As a Kingdom player, I use Caravans first to build roads and second to farm food.  I send them to build the road to the destination of my choice then disband them and build another to a new destination once I have my roads then I build one and send it to my farm/food producing city and use it to make food(as dumb as that sounds it works).

i don't see the point in this (and a lot of the distinctions between the kingdoms and empires)

can someone explain to me what getting three man squads instead of four, or multiple caravans instead of one, has to do with being an evil empire? (or whatever the current concept behind empires is)

what does it add to the game other than making it more difficult to balance