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Author Topic: Sending out trade caravans  (Read 11382 times)

Gumbiss

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #15 on: October 26, 2015, 06:45:29 pm »

Maybe you could also send people to other civilizations to put requests in for what you want their trade caravans to bring to your fortress, like you can with the dwarves.
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Gumbiss

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #16 on: October 28, 2015, 07:05:20 pm »

Or maybe when boats are added you can make a trading boat that you could send to civilizations also built along that river.
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #17 on: October 30, 2015, 06:56:17 am »

Maybe you could also send people to other civilizations to put requests in for what you want their trade caravans to bring to your fortress, like you can with the dwarves.

That already exists in that the outpost liason will ask you what your fortress demands from the caravan next year. 

Or maybe when boats are added you can make a trading boat that you could send to civilizations also built along that river.

The same basic system that works for caravans would work for boats.  I cannot wait for boats to be added into the game, as without boats the world is kind of not really one world but a series of one-island worlds.
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Bumber

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #18 on: November 02, 2015, 06:57:52 am »

Maybe you could also send people to other civilizations to put requests in for what you want their trade caravans to bring to your fortress, like you can with the dwarves.
That already exists in that the outpost liason will ask you what your fortress demands from the caravan next year.
Only for your own civ. You can't ask the elves for whatever giant animals you'd actually want.

It would also be good to be able to surpass the item request limit (5) by sending out multiple caravans and passing through multiple sites. Buying out a caravan's entire metal item supply to melt down is silly (and I imagine a dwarven trader would be deeply offended if they knew your intent for their crafts.)

We should be able to order our caravans to buy up all the steel bars they can, at the risk of becoming a tempting target for raiders. This would be subject to availability and negotiations.
« Last Edit: November 02, 2015, 07:02:54 am by Bumber »
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #19 on: November 03, 2015, 11:27:23 am »

Only for your own civ. You can't ask the elves for whatever giant animals you'd actually want.

It would also be good to be able to surpass the item request limit (5) by sending out multiple caravans and passing through multiple sites. Buying out a caravan's entire metal item supply to melt down is silly (and I imagine a dwarven trader would be deeply offended if they knew your intent for their crafts.)

We should be able to order our caravans to buy up all the steel bars they can, at the risk of becoming a tempting target for raiders. This would be subject to availability and negotiations.

It mechanically speaking exists for the other civs too.  It is just the raws are not present in the entity files; all you have to do is create a position with [RESPONSIBILITY:TRADE] for the other civs. 
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LordBaal

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #20 on: November 09, 2015, 10:19:16 am »

This thread made me wonder about naval trade. If we have a river, we'll eventually get trade barges or something?

That would make well placed shore fortress something interesting if serving as commercial and/or military ports.
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Niddhoger

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #21 on: November 10, 2015, 01:50:03 pm »

We'd need some type of fortress-milestone for sending out our own caravans.  Otherwise, we could get into the silly situation where your starting 7 repurposes its wagon/pack animals and sends out your broker to trade.  I am not saying this is a good idea... just silly.  So we'd want to at least be a town (have a mayor), but I'd rather set it to a barony.  Sending out a liason and sponsoring trade routes reeks of nobles.  Like captain of the guard, you'd get another position pop up: Trade Minister.  S/he'd be like the manager for trade routes.  You can select which sites to trade with, and toggle what you want from them while checking what they want in return.  I don't know about anyone else, but when the dwarf liason tells me what the mountainhome wants I can't remember that crap.  I usually just take a screenshot- its definitely a nightmare if I am juggling forts or haven't played in a while.  A place in game to check all of this would be a god-send.  From this menu you'd also select the parts needed to build a proper caravan, then mark the items for trade along with either quotas or a priority system on what to trade for.  The skill of the broker you put in the wagon seat would ultimately decide your profit margin.  This... would also be much simpler if currency was re-implemented.  However, then you'd have to question the value of currency from different sites and also the metal-content of said coins... and that gets into currency wars alongside trade-route wars >.> Besides, what would the elves use, wooden coins? Leaves? Psh.  Hippies. They don't even like using bones on a species-wide level. 

Yes, yes, we can make liasons from other races appear by tweaking the code, but its still for just one site.  Going on what GoblinCookie said earlier, we'd be seeking to seize that "first traders advantage" in setting up new routes with untapped sites.  We also might end up trading with multiple sites of the same race, so we'd need different liasons for that.  Toady also mentioned that he wants little villages of hill-dwarves to pop up around fortresses.  While these probably wouldn't need a caravan (or one caravan could visit many), it would still be several distinct sites to keep track of what they need/want (trade minister).  We could also send peddlers to them, possibly.  Historically, these would be the bread-baskets supporting the main city with food in exchange for manufactured goods.  It would be cool if we could completely supply our fort with food/cloth via these peasants, while sending out weapons, crafts, etc in exchange. 

As far as setting up a caravan... that wouldn't be so hard.  Our base wagon breaks down into just 3 logs, so I'd doubt we'd need more than that + a carpenter to assemble it.  We might want some leather to represent the covering and a rope or two to represent the reins, though.  Attach the beasts of burden, appoint a trader, attach some guards, and then load her up with goods.  Tell them what to buy and where to go.  Its already ludicrously easy to over-produce goods, so it shouldn't be hard to load it up with enough junk... er "valuable goods of the highest craft-dorfship" to make it profitable. 

The main problem is that trade if fundamentally broken as it is.  We need far too little from a caravan and can produce far too much with far too little effort.  There'd need to be an over-arching total industry overhaul.  Some form of reason to actually keep trade routes up.  As it stands, we basically just buy a little extra food and cloth in the first caravan or two.  After that, we only pick up metal items to melt down.  If you already have iron and flux, you'll likely never want to trade past the first year or so.  Strange-moods won't request metals you haven't smelted yet, so you wouldn't need to pad those numbers outside shiggles.  Food would need to be harder to make (soil shouldn't be equal and it shouldn't last forever, soil depletion!) or dorfs would need to eat more.  Crafting would need to be slowed down in either quantity or quality (paired with higher tier of quality available from trade).  It is rather silly that no one seems to be a legendary ANYTHING until they show up at your fort.  A year of making rock crafts later and they are legendary! Truly, in the entire 1000+ year history of my world, this is a first. There would need to be some form of supply/demand so we couldn't flood the market with stone trinkets forever.  There need to be more supplies from other sites we'd want.   Perhaps there could be things like spices and incense that would boost happiness tremendously- luxury goods that only appear rarely.  Perhaps trinkets and items from other sites would have an inherent "exotic" value multiplier to them?  Toady mentioned having special recipes for cooking that could be randomly generated and become hallmarks of taverns, so perhaps a similar mechanic could be at play for trade.  Certain sites become "known" for a trade good.  Think Persian Rugs becoming a hot luxury item, but on the dwarf-fortress scale.  Medieval brand names, if you will.  These would have much-higher values/happiness boosts to them, but only come from specific sites.  Again, trade needs a huge boost if we are going to start trading with even more sites.  I feel overwhelmed as it is just trading with humans, elves, and dorfs.  If I am not in a metal-poor site, I ever ignore them or trade them token goods for the sake of appearances.  Jumping that number up to 10 would be superfluous in the extreme for the current game.

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Dozebôm Lolumzalìs

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #22 on: November 11, 2015, 02:24:03 pm »

You can see agreements (imports/exports) from the "c"ivilization screen.
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #23 on: November 11, 2015, 05:58:43 pm »

We'd need some type of fortress-milestone for sending out our own caravans.  Otherwise, we could get into the silly situation where your starting 7 repurposes its wagon/pack animals and sends out your broker to trade.  I am not saying this is a good idea... just silly.  So we'd want to at least be a town (have a mayor), but I'd rather set it to a barony.  Sending out a liason and sponsoring trade routes reeks of nobles.  Like captain of the guard, you'd get another position pop up: Trade Minister.  S/he'd be like the manager for trade routes.  You can select which sites to trade with, and toggle what you want from them while checking what they want in return.  I don't know about anyone else, but when the dwarf liason tells me what the mountainhome wants I can't remember that crap.  I usually just take a screenshot- its definitely a nightmare if I am juggling forts or haven't played in a while.  A place in game to check all of this would be a god-send.  From this menu you'd also select the parts needed to build a proper caravan, then mark the items for trade along with either quotas or a priority system on what to trade for.  The skill of the broker you put in the wagon seat would ultimately decide your profit margin.  This... would also be much simpler if currency was re-implemented.  However, then you'd have to question the value of currency from different sites and also the metal-content of said coins... and that gets into currency wars alongside trade-route wars >.> Besides, what would the elves use, wooden coins? Leaves? Psh.  Hippies. They don't even like using bones on a species-wide level. 

Yes, yes, we can make liasons from other races appear by tweaking the code, but its still for just one site.  Going on what GoblinCookie said earlier, we'd be seeking to seize that "first traders advantage" in setting up new routes with untapped sites.  We also might end up trading with multiple sites of the same race, so we'd need different liasons for that.  Toady also mentioned that he wants little villages of hill-dwarves to pop up around fortresses.  While these probably wouldn't need a caravan (or one caravan could visit many), it would still be several distinct sites to keep track of what they need/want (trade minister).  We could also send peddlers to them, possibly.  Historically, these would be the bread-baskets supporting the main city with food in exchange for manufactured goods.  It would be cool if we could completely supply our fort with food/cloth via these peasants, while sending out weapons, crafts, etc in exchange. 

As far as setting up a caravan... that wouldn't be so hard.  Our base wagon breaks down into just 3 logs, so I'd doubt we'd need more than that + a carpenter to assemble it.  We might want some leather to represent the covering and a rope or two to represent the reins, though.  Attach the beasts of burden, appoint a trader, attach some guards, and then load her up with goods.  Tell them what to buy and where to go.  Its already ludicrously easy to over-produce goods, so it shouldn't be hard to load it up with enough junk... er "valuable goods of the highest craft-dorfship" to make it profitable. 

The answer to the question of making caravans scarce is not very hard to figure out.  While the physical requirements of a caravan are not hard to come by, relatively speaking the personel are the scarce resource.  The answer I think is connected to the next release in which we will see merceneries visit your fortress and take up residence just as they already do with AI sites outside of fortress mode.  A caravan needs a staff of merchants sufficient both to trade and to load/unload the goods reasonably quickly as well as requiring an escort of guards to escort the caravan, guards which can also help out with the hauling. 

The tricky part would be this, ordinery fortress dwarves refuse to guard or man caravans.  Only dwarves who are presently merceneries or traders would be willing to do so, that means that in order to set up your caravan you must not only have the material requirements but also at least one merchant available in your fortress and a force of merceneries to be assigned to guard the caravan.  Neither of these can simply be assigned as tasks to ordinery dwarves but arise spontaneously as dwarves individually decide to take up that line of work instead of just being ordinery dwarves.

Merceneries would be attacted to an already wealthy fortress as would minor merchant peddlers of the type that broker trade with the hill dwarves.  What you would be doing is collecting a sufficient group of merceneries, rounding up a minor peddler and then 'promoting' said peddler into a proper merchant with a caravan.  Same thing could apply more or less with trading boats too, once boats are introduced.

The main problem is that trade if fundamentally broken as it is.  We need far too little from a caravan and can produce far too much with far too little effort.  There'd need to be an over-arching total industry overhaul.  Some form of reason to actually keep trade routes up.  As it stands, we basically just buy a little extra food and cloth in the first caravan or two.  After that, we only pick up metal items to melt down.  If you already have iron and flux, you'll likely never want to trade past the first year or so.  Strange-moods won't request metals you haven't smelted yet, so you wouldn't need to pad those numbers outside shiggles.  Food would need to be harder to make (soil shouldn't be equal and it shouldn't last forever, soil depletion!) or dorfs would need to eat more.  Crafting would need to be slowed down in either quantity or quality (paired with higher tier of quality available from trade).  It is rather silly that no one seems to be a legendary ANYTHING until they show up at your fort.  A year of making rock crafts later and they are legendary! Truly, in the entire 1000+ year history of my world, this is a first. There would need to be some form of supply/demand so we couldn't flood the market with stone trinkets forever.  There need to be more supplies from other sites we'd want.   Perhaps there could be things like spices and incense that would boost happiness tremendously- luxury goods that only appear rarely.  Perhaps trinkets and items from other sites would have an inherent "exotic" value multiplier to them?  Toady mentioned having special recipes for cooking that could be randomly generated and become hallmarks of taverns, so perhaps a similar mechanic could be at play for trade.  Certain sites become "known" for a trade good.  Think Persian Rugs becoming a hot luxury item, but on the dwarf-fortress scale.  Medieval brand names, if you will.  These would have much-higher values/happiness boosts to them, but only come from specific sites.  Again, trade needs a huge boost if we are going to start trading with even more sites.  I feel overwhelmed as it is just trading with humans, elves, and dorfs.  If I am not in a metal-poor site, I ever ignore them or trade them token goods for the sake of appearances.  Jumping that number up to 10 would be superfluous in the extreme for the current game.

Yes, our dwarves produce far too much and consume far too little.  All items also need to gradually break down as a result of use, with lower quality items breaking down faster; these are however things which have to be implemented prior to any actual world economy being implemented that involves us in any way.  I rather hope that the artefact release is going to involve more than just being other than our own dwarves making artefacts independantly of us and is going to involve redoing production to increase the demand and/or reduce the production rate as well.
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Dozebôm Lolumzalìs

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #24 on: November 11, 2015, 06:51:07 pm »

That sounds so hard and unrealistic.  Why won't brokers and peddlers from your own fortress go to broke and peddle?  And guards and so on?  I think if the king wants it, any dwarf would definitely go and trade.  Especially if pay/profit is expected.  These peddlers are coming from somewhere; why can't they come from your fort too?  What makes your fort so special that nobody ever wants to go out and trade?  And most importantly,

The peddlers that come to your fortress will leave when they are done trading, or soon afterwards.  Mercenaries are either part of your fort or they're visitors that will not listen to you.

In summary,

Your idea for this suggestion is not very good, IMHO.  Too gamey and hard.

And what's the problem with "you can trade too early"?  You wouldn't have enough goods/dwarves to trade!  You'd either be slaughtered by ambushes and mercenaries, or just plain not make a good profit.
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Bumber

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #25 on: November 11, 2015, 10:19:13 pm »

That sounds so hard and unrealistic.  Why won't brokers and peddlers from your own fortress go to broke and peddle?  And guards and so on?  I think if the king wants it, any dwarf would definitely go and trade.  Especially if pay/profit is expected.  These peddlers are coming from somewhere; why can't they come from your fort too?  What makes your fort so special that nobody ever wants to go out and trade?  And most importantly,

The peddlers that come to your fortress will leave when they are done trading, or soon afterwards.  Mercenaries are either part of your fort or they're visitors that will not listen to you.
Not to mention it flies in the face of
Quote from: Core27, ARMIES OF DWARVES, (Future):
You should be able to send patrols (and, as you get more dwarves, armies) out over the world map. They could attack smaller nearby threats, such as a kobold cave, or let you know about incoming invasions.

It should depend on personality traits, not citizenship status. If they don't like it, they get stressed. If their stress gets too high they might defect (possible new crime) or just go insane. Relevant traits:

+Independence?
+Commerce
+Nature (above ground trade only?)
+Ambition?
+Curious?
+Excitement Seeking?
-Family
« Last Edit: November 11, 2015, 10:21:36 pm by Bumber »
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #26 on: November 12, 2015, 07:49:56 am »

That sounds so hard and unrealistic.  Why won't brokers and peddlers from your own fortress go to broke and peddle?  And guards and so on?  I think if the king wants it, any dwarf would definitely go and trade.  Especially if pay/profit is expected.  These peddlers are coming from somewhere; why can't they come from your fort too?  What makes your fort so special that nobody ever wants to go out and trade?  And most importantly,

The peddlers that come to your fortress will leave when they are done trading, or soon afterwards.  Mercenaries are either part of your fort or they're visitors that will not listen to you.

Nothing is special about your own fortress, your own dwarves can become peddlers or merceneries but what I am saying is that your mayor cannot just say to a dwarf "though are a peddler now" the same way you can appoint a broker at present.  Instead, using the present system your own dwarves petition the mayor to become minor peddlers trading with the local hill dwaves and could request an initial investment of certain goods.  Once you have a few such individuals in your fortress along with a sufficiant group of merceneries on your payroll you can create a caravan to send off. 

The same principle applies with merceneries, they also self-recruit in the same manner.  In both cases however, you can also recruit outside traders and merceneries in addition to accepting offers from your own dwarves to become those things, using the framework that is presently being developed.  A wealthy and successful fortress should find a readier supploy of outside merceneries/merchants for it's caravans than internal ones. 

In summary,

Your idea for this suggestion is not very good, IMHO.  Too gamey and hard.

And what's the problem with "you can trade too early"?  You wouldn't have enough goods/dwarves to trade!  You'd either be slaughtered by ambushes and mercenaries, or just plain not make a good profit.

The game needs to be harder in lots of respects not related to the interface, being able to trade with anyone cheaply at minimum expense would make them game even easier than it already is.

That sounds so hard and unrealistic.  Why won't brokers and peddlers from your own fortress go to broke and peddle?  And guards and so on?  I think if the king wants it, any dwarf would definitely go and trade.  Especially if pay/profit is expected.  These peddlers are coming from somewhere; why can't they come from your fort too?  What makes your fort so special that nobody ever wants to go out and trade?  And most importantly,

The peddlers that come to your fortress will leave when they are done trading, or soon afterwards.  Mercenaries are either part of your fort or they're visitors that will not listen to you.
Not to mention it flies in the face of
Quote from: Core27, ARMIES OF DWARVES, (Future):
You should be able to send patrols (and, as you get more dwarves, armies) out over the world map. They could attack smaller nearby threats, such as a kobold cave, or let you know about incoming invasions.

It should depend on personality traits, not citizenship status. If they don't like it, they get stressed. If their stress gets too high they might defect (possible new crime) or just go insane. Relevant traits:

+Independence?
+Commerce
+Nature (above ground trade only?)
+Ambition?
+Curious?
+Excitement Seeking?
-Family

Those are the traits that would cause particular dwarves to volunterily become traders.  Independance, excitement seeking, disdain for peace/family and martial prowess would often cause individual dwarves to volunterily become merceneries.
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Dozebôm Lolumzalìs

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #27 on: November 12, 2015, 07:33:34 pm »

Oh, sorry, GoblinCookie. I didn't see the part where you said that dwarves from your own fortresswould spontaneously decide to become traders.

So I take back my "I don't think your idea is very good" statement.

However, my statement stills stands: any dwarf could become a peddler. They might not like it, and as Bumber said, they might defect, but it is already planned (or at least suggested) that dwarves will do harder things with fewer bad thoughts during hardships, including the first few years of a fortress. So that could balance out several things.

Becoming a guard would have the same bad thoughts as just suddenly being drafted, and bad guards would likely not guard well.  (BTW, where'd the "complained of the draft" thought go?  I never see it anymore.)

Seriously, any random dwarf should be able to trade/guard, but that might not be a good idea for the fortress. You need the wagons, pack animals/pull animals, goods, and a (hopefully) trained group of peddlers and guards. (BTW, why'd you say they had to be mercenaries?) So if you struck gold in your first month, you could send out a caravan, but it would likely be killed, robbed from, or not make a good profit.

As I said, it is extremely gamey to say "now you can trade." You can attempt to do very hard/impossible things in-game. Why can't this be one of them? It sort of scoffs at the player, saying, "You can't possibly handle a caravan yet." And what about those who play with a low pop cap? With skilled guards and traders, plenty of animals, wagons, and goods, you should be able to trade.
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GoblinCookie

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #28 on: November 13, 2015, 05:36:59 pm »

However, my statement stills stands: any dwarf could become a peddler. They might not like it, and as Bumber said, they might defect, but it is already planned (or at least suggested) that dwarves will do harder things with fewer bad thoughts during hardships, including the first few years of a fortress. So that could balance out several things.

Becoming a guard would have the same bad thoughts as just suddenly being drafted, and bad guards would likely not guard well.  (BTW, where'd the "complained of the draft" thought go?  I never see it anymore.)

Bumber's idea is actually quite functional and has merit.  The only problem with Bumber's idea is that unlike mine it does not really allow the integration of adventure mode trading goals with the fortress mode reality while avoiding the imposition of explicit classes on the player.  Bumber's model can only really have the trader adventurer explicitly told by the government of his home site "go and be a trader" which while quite functional from a fortress mode perspective logically requires fixed starting classes for the adventurer.  My idea by contrast allows the adventurer to go badger the site government to become part of a caravan or be allowed to become a trader as well as to be given a caravan head once he has built up a reputation as a minor trader without this resulting in a clash between how things work in both modes. 

Seriously, any random dwarf should be able to trade/guard, but that might not be a good idea for the fortress. You need the wagons, pack animals/pull animals, goods, and a (hopefully) trained group of peddlers and guards. (BTW, why'd you say they had to be mercenaries?) So if you struck gold in your first month, you could send out a caravan, but it would likely be killed, robbed from, or not make a good profit.

As I said, it is extremely gamey to say "now you can trade." You can attempt to do very hard/impossible things in-game. Why can't this be one of them? It sort of scoffs at the player, saying, "You can't possibly handle a caravan yet." And what about those who play with a low pop cap? With skilled guards and traders, plenty of animals, wagons, and goods, you should be able to trade.

The reason is that as far as dwarves are concerned you do not have the right to simply order them as individuals to risk death in the wilderness since the relationship between the site government and the individual dwarves ought to be somewhat reciprical.  You are taking them away from their homes, their families and friends for a period of time, depriving them of the wealth and security the fortress has built up in order to risk life and limb for the sake of other dwarves that sit around benefitting from the goods they bring back.

The reason it has to be merceneries is that ordinery dwarf militia think as the above, merceneries on the other want actually want to risk life and limb in the wilderness, that is why they left home in the first place; it also gives them a reason to exist which at present they basically do not have.  It does not matter if your own fortress cannot manage to produce traders and merceneries because you can hire visiting merceneries and traders.  They did however arise at random from suitable individuals in other sites to start with, you are simply being part of the world by your dwarves being able to become those things, it is not intended to always be sufficient to allow the player to reliably produce a caravan solely with their own personnel alone. 
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Bumber

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Re: Sending out trade caravans
« Reply #29 on: November 16, 2015, 05:33:55 am »

Bumber's idea is actually quite functional and has merit.  The only problem with Bumber's idea is that unlike mine it does not really allow the integration of adventure mode trading goals with the fortress mode reality while avoiding the imposition of explicit classes on the player.  Bumber's model can only really have the trader adventurer explicitly told by the government of his home site "go and be a trader" which while quite functional from a fortress mode perspective logically requires fixed starting classes for the adventurer.
I'm not sure I follow here. Why does the adventurer have to be asked?
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