I think Tom said, some time ago, that he liked the suggestion of having three resources: food, materials, and goods.
It was my suggestion, at least. To keep things simple: having a million resources puts too much of a focus on the trading game which many people hate. My suggestion at the time was also that the resources not all work exactly the same: I don't think the lack of materials should drop production to 0 and prevent all repairs, but maybe it could cap production at 50 and make repairs more expensive. I could see every region needing a certain number of materials according to population, and if it only has 50% of those materials, then the region would be capped at 75% production. After all, people can improvise, recycle, and replace missing parts with what's available (though it's likely to cost more, be less effective, and not last as long). If it had an overabundance of materials, perhaps it could allow the region to go slightly above 100% productivity. As for goods, I could see it working the same way, or perhaps its own way. Perhaps every realm could produce its own kind of goods, to trade with others, which provide morale bonuses according to the diversity and the distance from which the goods come. For example, if Morek got a lot of goods from Corsanctum, it'd get a little bonus, but if it had goods from Corsanctum, D'Hara, Barca, and Grand Duchy of Fissoa (in the same regions), then it'd have a much better bonus. This dynamic has two advantages: one, it doesn't force anyone to pay more attention to the trading game, because there's no (or small) penalties for not having the resource, while two, it helps traders out by giving them more to do, as food is have/have-not dichotomy: either you have food and you'll be fine regardless of the amounts you have, or either you don't and you'll be in big trouble regardless of the amounts you'd need. Having resources with (non-linear) scaling bonuses would give traders more to do, because a lot more people would be interested in trading with them (without being forced to).
