Ferengi Effect (it's just a catchy title, so just ignore it)
Open Market-
first off what I would enjoy seeing in Elemental is an option to decide whether you want to sell a given product on the open market and a % quantity of said product. Say I have a 100 units of swords but want to sell 50 units and make a hefty profit. I could do this one of two ways. One, go to the warehouse (holding the swords) and specify how many swords i want to sell and how many i want to keep and set the selling rate. Or two, open up a window titled resources (or an equivalent), click a swords icon do the same thing. Now this could universal throughout your empire or made specificly to a given town, but personally i would rather make it universal so i wouldn't have to deal with the bloody micro-management. Now a wandering merchant would come along buy the 50 swords and them on the open market.
The problem with this is you have control over where those swords go. As far as you know the damn merchant could have sold those swords to an enemy faction that you're currently at war with. Though that would be ironic, being cut by the very swords you made.
International Trade-
To paint the picture, you have a major monopoly on metal resources and weapons but have limited access to lumber. Now the neighboring kingdom has more than lumber than they care for but have next to nothing in metal and metal based products. So you setup trade rights with your neighbor, for your iron for his lumber. the real beauty is in the fact that not only do you get a quasi-reliable supply of lumber but you also get a nive profit for your iron. This would of course take time for resouces to arrive but in the end it well worth the wait.
To make this even more deliciously profitable, say two neighboring kingdoms are at war with one another, but you're on good terms with both sides and you also have trade rights with both sides as well. get the picture
So what you guys and gals think?