Well there is people that enjoy trading, whether it is by way of pillaging or making commercial agreements and making things work. Its a chore but I'm one of the people that enjoy it and pretty sure lots do.
But yeah if you are in a faction that most of the active people hate trading, it is as shitty as forcing people to fight uninteresting battles.
For that reason (and also to diversify the game) I'm gonna introduce new ways to make money:
- reselling of gear will become viable (but its going to need the removal of discounts for obv exploit issues (or if you know how I could avoid that, always interested to hear ideas))
- possibly gonna implement some way to make prisoners and make them have a certain value (ransom brokering) maybe even introduce other items that would have 0 combat value but lots of commercial ones (mostly things that would be cool lore-wise)
- most certainly going to add fixed revenues to fiefs, independant of trade somewhat (will be very small to keep people motivated to trade and make battles)
- possibly overhaul raiding so that it gives money without having to fight a garrison at all
I would add a fifth - and put "crafting" here but I completely forgot how crafting worked in the first rounds of Strategus? Would it be viable again or it would need overhauling too? Afai remember it was a bit shit but maybe my memory is wrong.
The old crafting was really really tedious. You basically had people that used the same weapons all the time get crafting bonuses in strat with those weapons. SO they would have to sit and craft only that gear and never move (this was instead of city looming and discounts). SO you had a few people that could do nothing but craft and the rest usually just sitting around waiting for them making 10 gold per hour or doing trading moving 2 meters a minute. 3rd strat we all quit because these two things made it incredibly tedious.
Selling back items should get 40% not 20% return, max discount should be 50% so you would never have be able to glitch abuse it.
Could have a new form of "crafting" where people can sit inside fiefs and make money in addition to building troops (for those least active members that just want to fight in strat battles and help primarily with recruiting troops now).
Though I could see something interesting with old crafting system if your specialty allowed you to produce a new level of +4 items (legendary) in very limited quantities for some interesting addition to battles.