Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-32907125-20160704233931/@comment-24108228-20160705175823

In my two years I've seen one or two traders, who may at some point have been bouncing back and forth between two tribes, but never an organised trade route.

This is probably because it's ridiculously easy to scam a trader, and by the time you've found someone willing to sell goods you want, you could have just crafted a stone tool and got them yourself. Hence a lack of traders, hence a lack of trade routes. However, there are a couple instances where they might work, and if you're happy to be the trader in this situation (as opposed to blindly hoping that against all odds, a trader will turn up this game), you could perhaps instigate a situation where players will form tribes on islands in order to make frequent trading possible.

The first situation I can think of is the obvious "food for metals" trade that seems to form 99% of any trading that does happen in this game. Since it's a trade route, you'd need to have a settled tribe buying food, and another farmer or perhaps an avid fisher (though fish didn't do too well in the saturation update, so I doubt they'll be able to produce enough for themself, a medium sized tribe and their fish-trophy collection); and they can do the selling. This is a bit dubious however, as basically all settled tribes have a food source of some form, and if they're actively mining iron/creating tools in order to buy pies, they may as well just make their own pies. After all, each one is about half an hour of food per person, so it's probably easier to just make a batch and forget about it, rather than hope the farmer won't leave or start charging higher prices for however long the tribe will live.

As for the second situation, this one is more sustainable, as if you have two medium-ish sized tribes on islands with different types of ore, then you can charge (favourable) exchange rates of things like 2 iron for a coal, and vice-versa for the settlers on canyon, as well as trading sulphur, gunpowder, and mithril should your tribes have access to these items. This would work for as long as it takes for either tribe to decide they have a lifetime's supply of steel, or whatever material you're helping them get, at which point it will dry up. You'd also have to hope that none of them have the kind of guy who says "y u buy it i can go get sum", then wander off to some distant island and go on an adventure to get some coal, and "while im here ima get some mith", followed by "im gonna get bs", during which time the tribe don't want to trade since they theoretically already have access to the material, albiet not at their base and certainly not in the form of defences.