Combat is also a bit slow and deliberate, but it can provide some interesting tactical battles. The adventurer campaign splits off from the trading portion and introduces you to the elements of ship-to-ship combat and even ship-to-town fighting. If trading doesn't tickle your fancy, Port Royale 3 also offers some naval combat. Also, automating your ships is only useful once you buy more vessels, so you can control a convoy of ships and let the others run routes. My experience with the automated system is that the AI isn't nearly as proficient at making cash as you would manually, and I'm sure that's intentional. You can set a number of trading options - e.g., trading for raw materials, trading for profit only - and take a more hands-off approach while (hopefully) watching the cash roll in.

If you'd prefer to not control the movement, you can also set up trade routes, which allow you to select a number of towns and have your convoy of ships move automatically between them. You can helpfully hold down a button to bump it up to 10 times the normal speed, but a few more options in between or beyond would have been more helpful for particularly long trips. These add a little flavor to the experience of moving from one town to the next, but the general movement via the overworld map is kind of slow. Occasionally, you'll also see pirate bases, pirate ships, shipwrecked survivors, and flotsam containing random goods. You start off with a number of discovered towns, but exploring along the coasts often reveals new trading locations. Via the overworld map, you also have some limited exploration elements. The game also gives you an average price for the goods you currently have stowed on your vessels, so you'll always be able to tell if you're making a profit. The idea is to buy the excess for a low amount and sell the desired stuff for a profit. When you bring up the dock, you see a list of goods and a helpful marker next to each that lets you know if the town has an excess or shortage of it. A lot of goods tend to tie in to other things, such as needing adobe bricks and wood so you can create buildings or farms in other locations. There are about 18 different goods in Port Royale 3, including adobe bricks, sugar and textiles. The building that gets the most play is the dock, which is where you purchase and sell goods. This gives you the ability to look around and check out the buildings, and later in the game, you can place your own buildings, farms and houses for your workers. If you prefer, you can switch from the overhead map view and actually enter the town. When visiting a port, you can bring up a radial menu that allows you to select from different buildings within the town. The game does a great job of giving the player enough information to make informed decisions about buying and selling, so you won't make a bad decision unless you're not paying attention. To Port Royale 3's credit, this isn't as difficult or cumbersome as it might sound. Once that's done, you can buy some rum, take that to another port, and sell it for a profit if that town is in need of drink. To make rum, Port Royale needs sugar, which you need to retrieve from a nearby town.

The introductory good in the onset of both tutorials comes from the rum produced in Port Royale.

Each town offers five goods that they tend to have in surplus, usually due to manufacturing via farms or factories.

In the trader campaign, your goal is to earn cash by purchasing goods at one port town and moving to the next to offload those goods at a higher price, all the while purchasing more to replenish your stock. You arrive on the docks of Port Royale to kick off your adventure, and you're quickly introduced to the concepts of buying low and selling high. In the two campaigns, you play the role of a young man or woman washed overboard and rescued aboard a Spanish galley. The naval forces from four countries - England, France, Holland and Spain - are trying to reign the seas and colonies. Port Royale 3 takes place in the 17th century and focuses on the Caribbean.

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