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[Cocoprimate]

The situation is the following:

For 20 years, I let the elves trade with me because of their exotic animals. But they only ever brought these (admittedly lame) exotics: Black bear, wolf, cougar, eagle.

After a few years, I already had black bear, wolf and cougar farms, and was breeding them for meat and skins. So there really was no point in trading with the elves anymore, because they weren't bringing me anything better, so the next time they came I fed them to the dogs.

After 2 or 3 times of elven caravans not returning, they started sending armies. But the bastards didn't show up riding black bears and cougars, they showed up riding giant weasels and giant mosquitoes! Those are the type creatures I wanted! So many elves could have been spared. So many hauling jobs avoided.

What gives? Is there a way to make the elves bring me a greater variety of animals? Why don't they bring me their best animals to trade? Can they be modded to bring a trade representative like the humans and dwarfs do, so I can choose the animals I want?

[wierd]

The only solution I know of for this issue is to generate a world with "above normal" amounts of savagery, so that ordinary forest animals just aren't in enough abundance to be the main domesticated animal friends of the local elven civ.

We are talking savagery on the "OMG!" Side of things. Forests with Rocs nesting in them.

Elves will then bring giant creatures more regularly, but sadly they will mostly be things like giant lovebirds and crap like that.

Elves just love being worthless. It's in their natures.

[Zammer990]

DFHack has a "fixdiplomats" command that makes the elves bring a diplomat, I'm fairly sure you can order pets from them like any other good.

[wierd]

The elven diplomat is seperate from the trade liason. Elves do not send trade liasons, so you can't make import agreements with them.

[Galagaman]

The real question here is:

Why do you want giant mosquitoes?

[Aseaheru]

You cant ride them.

[Urist McOriginalname]

Giant mosquitoes can suck blood.
Pit one tame mosquito with a goblin hammerdwarf.
Enjoy as the goblin slowly gets drained dry without being able to fight back.

Mosquitoes are basically karma for everything a goblin has done wrong.

[Splint]

Could always make giant animals in general trainable for battle, though it'd take some time to get all of them. And suddenly those giant weasels and giant lovebirds go from nigh useless unless cornered to blood thirsty monsters that will tear enemies to shreds for looking at them funny!

Of course that is a bit of a double edged sword...

[Syndic]

If you mod the elves to have a trade liaison (copypaste the one from the dwarves, or look for the answer I was given in the modding questions thread^^) *and generate a new world* (sadly neccesary) you can order from any exotics they have. I'll never play with liaison-less elves again^^

[thegoatgod_pan]

There is actually a perfectly reasonable answer: the more elves like you the more value they bring you by weight, in the caravan.

Thus is elves love you, they will bring the most valuable object by weight: cloth, lots and lots of cloth

If elves have no strong feelings, they will bring a couple of animals too: low value by the pound

Finally, if elves hate you, they will brings tons of giant animals which take up almost all the caravan weight and cost pennies on the pound.

Killing elves makes for better caravans.

[ColdBones]

There is actually a perfectly reasonable answer: the more elves like you the more value they bring you by weight, in the caravan.

Thus is elves love you, they will bring the most valuable object by weight: cloth, lots and lots of cloth

If elves have no strong feelings, they will bring a couple of animals too: low value by the pound

Finally, if elves hate you, they will brings tons of giant animals which take up almost all the caravan weight and cost pennies on the pound.

Killing elves makes for better caravans.

And now all is right in the world...

Too bad my current fortress is on an island with no elves.  Is this also true of Humans?

[Cocoprimate]

I've heard that before, but it didn't work in my case. I always seized their stuff, then genocided their armies when they came, then accepted their peaces only to do it again, never agreed to their tree-quotas. Still, only wolves and shit, no giant mosquitoes for the arena. I'm past caring though, ever since I tamed the cavern animals.

Now I have tame cave crocodiles, tame floating guts (!), war jabberers, tame rutherers, tame giant cave spiders, tame giant toads and tame giant olms. I had to add the child tag for some to be able to breed, but my animal husbandry programs have all largely succeeded. I even have about 20 dragons, and I already captured a female hydra, so I'm waiting for a male of those to come so we can have dragon hydra roasts.

Also, once you have a good pool of female rutherers, you'll never need anything else for meat again, even if you have 300 dwarves. I'm having trouble finding space for storage, so I atomsmash a few thousand roasts every now and then. I have 8 legendary cooks pumping out roasts on repeat all year long, which I offload to the dwarf and human caravans.

Seriously, tame the caverns guys. Nowadays the only surface animals I keep are pigs and a few cows/reindeers for the milk.

[Larix]

I suspect the above suggestion to be a rumour. Elves bring cloth if the stockpile check suggests you're running out of clothes, their attitude towards you should be completely irrelevant. And they'll bring whatever natural animals are present near their location; if they live near a savage savanna, they might bring giant lions, if they live in a peaceful temperate forest, it'll be skunks and green tree frogs.

Having enough cloth and wood on hand when the elves show up should get them to leave out "basic provisions", making more room for cages with animals. I never try to adjust the elves' attitude towards my fort, so it's probably always middling-to-friendly; and i regularly get a wide variety of animal imports from the elves, anything from vermin to elephants and giant predators.