A need for some kind of prepared meals is far too easy to meet Bumber. I think that should work is that dwarves should get a happy thought from good quality prepared meals and a bad thought from eating raw food, with the exception of fruits and nuts (aka seeds and leaves category). No needs in the wider sense should be met save from eating foods with a liked intermediate, (like at present).
For now, but agriculture will be reworked and recipes are coming eventually. Needs aren't supposed to be that difficult to meet. Pray to deity is as simple as building a temple. Drinking is as simple as having booze. There are ones just for talking to people or viewing art. IMO, we don't need an entire economy based upon a single need.
Bumber is correct, there's no reason why needs should be absurdly difficult and micromanagement-heavy to fulfill. They are
needs, not
wants.
Remember that I am proposing that the available array of food demands that a dwarf can want be greatly reduced to within the range of foods that it's civilization and the immediate trade partners of that civilization, this means that the majority of individual demands of most dwarves should be meetable more easily since needs are restricted to the foodstuffs that are culturally available for a given civilization.
Yay, you've reduced it from the completely unmanageable 1000 food types down to a "mere" functionally unmanageable 200 food types.
Even if needs called for difficulty, and they don't, micromanagement isn't difficulty, it's just not fun.
Why do you hate fun?
We do not have to invent an arbitrary luxury goods category in order to motivate commerce,
We already have arbitrary luxury goods. I was talking about a system to actually give them a purpose. A system that isn't based upon perverting the needs system for something it was never designed to handle, for reasons nobody but you seems to see.
I would rather you actually read what I was proposing carefully and did not read absurd contradictions into it; by available to the civilization I of course available through trade, in addition to the things the civilization imports. 
Actually, I have read it, and understand it and its implications, apparently better than you do. (As does, seemingly everyone else in this thread.) That's why I'm stuck here having to repeatedly explain to you that you're trying to propose a solution to something that isn't a problem.
I would rather
you actually read what you are proposing carefully and read the absurd contradictions in it.
The random needs are there but they are secret.
Once again, this is a terrible idea.
NEEDS SHOULD NOT BE SECRET. They are
needs. They are things players
have to provide.
You should not make something the player has to do secret, and hide it from the player.
If you want to have a
want that is secret, that applies a bonus above and beyond what is
needed, that would be one thing, but this is a
need. This is something you
have to provide.
Need I remind you that trading isn't always possible? Some forts go through long periods of sieges, even permanent ones, although this is due to bugs. You're saying that players shouldn't have a choice, they
have to import
every single food that is tradable, all the time. Doing that, even by your own standard, isn't "difficult", it's just "tedious" when it isn't "impossible". In fact, "just take one of everything" takes even less thought and planning on the part of the player than trying to fill one of every "flavor category", which was what you were trying to oppose.
What you are proposing is like saying that, to use D&D for an example, there will be a room in every dungeon that can only be opened by a single completely blindly randomly chosen item off the chart of stuff in the "equipment" section of the Player's Handbook. There are no hints, no clever puzzle, just carry 7 tons of equipment with you at all times no matter where you go, and spend far less time actually adventuring or having fun since you're going to be forced to order minions and teamsters carrying all your bec de corbins and hide armors around. Because you think that's where the "challenge" of the game should come from.
