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[Red Cossack]

if and when the caravan arc is completed, production of the same item over and over might depress the market. So all those masterwork meals in a few trades might be wothless. and you'll have to find another item to hawk. or you might become the only food producer in the world if you keep it up long enough. depends on the depth toady goes for.

Possibly impacting what immigrants show up  "I heard this is where I can become a master chef?"

[obeliab]

Except in the very early game, I like to give the traders a huge profit margin--like 200-300%--and a big offering, usually consisting of all the extra crafts that they didn't require to buy out their whole stock.  I don't think it has much of an effect, but I view it as an expression of my dwarves' overwhelming wealth.  I find it's a good policy to institute a personal prohibition on trading anything but craft-like goods... seems to be a little more balanced that way (at least until you've got like a dozen legendary crafters).

[Mushroo]

The high prices for prepared meals seem reasonable to me. Consider all the resources that go into that quarry bush roast:

Miner digs farm plot.
Planter grows quarry bushes and pig tails.
Thresher processes pig tail thread.
Weaver makes cloth.
Clothier makes bags.
Thresher processes quarry leaves.
Cook makes roast.

If the roast has several ingredients then it might also represent the work of millers, butchers, beekeepers, barrel-makers, military to protect the above-ground berry farm, etc.

So it makes sense to me that a finished good requiring coordinated team effort is worth a lot more than a gabbro mini-forge that is the work of a single craftsdwarf.

What frustrates people I think is that dwarfs "should be" master stone and metal crafters based on our imagination. But currently prepared food is the most lucrative industry due to the "stacking" effect of something like "quarry bush leaves [25]." What would be cool is a comparable stacking effect for other crafts. For example a jewel-encrusted figurine of a dwarf is a nice craft good, but a "stack" of 32 jewel-encrusted figurines becomes a "chess set" worth a small fortune. Just a thought...

[jellsprout]

I love it when I buy out an entire caravan for a few green glass large serrated discs. Food at least has a use.

[Jorshamo]

Thing like prepared meals, serrated discs, or a few dozen masterwork whatevers do seem to be overpowered. I'm hoping that dimplomats will give you a list of what they want, which will fetch higher prices, and a list of items they have in abundance, which you wont get as much for. It would make trading a lot more dynamic, and harder to break.

[ledgekindred]

I love it when I buy out an entire caravan for a few green glass large serrated discs. Food at least has a use.

Green glass large serrated discs have uses too -- that of being large, serrated discs.

Thing like prepared meals, serrated discs, or a few dozen masterwork whatevers do seem to be overpowered. I'm hoping that dimplomats will give you a list of what they want, which will fetch higher prices, and a list of items they have in abundance, which you wont get as much for. It would make trading a lot more dynamic, and harder to break.

They already do this to some extent by telling you what goods they will pay extra for.

I've also noticed on my last couple of forts, but it may just be by chance due to a limited sample size, that the merchants now only tend to bring the items that you've specifically asked for during the previous season.  I was in dire need of food and booze, so those were really the only things I asked for, and I checked off nearly every kind of meat they had listed.  When the merchants came back the next season, they came with a cartload of food and booze and very little else.  This included several dozen screens worth of different foods.  Pretty much everything, and only the things, I had asked for.

[Mushroo]

Thing like prepared meals, serrated discs, or a few dozen masterwork whatevers do seem to be overpowered. I'm hoping that dimplomats will give you a list of what they want, which will fetch higher prices, and a list of items they have in abundance, which you wont get as much for. It would make trading a lot more dynamic, and harder to break.

Don't they already? (At least the Dwarf caravans.)

To be honest though after the first few years I've started completely ignoring these trade agreements. Who cares that they'll buy my scepters at 178% and socks at 184% when I can buy the entire caravan with one large clay prepared food pot?

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. As a player, I find it lots more fun to hunt strange animals, grow different seasonal crops, and process raw ingredients in different combinations compared with making goblets out of rocks. I'd rather have my happy little guys running around the caverns prospecting for strange mushrooms than sitting in a sweatshop making mittens. But this of course is probably due to my interests in real life (I love gourmet cooking and a trip to the farmers market) and fortunately the game is biased towards my interests in this case.

[NecroRebel]

I've also noticed on my last couple of forts, but it may just be by chance due to a limited sample size, that the merchants now only tend to bring the items that you've specifically asked for during the previous season.  I was in dire need of food and booze, so those were really the only things I asked for, and I checked off nearly every kind of meat they had listed.  When the merchants came back the next season, they came with a cartload of food and booze and very little else.  This included several dozen screens worth of different foods.  Pretty much everything, and only the things, I had asked for.

When you max out a request at the liaison, the traders the next year will attempt to bring 4 of that item type in addition to whatever random stuff they want to bring. This means 4 bars for metals and such, 4 stones for rocks, 4 bins of leather or cloth, 4 stacks for food, 4 barrels for booze, and so on. They also have a weight limit that they can bring in, however, so if you order a lot of stuff or very heavy stuff, they'll not have much room for random stuff. If you ordered every kind of meat, booze, and other foodstuffs, you ordered a lot of things, and they loaded their caravan down with that above all else. All that lightweight food adds up if they're bringing 200 stacks of it.

You can also max out caravans fairly easily by ordering metal. Often, in the lategame once my fort is self-sufficient, I'll order maxed-out platinum bars and nuggets, aluminum bars and nuggets, steel, iron, pig iron, coke, and charcoal bars, flux stones, iron ores, and sometimes gold or silver. Those things are all very heavy, so the caravan brings little, if anything, else. On the other hand, early on I'll usually order large quantities of leather and a bit of food, and the caravan will carry quite a bit besides what I ask for.

[GrayFoxUA]

My guilt-free method of getting goods includes walling the traders in till they starve to death and then collecting the goods. Guilt-free guaranteed

[Unfrozen Caveman]

Once you get any industry going it's pretty easy to produce enough of anything high quality to trade for whatever the caravans have that you might want.  I never want everything they have.  I want wood, ropes, tame beasts, and produce.

I'm very interested on how the economy is going to change.  I would like to see marginal utility at work. 

[Girlinhat]

(didn't read the entire thread)

Toady is currently working on the Caravan Arc, which is the series of releases that will overhaul trade, caravans, and hopefully wagon.  One thing that is expected, is supply and demand.  If you trade a dozen prepared meals one year, the next year they may be worth half as much, until they hit lowest price (and by extension other foodstuffs should drop in value) and you'll have to trade a ton of meals to get what you want.  At that point it'll be easier to make a few gold goblets and sell them off instead, until the price on them bottoms out, by which point the trading partners are probably getting hungry again...

That's just one example.  Right now trading is purely "This is X value" but in future releases it's going to be a lot more complex and challenging.

[Naros]

To me it feels exploity to send out the huge stacks of food which is more valuable than gold.

I tend to never trade any. But in the end it depends on your vision of what dwarves are.
Mine churn out obsidian mechanisms and stone crafts and goblin skull totems, but in the end that's not very difficult either. But it's not as easy, and not as valuable, so I prefer it.
It just feels right.

[Starver]

It's been said already, more or less, but my view is that at the moment each and every caravan is coming to your humble site just to trade with you, and apparently with no other ports of call before or after.  If they end up leaving with something they brought, then that's wasted effort.  If they're willing to discuss swapping silk cloth, magnificent pre-trained beasts or ingots of all the various metals (except one!) that you may well be without for some ☼masterful☼ stone earrings and whatnot, then that's their business.  That's trade.  Haves with a want meet have-nots with an abundance of something the latter consider worthless, swap their respective surpluses and each imagine themselves on top of the deal.

But as and when caravans are more accurately modelled to run a circuit consisting not only of your settlement but of numerous human hamlets, elevated elven encampments, slugman settlements, possibly even a dark tower or two, they're probably going to be a bit more picky.  "Hey, Urist McTrader.  I know your place makes good rings and all, but last year the Goblin Lord complained that we'd not got any caged Megabeasts left after we'd passed by your place, and after only a couple of annual circuits, all our other market-places are now peopled (and 'thing'ed!) entirely by various beings with so much jewellery on that they constantly rattle and occasionally even collapse to the ground and can't get up again!  We'd take all your fine crafts, yes, but I really can't see us able to swap even one low quality donkey-cage (with one low quality donkey, in it!) for less then a thousand or so figurines.  What?  What do you mean you'll take five!?!  Oh dear, my poor camels, I'm going to have to talk to my union representative about this!"


(Additionally, I've always wondered what it might take to get some of the traders or accompanying guards to relinquish some of their personal equipment.  Perhaps rarely possible, but some guy might like a nice vegan roast in return for a silk cape, or a wagon-driver (if they ever happen again) might even trade his shoes for a meaty FB biscuit or two.)

[Urist Imiknorris]

It's been said already, more or less, but my view is that at the moment each and every caravan is coming to your humble site just to trade with you, and apparently with no other ports of call before or after.

In 40d I had an elven caravan arrive in my fort's second year, trade some seeds and booze for obsidian mugs, and leave. I then abandoned (bored with the fort already) and embarked on a nearby human town. Who did I find in the keep? The very same elven merchants, past-fort-made obsidian mugs and all.

[hitto]

Hey, your broker has a skill for a reason.

"Dude, even MacDonald's meals get more expensive with time. You want macdonald's, or you want Masterwork gourmet qarry bush leaves roasts"

"What, don't wanna trade everything for one large glass disk? But elephants HATE that shit. Guaranteed repellant!"

Side question, elves NEVER ask me anything about trees or quotas, I suspect it's because I always let all caravans go with a page of roasts as offerings, but does flooding the merchants in wares actually guarantee a larger caravan the next time they visit?