Simply put, I think “Trading” as a Feature, requires an “overhaul”.
Let me explain why.
There are a lot of ways how to play Ikariam and there are different ways, in how to interact with others.
Unlike fighting, piracy, or dealing with wonders/donation-leechers, Trading is one of the rare situations, where everyone involved has a good time.
At Least that’s how it's supposed to be in theory, because Trading via the Trading Post can currently be very frustrating.
So I have some suggestions on how some of the issues could be fixed, to make it a valid Gameplay-Part again, enjoyable for everyone.
I aimed at only “realistic” suggestions that don’t seem too hard to implement, compared to adding/overthrowing entire Features/Buildings and whatnot.
1) Bug-Fix.
I think that’s the most obvious one.
For those who don’t know the simplified version: If someone has an offer in the Trading-Post that is like “want to buy 5mio Wood” and you have 1mio in your warehouse and you want to sell them 1mio… you can’t.
Only if you have more then 5mio Wood in your warehouse, can you sell them Wood, even though you only want to sell 1mio, you still need to have over 5mio.
This Bug has existed now for around 2 years (or even longer) and prevents Trading in a lot of situations, or forces you to hoard a lot of extra resources, to circumvent the Bug.
Often Players put in offers like “want to buy 10mio Wood” and wonder why noone sells them anything.
As Long as this Bug exists, Trading will always be frustrating.
2) Improved Trade-Treaty.
A lot of Players seem to not know this, while a Trade-Treaty gives you a “pre buy-right”, it does not give you a “pre-sale right”.
If Player A and B have a Trade-Treaty and A sends his trading ships to BUY Resources from Player B, no one can interfere and the Trade-offer disappears for everyone else in the Trading-Posts.
If on the other hand A sends his trading ships to SELL Resources to Player B, nothing happens and other Players can interfere and the Trade-offer remains in the Trading-Posts.
Imo. a Trade-Treaty should do both, give you a “pre buy-right” AND a “pre-sale right”.
This would decrease the amount of empty trading-trips where you send your ships to sell ressources and they come back without selling anything.
It would also increase the interaction between Traders.
Because there could be the scenario where Player A and B have a trade-treaty and a Player C sends his ship to sell Player A Resources, Player B sends his ships after Player C, but because of the "pre-sale-right" he get's the deal and Player C makes an empty trip.
But this would only happen once, because now Player C could also make a trade-treaty with Player A, so next time the first one to send his ships, would get the deal and for the other one the offer would disappear, so there would be no more empty-run.
Right now if there's an empty-run like that there's nothing you can rly do, to prevent it from happening again.
3) Trade-Treaty for Alliance-Mates.
I would also suggest that the effects of a Trade-Treaty automatically work between Alliance-Mates.
As you’re able to station troops inside a city of an alliance-mate without requesting garrison-right first, imo in the same way it should be that you also benefit from trading-treaties between all your alliance-mates automatically.
This would also give Alliances a small benefit.
Maybe there would be alliances/Players that don’t want this (I also know Players who dislike that others can garrison without asking) so maybe it should be an optional-Feature for Alliances/Players to activate.
4) More Capacity.
The capacity of the Trading-Post on higher levels is basically outdated.
Nowadays with Freighters you can technically buy/sell multiple millions of Ressources on one Go.
But the amount of Resources you can set into the Trading-Post for others to buy is heavily limited.
Even with maxed Reducers, you gotta pay ~95mio Resources, for your Trading-Post to reach 1mio Capacity and 1.5 Billion(!) Ressources till your Trading Post has a capacity of 2mio.
Imo. these Numbers should definitely be adjusted so it becomes a valid option again to put Resources into the Trading-Post for others to buy.
This would imo. also make it again more viable to upgrade the Trading-Post / give you more in return.
5) Trading Resources with Resources.
I know there’s the Premium-Trader, but Players have always traded Resources with each other 1:1 in so many situations.
And Players have also always been bothered about the Pushing-Rule in that context since if 2 Players trade resources with each other, one of them will almost always have more Points then the other one.
So my suggestion would be that you can set Ressources that you’d like to trade 1:1 into the Trading-Post, making it much easier for those who are worried about the Pushing-Rule since the Trade happens in one go so you also save one Ship-Trip overall (since you send the Resources and the ships take directly the Resources from the other Player on the way back home).
This would remove worries about the pushing rule and make it easier in general for Players to trade Resources with each other.
To improve Trading would imo. improve the Game in general.
It would increase activity, interactions, reduce frustration and with Premium-Features like Tritons and Mercenary-Ships Ikariam would also likely earn Money directly by it, if more Players trade with each other.
They could also do stuff like add Mercenary-Freighters or add an Ambrosia-Feature that increases the Range of your Trading-Posts.
Of course Trading is mainly a relevant Feature if Servers are populated enough, thanks to the Merge this is now more often the case then before.
But especially on Servers where it's even harder to find trading-partners, it's even more frustrating if you find someone and a Bug prevents you from trading, or if you make an empty trip because a trading-treaty doesn't give you a pre-sale-right and someone else was faster.
Also thought about stuff like Barbarians (NPC's) with whom you can trade with, but as mentioned I wanted to focus on "realistic" Features that improve the interaction between Traders.
