Good! It is high time that economic elements enter more into diplomacy.
I think you overestimate its impacts. It only truly affects the importing realm in a serious manner, as the trade profits from the exporter and much lower than the costs of a war. Meanwhile, very, very few realms in the game are import-heavy and there is usually an abundance of potential trade partners to work with. On Dwilight, D'Hara is the biggest importer (probably of the whole game, too), but it faces no real competition aside from the Zuma. And while it wants to trade with everyone, there's no incentive to take any action against those who deny trade, as every realm that could hamper our trade is part of a bloc that could bring us in a very costly war we have no interest in waging.
And besides, the restraints are becoming passive instead of active: instead of going out of their way to block us from buying from their lords or trading with their neighbor, all they have to do is sit around and do nothing. This reduces interaction, because it requires nothing on their part and there's very little to set the intentional failure to trade apart from the "can't be arsed" failure to trade.
I'm not saying the new system sucks, and I do think that simplification is overall a good thing, as most players really don't want to deal with trade and as such the simpler the system is, the better it is for them. Simpler code = less bugs, which is good too. But I simply can't agree with this conclusion that the new system will make economic elements enter diplomacy more. I'd figure it would make it matter even less, because we lose the ability to decide that we will sell to X for 40 gold, but to Y for 60 gold. Or that we will feed region X for 40 gold, but refuse to feed region Y even if it offers 60 gold. Everything is now up on the free and open market, the new system removes our power to do preferential trading. How can trade figure in diplomacy when everyone has open and free markets?
Economy, in general, always affects diplomacy in one way or another. Gold production always has (quest for rich regions, desire for wealthy allies). Food production helped consolidate alliances. They always had their role, and whether that role was significant or not is really just a matter of opinion. However, they will only significantly increase in importance if they become scarce. Then people would consider them more importantly, as D'Hara decides everything according to food. However, I highly doubt that's the best way to go, because scarcity means winners and losers, and therefore a lot of frustration. D'Hara's unique, and I always enjoyed managing imports and looking forward to the day our trade network would be great enough for us to monopolize trade on Dwilight. A dream more than a project, really. But I'm pretty sure most players would bore themselves to death in D'Hara, and I would never suggest imposing such economic burdens on significant portions of the player base. We colonized the isles knowing we would live and die according to our capacity to import food from abroad, nobody else threw themselves in such a situation of anticipated food deficits. As such, be it with food or new resources, I don't think we should ever make the lack of resources become of greater importance than it is now.
