Trade versus Economic Treaties

From my personal experience:

1) Dunno.

2) They count roughly the same by the AI, well sometimes they differ much. Look at the price of the treaty to know the difference. But one thing for sure is power rating difference impact treaty price. Perhaps the distance between capitals also affect economic treaty price.

3) Trade treaty is 10% of your total income. Economic Treaty give x % bonus to your capital income (depends on how far your capital from AI capital)

4) Trade is generally better income wise, because of point 3. Economic can beat trade IF your capital and AI capital are gildar focused towns. However one must consider other use of economic treaty which is to reveal enemy capital and to a lesser extent their territory and creating road if you want to attack them, this also reveal your capital and territory which make your kingdom more vulnerable (but i believe AI map is like it doesn't have fog of war so this point is irrelevant).

5) For me, it's fine as it is.

To be honest, I hardly ever use them. They both cost quite a lot if I want to initiate them. So I never do.

If the AI offers them to me, I will always accept, as it doesn't cost me anything.

I will generally accept or initiate both treaties if I benefit from as much or more than the AI player. That means I tend to have treaties with the smaller AI players (I don't want to make the stronger AI players any stronger).

Having a road direct to a smaller AI's capital is really very handy if or when you decide to attack them.

You certainly could make them into one treaty. Some people want to make diplomacy more complex, not less complex, though. Personally I'm with the school of thought that says caravans should not actually be units, they're a pain when they get in the way. You could have much the same effect if they were just travelling graphics which disappear if there is an enemy force cutting off the road, e.g. in the way that the Total War series shows trade.

Most of the time stronger player won't even agree to any treaty, they can agree but with insane price, which is the same as not agreeing.

The use of treaty is best at a map setting which has max opponent, to know the max opponent simply hover at the map size at the setting window before starting the game. Like in huge map (largest map), max player is 10, max AI is 9.

Treaty will be very useful there to lock the weaker AI so you can concentrate on the stronger one. Especially if you are a rusher gamer, your power rating will increase very fast, leaving only a few AI at higher than you, somehow this impact their decision whether they want to attack you or not, i mean they fear your friends, even if they are not ally, as long as the icon is smiley green. And in such large map, diplomacy victory is the fastest way to win the game, albeit the least epic one.

This is very backwards, imo. There is no reason NOT to get a Trade Treaty going if you are boosting your income by 10% based off of YOUR income. You have FULL control of how much income you are going to make.  

If diplomacy is to be any better, the first step would be to make the current treaties interesting:

Imo, the Trade treaty should be 10% of the OTHER faction's income....which could be postive OR negative AND it can vary from turn to turn. This would require you to STUDY the other faction....find out what it's doing....what it's building...makes you have to DECIDE if the deal is good for you or not. Likewise, the AI has to be smart enough to look at how much your current income is AND what your potential income is. The natural outcome from this is that any player/AI would like to make treaties with the factions that have better ecomony. There is most likely a correlation between economy strength and military strength. Therefore, the stronger factions do still get stronger...but not as quickly as the weaker factions would catch up. It becomes a question of how much you are willing to help out a weaker faction to get ahead. Also...the naturally turns into an AWESOME game balancing mechanic when set up this way.

Thoughts? Comments?

As for the Economic Treaty, it sure seems like it's not worth the effort UNLESS you want that road connecting capitals. The economic benefits are pretty non-existant. Everything around this treaty seems to be aimed towards using the road as a mechanism for attack. The AI should be realizing this too and considering military strength into the equation before accepting this treaty.

Does anyone have any math for this treaty?

But if it's 10% of other faction income, will the stronger one agree to this? mostly they won't, unless they have other war with other faction of equal or stronger strength, in this case they perhaps want to agree to this to boost their income and to lock you in peace with them so they can concentrate on their real opponent, but this case is rare, and even rarer is how many player pay attention to diplomacy in this game, a sad fact.

While i mostly agree with economic one, sometimes you can be surprised that it can often beat trade income wise. This usually happen if capital city is near river or there is a gold mine or material mine nearby or whether the town has high essence (material influence gildar income, and there is a spell that increase city material depending on its essence yield), all of this variable will insanely boost gildar income, your capital can even reach 50-100 gildar income / turn with normal tax, most economic treaty usually give 15%-25% bonus from that, can be higher than that in huge map.

I don't know what influence AI decision about these two treaties, i guess only brad know this because he is the AI expert here.

But from my experience AI ask for economic treaty more than trade treaty.

You could always do it as a percentage of the combined faction's income, so that two strong economic powers have a desire to work together.

That's it, your idea solve the problem.

Am I the only one who economic treaties everyone, to speed up general movement and to scout? With a lot of players, I find that racing free fire-and-forget 8-effective-movement scouts straight to everyone else's capital repeatedly gives me a lot of valuable information. Even when that gives less money than a trade treaty, it still always struck me as more useful.

A perfect example as to what I hoped this thread would be about.

Most certainly that is an excellent use for the Economic Treaty, and it's already been stated that anything knowledge gained through this oberservation can easily and synonomously be turned into surveillance as a prelude to war.

Imo, this makes the Economic Treaty way too powerful and I would have thought the Treaty be released with the Economics tech instead as a result.

You can also monitor the traveling caravan, the advantage of this is you get to view surrounding tiles of said caravan position, so it's a free scout. Very useful if you can cast monolith outpost, as you can fast snatch something before your opponent do. You can even make neutral units without killing its guard, a dragon lair or troll camp on the far end of the continent? you can have it in a single turn by the time you spot it, if you have the gildar to rush it. I've mentioned the trick (getting units without killing its guard) to do this in other thread, it's better than kiting it, sure you can kite it, but it takes more time, furthermore if the place is in the other side of your kingdom or the continent, traveling there just to kite it or kill it (if you need exp) will certainly take your time, and if you want to have the unit a.s.a.p (like at the same turn when you discover it) there's no better way than to do the trick.

i trade/economic anyone of lesser power - since its cheap.   then i wait for the others to initiate.

I might not pay for it up front if the return takes 40+ turns to pay back (although from above it seems like the return might be variable, so i'll have to re-look at it).

I think it helps diplomatic stance, its free money, free roads and free scouting.  Roads being the most key, even if not used to attack the trading partner.

Usually lesser power doesn't ask more than 100 gildar for those treaties, and you'll get more gildar when those treaties expire.