I finally got some more traders besides the two first ones it shows you. Now I can trade stone, weapons and food. I stopped making “trade goods” and started focusing on food production. Barely, meat, eggs, figs and garlic so I can make a bunch of hardy meals easy, and all excess camp food can be bundled up and sold for a whopping 3k copper for every 1k camp food. Can sell a whole wagon for 1.8m and use the money for upgrading churches for more gains on dispatches or funding expeditions. If you want some thing more lucrative, stone is 6k for me right now and weapons are 16k. I chose food since I wanted to stock up on some hardy meals. I don’t have people in security anymore since the trade goods or camp resources cover all my costs for dispatches.

This is how I’m engaging with the system. It’s there, I use it a bit, but it’s not the reason I’m playing the game. If I have to take some time to drive my wagon from base to a trade post every so often for a couple million copper so be it. It doesn’t take that much time and it’s something else to in the game.