I like the cap idea, but trading is broken: “an agreement between two Cardinals” doesn’t actually require either of those Cardinals to be the ones involved in the trade.

And in fact, we can already trade Benefices: “As a Church Action, a Cardinal may reduce their Benefices by 1 to increase the Benefices of another Cardinal by 1.” - we could cost it differently, but I’m not sure why we need anything more than that when there’s only a single resource that’s being traded.

The idea here is that you can trade other items for benefices. Influence, nepotism, etc.

Ah, fair enough. Saying that players can “trade benefices amongst themselves” sounds like it’s just about trading that single resource back and forth, and I think that’s all that a strict reading of the rule would actually allow.

Completely free trade of “etc” becomes risky. It’s my favourite way of shutting down a game of Monopoly, just having two players who freely trade their resources as required (effectively “at the start of your turn, I trade you all my money and properties in exchange for nothing, agreed?”), making them a single player with twice the resources and turns of everyone else.

I agree that there could be some more structure around trading, but I left it purposefully vague at the beginning so that the group could add restrictions with future proposals.