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.

I do trade stratagic resources like horses, iron, elephants, and copper.  Trading a strategic resource can net you mutiple resources for the trade.  It's not unusual to get two resources and some gold per turn for one strategic resource.  Who I trade with is critical.  Usually to civs far behind in techs or a weaker civ that is at war with an enemy of mine and to my vassals.

Trading resources for gold per turn is typically more valuable later in the game when you can pick up 20 gpt for sugar with a civ on another continent.  I will still trade excess resources to friendly civs or civs that are no threat.

Resource for resource trades are an often overlooked factor.  For instance trading pig for wheat is better than an even trade.  Granies are an early build an in most cities so the wheat will be multiplied to give you +2 health whereas the pig requires a late building to mutiply health.  Same with resources like trading gold for spices.

I will trade building multipliers like copper (Collosas) to weaker civs or friendly civs if I'm not planning on building the wonder.  As an attempt to deny that wonder to my mortal enemies.   

(ps Upgrades such as "Beyond The Sword" you will probably have to pay for... mods are usually free and available online.)