To get (or increase) the diplomatic bonus from years of resource trading, is it only # of turns that is a factor, or number of resources, or gifted resources?

i.e. right now in my current game, I have De Gaulle at pleased and one more point would get him to friendly so I can get out of WFYABTA. haven't been able to trade him resources pretty much the whole game until I did a little conquering. to get that vital last point, is it just as fast to do say, just wheat for corn as it is to gift him wheat, or sell him silk for 8 gpt, etc? If I do three trades, is it better than just one or does one trigger the bonus and nothing else matters?

Also, are strategic resources worth more than food/happiness? My google skills are apparently inferior, so if this has an article somewhere please feel free to link it and point and laugh :P

I think it's the years that matter - not the turns. I.E. it's easier and faster to get the bonus early than later.

However, I believe that resource trades do count for the 'Trade Relations' bonus, so if you haven't maxed that out yet then that can work.

^^ this doesn't seem right to me. (I don't know for sure.) But I've never hear of a situation where the calendar years play into the equation (except culture doubling after 1000 years). It's always been a number of turns type thing.

I've wondered this myself, and would love to hear an answer.

The number of trades is a factor because you get merits faster with more of them.

I believe it's a hard-coded number of resource-turns for all AI, someone was talking about this in another thread. Something like 50 turns of giving them a resource - so one resource for 50 turns does it, or 5 resources for 10 turns would. The bonus is capped at +2 I think. (it's probably gamespeed dependent, I'm going off of what I might have heard here so it's not guaranteed 50, but similar in principle).

Personally, I've always made a habit of gifting random resources from early in the game, of course trading is even better - I'll exchange a resource I only have one of for another, which means no net effect, but can give this bonus - resource+OB is often vital to get AI to pleased, if they don't have HR as their civic or you're not in a position to share religion.

I believe diplomacy modifier decay is unaffected by game speed... TMIT complains about this a lot. :-)