First, thieves, scrap 'em. Absolutely retarded. While I will shamelessly continue to avail myself of existing game mechanics, it is absolutely absurd that thousands of guys in face masks are going to descend upon a city and sneek off with tons industrial resources. If you want loot, send a frikking army, or intercept caravans after pathfinding.

 That out of the way, localize trading. That is, I select goods and place them on the market in-town.

A new sales-geek type unit would have to be dispatched to any town with some kinda visible open-to-trading indicator to review stock, purchase and reserve lots. He would also review 'buys' for that town.

Caravans are then dispatched to collect the order. Maybe have a fee based option for order delivery which would add flexibility'

 What I envision is that eventually we could have a new kind of city specialization as a trade hub. Alliances and regions would evolve trade hubs, possibilities include a new trading element to diplomacy, trade agreements, embargoes, etc.

In a nutshell, when I needed stuff, I would dispatch sales geeks to the hubs in my area, of course over time I would get a sense of who deals in what along with other locals and hubs would naturally develop. 

A local hub would grow based on supply/demand within it's player driven range of influence. A good trader could keep a finger on the pulse of supply/demand and play the market in his own town with buys/sales and of course while people could still shop around sooner or later convenience and logistics would make it practical for a hub with an active market savvey player at the helm to capture most of the area's trade action.

 Actually some of this is similar to 'Port Royale'. It would be cool also if our trade geeks could optionally simply travel with a caravan and just roam, developing trade routes based on buys/sells in the towns he/she visits.

It would take 50 more paragraphs to encapsulate all the possibilities.

Hi again.

Did you read the Trade 2.0 plans at all?

http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/the-newness-18aug10_topic929_page4.html" rel="nofollow - http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/the-newness-18aug10_topic929_page4.html

Basically, trade will be focused around NPC faction hubs, each hub will have their own 'market' like the current global market, and the global one will be discontinued.  You can have a 'trader' unit at a hub and purchase goods directly there rather than having to send caravans of gold.

You can also have prices up for sale at your city, that other players can send caravans of gold to and come away with the goods they purchased.

Both of these methods are subject to taxes, as either the Faction or the King handles the transaction for you.  Direct trade/barter between players (IE - agreements over global chat) is untaxed.

Which is pretty much what you are suggesting here.

What I envision is that eventually we could have a new kind of city specialization as a trade hub. Alliances and regions would evolve trade hubs, possibilities include a new trading element to diplomacy, trade agreements, embargoes, etc.

Alliances will be able to build Trade Hubs that are potentially seigeable (as opposed to the Faction Hubs, which cannot be seiged)  There was also an indication of 'new trade buildings' and technologies around smuggling and avoiding tax costs, thereby allowing towns to specialize in trade.

[quote\A local hub would grow based on supply/demand within it's player driven range of influence. A good trader could keep a finger on the pulse of supply/demand and play the market in his own town with buys/sales and of course while people could still shop around sooner or later convenience and logistics would make it practical for a hub with an active market savvey player at the helm to capture most of the area's trade action.[/quote]

Exactly, that's why Faction Hubs are evenly distributed throughout the world, with pretty close to even spacing between them.  

I don't think anything you've said here is not already covered in the Trade v2 plan, as stated by the developers.

So... you're making suggestions to something in the works without reading what they already plan to do.  *scratches head* not sure that's productive.