Hide the Jewelry has been updated to Jade Dragon. The biggest new feature is a resource and trading system:
Depending on the prosperity level of the province, every province spawns a resource or trading good (using CK2’s artifact system) every 10 to 40 years. There is a resource corresponding to each of the 18 technologies. Slaves are a special case. There are a few provinces at the African edges of the map which produce them, but mostly you get them by raiding and sieging holdings while having Serfdom laws enabled. They can be exchanged via a county-level title decision for the resource produced by that province.
Besides these raw resources, there are also fabricated resources, again corresponding to a technology. You get them by constructing certain buildings in your family palace or in major trade route trading posts, and having the required raw resources. For instance if you have Wool and Dye in your treasury, you can construct the Weaver building in a trade post. Then, depending on Prosperity, every 10 to 40 years, you‘ll get an event allowing you to destroy the Wool and Dye goods and get a Cloth good in return.
The use of these resources is to boost tech in a province or construct buildings. The raw resources can be used for techs and buildings up to level 3. Fabricated resources are needed for level 4 and above. There’s also an ever increasing number of modified vanilla events and decisions which allow you to pay a good instead of ducats as an alternative cost to get something.
Besides using them yourself you can also make a profit simply acting as the middleman between producer and consumer. For the game to see you as a middleman or trader, you need to be a patrician or own a major trading post. Producers of resources are able to sell them to traders at an advantageous price for the traders. Traders are able to buy and sell them from each other at their actual worth, and they can be sold to consumers for a profit.
For inter-AI deals the requirements are rather lax to help keep the goods flowing. As a human you need to have one of several possible relationships to be allowed to trade with a character. These include:
- Vassal-liege relation
- Tributary relation
- Non-aggression pact, most commonly through marriage
- Being a patrician and having a trading post in their demesne
Every producer who has one of these relations with you will occasionally offer you a trade deal, selling you one of their resources. You are their favored trading partner and they will only (temporarily) turn elsewhere if you refuse a deal they offered. So there’s no need to start micromanaging or to regularly check if for instance a vassal has gotten a new resource yet.