Implementing proper trading isn ' t too hard but you need abstractions , in fact something like thisCOuld be extra fun to go in with some money , buy up some stuff to force a resupply then catch the caravan on the local roads and hijack it and sell the supplies to the blacksmith at a markup . would be nice to also see persistence of sorts and free market pricing , like if you did make 1 , 000 daggers maybe you speechcrafted the local blacksmith to buy them on bulk . then you notice that he recycled some as raw material and skipped a delivery and that he has a sale on daggers and everyone in town now has one of your daggers because they are so cheap . seems possible but the trick is stability , in these games the PC tends to get unreasonably wealthy . which is kind of a requirement to move along . this wealth would make it trivial to disrupt the economy , buying all the flour in town to starve the village etc . pick pocketing everyone in town thus sucking out all the money from all the villagers freezing the economy . How much Deus Ex Machina is needed to keep both the immersion and stability ? how much can you restrict the PC from obtaining obscene wealth easily without making the game too hard or boring ? Is impossible in a simulationist game . The blacksmith would not sell you at a detriment or sell you at all since he would have more reliable contracts , if he is allowed to sell you anything by law . You can ' t make 1000 daggers in a day and even if you do this demigod like feats you can ' t expect the system to not break down because a fucking god walks on the earth . That said you can have plenty of dynamism and interactivity with an economy , you just have to keep some abstractions to make it stable . Even trading games like Patrician 3 have their abstraction and they work pretty good . You just pick your battles on what you want out of it .