To me, trade is one of the more interesting aspects of the game.  I believe it could be significantly expanded and add much fun to the game.

To start with there should be a feature allowing archons to make articles-for-resources offers.  Right now the only realistic option for a leftover Article is to sell it at the Ephorate at a low price set by the game. Many players would love to buy them but don’t have the level articles required to trade for them because those only become available when they no longer need the article... Why such a draconian limitation of trade?  I see dozens of offers “Athens for Eleusis”, “Alexandria for Crete”, “Farsala for Taras” but I believe practically ZERO of these offers are ever taken. Nobody who still needs an Athens article has received any Eleusis articles to trade for it yet.

Expanding on the idea, why couldn’t players offer other things for trade, including elixirs, boosts, hidden paths, dominion activators, refreshers etc. and use denarii and drachmas as their currency?

It would be fairly easy to control with a new set of articles/agreements - let’s call them “Phoenicia” since they were the seafarers and traders of Greek antiquity. Without this agreement players could not make or accept any offers involving anything other than basic resources and articles and their galleys could not carry any of the other articles. Tie the agreements into the tree at a high level (After Crete for example) and there would be little chance of abuse since a player who has reached level 60 or higher is not likely to be a “feeder account”.  

After the “Phoenicia” agreement level one is signed the player could build a new structure (The Emporium would be the correct Greek designation for a “trade center”) and with this structure could start making and seeing offers that involved more advanced items and his galleys could carry those items.  With multiple agreement levels, more and more items would become “tradable” until ultimately allowing selling items for Drachmas/Denarii.  There would be no set prices only the price the players decide is fair between them (Total free market).  When a player buys a “package deal” from Plarium and get some items he never uses like “Quest Refresher” or “City Relocation Tool” he could sell them for resources, boosters or Drachmas.

Controlling the levels of allowed trade could either be done via upgrades to the Emporium building or by adding levels to the Phoenicia agreement (Like another Stymphalos Lvl 1-5 branch)

In my view this idea could hugely expand the interest of the game.  This could even provide an incentive for some players to be “traders” rather than “warriors” as was the case with some city-states in ancient Greece.

What do you think?