Yea a market for trading resources would be good like in Dragon Crusade.
Also about the portals and stuff, since gold is scarce, a 1 time portal is expensive. HOwever, if they fix the gold scaling and on troops and upgrades, the portal may not be too bad since, you are suppose to explore, not randomly teleport.
I already said this in the survey, but troops looks useless in this game compared to heroes. Also troops take too much food and are weak.