There are a few issues I've noted while playing as kobolds.
- Exported wealth does not count
- The race Dodge bonus is quite significant, but as their ONLY worldgen weapons are cobalt it combines to make kobolds a very powerful civilization which distracts thematically (allowing them STONE_PREF actually makes them weaker), and in regular gameplay it's quite easy to access these weapons from caravans while making it difficult to acquire embark tools. A change to a lesser metal or a workaround to generate bone and wood weapons (not the current WOOD_WEAPON tag, which disables treecutting) may be in order?
- Some embarks begin with all kobolds suiciding themselves onto wildlife they can't kill
- Since all trophies are UNTHINKABLE they can't butcher sapients. Not sure if this is intended as eating sapients is set to ACCEPTABLE. They also have problems butchering things in general, as any incidental animal kills made by pets and such would not be butchered.
butchering "sapients" has been broken in vanilla DF along with butchering named animals etc since the introduction to 42.06 so any setting you set there really doesn't matter until vanilla DF is fixed in that regard.
embarking kobolds should avoid the initial embark wildlife, I'd suggest digging a hole and building a wall around it, immediately. but Kobolds die pretty easy, anyway.
only certain Kobold castes have dodge bonuses and I'd suggest figuring out which ones and using them for your hunters and military. Cobalt is hard to come by for a lot of Kobold civs, either it doesn't generate near the surface so they can dig it (i.e. turn stone undiggable on for the real kobold experience), or if they can get to some, its not nearly as much as what you need for a proper military, additionally, you have to trade for an anvil.. kobolds don't have any suitable. oh and cobalt isn't all that great its between tin and copper in its values last I checked.
Kobolds have lots of issues and most times if you enable more then the base set of races, either will not spawn or be wiped out in the first 50 years... really they aren't that strong.
exported wealth? I'm not sure what you are trying to say there.
additionally which version are you using?