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[VarrgieCaelai]

Trading is extremely useful, especially if you have an efficient military. I usually just lure them in, whether they're elven or dwarven, let them come close to my fort... Then send my military in to slaughter them all. No survivors means another caravan will eventually turn up... And the process begins again. I've made a huge amount of revenue with this method.

Revenue for what? If you slaughter all the caravans, who's going to tell the mountainhome that you've got tons of stuff?

You make a point... I guess the stuff I get isn't exactly high quality...

[CrazyEyes]

In my current fortress the traders that come around a couple times a year (humans and dwarves) are perfectly happy to trade me everything I could need for piles and piles of mussel shell crafts.  The crafts are just a way for me to get rid of leftover shells from my fishing industry.  The merchants bring me valuable metal bars, glass, weapons, armor, booze and food in return for what is essentially my garbage.

That said, the way I do things isn't exactly realistic.  I'm sure no merchant in his right mind would happily trade away all his caravan's food and weapons for a mountain of baubles.  There should (at least) be diminishing returns on higher quantities of items you're trading them - ten or twenty masterwork mussel shell amulets might fetch a good price back at the mountainhome, but try to push five hundred of the things off on him and the trader will suspect they're not so vaulable after all...

[Ancalagon_TB]

I too trade away mostly totems, horn/hoof crafts and bone crafts.  Oh and old socks.  However, for roleplaying reasons I always make sure to give them at least 2-3 silver or gold items, so they don't feel like they came all the way for nothing.

I've found that anvils are an excellent source of iron/steel

[Aslandus]

That said, the way I do things isn't exactly realistic.  I'm sure no merchant in his right mind would happily trade away all his caravan's food and weapons for a mountain of baubles.  There should (at least) be diminishing returns on higher quantities of items you're trading them - ten or twenty masterwork mussel shell amulets might fetch a good price back at the mountainhome, but try to push five hundred of the things off on him and the trader will suspect they're not so vaulable after all...

Unfortunately the housing crisis sort of proves this isn't the case in the real world, given the option of 10 valuable items or 10,000 valuable items people choose the 10,000 because they don't consider what flooding the market would do to the price...

[Broseph Stalin]

Unfortunately the housing crisis sort of proves this isn't the case in the real world, given the option of 10 valuable items or 10,000 valuable items people choose the 10,000 because they don't consider what flooding the market would do to the price...

There's also the fact that they're travelling merchants, they probably aren't just going mountainhomes -> you ->mountainhomes. Sell a few bins of trendy turtle shell trinkets to the mountainhome and then sell some more to the humans and more to the elves. That offsets the diminishing returns.

[Aslandus]

Unfortunately the housing crisis sort of proves this isn't the case in the real world, given the option of 10 valuable items or 10,000 valuable items people choose the 10,000 because they don't consider what flooding the market would do to the price...

There's also the fact that they're travelling merchants, they probably aren't just going mountainhomes -> you ->mountainhomes. Sell a few bins of trendy turtle shell trinkets to the mountainhome and then sell some more to the humans and more to the elves. That offsets the diminishing returns.

That is much better than my explanation

[McCautious]

"Just give the traders more junk than they leave behind and it won't cause clutter. They're great for xXTrousersXx."

Incidentally... how the heck do you deal with old clothes efficiently?  Every time I trade, I have to haul all the clothing bins over, and then painfully go through them to find the used clothes.  I tried the "w" search feature to search for x but no luck.  It's doable, but it's a pain.

1. Designate your only garbage dump zone right next to the trade depot.
2. Enter at Dfhack: cleanowned scattered x (this will seize/disown and dump any scattered item or item with the tattered tag x ... you can also use X)
3. Wait until the shitloads of worn clothing are seized and dumped
4. When trading: search for items with "x" ... the worn clothes come in whole screens right at the top of the list because they sit right next to the depot. Just hit Shift-Enter to mark each screen of clothes as [PENDING]

5. Sometimes x-items make it out of the loop after getting seized. Some dwarf puts them on right away or some dwarf has dropped (disowned) them himself before so they of course cannot be seized anymore. I don't know how it's happening but tattered items will end up in your clothing stockpile again sometimes. Here I just go to stocks (z) then advanced mode (e) search for "x" while only tagging unowned items. Going through this list and manually marking tattered clothes for dumping is not really a big deal. Preferably, I do this after the large share has been traded away already.

[CrazyEyes]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Unfortunately the housing crisis sort of proves this isn't the case in the real world, given the option of 10 valuable items or 10,000 valuable items people choose the 10,000 because they don't consider what flooding the market would do to the price...

There's also the fact that they're travelling merchants, they probably aren't just going mountainhomes -> you ->mountainhomes. Sell a few bins of trendy turtle shell trinkets to the mountainhome and then sell some more to the humans and more to the elves. That offsets the diminishing returns.

That is much better than my explanation

That does make sense, but I still think there should be a point where the trader simply doesn't want any more of the same crap. 

I mentioned the mountainhomes specifically only because that's a place I can think of off the top of my head where people would be interested in buying crafts just for the sake of having them.  I'm sure there are other places out in the world that would like to import the crafts I make, but I'm also sure I've exported so many by now that they could give a free ≡mussel shell figurine≡ to every customer and still not be rid of them all.  Plus, not every location the merchant visits is going to want them - in my fort (and I'm sure this holds true for many players) I never buy crafts  unless I'm planning to melt them down for their metal.

Similarly, if you're trying to buy ALL the trader's food or steel or leather, the price should start going up after a certain threshold. Both because you're buying out his stock that he might have sold for a profit at other settlements and - more importantly - you're demonstrating that you want it badly enough that you're probably willing to pay more for it.

[Aslandus]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Unfortunately the housing crisis sort of proves this isn't the case in the real world, given the option of 10 valuable items or 10,000 valuable items people choose the 10,000 because they don't consider what flooding the market would do to the price...

There's also the fact that they're travelling merchants, they probably aren't just going mountainhomes -> you ->mountainhomes. Sell a few bins of trendy turtle shell trinkets to the mountainhome and then sell some more to the humans and more to the elves. That offsets the diminishing returns.

That is much better than my explanation

That does make sense, but I still think there should be a point where the trader simply doesn't want any more of the same crap. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I mentioned the mountainhomes specifically only because that's a place I can think of off the top of my head where people would be interested in buying crafts just for the sake of having them.  I'm sure there are other places out in the world that would like to import the crafts I make, but I'm also sure I've exported so many by now that they could give a free ≡mussel shell figurine≡ to every customer and still not be rid of them all.  Plus, not every location the merchant visits is going to want them - in my fort (and I'm sure this holds true for many players) I never buy crafts  unless I'm planning to melt them down for their metal.

Similarly, if you're trying to buy ALL the trader's food or steel or leather, the price should start going up after a certain threshold. Both because you're buying out his stock that he might have sold for a profit at other settlements and - more importantly - you're demonstrating that you want it badly enough that you're probably willing to pay more for it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the mountainhome presumably isn't the same as a fortress, and the other places the merchants go (with the dwarves acting of their own volition rather than under player influence) may not want the same things that an all-seeing overseer would consider valuable,like how dwarves themselves consider murder terrible, but some overseers will atom-smash a dwarf for complaining that the water tastes funny. So while iron bars and leather may seem like invaluable materials to you, other places might think "That stuff's just trash to shove onto the caravans to haul away, but damn if only we could convince those caravans to bring some decent food and trap components, and maybe some toys to get these kids to stop bugging us". And while the "market" doesn't really exist yet you can encourage the caravans to bring stuff by agreeing to pay more for it when the liaison comes by...

(mostly playing devil's advocate here, you're probably right about the supply and demand thing not making sense, but a whole world economy is pretty complicated to put in when a lot of people are still getting adjusted to all the changes from DF2012)

That said, I still love the mental image of the king/queen receiving my offerings and responding "What the hell am I supposed to do with 5000 pond turtle shell earrings?"

[CrazyEyes]

Oh, I never make offerings.  Not because I can't afford it, but because I want to avoid encouraging more lazy hard-working worthless indespensable fops nobles to my fortress with their constant mandates.

Instead, I picture something like the Dino Bite gift shop from Fallout: New Vegas.  Poor Cliff Briscoe trying to convince everyone that his souvenir T-Rex toys are rare and in high demand when he's got a whole closet crammed full of the things because they're useless and nobody wants them.

[Ancalagon_TB]

"Just give the traders more junk than they leave behind and it won't cause clutter. They're great for xXTrousersXx."

Incidentally... how the heck do you deal with old clothes efficiently?  Every time I trade, I have to haul all the clothing bins over, and then painfully go through them to find the used clothes.  I tried the "w" search feature to search for x but no luck.  It's doable, but it's a pain.

4. When trading: search for items with "x" ... the worn clothes come in whole screens right at the top of the list because they sit right next to the depot. Just hit Shift-Enter to mark each screen of clothes as [PENDING]

The part that doesn't work for me is search for items with x. If I could figure that part out, it would save me time.  I can search for other items (like say, totems) but x (or X or whatever) clothing, it's not recognized.

[Naryar]

Trading is useful in the first years when you need stuff. Or in case you want moar exotic animals from the elves like I do.

After that it's usefulness decreases. It's also handy to get wood (in case you're in a desert and don't get 100 wood units from your first woodcutting order), containers, cloth, leather and other stuff.

But yeah, it's not necessary to a grown fort.

[Thisfox]

That said, I still love the mental image of the king/queen receiving my offerings and responding "What the hell am I supposed to do with 5000 pond turtle shell earrings?"

....Throw a mardi gras?

[Arx]

I use it as a way of getting rid of useless stuff, especially things that clog the refuse piles (pond turtle shells) in return for marginally useful stuff (the occasional valuable metal, sometimes vegetables or seeds, leather and cloth). It's also a way of making the "Exported Wealth" number go up, and I like making numbers go up.

[Zammer990]

Trading means I don't have to set up a textiles industry ever, for the price of a bin of prepared meals