They were listed as neighbours, so yes. It's quite frequent that a civ doesn't contact until 3rd year when you're on an evil map, so I don't know if my code is messing up their caravan or they're just being lazy. If I'd continued with that game I would have found out, but there were other things to tweak and try.
I only wanted them for the dimple cups.
Current game is a terrifying swamp on shale. Unfortunately the "terror" consists of the trees being dead and a few snailmen/slugmen about. We're actually at WAR with the goblins, as opposed to redlined. I've become incredible bored checking legends so I don't know what happened, but there's a whole mountain range loaded with ruins. I don't know if they're dead goblin forts or dead dwarf forts. All civs were listed, however.
The big problem with this map is no coal (so far, summer year two). First time I ever embarked on sedimentry without heaps of it. Tends to put a bit of a bind on metalworking. I would never have been able to make steel here even with flux and [METAL_PREF].
No useful local animals also means leather is at a premium. For some reason we couldn't get cougars or the other big cats (I think I chose a really small civ) so we embarked with wolves. They haven't quite reached useful numbers yet, but my leader has a war wolf.
I have a small military (4 wrestlers, one an ex-hunter) in iron chain. Rather than build an archery range I am sending them out with iron bows and bone bolts to put the bite into the snailmen.
I have a migrant herbalist that I send out in the hope of getting some sliver barb. No luck so-far.
I think I'm happier without the steelworking. When I talked about "balance", I have this little theory about a 2-d "alignment" in DF, a little like this:
...........Nature.........
..............I..............
Good-----I-------Evil
..............I..............
........Mechanical......
and that the races fit into it like this;
Elves......................
................Kobolds...
..........Humans...Goblins
.............................
..........Dwarves........
So the Elves are Naturalist Good, to the point where they're naturalist stupid. The Dwarves, with their ruthlessness and steelworking, are Mechanistic Neutral. The Humans pure Neutral, the goblins Neutral Evil (no particular mechanistic/naturalisic bias) and the kobolds, with their thievery and limited technology, are in between Neutral and Naturalist Evil.
With my changes, it looks more like this:
Elves.......................
.................Kobolds...
.........Faerie.....Goblins
........Humans............
........Dwarves...........
So the humans are bumped up one rung by their ability to use steel, and become closer to mechanistic neutral (they don't go the whole way, no mechanisms). And the Faerie sit right in the middle. However the Faerie good/evil neutrality is based not on avoiding good/evil areas but rather dwelling in both.
All this means nothing to anyone else, and is a little D&D for my liking. But still, it's a design philosophy and I feel better using it, rather than trying to create a race that does everything.
