A Lord in one of Summerdale's northernmost regions, who never joined any guild is SUPPOSED not to know that D'Hara is such a trade haven, especially because you purposely not advertise your trade between council members to avoid intrusions. And if he, reading on the forum what we wrote, decides that is the moment to take a walk to Morek and join a couple of trading guild, you served a perfect ooc intrusion in the game without any effort. I don't like it.
About bankers, I would like to hear something from someone that plays a banker on testing, but as far as my tiny duchy is concerned, I have absolutely no clue how much food is available given that the majority of it is on his way somewhere and undetectable. day by day caravans reach the city and deposit food, but it's overall a system solely based on trust and nothing else. This can be nice, but if the banker loses a good network of information, he has nothing in his hands. Much like a General working in a realm without armies. He's useless.
edit: just to expand a bit my argument. I'm not saying bankers should have the chance to micromanage food and discover immediately whether a lord is smuggling food out of the realm or not. However, I believe they should have the informations and powers that would allow them to feed their own realm or gain money from the surplus by themselves in the case the realm agrees on that. As things stand now bankers would have a hard time oranizing the trade according to the surplus/deficit of food of their realm, since a huge portion of said food is travelling and invisible. Just as the General is the one supposed to organize armies and is the one to be blamed first if a realm performs poorly militarily, one expects the same thing for food and bankers. But if they don't have the tools for doing that, they are useless.
