ElGato wrote:Nope, that about covers it.

Some of the most fun gameplay I've had in Haven involved trading a thriving industrial operation for quality metal merchandise to fuel a war effort, which had to be transported long distance because no existing road had been constructed between the two cities.

Back then, connecting two cities that were remote had real diplomatic (and warfare related) consequence. Further, because the game was new, there wasn't as much bot made production and different villages had different *unfulfilled needs* which created imbalances in demand and availability from settlement to settlement that drove trade. Those imbalances existed because knowledge of the game was limited, and everyone had to explore different modes of production, which they did at different paces down different "paths." Now, we know virtually all the optimal production techniques and gameplay practices, so there's very little another village could offer you couldn't reproduce yourself, and if another village is advanced enough that they offer considerably better goods, your goods are very likely to have little to value to them.
It's not impossible to imagine additional development creating "trade-friendly" conditions permanently: Introducing a large number of new regional resources, and modifying existing recipes to require these resources and intermediate crafted goods produced from several of these resources, would create an abundance of supply in one area, and a demand in another area. That economic change, in conjunction with further rolling back teleportation to roads only, and considerably limiting the instant teleportation component of roads (perhaps you can only do it with an empty inventory, with an inventory you'd simply move at a high pace down the road?), may produce the conditions necessary to drive the same city->city interaction, and further provide incentive for conflict by allowing third parties to interfere and attempt to forcefully take goods or render it more difficult for the towns to trade by acting as a privateer on the roadways.
We could also have road fights again.