Getting a trade business going makes Patrician 3 interesting for me. Where others use buildings to make gold, my approach is buy low and sell high. I normally keep only 5-6 ships.

I'm trying something a little different to give a comparison with other people's play styles. I've started in year 1300 on Merchant difficulty and am playing with goal "balance of wealth" for 1 year.

Trading is really efficient at making gold. I started in 1300 (June) and it's now 1301 (April). I've accumulated 809,924 gold and my company total wealth is just under twice that: 1,506,288 gold. Maybe that opens the eyes of other Patrician 3 players - trade is very profitable, and your only expense is wages for ~10 sailers per ship.

Unfortunately to prove that point I'm juggling 11 ships, where normally I only keep 5-6 ships active. It's more work than fun at that point. Cities are better supplied in general, keeping price swings smaller. And I have more ships to keep from overlapping each other. So with a dozen ships, trading is likely to be dull.

I still plan on finishing that experiment and posting the result after 1 year of play.

Update: finished, what a relief to end this experiment in pure trading with many ships.

Playing balance of wealth for 1 year, I wound up with:
score 1140 pts
reputation 322
wealth 1,997,127 (about 1.3 million gold, rest goods)
ships 11
offices 3
employees 2

I'm a bit confused here, what were you trying to prove? Like trading is profitable compared to which other playstyle?

Capturing merchant ships sure gives a steeper increase in wealth at first, but then you'd have to keep the hansa going all by yourself which can be quite a daunting task. But plundering a town's coffers has little ill effect early on, I just hate fighting towers manually so rarely use it. All your buildings, ships, loans also count towards the wealth, sitting on all this dead cash wasn't necessary.

Decrease your speed and use automated routes if the juggling becomes too much (unless that was against the point of your experiment).

My play style is purely trading, which I've understood is very different from most people playing Patrician 3. It also comes up for beginners, who might lack a play style and yet have trouble getting enough gold to keep their empire going. Both of those audiences could use an alternative approach, which I was trying to maximize. I had no buildings other than trading centers. I typically use an open ended game, so I didn't know until now that loans are counted in wealth. Pesky to deal with impounds, but worth it if the gold is idle.

I'd be interested in a comparison with trading vs plundering merchants. How long does it take to get started with that approach, and how quickly does wealth add up when you're capturing merchant ships?