After buying out the umpteenth caravan with stacks of roasts, I'm thinking of switching over to trade goods that are bit more balanced. I still like the idea of trading food, but for my next game I'll stick to non-perishable base ingredients like syrup, flour, and rock nut oil. There's no right way to play DF, so this isn't about dissing anyone else's game preferences. I'm just wondering if others self-balance the trading aspect of the game in similar ways.
I'm selling them stuff that they would plausibly use and would seek trade for. So, I sell Humans some iron weapons or metal toys/flasks, like what happens in LOTR with the Hobbits. There's also.... "unique" items, such as dimple dye, dwarven syrup, dwarven sugar and of course, alcohol. Then the whole dwarven craftmenship, as I put in my other post, I'm starting up a wooden trade industry,so I earmarked some wooden caskets and cabinets for sale. But otherwise, definitely stone masonry... even slabs/blocks, since the mason workshop pump those out like crazy. But again, dimple dye bags can be amazingly profitable since the cloth bag itself is expensive. I been meaning to try dwarven syrup with metal barrels or glass encrusted barrels, but I haven't got that off as a trade good reliably yet.
The Elves get as their special items glass and cloth crafts. Just pure cloth crafts. I mean, they have their rope reed, we have our pigtails, so, pig tail amulets. Its.... amazing when one consider that a few bin worth of cloth amulets, properly dyed can effectively buy you all the food and beasts and other raw mats you might want from an Elven caravan,well, outside of gnomeblight that is.. In a previous fort prior to FPS, I sold them iron weaponery/armour, but that was because my civ was under the subjugation of the Elves and I was RPing.
As mentioned in going green, I'm earmarking a wooden industry for the dwarves. The dwarves are always my sell spoils to, so all those silver daggers and troll fur gets dumped on them, along with worn dwarven clothes. Unless a siege happens, which forced me to dump it on the elves:D. So, wooden caskets for the vamps, wooden cabinets and doors and of course, lots and lots of wheelbarrows/minecarts. Its never enough to afford the stuff I want from the dwarves though, so, I essentially conduct entrepot trade. I get cloth from the elves/humies, and I make a fashion capital for the Dwarves, less wellspun rope reed fibre, but excellently dyed with fort dyes and of course, silks and etc. Clothes and cloth craft, if dyed, are amazingly profitable. Otherwise, I sell them alcohol or more importantly, aboveground alcohol roasts:D
I'm way too niggardly to sell them the piles of copper bolts/leggings/statues I made to train my metalsmiths.....Metals are my precious! That and gems!
P.S Wood doesn't rot if its not exposed to moisture, so, caverns in mountains might preserve wood pretty well depending on the climate. So, it does make sense for them.
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Topic: Balanced trade goods? (Read 6668 times)