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[cryptyk]

Once I have everything I need and my fortress is self-sufficient, is there any point of trading anymore?  I might be missing the obvious, but why bother giving the caravan a bunch of gold figurines so that I can get back a bunch of bags of leather?

My military is outfitted, my halls are opulent, etc.  Is there some other benefit of trading once you no longer need the stuff caravans have?
On a side note, what do I do with all of these crafts?  Just keep building bins and expanding the stockpile?

What do your trades look like in the later years of your fortress?

Thanks!
-c

[weenog]

Getting your garbage hauled off the map is pretty handy.

[Garath]

I'm not so much trading as doing creative rubbish management

However, first of all, I don't make many crafts. A lot of gold is obviously there to make all furniture gold, all bridges gold, doors, everything (that you can). Still, in the later years, most of my trading is to get rid of stuff, not really caring what I get in exchange. Usually I just buy loads of iron and steel stuff and melt it back down to bars

[MonkeyHead]

After year 2 I export highly decorated crafts of varying types and surplus clothing/prepared food in trade for leather and cloth for manufacturing high quality clothing, and ingredients for high quality meals. I will also purchase small quantities of hard to come by things such as platinum/aluminium bars for use in moods or very high value items, gypsum plaster if I can not manufacture it, unusual or rare animals when possible, and items that take my fancy, such as gold flasks or other curios. Its less of a utility (save for the large amount of raw material to keep a fort of 200 or so clothed) and more of a "lets see what treats I can find" deal.

[Telgin]

There isn't a lot of point, really.  I tend to just trade food for food, for the sake of actually trading something.  I'll give the caravan gross overpayment in prepared meals in exchange for some meat and cheese that I don't have locally, or something like that.

Building trade value can supposedly impact the size of invasions, but that's about the only real reason to bother once you've got all of the basic resources you need.

I don't bother with crafts really at all, and I just atomsmash garbage instead of bothering to haul it to the depot and trading it.

[Remuthra]

Trading enough is neccesary to access some invasions. Also, trading with the dwarven caravan impacts your migrations.

[Garath]

After year 2 I export highly decorated crafts of varying types and surplus clothing/prepared food in trade for leather and cloth for manufacturing high quality clothing, and ingredients for high quality meals. I will also purchase small quantities of hard to come by things such as platinum/aluminium bars for use in moods or very high value items, gypsum plaster if I can not manufacture it, unusual or rare animals when possible, and items that take my fancy, such as gold flasks or other curios. Its less of a utility (save for the large amount of raw material to keep a fort of 200 or so clothed) and more of a "lets see what treats I can find" deal.

good that you mention it, I forgot. I usually get a small stock of te rarer metal bars and some gypsum plaster too. Things that strike my fancy are also misc weapons - boning knives, carving forks. Since I tend to cycle cooks out when they become legendary +5 and switch them to military. It's fun to send them out with cooking utensils as weapons

[Caldfir]

I usually import all my food, not because I have to, but because there's pretty much no reason NOT to.  All kinds of trash all over the place gets hauled away, and in return I have more free hands for building and fighting in stead of growing mushrooms. 

Strictly speaking, trading is mostly pointless in the current version.  You can't ask for enough of anything to be really useful, and anything you need can be produced on-site better and cheaper than from the caravan. 

Hopefully this changes at some point. 

[Remuthra]

I typically buy exotic creatures, some rare metals I can't get but still want, and most of my thread, leather, and cloth. That last bit is because I can't be bothered to take time away from building and such to set up an animal slaughter or pig tail farming industry at least for a good 5 years, and the merchants typically bring large amounts of those anyway.

[i2amroy]

It allows you to play on maps that don't have iron ores. The majority of my iron materials I get from caravans, and I always need more iron.

[Garath]

I just wondered, you're supposed to be a colony in a good spot to enrich the mountainhomes, when will taxes/tithes be introduced

[vanatteveldt]

I just wondered, you're supposed to be a colony in a good spot to enrich the mountainhomes, when will taxes/tithes be introduced

+1, that's a neat idea. The caravan can start demanding stuff and the demands can grow year over year until you either get the monarch (and then have to supply his wishes instead of taxes) or you declare independence from the mountain homes, Colonization style!

[zooeyglass]

It allows you to play on maps that don't have iron ores. The majority of my iron materials I get from caravans, and I always need more iron.

this (and goblinite).

Also: useful for selling off old/damaged clothing, to clear the map. Atomsmashing items will give the creator a negative thought...

[Larix]

For most wares, caravans aren't a good supplier, because even when ordering, you'll get at most four extra; four more bins of pig tail cloth won't make much of a difference.

Things are different when looking at stuff that converts into more goods or stuff with large variety within its types: ores and coal are good things to order: if the dwarfs offer all three types of iron ore and you order them at top priority, that's another 48 bars of iron per year. Four lumps of bituminous coal are good for another 32 or 36 coke. You can order very significant amounts of leather and cut gems, because the dozens or hundreds of sub-types are all counted separately. Ordering lots of leather is definitely useful, ordering tons of small gems is mainly good for blinging up your fortress. I regularly order two of each from an arbitrarily-picked two pages of gems and use them to encrust whatever ware i decide to hoard (crutches, e.g. - my volcano fort's pimp canes must be the stuff of legends).

But apart from exotic animals, leather and non-local ores, caravans are mainly good for hauling off garbage. You can impose challenges upon yourself like only trading with the elves, or making a bowdwarf squad or never producing booze locally (while keeping your drunks drunk), but a fort in a decent location can completely ignore trade without problems, up to building an utterly unreachable depot (walled off, on a pedestal with no access ramps...) just to avoid traders going insane and accidentally donating their wares.

Re: negative thoughts from atomsmashing - only when it was a masterwork. Clothes also disappear after a week or two on a refuse stockpile, without causing bad thoughts. My old clothes removal is simply a 1x1 garbage dump with a refuse pile painted underneath; no mechanisms, no risk of smashing a dwarf along with the rags, no hurt feelings. Refuse piles aren't so good to get rid of excess food, because currently, prepared food never _starts_ rotting when on a stockpile of any kind, including refuse. You have to dump it off a stockpile to get the rotting started.

[foop]

Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh, my!