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[blapnk]

Well, there might be diminishing returns and you want to make sure you have enough to buy out the next caravan, but otherwise large profit margins are a good thing. Caravans make a very simple check to see how successful they are: the value of the stuff that left vs the value of the stuff that comes back. That's why even if you manage seize goods from a caravan without technically stealing it will still be recorded as a loss, and why you get blamed for failing to protect caravans from ambushers.

It will probably encourage elves to bring the more expensive goods, although I'm not sure about the exact details of how they select goods. More goods would mean a higher chance of an expensive material being chosen. The amount of clothes and fabric they bring will also depend on the amount of unforbidden pristine clothes you have in your fort.

[PatrikLundell]

I think the size of caravans, especially elven ones, is limited by the size of their civ. I've had elves that only send two paltry pack animals even after several years of "all you can haul" trading with very little in return to me (200 dwarfbucks or so), but with a healthy trading partner the caravans can get quite large. Unfortunately, you can't request specific stuff from civs other than the dwarves, but the larger the caravans are, the greater the chance they bring something of interest.

Also, I find it interesting that people even care about making good deals in trading given the current broken economy in DF: the first two dwarven caravans can struggle a little, but after that the caravans are just glorified garbage trucks for me, hauling osf xsockxs and sub standard goods produced when trying to provide dwarven masterworks for the fortress' usage.

[Psieye]

And will this encourage Elven caravans to bring their rare and special goods? I've noticed some things made of unique materials in Elven caravans (Liquid darkness, rotting fabric), that have incredibly high values. Only thing in their caravans I'm interested in.

Do note what you buy also influences what they bring in the future. If you keep buying their cloth, after a while that's the majority of their wares.

[Skorpion]

And will this encourage Elven caravans to bring their rare and special goods? I've noticed some things made of unique materials in Elven caravans (Liquid darkness, rotting fabric), that have incredibly high values. Only thing in their caravans I'm interested in.

Do note what you buy also influences what they bring in the future. If you keep buying their cloth, after a while that's the majority of their wares.

It's subtle, but it does happen. Helps if you order stuff from them, but even unprompted I've had humans roll up with more and more food, and dorf caravans roll up with more and more raw materials.

[MobRules]

Hold on, are Elven caravans still bringing cloth for you guys? For me, they haven't brought a single piece of fabric since the addition of 'grown wood' items in 40.

[Deboche]

Hold on, are Elven caravans still bringing cloth for you guys? For me, they haven't brought a single piece of fabric since the addition of 'grown wood' items in 40.

Same here. It was one of the few useful things they brought.

[Madventurer]

Elves are now officially useless for any fort that doesn't require anything exotic...

[flameaway]

I mostly use caravans to get rid of excess stuff... Saving framerate, is much more important, than the stuff the caravans bring.  I usually don't even want fair value in return, cuz I'm dumping value.  Lately, I just ignore caravans. I still set up a depot but spare myself the actual trading.

Different strokes.

[shoobs]

Funnily, I usually go with about a 15-20% profit margin.  AND IT USUALLY WORKS.  Sometimes I have to hit trade twice or three times, or they haggle, but it works fairly well.
Then again, my first two caravans are extremely light tradegood wise as I do not want to attract early ambushes.

[Niddhoger]

Actually, all caravans will check your stocks before appearing at the edge of the screen.  If you have too few (unforbidden)  cloth/clothing, logs, or food per dwarf, they'll spawn with more of that.  So right before you think a caravan will arrive, go into the stocks screen and forbid all your spare clothing and cloth stockpiles.  They should bring in 10-20 bins of the stuff.  You can then unforbid as soon as they arrive.  Its a trick many of us use to bilk extra fabric out of caravans, cuz its a pain to get a thriving textile industry up early. 

Btw, elven caravans only use pack animals instead of wagons.  This drastically lowers their carry weight and thus their selection they can bring.  You can make lead furniture (or other heavy, low value stuff like cinnabar and cobaltite) and easily overload their donkeys.  They'll refuse more trade due to weight limits. 

If nothing else, I'll always buy their food out.  I know you only need 2 types of food and 2 types of booze, but I like to give my Urists some more variety.  The cloth also helps, and you can buy up their clothing (since its small sized) for your dorfs as well.  Occasionally they might bring you a giant tiger breeding pair, and who doesn't need a pride of giant war-tigers!?  Those things are... 32? times the size of a normal Urist!

[Niddhoger]

Funnily, I usually go with about a 15-20% profit margin.  AND IT USUALLY WORKS.  Sometimes I have to hit trade twice or three times, or they haggle, but it works fairly well.
Then again, my first two caravans are extremely light tradegood wise as I do not want to attract early ambushes.

Do you start with a broker that has decent appraiser/judge of intent skills?

[shoobs]

No.

[PatrikLundell]

One useful trick when using caravans as garbage trucks is to buy clay from the elves, since it's heavy (and thus frees up weight for garbage), but doesn't cost much. Bulls and the like are heavy as well, and can be slaughtered to get rid of them afterwards. You can then sell the clay to the next caravan (since the other races have wagons), or, in my current case, actually use it to create various ceramic instrument parts (that's the plan. Haven't quite gotten the magma power up yet).

[Melting Sky]

I have always wondered about this. For me it seems that no matter what skill levels the broker has, traders won't be happy with anything less than 50% of pure profit.

Of course a full-sized fortress will produce that much surplus for export in dirty worn out socks alone...

Although I haven't played the most recent version, in the past I have definitely made trades where the caravan had a smaller margin of profit than that. Then again I always give them a couple of really good small item trades to butter them up before the big deal and generally have a skilled dwarf do the trading.

Beyond those first couple of caravans you don't need to worry about the profit margin on your trades anymore due to producing far more than you can ever use or trade. I remember when I had a fort where I could pretty much buy out every caravan that arrived just by selling of the goblinite and worn clothes each season. The caravan just becomes a means of waste disposal after a while.

[Xazo-Tak]

It still hasn't been explained, will giving the caravan a larger profit mean they will bring more of the stuff you want next time?