... Explorer Diaz is immediately available to drive around, rounding the Horn of Africa, attempting to reach China or Japan. It can be done before he dies sometime in 1500 AD; if not, Vasco de Gama can finish the job.

Click Start Game, click the Tago province, move the mouse around until a building highlights with a little black "balloon" text area appearing near the pointer saying "Promote Bailiff", then do so; continue doing so with your other provinces and the Azores off in the Atlantic. After a year, you'll be generating a nice healthy amount of taxes, but you'll need to adjust your budget and send merchants around to generate more, and find something to trade.

Finding trade items is a simple as sending Diaz around the map, but one needs ports to shorten distances. Find Fernando Po island off the coast of Africa, right-click the island to send a colonist ship; if the colonizing fails, right-click it again to send another ship out. While you're waiting for Po to colonize (and create a port in the process), send Diaz just offshore of Tago, find a Conquistador army, send it the ship, select the ship when they've boarded and then right-click Cape Verde islands to send the ship there and offload the troops. Once there, send Diaz down the coast of Africa; more than likely, this pass-by will "discover" small territories for the sending of traders.

Atop the control panel on the left side of the screen, click the coinbag to access the budget, moving the bottomost slider about halfway and then double-clicking to "set" the slider. Back out of that and find the money button about midway down the panel; the map will now change to the merchant screen. Click your home territory, place a merchant, and return to normal map mode.

As you drive Diaz nuts finding a route to spices and Portuguese glory, you can read the manual which is chock full of odd things you don't find in most game manuals. Like... what Royal marriages and vassalization were and other historical oddities. It's dense and detailed and will have you up nights reading history and...