I removed my original list of items produced at each town becuase it's actually random by game. I'll instead walk through a guide to trading and then producing goods. Instead, I've loaded a spreadsheet I use every game for tracking everything from good by city to my trade routes. I've included some examples from a recent playthrough...enjoy!

https://ufile.io/x84mf

1 - Before going after silver it can be good to go after Tobacco, Coffee and Cocoa, these are single stage goods (no manufacturing) and can be found in decent quantities at a few locations. They are cheaper than silver so easier to buy in bulk early on. (Thanks Mithras for the contribution)

2 - Look for a town with silver, price should be around 300. Find another town nearby that doesn't have silver and you should clear around 80 per unit.

3 - Record the location of the following items as they are crucial to trading. Each letter represents what a single town should be producing :

A. Silver & Jewellery
B. Fish, Meat, Salt, Salted Fish, Corned Beef (For the "Banquet" quests) - Fruit as well
C1. Iron, Irongoods & Weapons ----> Find these two nearby one another
C2. Lumber, Timber ----> (For the "Shipwright" quests
D. Sugarcane, Sugar
E. Grain, Flour
F. At some point a few cities will start to get 10 units of Wine, Porcelain, Silk & Spices. These locations are key to finishing "low supply" quests and you can get a very large gain by having some reserves of these items when you find a quest.

4 - These will fulfill most requirements in cities aid requests and you should be able to increase rank rapidly. A war brigantine fully loaded can take down some large vessels and you should be able to build up a fleet.

5 - Once you start thinking about production you should focus on a few locations becuase you have to visit the towns and manually sell what you produce. Since that's the case I usually just grab everything I produced and sell it at another town for a larger profit margin.

A. Silver & Jewellery are easy to create and both are worth a large amount. For starting, just buy a silver mine or two and you will always have a "reserve" to grab.
B. Fish, Meat & Salt are common and make salted fish and corned beef. Both fetch a high price and are common in the "Banquet" quest.
C2. Create a furniture manufacturing plant, expensive but this is probably one of the most rare items in the game.
D. If you find a town making sugar, build yourself a distillery as this is another very rare item.
E. Make bread, this is rare and is commonly requests at towns in "Banquet" and "Short Supply" quests.


--Adding another section
Once you have ships bigger than (I believe class 2) then you start having to pay harbor fees and taxes. One way to avoid this is to visit the pirate towns as they won't charge you. Personally, I'm happiest running around the map with something like a war brigantine and then a few other ships. You don't pay harbor fees and if you kite other ships (Sail away into the wind and turn back & forth to fire). You can take down most attackers.

If you have a few towns producing some high dollar items, it makes the game more fun becuase you have a reserve that you can retreat back. It's very difficult to build up a high enough rank to take towns and get cannons so early game is mostly trade focused.


Hope that helps, feel free to comment if you want more advice or additions. I was thinking of creating an excel doc with the towns so you can easily track your production and what towns produce.