The Aartform Games website now offers a playable demo for Spice Road to introduce this trade simulation set in the 18th century. There's also this trailer to give a pre-sample. Here's word on the game:

ABOUT SPICE ROAD:
Strategy trade empire building on the old Silk Road. Town building, social and ecomomic simulation game.

Deep in the mountains and deserts of central Asia, where life is hard and death is sudden, thin trails of gold, silk and spice trace a web between the industrial forges of the West and the exotic climes of the East.

You are a colonial governor in the 18th Century, building a town on the Spice Road in a time of war and discovery. More than spice travels your roads – musket armies, philosophies, and power plays that span the globe are at your control. From palace to monastry, trade post to smugglers den – your town is worthless without the nobles, monks, merchants and rogues that chose to live in it – and keeping them all happy at the same time is never simple.