Which, honestly, we just might do. I'm not saying I plan to do it, but it's an alternative. Many things in BM have always been and will always be experimental to some degree, and if they don't work out, if they don't add to the game, we will remove them again. It wouldn't be a first.
Still, I think food is important and should stay, and if we have food, then we need trade because otherwise the forum will be full of complaints when the first drought hits and people wonder why they can't simply buy or steal food somewhere else.
Can we even steal food anymore, now that caravans are gone?
Currently, trade exists to facilitate the exchange of food. Food is justified, because it makes cities dependent on rural regions, which counterbalances the importance of cities. Without food, cities would be self-sufficient regions, capable of supporting all economic structures, potent fortifications and able to produce large amounts of gold. That would be detrimental to gameplay, hence why food exists.
What you are asking, is the introduction of a new resource, not for the sake of balance, but for the sake of trade itself. As I demonstrated, trade is a supplementary feature, the role of which is to facilitate the exchange of food. Trade currently fulfils this role, fully, and so there is no point in adding to it.
I don't quite agree... Food makes trade necessary, but not quite "worth it". It's like if your well water was toxic, and the only solution you had was to buy a 2 million dollar filtration system. Without the pure water, you'd die. But does it really justify a 2 million dollar filtration system? Adding resources is basically the equivalent of giving your 2 million dollar filtration system other uses (water for exports, filtration for irrigation, juice filtration, etc.), so that you can better get a return on the investment.
This is something of a chicken-and-egg problem.
Regions must be fed. Therefore, realms work out ways to ensure that they are fed—without traders, because most realms don't have active traders.
If there were traders in the mix, it would be much easier for realms to just put up the offers (buy and sell) and let the traders handle the brokering. But, by and large, there aren't.
It's possible that this could be changed, at least somewhat, by removing or reducing the unit penalty for traders. If people could just hang onto the Trader subclass on the off-chance that there would be a use for it, without being penalized for that in their military capabilities, I think a lot more people would do it.
And many realms don't have traders because there just aren't enough food on the markets to make it any fun. It's a vicious cycle, really. There's not enough trading to do to incite people to become traders, and as such there aren't enough traders around to do the trading that is required. Hence why I think we should try to make being a trader more interesting, without making them any more necessary.
