I like #1. Trades brokered by traders not being subject to rot at all. (Note: Once food offered for trade is subject to rot, don't forget to rot food if the deal is canceled by the lord, or if the trade time expires, as well as if the deal is accepted by a lord.)
I like #2. 48 hours seems like a decent time. Enough time for traders who are on the ball to see it and act, if they can. Not so much as to be deadly to a lord who really needs food *now*.
I like #4. I would suggest that the food be added to the market in small increments, perhaps in 50 or 100 bushel lots. These massive orders of 500+ bushels are just way too hard to fill. Also, perhaps all auto-orders could be Open orders?
#3... I don't think this will do anything. If I want the trade with only my realm, the fact that some dishonest trader *could* use the order anyway will not convince me to use open orders. After all, *any* trader can use the open offers, but only the bad guys will use the black market, and they stand a chance of getting caught if they do. *Some* chance to catch the thief is better than *no* chance to catch the thief.
Some additional ideas:
- Restrict the length of time for which a restricted order can be posted. Max length of 4 days for Realm Only, 7 days for Allies Only, and the full 14 days only for Open offers? This may conflict with the auto-orders, though: if the auto-order is restricted and gets canceled, the auto-system would just repost it next turn. So maybe if an auto-order expires, then it won't be reposted for another 4 or 7 days?
- We were talking about fees for accepting offers. How about we turn this around, and put up fees for posting offers? Make Open offers free to post, but implement fees for restricted offers. Allies Only could be a fee of a couple gold, say 2-5 gold per offer. Realm Only to be twice that, or 4-10 gold per offer. (Not sure what a good fee would be to give incentive for rural lords to post Open offers, but not make it extortionate if they don't. I think even a small fee would convince may rural lords to start posting less restrictive orders.) Rationale is that it takes time/money for the Marketplace to screen traders to meet the desired restrictions. For Open offers they just let anyone buy it. But for restricted offers they have to verify the identity of the trader.
Personally I don't think we need more advantages to traders or disadvantages to lords beyond what Tom has suggested.
Sure, EC may have less trade offers than intended (or non-existant) but that just means that the political and military situation on EC is perhaps a lot more food stable than other continents. Maybe each realm is quite balance in the purchases that they need to make and can provide for themselves with only a few small exceptions.
All I know is that we can't make broad code changes that effect every island for problems that are only occuring on a single island, when those changes may create obvious other issues on the ones that are working. If it is a balance issue, then that can be addressed without code changes which may mess up the trading system. What I can see is that the food trading system on Atamara is working quite well. I have had multiple traders from multiple realms not only work with my realm, but seek to organize large trade brokerings across areas. One trader recently completed a buy offer a lord of my realm had posted for 700 bushels. (Not 7-100 bushels offers, but a single 700 bushel offer). Then a trader in my realm used this new amount of food to broker a trade to complete the 1000 bushel offer that I had on to purchase food for the past few days to a week.
This seems to be working to me, since my region alone has completed nearly 2000 bushels worth of offers in the past week to 10 days. I operate with the stigma of making very large bushel sets with a high(er) price so that traders who work hard to get food for my region, can be rewarded with a price increase for profitability. But if they simply are seeking small profits or a breakeven trade then I have less profitable 100 bushel offers. All of my offers are unrestricted, and personally I'd be quite happy if there was an option to buy/sell food to an enemy realm, as long as this was visible by the banker of both realms or something.
To me, this seems like a trading system that is working well. Perhaps the Dukes and lords of EC haven't gotten fully into it yet, or are brokering only deals in their realm. I don't know. But, I know that Atamara has a lot of trades going on, and it makes it interesting for me to watch as well getting all the purchase notifications from different people.
