Here are a few starters tips I've been using in my last games of EIC "Directors Cut".
In that game you start with a cutter, so don't expect to have much cargo-space.
1) Order the construction of a sloop.
2) Your first mission is to sail to India, to buy goods there and to return with them. You can do that with "auto-trade'; however the first stop doesn't buy goods. Check your ledger to see which Indian cities require Silver(ware) and buy that. Then send your ship in "Auto-trade" to India.
3) As soon as the sloop is finished, form a convoy and order it to sail to a city producing Silk or Spices. No need to buy goods, because you might run out of money before your Cutter reaches India.
4) Once your Cutter made it to India, you get a reward of 50K. Don't spend the money -yet- but instead wait until your Cutter has made it back past Capetown. The reason for that is that the captain often buys Diamonds in one of the South-African cities, while you also get your first tax-bill showing up.
5) If you have the money left for it after taxes are paid, order the construction of a Schooner. By the time it's finished, the Cutter should have retured to your hometown.
6) Order the Cutter to pick up Ivory or Gold, while the Schooner is put into a new convoy which trades with the city the Cutter was trading with first. Make sure you set all trading convoys to the "avoid enemy ships" stance, to make sure they avoid being attacked too often by pirates.
7) By now you should get a convoy consisting of 5 Galleon's. Use these to capture a city producing Silk or Spices; prefered the one you're trading with. It'll take that convoy over a year to get to that city, so keep trading with that particular city. Taking over Aceh or Port St.Blair is another option, since there are only two ports producing Porcelain.
8) Everytime you have over 75K in money, order a new Schooner. Once it is constructed, form a fleet and order it to auto-trade with an Indian city. Eventually you would have 6 fleets doing your trading, one for each good.
9) Order the construction of another Cutter and add that one to the first Cutter. Remove that fleet from trading, load it up with Marines and wait until the ban of attacking another EIC is lifted.
The moment that ban is lifted, position your fleet near the Canaries and attack the fleets of each EIC returning home once. Capture the ships and the goods; sell all off and use the money to create a 2nd group of Schooner-convoys to do the trading. Eventually you'll end up with 1 battle-convoy, 2 convoys trading Porcelain, 2 trading Silk, 2 trading Tea, 2 trading Spices, 2 trading Coffee, 2 trading Hides. A single sloop set to trade Ivory can be set as well. Add another Schooner to do missions and to take Ironwares to the port you have captured.
10) You need to improve the buildings in the port you captured. To do so you need money and Ironwares. Start by expanding the Tradingpost to lvl 4. Next is to upgrade the shipyard to lvl 4, followed by the garrison to lvl 4, the fortress to lvl 4 and eventually the shipyard to lvl 4.
By doing so, you start profiting of the reduced prices for the goods of that town, are able to build a small fleet of cutters for patrolling the area, are able to put marines at your Cutters, as well as defending the port and eventually are able to build the highest level ships there.
11) With enough money in the pocket, start building Schooners for your fleets and a few Cutters for your war-fleets. If you get a mission to attack another EIC because they are too powerful, accept it and completely destroy that EIC. You might consider using their ships, but in general only the Cutters are useful. The trade-ships are too often sloops and thus have a low cargo-space.
12) When your fleets encounter pirates, fight the battle yourself and order the ships to flee. Although you might miss out on a good ship, the risk of loosing your fleet - and its cargo - is too high. The good thing of those battles is that your trade captains can increase their skills. When they do, pick skills in this order: 1) Navigation, 2) Increased cargo-space, 3) Salesman, 4) Haggler, 5) Flee, Unsinkable etc.
The reason for that order is one of logic. Navigation makes your fleets move faster, thus you're able to sell more goods in both towns. Increased cargo-space mean you're also able to haul more. These two already increase your profit a lot.
Since you're already able to buy at a discount at both ports because of the increased Trading posts, Salesman is a better choice over Haggler since it gives you an increased profit. Taking Haggler after that to get even a higher discount is the logical step after that.
To increase the skills of your captains it's best to keep the pirates near St.Louis alive, no matter how anoying they are. Fighting is the only way to increase your captain's skills in EIC.
13) After 50 years you get new goals and new ships. Start by unlocking the Galleon and build 5 of them. When finished (about 4 years later), order them to capture another Indian port. Aceh or Port St.Blair are good choices because there are only two cities producing Porcelain. So make sure you secure one of those ports early in the game.
14) The Flute should be able to be unlocked as well, so do so and start building them after the Galleons. As soon as a Flute is finished, use it to replace a - or more - Schooner(s) in a convoy. You might consider moving the Schooner(s) to another convoy(s), to increase their cargo-space until they too can be replaced.
Keep on replacing the Schooners by Flutes until all your convoys are filled, or until you get the East-India Man (usually the last).
15) When the Xebec is available, build a few of those to be added to your war-convoy. I prefer to use 3 Xebec's and 2 cutters in a Convoy.
From now on it's rinse and repeat. When the Frigate comes available, you should add 3 frigates to your warfleet and remove the Cutters. The East-India Man class ships should replace the flutes over time.
If you end up in war with a nation, destroy them completely to make sure you have less competition. Using some bottlenecks at sea (Straight of Gibraltar, English Channel) to ambush those fleets is a good option. Keep capturing the Indian ports. Make sure you own at least one port of each trade-good, to make sure you meet the campaign goals.
The AI often captures the cities producing Ivory, Gold, Diamond, Hides and Coffee, so try to become an Ally of a nation having one of these ports. Bribing them might help. If not, declare war on them and capture those ports yourself. Just make sure you don't over-expand!
Galleon's make better ships to attack ports as Frigates do, however, they won't stand a change against the 3-5 star ports. If you want to capture a port of an AI competitor, DOW them, wait until they have given up that port, of have lowered its defences. Then attack that port and capture it.
In my game I ended up with 12 trading fleets for trading with the Indian cities, 1 mission-fleet (transporting Ironwares mostly), 3 War-fleets (2 patroling near Lisboa, 1 between the cities I had captured) and 1 fleet picking up Ivory. That last one was using a Sloop for quite some time and a Schooner later. No need to use a larger ship for it.
That way I had 3 "fleet-slots" left which were filled with fleets I captured from the AI. Those fleets were send back to my homeport and the goods (if import) were either sold or stored in my warehouse. The ships were sold.
Hope all of this helps a little.
Thorin
