I am trying to crack the game at Prince level and feel trade with the AI is an area I am letting myself down in. Sometimes I am so low on cash I trade off commodities for 1-5 gpt - is this counter productive ie is the AI benefitting more than me?

So please let me know what you will trade and for how much ie is a straight commodity for commodity somehting you would do or do you have to get the better of the deal? Is there anything you would never trade ie iron, horses etc.

Please add any info you think may be useful on the area of trading with the AI.

Thanks

In general, try to generate your own gold & not rely on per turn payments for resources. Resources are hard to value bcz they have so many varied benefits. Say you sell insense to a civ that controls a few religions. He is gonna build cathedrals all over the place & get 2-3 additionla happy faces. Sell copper & he is gonna beat you to the Colosus & rake in piles of gold for the rest of the game. Etc.

More reliable ways to generate gold are:

Colosus - this is a major one & well worth it if you got 10+ tiles of water to work on. This is not just one city that has 10+ tiles, this is total from all your cities. If you have bronze, do make sure to build this wonder

Great Lighthouse - if you got 3+ costal cities, you gonna thank yourself that you built this wonder. It starts paying in the middle ages, late classical.

Cast System - if you got a food rich city, hire a few merchants. That will generate you a few great merchants. When you settle these into cities they will yield you 1 food & 6 gold. At 1 per city ratio they can carry your Civics upkeep & City maintenance costs. Settle them all in 1 city though & compound it with marketplace/grocer/bank for even more gold.

There are numerous other ways to get gold, such as cottages, holy cities, representation, & such. But they involve more care & planning than the methods above outlined.