I would wait with any estimates on how the new system affects diplomacy until the boosts given during the switch run out, which should be in a few days. Then we will, for the first time, get a real picture on how important food is.
Crap... Gotta run to a marketplace. There seem to be so few around... None of my characters have had a chance to get to one yet.
You can do this--there are new restrictions on "sell only to your realm" or "sell only to your ally". and, of course, you can simply choose not to use sell orders at all, but instead utilize only buy orders.
This is extremely limiting, compared to what we used to be able to do. We can't use food against individual dukes anymore (a strategy used by many over the years). Also, this assumes that everyone at "peace" is viewed equally, and all "allies" are valued the same, etc. Furthermore, "can trade/can't trade" is far, far away from preferential/discriminating price policies. I also don't see why we are implementing new features based on the old diplomacy system, when "peace/alliance/etc." is supposed to end up scrapped.
