As far as I can see, if traders are brokering trades, it's because lords/stewards are lazy. I have yet to see a trade brokered in any of the regions I have a character in. This includes my lord characters on Dwilight and FEI, my steward on EC, and my knights on AT and BT. (All of these are city regions.) I have seen lords sell me food. I have bought food from other regions. But I don't think that any trader has ever brokered any of my trade deals.
It would be great if AT were working as designed. The question then would be why is it working on AT, and not the other islands? Is the food balance right on AT, and really wacky on other islands? Or is your character in Coria in just the right place to take advantage of it?
Personally, I think we really need more feedback from other people on AT. I have heard from at least one duke on AT that they are almost out of food, no one is selling them food, and there are no Sell offers available.
1. I believe a lot of lords are inherently lazy in this game. At least when it comes to food related things.
2. Perhaps Coria is uniquely positioned to take advantage of it since we're right in the middle of the continent, but Atamara is has a very broad spectrum of food realms. We have realms that heavily import food such as Coria, as well as realms that heavily export food such as Strombran and Eston.
3. Coria has two traders (although one just paused) and they are required to get food because all of the food offers which I'm buying food from are from over 500-1000 miles away. In other words, they are on the far end of the continent. Some of them are closer, but still outside of the range of my city.
What I think the problem is that the food is TOO balanced on EC perhaps. If realms are neither heavily importing or heavily exporting then they have no need to put a lot of time into trade. They can trade once every week or so outside of the realm to even things out and be fine, while having lords trade amongst themselves in realm.
However, if someone has to heavily export/import on the range of over 500 bushels or more every week then they have a lot of encouragement to make contacts in foreign realms and use traders to gather food from very far away.
It wasn't long ago that Coria was importing up to 750 bushels every week just to feed its city, and that was up to 1000 if possible before the size of city changes and before the city went into starvation.
