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[WanderingKid]

Here at Perplexmansions, our legendary chefs are cooking night and day for all traders who want to stop by.  We've got roasts!  Look legendary were-whatevers and... hm, cheese?  Oh, our cheesemaker's currently practicing with a hammer, don't mind him... cheese?  Oh, look, bins upon bins of cloth of cloth and leather and a bunch of crutches!  Excellent.

We'll take.  EVERYTHING.  Five barrels of food?!  ARE YOU MAD?!  No no, you get *four*.  And only the rock ones, we're keeping the nice light wooden ones, thanks.

No no, just leave the wagons here.  As a matter of fact, leave the animals too.  We'll take everything.  Oh, fine, you can have FIVE barrels of food.  Now, off you GO!

NEXT!


Okay, with some slight seriousness... Rock Crafts? Mugs? PAH!  Who needs that?  Two legendary cooks, a few hunters, a bit of milking, and simply buying out everything in food products the last caravan has to offer and you're able to buy out roughly every trade caravan from there on in.  The best/worst of this scenario is I typically have so much blinking food I was trying to figure out if I should simply deconstruct my kitchen at one point.  Food:Drink is 1:2 and I typically have 4:1 (working on that problem, actually).

Took me a bit to find them under the barrels menu, but since then, PAH!  Stonecrafters?  PAH!  Make more rock pots, we've got cookin' to do!

I have to assume the evil biomes pretty much nip this in the bud due to a heavy requirement for vegetarian dieting.

[wuphonsreach]

I do the same, but I make wood spiked balls and mechanisms non-stop until the first caravan arrives in the fall.  By the time they showed up this year, I had about 80-90k dwarfbucks worth of stuff to sell them.  (It's a heavily forested embark.)

By year 3, I'm buying out everything that is worth buying from the elves (hah, not much), the humans (they sometimes bring useful stuff), and the dwarves (who bring me a few thousand meat / fish / cheese / eggs).

[Loud Whispers]

I don't like cooking. Eats straight through meat stocks, and meat is hard to come by sometimes. Fish especially.

I just use cloth crafts for trade goods.

Cloth.

Crafts.

[Urist McTaverish]

I remember a couple volcanic embarks where I could get a metal industry set up quickly thanks to tones of copper ore and buy out the first caravan with metal and stone crafts.

Good times, good times.

[acetech09]

Eggs. Ten turkey hens, provided with next boxes, will provide more than enough food for 20+ dwarves, while still having spare eggs for caravan roast-buying-out.

[Di]

I just sell tattered socks and goblin underwear. That's enough most of the time.

[SixOfSpades]

The existing state of economic exchange is, while not strictly speaking a "bug," certainly horribly overbalanced. Make a rather nice *something*, embellish it with 1 to 3 fairly good +whatever+s, and BAM, you can trade that for literally everything you want out of the next caravan. While this is true of any type of good, it's most egregious with food, because
1) The raw materials are SO easy to come by, and literally dirt cheap,
2) You were going to be producing crops/livestock anyway, just to stay alive,
3) Combining different ingredients into 1 roast helps conserve your limited space,
4) Food is one of the few trade goods that your dwarves actually use (eating expensive food causes happy thoughts), and
5) All races buy food, & there's never an export restriction on it. (Just don't sell the elves any food in wooden barrels.)

From a powergaming perspective, there's hardly any point to building up any other trade industry. The caravans might as well path directly to your Kitchen, the Trade Depot is merely for show.

Why do both you & Loud Whispers seem to think that roasts require meat? Vegetarian roasts work just the same.

[mordrax]

At the moment, i give away 1-2k units of food to the value of 100-200k to each caravan just to get rid of stuff.

The last time the liason came, i asked for prepared meat as priority and bought out 6000 units of meat. In just a couple of years, they were turned into meals and still clog up the stockpiles. I'm still giving away food to this day.

Not to mention clothing, my legendary weaver, dyer, clothier churns out masterwork weaved, dyed clothing by the hundreds and they sell for over 500 a piece... and there's thousands of pieces of clothing lying about rotting. My fort is dying from having too much stuff lying around!

So yeah, trade and the value system is a bit broken IMO and after the first 1-2 years, i don't need them anymore.

[Friendstrange]

I am extremely selective of what I make and only place the repeat button on the stone crafts when I run short of something I need and want if from the caravan.

Even so, all the worn clothing laying around is enough to buy everything I need. If only it could be possible to gather up all that clothing into the trade depot before the caravan left. Alas, theres too much of the stuff.

[WanderingKid]

Why do both you & Loud Whispers seem to think that roasts require meat? Vegetarian roasts work just the same.

Erm, um... Look, a Zepplin!

Honestly, because 'Roast' to me screams 'Big honkin' chunk of meat in oven'.  Otherwise, I have absolutely no idea what combines into what, just that I've got roasts galore.

I'm curious about mugs, as long as we're discussing ways to abuse the economic system.  My understanding is that you get four mugs from each block, and four blocks from each rock.  These are encrustable etc etc and thus can, in theory, level up early masons cutting rocks for mugs which will then give you 16:1 per rock.  Does this sound right, I haven't actually tried it.

But yeah, meat's pretty easy to come by, particularly once you get your pigs and geese going.  I actually don't eat my eggs, currently.  I keep Goose-sploding and butchering away, and order pigs as a medium priority for the second dwarven visit to get that industry (and leather) going.  My current embark I've apparently wiled away the time long enough without mining that I *ran out of rock* however.  Though, I *did* forget to hook my breweries up to a stockpile with barrels so the booze is a bit low at the moment...

But yeah, it's kind of silly at this point.  5-10k pots of food, and I've currently got enough food (and indoor farming for booze) to pretty much seal up the bridges and laugh at any inbound migrants for a few dozen years.  This embark is sweet.  I've got sand, I've got clay, I've got a river, I've got a *little* steel, and my walls are finally up.  Just need to finish the moat (and eventually pump magma into it, water for now) and I should be able to play the French and insult them again!

Edit: Side note, I just HAD to say something... Massive Goblin Siege.
8 War Cave Dragons
10 Goblin Swordsmen with a Hammerlord, and associated pets (Elk Birds, Olms, Jabberers)
15 Goblin Crossbowmen with an Elite Crossbowman and associated pets (same)

I've managed to cage a female War Cave Dragon.  Doubt I'll get a male, too, but I can hope she's preggers... assuming I live through this.  The Moat seems to be holding... and the Elven caravan is VERY dead.

[Mimodo]

I simply pump out silver bolts, and sell the masterwork. Normally 3000 for a stack of 25, unless your humans, which are happy to pay double. Uses up that supply of silver, gives plenty of bolts to the marksdwarves, and saves me needing to worry about anything else

[VerdantSF]

Haha! Yeah, becoming the dwarven equivalent of a grill house is fun =D.  My forts often specialize in Dwarven Syrup roasts spiced with Quarry Leaves.  However, in my most recent fort, everywhere I dig is magnetite.  I've never had an embark with this much.  I've even sold raw magnetite to wagon caravans, since they can actually handle the weight. Now if only I had as much flux... 

[Panando]

Why do both you & Loud Whispers seem to think that roasts require meat? Vegetarian roasts work just the same.

Indeed, I've practically brought out caravans with seeds roasts. If you include booze cooking and quarry bush leaf roasts then the profits are through the roof. DFHack seedwatch is quite helpful for managing seed cooking, but by no means essential. A high-skilled herbalist will quickly replenish plant supplies to produce more seeds.

I think the trick really is to avoid cooking plump helmets and berries directly. Process plants into booze or other processed products (like sugar or wheat), and cook that and the seeds too. That's the trick to mad profits with plant roasts.

And personally I reckon that some flour-based roasts sound pretty darn good.

[Helgoland]

Planepacked bug works for meals, too.
Y U NO obliterate clutter? Make a roast worth more than the entire fortress!

[Loud Whispers]

Why do both you & Loud Whispers seem to think that roasts require meat? Vegetarian roasts work just the same.

Kills seed stocks :/