I gotta say that the work to set up manual transactions does not frustrate anywhere near as much as the lack of food on the markets.
If I had to continuously put up purchase offers, or accept sell offers, but these would be easily filled, I'd be considerably less frustrated than if it were all automated but there was no transaction to be had anyways. Back during the caravans, I had to continuously send out a ton of caravans. But I did not find it anywhere near as frustrating as I find things now, following the food reductions of Dwilight, and I never really did mind having to manually send caravans all of the time.
Creating (considerably greater) resource scarcity didn't create conflict, it just created frustration. There was already plenty of interactions due to food already.
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