Trade Interest is a temporal diplomatic variable. Its purpose is to emulate the mood of the AI wizards: If they have been bombarded with too many diplomatic offers, they get tired of it and will be less likely to accept any such offer, and ultimately end the conversation during Player to AI Diplomacy. Proposing trade offers decreases Trade Interest the most, but so do several other interactions.
Each AI has independent Trade Interest for each other wizard, and it is not symmetric. In relations between the human and AI players, only one side of the variable pair is being actively used, but in AI to AI relations, either side can be used depending on which AI player is offering the trade to the other.
Generally speaking, Trade Interest decreases large amounts at a time during interactions, both diplomatic and military, but recovers gradually over time.
Ways to change Trade Interest[]
Trade Interest builds up gradually over time, and builds up more quickly when it is low. These increases happen at the end of the turn:
- If Trade Interest is below 100, it increases by 10. In the 1.50 unofficial patch, this is reduced to 5 instead.
- If Trade Interest is below 0, it increases by an additional random amount from 1 to 5.
- If Trade Interest is below 50, it increases by another additional random amount from 1-5. This is cumulative with the above.
Reductions in Trade Interest (and Treaty Interest or Peace Interest) are the primary method of moderating the length and frequency of Diplomacy interactions:
- In Player to AI Diplomacy, any offer made will decrease Trade Interest. Offers related to trades will reduce it more, but treaty offers will also do so.
- Likewise, if the AI offers a treaty or trade to the player in AI to Player Diplomacy, Trade Interest is reduced in a similar way.
- If an AI wizard decides to conduct AI to AI Diplomacy, even if they ended up not doing anything, their Trade Interest toward that wizard will be reduced.
Finally, during a Diplomatic Reaction, this variable is supposed to be changed by an equal amount as Visible Relations. Unfortunately, there is a bug: It will adjust the variable of the wrong player AND copy it over into the correct variable, overwriting the actual contents with nonsense values.