I know this idea has been around for a while in BM and we have more then enough feature requests already, but I am bringing it up anyway.
(Actually we had parts of this half implemented and visible on testing under economy region tab. Now we have Economy: N/A in main region page)
Resources and Trade
Summary:
Certain region produce certain types of resources like: Wood, Metal, Stone, Jewellery, Craft/Produce based on region type.
Production of these resources is allocated to estates like tax income.
These resources can be sold for gold on the local markets for a price based on supply and demand recently, or to trader class characters who can set their own prices.
Estate owners can choose to hoard their resource shares, driving the local prices of this particular resource up to sell it later for a higher price.
Estate owners can also sell it to a trader for an above local market price, who can go to regions with little to no type of this resource and sell it there for even more profit.
Resources, apart from trading, can only be spend on investments, estate owners can invest in their region with a set of different resources to increase their resource income.
Since every region type produces its own (set of) resources, there always has to be resources traded in order to get the set of resources needed to make these investments.
Details:
Buying and selling/trading resources for gold can work a bit like trading food using marketplaces: Trader class characters can trade at the markets of any region their at with the same range as it can trade food. Estate owners can only trade their resources on the market of their estates region.
Basically: the actual resources, once collected go to the estate, not the owner, the owner does not carry them around like gold, only traders can carry around resources from market to market and trade them where ever they go.
Investments are temporary and not permanent, to keep production up to its full potential one has to keep trading in resources in the form of buildings needing repairs for example.
Every level of investment has an increase of cost and variation of resources required, making the first investment available for a simple combination of any of two or three different resources.
Adventurers can be included by giving them the ability to break down (certain) common items into resources and sell them on the local markets as well like traders but obviously dealing with far smaller quantities, however trading cleverly could still yield a significant income for advies, making this part of the game also more interesting.
Benefits:
This will create a whole new trade game in BM with only basic features and make the Trader class worthwhile.
The trader will be essential in making the greatest profits possible for everyone by travelling from area to area with different supply and demands.
The trader is the key to more income for everyone because most likely he will be needed to make investments to get more resources and also able to pay more then the local market for your estates resources.
Without traders, estate owners have to relay on trade chains of local markets (where traded resources usually end up in the regions with the least income of this resource since the price is higher), profits will be less and getting all the resources for investments will be more difficult but still possible.
It also gives knights something to work towards, something to invest in and potentially make lots of extra income, something that takes actual decisions instead of just following orders all the time.
It also gives those BM junkies with already way to much positions a whole other thing to rule in since every noble is basically an estate owner except for the ruler and pathetic landless nobles.
Possible Downsides/Exploits:
Hard to balance, gold income potential could either be overpowered or too little to be interesting at all.
A balanced resource allocation per region might also be challenging and all in all alot of work.
Tweaking local market pricing to create a balanced system might also be challenging, also to prevent massive 'exploits' like taking alot of resources away and putting it back in the local market to abuse price fluctuation.
However since resources are only traded for gold and do not influence other mechanics directly its effects are simply limited to gold income.
