Here's the deal: you have the option to post your intentions publicly here, in which case, if someone else wants to hatch a plan to foil yours, they already know what you plan to do. If you wish, however, you can send me your instructions privately, so that only you and I know what you have told your dwarf to do, and the others may guess your plans a season or two down the road by what your dwarf has done already. I'm just giving you guys the option of keeping your "true intentions" secret if you wish them to be. You can even say one thing on the board and another to me via PM, (In which case I'll use the PM instructions instead.) It helps the game be more involving, trying to figure out what everyone is trying to do with the limited resources at the embark. Migrants will be available to be dwarfed, but will otherwise be "up for grabs" to the highest bidders, so accumulating wealth,
wealth will be either in the form of trade items worth dorfbucks to the caravan, or IOU's for services rendered within the fortress, which is this game's version of paper money I'm gonna call "favors"
, is a good idea, because you can trade the "hard currency" of trade items in each time a caravan comes, to buy stuff from the mountainhome, or trade favors between the various dwarves of the Fortress for services and supplies.
Migrants coming to the fortress will only have the clothes on their backs as any form of "hard currency", but can sign work contracts each season with any dwarf willing to pay them in either trade items or favors.
Any military squad leaders will have to make sure that their squad is covered by making contracts with whomever they're working with/protecting. (Yes, this does mean that a really rich dwarf can have his/her own personal squad of bodygaurds who do nothing for anybody else, if that Player wishes it. They better have the wealth to support that squad though, since unhappy military dorfs can show their displeasure in a
very pointed fashion sometimes.)
Unless their owner has chosen to trade them at the caravan, or use them to pay someone, trade goods will be stockpiled where their owner wants them, using Display cases and bins that have been forbidden. Each end of season report will also include the relative worth of each Player's dwarf in trade goods and favors owed them by the other residents.