How do I give it food?
- Put up a Sell offer and have him buy it.
- Have him put up a Buy offer, and then you sell him food to fill it.
Really, not much has changed, except that you can't just give food away any more. (Which I agree is a bit annoying. But I can deal with that.)
...all of a sudden the government gets a lot more power over their lords over who they can or can't trade with.
Umm... what? I get the feeling that your just posting random objections to the system without really thinking things through.
In order for the government to prevent you from trading with someone, they will need to declare war on them. (And you can work around that with the assistance of a neutral third party, anyway.) "The government" has no idea who you are selling food to, or who you are buying food from, or for how much. They cannot control how much food you sell, or for what price. They can see the offers you post, if they happen to look while the offer is open. But they cannot know who fills them. And if you are paranoid about "the government" seeing what offers you have open, then have your foreign contact put up offers, and you fill them. That way your region never has an open offer, and no one will ever know that you bought/sold the food.
