If only that was possible, like it was in Port Royal 2. In fact there are things in that game that would have made COAS a far greater game, PR2 was based more around trade which was nice and in order to take towns you had to weaken the military convoy's for that nation to a stage where they was too weak to defend all the towns they owned. But also by taking towns off them you reduced the total military convoy's that nation could have, although they could have as many armed ships they couldn't have as many military convoy's as they liked. And when you took a town you could build things like production sites that would produce rum, food etc so you could trade the goods making profit all the time. However there was a catch, you couldn't just attack and capture a town you had to capture so many towns for a nation before you would be granted to capture one for yourself. The game was very indepth in how it was all setup. I guess thats why even today its a popular game.
This is one of the reasons i wanted to make the cargo holds smaller, and increase the weight of goods. To make trading tougher but more fun, later in the game in the stock version you had so much money you couldn't do anything with it, you was alway's looking for some where to stash it all. Hopefully the new changes we've both made will reduce that and make it more fun. In real life it was tough to get any where, for example it would be nice to be able to sign a contact with a towns govener to be a merchantman for that town, then you are given a list of goods the town requires and a list of goods the town will use to trade for those goods. You get paid not buy the trade you do but by how much your contact say's you are paid. And you are paid weekly not every day. Now that would massively make the game more fun and bring a more realistic side to been a merchant for a nation.