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[Tamren]

Couple of upgrades that would be awesome:

1. After your fortress reaches a certain size, dwarves will begin to bring wagons for trade in heavy items like stone and metal. We already know that dwarves can use wagons since starting fortresses use them to carry supplies.

2. Add metal framed wagons. Same as wood wagons but they can carry more weight.

3. At the same time, add lumber, box and flatbed wagons. These are built for the transport of wood, stone, livestock and other large bulky items like furniture. They are heavily reinforced but will only carry specific types of items.

These wagons might show up empty, this allows us to trade away large quantities of things like statues or siege weapon parts that would not fit on normal wagons.

4. The elf "ambassador" also works as a trade liason. You can then request that elves bring certain items over others. (instead of endless rope reed). The elves will tend to request items like metal cages and stone mugs. Basically stuff they cant make themselves or would have to use precious wood.

5. Add sand to the list of items available to trade from dwarves and humans. Seriously, if someone can make a profit selling me bags of sand, they will. While your at it, also add raw gems/glass to the list.

6. Allow dwarves to trade for coins. These coins can be traded back to traders in exchange for goods, leaving more room in the wagons for heavy objects. The traders like this because it allows them to carry home a lot more stuff.

This also means you can avoid giving the traders ridiculous profits when all you have to trade are very expensive items. Ie trading a crossbow for a masterwork roast.

7. Bring back roads. This time around, when you connect your trade depot to a map edge, trade caravans will always use the road and not appear out of the wilderness. Stronger and smoother roads allow the use of heavier wagons, and thus more stuff for you to buy.

This also applies to migrants, liasons and other entities. Its EXTREMELY annoying when you pick a map with extreme cliffs and migrants show up 10 levels above your fortress on a tiny cliff apparantly having walked over 15+ mountains.

8. Allow us to specify the quality of item we want. The default is standard. If you want something special, such as high quality weapons you can request those instead. At the same time you can also specify whether or not you want decorated items. I can't count how many times ive seen items i want but cant afford. Things like exceptional iron crossbows decorated with masterwork star rubies and rose gold...

9. Anything the rest of you have to add.

Thoughts?

[Yat]

Exotic animals. On the lists of leather there is merfolk and whales and tigers and the ever popular wagon leather; why not be able to buy the live versions of these things, get a proper dwarven zoo, that isn't all goblins and fireflies.

[Thallone]

I second exotic animals. There should, however be a steep cost. Perhaps, depending on the animal, it will only be traded for a masterwork platinum nick-nack?

So you would chose, say, Giant Cave Spider, wanted at 200% of price <highest>, and along with the other information, the trader tells you "I will get you your Giant Cave Spider, but you must have 5 ≡exceptional≡ steel crossbows ready for me in exchange. And when the traders appear the following year, they would bring a Giant Cave Spider, and if you failed to have 5 ≡steel crossbow≡ in your trade, no matter what you offered it would be rejected.

[Tamren]

Trade agreements are good, but what about contracts?

The way contracts work is a bit different. Lets say you had a contract open for the import of 10 iron crossbows of exceptional quality. In return you would make a platinum statue or something. Next time the caravan rolls up they will without fail bring exactly what you wanted. The difference is that you can only buy those 10 crossbows for that one platinum statue.

This option would be highly useful for bulk orders. You could say... ask the merchants to bring 200 pieces of wood over 4 years in return for a 250% price. Combine this with the lumber carts mentioned above, and you get your order. The only other option is to put a heavy bias on wood in this years trade agreement, which doesnt work all that well currently.

Some more ideas:

1. Independant traders. Instead of 1 guaranteed caravan per year, add in "wandering" caravans which show up randomly. Or more regular caravans that show up throughout the year as more and more profit goes out.

2. Player trade caravans. They work just like the current ones only in reverse. You appoint a merchant, give him a list of things to buy and send him off with a wagonful of goods. When he returns he will have bought as much of those goods as he could with the items he brought with him. Any extra is converted to coins.

3. Escort caravan missions in ADV mode.

[ December 21, 2007: Message edited by: Tamren ]

[veryinky]

I once suggested (in the irc channel) that there should be a special option for the trade liaisons, buying items in advance. The player would select an item from the stocks then the liaison would give the embarking item list where the number of points would be the item's value. A masterfully ruby encrusted masterful steel battleaxe (12x40x10+12x30x10=8400) would give 8400 points to buy items/animals. Where the "prices" are modified by the broker's skill, or maybe the number of points given by the item is based on the broker's skill. (200% markup would mean it was worth only 4200 points) So long as the liaison leaves the map carrying the item, the next caravan would bring the items in addition to the regular trade goods.

[Ixen-bay]

quote:Originally posted by Yat:
<STRONG>Exotic animals. On the lists of leather there is merfolk and whales and tigers and the ever popular wagon leather; why not be able to buy the live versions of these things, get a proper dwarven zoo, that isn't all goblins and fireflies.</STRONG>

I want a "stray wagon, tame"

[Dame de la Licorne]

quote:Originally posted by Tamren:
<STRONG>5. Add sand to the list of items available to trade from dwarves and humans. Seriously, if someone can make a profit selling me bags of sand, they will. While your at it, also add raw gems/glass to the list.
</STRONG>

Oh, please!! I've just lost yet another moody dwarf because it wanted clear glass that I couldn't make from sand that I can't find.  This would ameliorate a lot of frustration.

[umiman]

I've always found it curious that those massive wagons and all those humans with all their goods can fit in such a tiny space.

How about making it more difficult to trade? *wink wink nudge nudge*

It'll be more interesting with extra features such as:

- building more depots and more infrastructure gets larger caravans
- dwarven citizens can trade their own stuff for stuff in the caravans
- some sort of bazaar could probably work
- tourism! we need tourism by the other races. Make it so that with a thriving trade area, you'd get other races coming for the sole purpose of trading with the other traders. Then maybe you'd get the always hilarious event of markselves guarding a dwarf fortress while their caravans trade.
- give traders some form of basic intelligence or memory so they can recall what you sold them that were fantabulous and what you can potentionally offer them. I'm tired of traders asking me to provide them with fish.
- universal currency would be nice as well. Or at least a generally accepted one.