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[bucket]

I like to give one of my Miners some trading skills so he can be the official broker. I know "appraisal" is a pretty necessary skill to see the value of items; is there anything else? I also tend to give him "negotiation" but I wonder if "persuasion" is better to have.

[Poindexterity]

you are correct about all three.

[varangian]

Brokers seem to skill up pretty quickly. On my latest fort embark I gave one dwarf novice appraiser skill but nothing else and made him the broker. After a couple of years trading he was proficient or better in all the relevant skills and was doing a fine job of selling stacks of blue peahen egg roast at 3K a pop.

[obeliab]

Technically, I think all of the social skills affect trading, but the most important skills would be Appraiser and Judge of Intent.  I wouldn't worry too much about the others.

[Langdon]

Brokers seem to skill up pretty quickly. On my latest fort embark I gave one dwarf novice appraiser skill but nothing else and made him the broker. After a couple of years trading he was proficient or better in all the relevant skills and was doing a fine job of selling stacks of blue peahen egg roast at 3K a pop.

I believe they get a skillup "tick" for every item in the trading screen when you first open trade. Bigger caravans will get you several levels at once (I use "Anybody can trade", so a lot of my dwarves have Adequate Appraiser from their first time at the trading post) - if you use the same broker over several years you can hit Legendary Appraiser pretty quickly.

[Lagslayer]

I've tried the "multiple small trades" approach, but I've only ever noticed a single "appraiser" exp gain per caravan.

Also, what I like to do is as soon as I can afford to, remove all the labors from my broker and let him idle in the meeting area. This way, most of his social skills will improve faster (helping with trading), and he won't be so busy he never gets around to trading.

[Bouchart]

On embark I always give my Proficient Building Designer a few broker skills.  Novice level in appraisal, judge of intent and three others.

It really isn't a big concern after you've done a few trades and have your industry up and running.

[bucket]

"Proficient Building Designer"?
What do you do that you need tons of Architecture right off the bat?

[Bouchart]

"Proficient Building Designer"?
What do you do that you need tons of Architecture right off the bat?

No, it's just because it's an annoying skill to train.

[agatharchides]

Does it actually do something? I always thought it just made buildings go up a little faster, so it never seemed worth training.

[Lagslayer]

Certain structures require the architect to set it up first. The architect goes to the site, does whatever he does, then brings the materials to the site one by one. Only after all of this, does the carpenter, mason, whatever come and build it. An architect designing the building has quality modifiers, with higher quality coming with higher skill, just like making an item.

[CapnUrist]

Does it actually do something? I always thought it just made buildings go up a little faster, so it never seemed worth training.

Sometimes speed matters. Like, say, the drawbridge to keep the undead deer outside the fort.

[Moddan]

I think sometimes dwarves admire well-build structures and get a happy thought from that. At least they did in the past if I remember that correctly.

[Langdon]

I've tried the "multiple small trades" approach, but I've only ever noticed a single "appraiser" exp gain per caravan.

The appraiser skillup is when you first open the trade screen for a given caravan - that's when the dwarf looks at everything the traders have and takes a guess at their prices. Once the prices are marked, there are no more Appraiser skillups for that particular caravan.

I'm not sure but the multiple small trades might give Negotiation exp instead of Appraiser. Or maybe only if you haggle. One of these days I'll verify using Runesmith to look at the actual exp awarded.