The absolute best of its kind.
You start by picking a home town. Each town produces a few products at high efficiency, and another few at low efficiency (meaning there will be a steady supply, and you can stock up on those goods in those cities, and sell them elsewhere in places that don't produce them). Let's say Luebeck that produces Iron Goods averaged at 300 gold a barrel. Then you sail up the coast selling to the cities with shortages. Stocking up on the products they make like honey, skins, meats and stuff Luebeck needs and bringing it back there for them.
You have a reputation in your hometown, both your own rank that increases based on your performance, allowing you access to more and more important people and facilities, eventually allowing you to enter politics. And you have a reputation among the 3 classes in society. The lower, middle and upper. Known as Poor, Wealthy and Rich. Each class has its own material needs. The Poor are satisfied with beer and grain but the rich want meat and wine and higher end items. You basically end up setting up supply lines to your hometown in order to supply it, which makes it more attractive for outsiders to move to, which increases the population, which drives up the demand for the goods you sell and supply for those produced in the city increasing your profits.
You need to make housing for these people, and you can go out of your way to source the materials yourself and basically build stuff at half price if you're savvy. You can buy bricks and timber slowly over time from cities that produce and just store them in your warehouse until you're ready to build so you aren't dependent on market rates, which might be double what they are in some cities if there's a shortage at the time you want to build. You also can build industry which is required for the beggar's who come to the cities to get jobs and become the Poor class and move into housing (and paying rent). Then the products made from these industry will be in higher supply, so you'll have them at an even cheaper place at your market to help you export elsewhere.
Then once you've visited another city enough, you can set up a trade office there and repeat this exact process. And once you search long and wide across the map (there are only 2 on the map at a given time, and there's a total of 24 possible places for them to be) for a Captain, you can automate the whole thing. You set the exact price and amount you want him to buy at, at what cities, and he'll sail up and down and do it for you. You can also pay an administrator at your trading office to buy things off the market at a set rate while you're not actively keeping track of the city.
There's so many more mechanics here. I'm really new to the game still. There's pirates that'll be a real hassle, but you can arm your ships and sailors, and eventually have them travel with convoys and partake in naval battles. You can become a pirate and take to the pirate life yourself. You can become the Lord Mayor of a city and if you anger the Prince he'll raid you and you have to literally buy the bricks and supplies to upkeep the town defenses.
You can join the guild. You can go to the bath house and have shady deals. You can accept offers to deliver goods to besieged towns quickly for super high profits. You lend a bunch of low interest loans, donate to the church, host amazing festivals, and keep all the city's goods stocked at normal prices and everyone will love you. Or you can make predatory loans, price gouge during crises, never donate a single loaf of bread or ounce of gold, never host a festival and literally go out of your way to buy up all the goods and cause shortages in cities and everyone will despise you. You can get paid to hide illegal goods in your warehouse or transport them, which require you to do specific things to keep them hidden or else you end up having to deal with the law. You can sell shares of your company, and I believe do stock buybacks (it looks like there's an option for it but it hasn't been available to me yet). You can just lend your ships to pirates who will pay you a lot, but with the risk of obvious damage or loss of your ship and some legal consequences for you.
There's a ton of stuff I know I'm forgetting, and definitely more I'm unaware of. It really is the best of its craft. Such a good fusion of different mechanics going on complimented by a really, really unique setting. I didn't know anything about anything about the Hanseatic League prior to this game and it's actually really fascinating. A few times I've closed out of this to go find a documentary about the subject.
Highly highly recommend if it looks like it might be interesting to you.
