex holds at most six; return any excess produced containers to the bag. Containers removed from the market when their value reaches 1 go to a separate discard pile.