Caravans and essence

Caravans are automatically produced when you make a Trade Treaty with a different faction.

You can increase Essence in a city with the Scrying Pool, which is a special building only available with the Enchanters faction trait.

If you pick conclave, picking Oracle will also increase essence by 1.

conclave cities get a choice at level 3 cities to add a point of essence.

edit:   yes, it is oracle.

That's a shame, not many ways to get essence. Ok thanks for the info.

Yup. Totally agree.

Posted the idea a while back for all factions to gain access to the Scrying Pool, but just tied with a later tech (like Arcane Mastery)...and have Pariden get a boost to the improvent at that same tech in order to maintain balance....

Was not meant to be though....

I'll be modding it in.

Id prefer we had mroe economical options for things...not like Hearts of iron but nevertheless...

anyway,

why does it happen that another faction always gets more gold from our trade treaty?

I'd like to know more about what caravans do. I can't find anything in the help about them. Do they move by themselves? If so, why does my next-unit key have to select them?

The amount of gold each faction gets (per turn) from the trade treaty seems to be based on your overall gold per turn rate or maybe population - its tied to your economy somehow. In general, I notice that I get the better end of the deal when I have a stronger economy than the faction I'm trading with, and vice versa. However, this gets offset somewhat by the fact that the other faction will make you pay them to sign the treaty in the first place if you are going to get more gold per turn than they will. It seems to me that its a short term vs long term kind of trade off, you pay up front to set up a treaty that benefits you more than them, and in the long term you should gain more gold back than you initially paid, making it a net gain, but only after some 20-30 turns have passed (rough estimate from my experience so far).

You and it both get a 10% bonus to your cash income. If it gets more, it's because it had more to begin with.  I also usually get less than the AI on trade, but I usually get two or three times more than them on technology treaties.

And of course, once you have beaten an AI down to a smidgeon of what they used to be, you can usually force them into peace.  It may cost more than surrender (which is ridiculous in itself) but then you can get them into a trade/tech/alliance treaty, and get a 10% bonus on both.  By the time they are this weak, everyone has declared was on them, so they will be your best friend forever.  Just make sure you keep them alive.

It's fun winning an alliance victory with all AIs still alive, but most down to one city.  You get fewer diplomatic penalties this way, too.  Fewer, not none.

there is also a strategic spell that adds essense production to cities. That seems to be the easiest way without shards and scrying pools.

You need to have Alliance researched and Close relations with the other faction.

You cannot make them declare war on another faction, if they have good relations with them (friendly or better I believe).

Well problem solved.  I am usually at war.  I don't think I have ever had close relations with anybody.  I have entered non aggression pacts to give my slef a breather or at least stop a two front war.  Other than that, down with cowards.