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[Grendus]

So it's generally accepted that most trade races bring larger caravans when you send them with more profit. It's also somewhat widely believed that elves bring more cloth when they get more profit, and bring the useful animals, booze, cages, bags, and barrels when they get crap trades. With this in mind, I've been sending the elves home with as little profit as possible.

The most recent elf caravan brought an additional pack animal, as well as half a dozen bins of cloth (though they brought two jaguars, so it's actually one of their better caravans). I'm confused though, I gave them almost no profit, they got like 200 profit last time, and now they're bringing larger caravans? I gave both the dwarf and human caravans massive profits to encourage larger trade caravans from them, could the elf caravans be based on profit to the other races?

[Tenebrous]

The elves become complacent. If you give them lots of dwarfbucks, they have no drive to impress you next year. On the other hand, if you are stingy with your trade they work a little harder. Just a little.

(After reading my post, I feel I should clarify: I don't know, I'm just using this opportunity to bad mouth elves. Your theory about elves looking at other race's trade might be sound, and possibly a bug (Dwarfs siezed all our goods, but gave lots of platinum mugs to the humans - let us shower them with tame cave crocs!), but without further tests it probably doesn't deserve a thread in the Bug Report forum)

[Duuvian]

I might just be lucky but the elves always bring two or more rare animals every year after I hook them up with 300k in legendary meals. I don't keep track of the cloth, I just buy it, set the dyer to dye the ones not dyed already, and then have the clothier sew images with them on goblin clothes. I don't usually notice large amounts of cloth though.

[Grendus]

Was just curious. It does seem that withholding profit from them increases the chance of animals, the last caravan turned out to have five caged animals - 2 jaguars (a breeding pair no less), two foxes (both male), and a wolf. I was just curious as to why they were bringing more pack animals, seeing as they've been getting pitiful profits from me.

Damn I wish the elves were civilized enough to form actual trade agreements (without modding). I'd love to order some grizzly bears.

[They Got Leader]

Grizzlies? I'd order a couple of tamed Giant Eagles...

Wait. I have supporting evidence. I have a tendency to buy out traders. All of what they bring (human and dwarf liasoned from last year) is what I want, so I usually buy all of it, in all its vast quantities. This includes the elven stuff (I have a legendary clothesmaker who just has no labor but clothesmaking) which each year consists of a couple fruits, a little meat, and a bunch of cloth. After 5 years of buying all this junk off them, this year they bring 10 logs, 3 fruits, 1 stack of arrows and a bag of emerald dye.

[Malicus]

I think the current understanding of the dirty elf traders is that because the value/weight of caged animals is not very high, if they get good profits, they will IGNORE those because the elves think that they are not profitable and bring cloth (which THEY think is valuable for some stupid reason) instead.  Therefore, if you want to keep seeing caged animals from them, don't make the elf traders happy.