Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Thisfox]

☼gold statue of large roaches☼.

...I'd just put the statue in the tomb of a dwarf I don't like very much...

[Larix]

I've found that much later on, trading is essential for getting rid of junk that you can't simply destroy without repercussion e.g. XX☼sheep wool sock☼XX, ☼gold statue of large roaches☼.

Crafters don't complain if goods made by them simply rot away.

And not wanting to install a ☼gold statue of large roaches☼ is just a roleplay self-restriction. Dwarfs will _love_ such a statue; those who detest large roaches will love it a good deal less ("only" about as much as a ☼silver statue of [animal they don't particularly care about]☼) but they'll still be extremely chuffed whenever they get near.

That said, traders _are_ a very convenient way to get rid of old clothes. And gifting them obscenely heavy furniture is always quite amusing.

[Shazial]

Trading is often the easiest way to secure cloth and leather if you accidentally cook your seeds or a forgotten beast comes and kills all your animals before your military marches in to take care of it. I also tend to enjoy trading as an RP thing. It makes my fortress feel like it's connected to the world around it and doesn't just exist in some sort of a micro world of its own. It almost always feels like a festival when the caravans arrive - the dwarves stop their every day work and haul things to the Depot to receive more booze and food to guzzle down.

Though the fest is probably just an illusion the starving dwarves created out of the joy of getting food other than plump helmet gruel.

Plus it's always nice to dust out the warehouse and sell out all the excess and lower quality stuff you don't want your dwarves to use.

[Kuikka]

Trading is worth doing if you're unfortunate enough to set up your cursed town in a place where "metals" are coal and gypsum and only distantly exotic looking stone is cinnabar, which is both worthless and breaks the back of your haulers.

I was lucky to get some iron via trading so I didn't suck so much when first siege came, and goblinite will provide the rest. Still, different food (=not raw mussel) is nice, and one can never have enough leather and cloth. I thought I had massive fields for rope reeds but alas, I was wrong. Exotic pets and things (giant louse? Giant adder?) are nice as well.

So far I have noticed that war animals are basically useless. No goblin sees them as a threat. But meatshielding, perhaps....

[Foxite]

I only ever "trade" with elves by letting my military train on them, in exchange for a reason for going to war with my civ.

[Foxite]

So far I have noticed that war animals are basically useless. No goblin sees them as a threat.

Have you tried War Cave Dragons?

[StagnantSoul]

Any war animal past dogs and regular big cats can tear into goblins like butter. A grizzly is more than a match for two-three goblins, giant tigers and lions are stronger, gorillas are just a bit stronger than grizzlys, giant jaguars/leopards/cheetahs just just a bit under grizzlies, and then rhinos and elephants and giraffes are goblins slayers, as proficient at the art as master dwarves. Anything bigger, like cave dragons, rocs, dragons, those are sheer overkill, just useful for laughing at goblins.

Plus, if you think war animals are useless, try jabberers. They reach their maximum size after two years, can be put into war training after one, are slightly stronger than elephants, and don't need to graze. A breeding pair, and patience, makes a very painful flock.

[Aslandus]

Trading is a good way to make up for a deficient fortress (getting glass and clay for moods when you don't have any on the map or getting weaponable metal on a metalless embark). Things like leather and cloth take a lot of time to make locally, so it's much cheaper to just buy bins and bins of it and make the clothes, then sell the old rotting clothes back to the traders.

There's no strict reason to trade if your embark has everything you need, but it's very convenient to sell all the trinkets which do nothing for stuff you can use (perhaps to make more trinkets if that's your thing)

Oh, I *might* be able to clothe my dwarves with no external output, but it's far easier just to trade for the leather.

... too easy.  A tanned hide is what, 10-30 urist?  A gold craft will sell for roughly 1000-3000 urist.  I just buy it by the bin and laugh at the cost.

Oh, and no elves (nor goblins) in this fort

^
Yeah that wouldn't happen in a real economy. The AI would want the same things YOU do -- useful stuff, most of all. Leather and booze and wood (in non forest areas), etc. should end up quite expensive, and gold crafts a couple urists apiece at most.

ESPECIALLY the leather - that stuff is very hard to obtain in quantity realistically.

Presumably by the time real economy is implemented, "trade goods" will have some use that makes them have actual value rather than just being stuff you give to traders (even if it's just making your dwarves feel better), and dwarves with master level skill may still be a rarity in the civ even if your entire fortress is full of them, making high quality anything extremely valuable.

And that's assuming an ideal economy where everyone does logical things. Just look at the value of gold (high price, extremely few uses) vs water (low price, vital for almost everything) in the real world, and you'll see economic ideals are not very realistic.

[StagnantSoul]

This is how economy runs- if it's shiny, it's expensive. If it's hard to find but useless, it's expensive. Who cares if it's useless, we'll find some use for it later.

[Tacomagic]

I play in a lot of inhospitable embark locations.  Including one that was very... well... here's a picture:



Trading is a LOT more important to this kind of fort since you have to import nearly everything.

[Kuikka]

Any war animal past dogs and regular big cats can tear into goblins like butter. A grizzly is more than a match for two-three goblins, giant tigers and lions are stronger, gorillas are just a bit stronger than grizzlys, giant jaguars/leopards/cheetahs just just a bit under grizzlies, and then rhinos and elephants and giraffes are goblins slayers, as proficient at the art as master dwarves. Anything bigger, like cave dragons, rocs, dragons, those are sheer overkill, just useful for laughing at goblins.

Plus, if you think war animals are useless, try jabberers. They reach their maximum size after two years, can be put into war training after one, are slightly stronger than elephants, and don't need to graze. A breeding pair, and patience, makes a very painful flock.

My war dogs haven't been anything else than toothpicks for gobs, even tantruming dorf/humie can tear one apart in seconds. I had a giant war tiger, that got a hit to its toe. It gave in to pain immediately and then came the finishing blow. Now I bought giant bobcat and giant panda and I'll give these one chance to prove themselves. Otherwise, kitchen.

[Dwarf4Explosives]

That hit to the toe. Ouch, most unfortunate stubbing ever. I've tested, and in my experience, assuming that both are relatively unskilled, most animals that are at least three times as large as a creature can kill said creature, so that giant war tiger would probably have crushed those goblins were it not for that. A giant panda sounds like it could probably one-shot a goblin. I'm doubtful about the bobcat, although it should be able to take down at least a couple of goblins.

Really, the true value of war animals, though, is the fact that, with a sufficient breeding population, they are an endless resource. Your giant panda was killed? No matter, we've got fifty more! The best war animal would probably be whatever giant creature breeds fastest. If one hundred cats can kill off most of the HFS with minimal net casualties* (as long as they don't get hit by dust), a bunch of giant animals should easily be capable of taking down a large siege. If you've got two fully trained war giant animal armies, you're more or less invincible, and your fortress becomes ridiculously rich too.

*net casualties being casualties - newly born

[Aslandus]

Don't forget the REAL reason most people trade: to brag to mountainhome about how wealthy the members of the fortress are after moving out there. They are so rich now, they can afford to give the traders 1000 gold statues for a few bags of sand and steel bars, and they can literally gift the monarch a few thousand urist of prepared food because they just have too much

[Loud Whispers]

Sure I could buy more, but what's the point?

The point is MORE. Plate your Fortress in gold, build a stash of millions of gold coins. Do something with your bountiful wealth!

[Uronym]

Wow, everyone here seems extremely positive about traders... They irritate me. I don't like how they bring trash to my fortress; if they happen to drop their load, then all my stockpiles clog up, my frames drop, and my productivity crawls due to all the hauling.

I interpret traders as hostiles and treat them as such. In most of my fortresses, I have a tunnel somewhere with a trade depot at the end; when the traders arrive, I wall/shut them in until they die; then, I either forbid all their trash or have it destroyed somehow. Repeat until they stop coming. This has several enormous benefits; aside from getting rid of those annoying traders and the trash they bring, it makes them angry! If I kill them and destroy them and their trash enough times, they *might* declare war, which is far more valuable than "trade"! After all, a siege brings training dummies for your soldiers and spare weapons, armor, clothing and metal for your economy... for free! What could be better?

Needless to say, all of my fortresses are probably more isolationist than North Korea. Kim Il-Sung's ghost smiles at my fortresses, which espouse all of the glorious tenets of Juche. Just like North Korea, my fortresses will simply go without whatever we cannot make ourselves. No iron? No iron; we'll make copper do. No surface cultivation? No surface cultivation. Plump helmets shall pour from our ears before we become dependent on foreign imperialist powers!