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[SixOfSpades]

In the Proposal of some economic solutions in DF thread, Sarmatian123 said:

In DF Trading Depots would be functioning like regular Depots, just assigned to some traders for whole year for a fee.
Those would be open for trading whole year. Caravan here would be just moving merchandise in and out once a year.

I found that intriguing enough to run with it . . . essentially re-introducing the Shop, which was abandoned back in v0.28 along with the Economy.

Economy is coming [back] in 20 years. Patience is a virtue!

Ah, but we wouldn't need the Economy arc to make this workable. Here's my take on the idea.

The Basics:
     After you have a Trade Depot up, you are able to build a Shop, which has the same dimensions & access requirements as a Trade Depot. After the Shop is built, you can reserve it for any civ whose merchants have visited your site, or leave it non-specified. Then, when a caravan is in town, the merchants may decide to Conduct Meeting with your broker, to rent the Shop for a year. If so, you will get a chance to influence the Shop's starting inventory by stating your fort's demands (a duplicate of the Trade Agreements screen that your mayor typically holds with the liaison), which will also determine the rent for the Shop: Greater demand for goods indicates more likely sales indicates more profit, which justifies higher rent. Then, about 6 months later, the first Shop caravan will arrive, and then annually for as long as the Shop remains open.
     This means that, even if your only neighbors are dwarves, you will still receive regular resupply caravans, pathing to the Trade Depot in autumn and to the Shop in spring. If the elves happen to show up at the same time, that's all right because they don't have to share the Trade Depot, and there's no worry about traffic jams (wagons of 2 different civs blocking each other from moving) because elves don't use wagons anyway. (There might be a traffic problem between humans & goblins, I don't know if the latter have wagons--but then, they hardly ever trade in the first place.)
     Trade can take place at the Shop at any time--if the broker decides to go Drink for a week, no big deal--although the shopkeeper needs his own break times as well. Just as with the Trade Depot, goods are ordered moved to the Shop, the broker does the bartering, the shopkeeper honors the profit margins established in the trade agreement (if applicable), the exchanges are made, and the fort's new goods are hauled off to stockpiles. The only difference is the rent: If the broker & shopkeeper agreed on a price of ☼90 for that year, then the broker starts the year with a ☼90 credit, and can walk away with about ☼60 worth of stuff without giving up a single item.
     When the shop's resupply caravan comes, the shopkeeper will first meet once again with your broker, to decide what you want next year's Shop caravan to bring (this will also determine the rent for the new year). Then, the shopkeeper barters with his own caravan, trading away those types of goods for which fort demand was low ("They didn't want any cloth at all, get these bins out of here"), in exchange for what was purchased over the past year ("They bought my entire stock of wood & fish"), and anything that matches the fort's demands for next year ("They put a premium on all flux stones, so I'll take that dolomite there"). The shopkeeper trades with his caravan at a 1:1 ratio, as they're the same profit entity. After he's concluded his business with his caravan, they pack up & leave, and trade with the fort can resume--but expect a markup on that dolomite you wanted.
     The Shop appears to include a bed, as the shopkeeper can sleep there. He will eat & drink from his own stock until you buy him out, at which point he will grab food from a tavern or dining hall and pay for it in bartering credits, just like rent. He is not a fortress resident and cannot be assigned labors, but he will petition to join if he falls in love with a citizen--although he will not actually become a citizen himself (or marry) until someone from his Shop caravan can take his place as shopkeeper. Similarly, the Shop itself is not under fortress control as long as there is an active contract--it reverts back to part of the fort only if the shopkeeper has had a disappointing year of business & decides not to renew for next year, the shopkeeper was gravely offended (by having their goods seized, or being badly injured, or being offered unethical wood), or the Shop itself (or its contents) suffered significant damage/theft. You could also terminate the contract yourself, during the annual meeting with the broker. In all of these cases, the shopkeeper will wait out the remainder of the year, and depart with his caravan (although he may offer you one last chance to trade before he leaves).
     You can build as many Shops as you want, although this basic setup will only use a maximum of 4 (one for each contacted merchant civ).
     About 90% of this can be accomplished solely by duplicating already-existing behavior.

Possible Wrinkles:
     1) The biggest one would be security, the guards that accompany every dwarven & human caravan. If they stay to guard the Shop (deterring potential thieves from inside the fort as well as outside), then the rent situation is reversed: You pay them to stick around. If each Shop has 2 or 3 guards (at least 1 of whom is always on duty), a heavily armed caravan arrives every season (dwarves in spring & autumn, humans in summer & winter), and all those soldiers are stationed near your entrance, that's a pretty decent military force, without your having to form a single squad. They would all want free room & board, but that's only fair.
     2) Next is capitalism: When the Shop caravan (maybe even the Trade Depot caravan) arrives, they are not the same profit entity as the shopkeeper, and Conduct Meeting with both the shopkeeper and your broker. If your broker offers the better deal, the caravan will path to the Trade Depot where you can cut out the middleman--but it's quite possible to promise them rates that are too high, and you'll wind up paying more than you would at the Shop. If the shopkeeper gets bypassed in this way, he will go to the Trade Depot himself, to barter away his own goods & improve his inventory. He's had all year to learn what the fort doesn't want.
     Another angle on capitalism is the possibility of having multiple Shops run by people of the same race: Maybe you have one Shop (and its caravan) whose loyalties are tied directly to their government, but there are also 1 or more independent mercantile concerns eager for your business as well. Perhaps the merchant rules will change, from "One contact from each race that can reach the fort, no matter how far away they are" to "Every friendly or neutral civ no more than 3 days' travel away". Each Shop could also trade with the others, if they think they can make a profit or broaden their selection.
     3) Last is the shopkeeper's free time: There's no way that a handful of business deals (with the broker, other shops, and maybe even individual dwarves) is going to occupy the shopkeeper's entire year. He should have his own selection of known skills (random, but excluding those that require landscape features, like Grower, Woodcutter or Fisherdwarf), and carry some raw materials that fit those skills, and finally take the opportunity to use those skills while waiting for business. If nobody wants to buy his cave spider silk thread, let him build his own Loom, Dyer's, and maybe even Clothier's shop, increasing the value of his goods through his own labor. To this end, all Shops would best include enough nearby open space to build at least 1 or 2 workshops.

[KittyTac]

I meant that this would be only implemented in 20 years due to the dev plan. I think we should get Myth and Magic before economy of any sort. And don't tell me you think you know better than Toady.

[SixOfSpades]

I meant that this would be only implemented in 20 years due to the dev plan. I think we should get Myth and Magic before economy of any sort.

The biggest can of worms in the Economy arc would be the huge, tangled mess that involves who should earn how much for performing which step of labor, should Doctors be paid more than Growers, should Miners earn more in a fort where Miners are scarce, could guilds unionize and seize control of the means of production, and other assorted issues relating to the struggle of the urban proletariat. I'm glad I'm not a part of that convoluted horror show.

But the Shop plan avoids all of that. It's basically just alternate caravan destinations, and allocating memory space to hold multiple simultaneous trade agreements.

And don't tell me you think you know better than Toady.

And don't tell me you think I was actually implying that.

P.S. Another benefit of this plan is that it allows you to keep controlling trade agreements even after becoming the Mountainhome.

[KittyTac]

Are you trying to get this implemented ASAP? It'll only be implemented 20 years into the future.

[daggaz]

The biggest can of worms in the Economy arc would be the huge, tangled mess that involves who should earn how much for performing which step of labor

Lol, let the rest of the world know if you manage to find an explicit solution to this one

[Encrtia]

@Kit

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@ SixOfSpades

I like this idea quite a lot. It does subvert the main issues tackled by the Economy arc (from what little I know), with a really nice system that I'd feel at home working with in the game. A much more organic feel to the caravan system.

Although I may agree with the proposed idea, in civil terms, it still might be ignored until the economy arc is tackled by Toady. I know you explained how it avoids who earns what for each labour, with guilds unionizing along with other urban proletariat struggles, but looking at the bay12 development page, it's stated that in time, Toady will address the following:

Replace dwarf mode generated caravans with actual caravans
Improved dwarf mode trade agreements incorporating all the world gen/supply/demand/merchant info etc.

So it may not be something he'd tackle just yet, but obviously I can't say what he will/willn't be doing - after all, he runs the show & may suddenly decide to tackle something different out of personal interest, or as a result of it tying with something being worked on.

[KittyTac]

I told him why it won't be implemented until 20 years into the future. The development plan. It just isn't a priority right now.

[GoblinCookie]

On the topic, I think the question not being answered here is, "what is the point of shops?".  It is rather like we are adding shops in for the sake of it, because we want the appearance of shops, it is essentially a pre-economy concept actually.  We presently have a caravan because we need the appearance of a caravan, not because there is any actual trade going on post-gen. 

What shops do in economy terms is move goods from the central depots where they are stored to the localities where the people live.  Without shops we all have to live at the central depot.  Problem is that with our population of a mere 200, all living crammed together in a small area are we not basically in the 'living at the central depot' situation, so no need for shops.  This by the way is not about who owns the goods or whether they are bought or just taken at will, such questions are irrelevant here. 

This makes me think that it is actually the hillocks/mountain halls that would actually benefit from shops, not the fortress.  The fortress does not need shops, but they may well do.  We (the fortress) should be able to set up shops in the surrounding villages, even if they are not dwarf in order to sell them things that we ship out from our fortress.  The shopkeepers could be local people or they could be our people, it does not really matter; what matters is that we ship goods out to said shops from our fortress and they give us something back for doing so. 

I told him why it won't be implemented until 20 years into the future. The development plan. It just isn't a priority right now.

The economy is not a single monolithic thing.  Some parts it are already in, especially during world-gen, other are not.  The general trajectory is that we start off with things appearing by magic when required (the present caravan) and then we gradually develop a more detailed model as to how they get there. 

[SixOfSpades]

Are you trying to get this implemented ASAP? It'll only be implemented 20 years into the future.

I realize this thread is probably already archived in the list of "Threads to re-read once it's time to work on the Economy arc again", and I'm okay with that. But the fact remains that this (certainly seems like it) would be relatively easy to do, as so many of the mechanics are already in place. And look at what you could get: Multiple shops, run by people of multiple races, trading all year long with the fort, with each other, and most likely even with individual dwarves bartering personal possessions. Keep expanding the idea, and you could have specialist shops: A dwarf might run a store that only sells jewelry, while an elf oversees a grown-furniture warehouse, and some humans run a fruit stand. For the first time, the marketplace would actually feel like a real market. All that, for only a relatively minor amount of new code. It's very close to maximum return for minimal work . . . which is, fittingly enough, largely what economy is all about.

So it [Shops] may not be something he'd tackle just yet, but obviously I can't say--after all, he runs the show & may suddenly decide to tackle something different out of personal interest, or as a result of it tying with something being worked on.

Very true. I'm just pointing out that there's a way to closely approximate something he wants to do ("Replace dwarf mode generated caravans with actual caravans"), with none of the negative aspects of an actual Economy arc, such as Haulers being left homeless because they can't earn rent. I well understand waiting 20 years for the struggle of the industrial bourgeoisie, but from what I know of programming, something like this could be done in about a week. (I know, that kinda sounds like I'm challenging or belittling Toady--believe me, I am not.) Of course, the drawback is that the Shop caravans I'm proposing would still be "dwarf mode generated caravans", which segues neatly into GoblinCookie's point.

We presently have a caravan because we need the appearance of a caravan, not because there is any actual trade going on post-gen.

Yes. A real economic trade flow would normally be finished goods flowing out from the capital, in return for raw materials--especially food--shipped in from the country. Currently, most caravan trades are the exact opposite of that, with the fort snapping up tons of lumber & food for the price of a few stone crafts. Now, that sort of trade flow would be quite all right between the fort and any surrounding villages (who likely are focused on agriculture & don't have the time to develop specialized industries of their own, so the fort's craft goods have a market there), but to be able to use one's own Mountainhome (as well as the other nations) as a vassal state is just quite incorrect.
     Amusingly enough, this incongruity can be answered not with a game change, but a simple explanation: The caravan carries raw goods like boulders and leather because it stopped & traded at a few villages before it got to you, and is willing to sell you those goods (as well as accept your -crafts-) because it's going visit some more villages after you. But in a way, that's little more than hand-waving. I would of course prefer a REAL caravan, that has a specific origin and route, with stops along the way, and whose inventory changes to reflect each stop--according to the caravan drivers' profit-making intentions. And I applaud Toady for committing to such a task.
 

I think the question not being answered here is, "what is the point of shops?". . . What shops do in economy terms is move goods from where they are stored [or made] to the localities where the people live.

But--that's exactly what the Shops plan (as well as the Trade Depot) does as well, it takes goods from off the map and moves them to where your citizens can access them. The shopkeeper benefits by trading at a profit, the fort benefits by obtaining goods not available in the immediate vicinity. As long as the goods enter or exit the map, the Shop/Trade Depot serves a legitimate purpose and is not just for show. (As for a market where goods don't enter or leave, it's just your dwarves selling your items to more of your dwarves, that's a zero-sum game played essentially just for flavor, although individual dwarves can still get rich.)

This makes me think that it is actually the hillocks/mountain halls that would actually benefit from shops, not the fortress.  The fortress does not need shops, but they may well do.  We (the fortress) should be able to set up shops in the surrounding villages, even if they are not dwarf in order to sell them things that we ship out from our fortress.

That's a good idea--although personally, I'd prefer it the other way round, with the hill dwarves coming to the fort, because it's more fun if we can see them. If the village is close enough, average citizens might come; little Dodok is here to sell the family cow on market day, it'll fetch a better price in the city than at home. If the village is a bit further away, you might only get monthly visits from a trader with her pack llama, browsing through every shop for useful wares before she heads back home. Flavor.

[Reelya]

I meant that this would be only implemented in 20 years due to the dev plan. I think we should get Myth and Magic before economy of any sort.

The biggest can of worms in the Economy arc would be the huge, tangled mess that involves who should earn how much for performing which step of labor, should Doctors be paid more than Growers, should Miners earn more in a fort where Miners are scarce, could guilds unionize and seize control of the means of production, and other assorted issues relating to the struggle of the urban proletariat. I'm glad I'm not a part of that convoluted horror show.

The easiest way to set up the basis for this, would be to just make use on economic theory related to auctions. At each time slice, a number of tasks need to be done, and a number of workers are available to do each task. You start with a concept of "utility" to the settlement, e.g. abstract-away money altogether until much later.

Say that there's a rock to be mined, then the utility for that is set in a reverse auction. A rookie miner would need e.g. 1 hour to mine the rock, while an expert might only need 5 minutes to mine the same rock. So, the expert miner wouldn't need as much utility per rock to make it an attractive task, compared to the rookie. The worker would also take into account distance - if a task requires a lot of travel, then it's less attractive, so the utility offered would have to rise for it to be attractive. Meanwhile, the workers each look at every available job they have labors for, and decided which one is the most beneficial in terms of utility. There could be priorities built into the system, e.g. if there's a booze shortage, then all brewing tasks get additional utility value to allocate to dwarfs who can take brewing tasks. So, each worker is trying to maximize their own utility, but the owners of the resource, in this case the entire colony, is trying to minimize the overall utility paid out. The same idea can then be extended to multiple owners of productive capacity, e.g. guilds and the like, so that they compete for labor. Money can be added later as the player-facing justification.

It might work best if there's a "base" utility. e.g. dwarfs value relaxing at e.g. 100 utility per hour. Then, if there's a job that offers them more utility per hour than that, they will take it (taking into account their personal speed at the task, and travel time). Wages would rise until it hits the point where all available labor is utilized, but then you'd get downward pressure on wages if there's a high utilization. So, if there's a doctor shortage, then medical jobs will go unfulfilled, then the utility value for each doctor job would start to rise, and it would look at the utility for similar tasks when making a new task. But then once doctor task become scarce again, the utility on those tasks will fall until it hits the level at which backlogs start to rise again.

[Sarmatian123]

The thing with the store is

1. It would have also limited offer to sell and limited offer to buy items of same type, in comparison to what is currently offered, which is depending on weight of items. Including resupply mountain-home caravans.

2. Also you could sell materials like cloth all year around without fear Dwarves snatching those for own use, which is an annoying left over of last economy implementation attempt. Dwarves picking up even forbidden items and not only cloths. Kids do same with forbidden toys. Fortunately I noticed you can mass mark unforbidden+dump and it even removes the items ownership. Something I tend to do when caravans do arrive. Selling old cloths gives some fps back. Yay!

3. Makes easier to introduce ships+docks later on.

As a fan of bottom-up economic designs, I am rather for economies being developed naturally with gradual introduction of economy elements, balancing them, fixing issues, then adding next layer more advanced economic engagements and elements. So all my suggestions were all bottom-up. Eventually a resulting economy system could be anyone guess.

[GoblinCookie]

Yes. A real economic trade flow would normally be finished goods flowing out from the capital, in return for raw materials--especially food--shipped in from the country. Currently, most caravan trades are the exact opposite of that, with the fort snapping up tons of lumber & food for the price of a few stone crafts. Now, that sort of trade flow would be quite all right between the fort and any surrounding villages (who likely are focused on agriculture & don't have the time to develop specialized industries of their own, so the fort's craft goods have a market there), but to be able to use one's own Mountainhome (as well as the other nations) as a vassal state is just quite incorrect.
     Amusingly enough, this incongruity can be answered not with a game change, but a simple explanation: The caravan carries raw goods like boulders and leather because it stopped & traded at a few villages before it got to you, and is willing to sell you those goods (as well as accept your -crafts-) because it's going visit some more villages after you. But in a way, that's little more than hand-waving. I would of course prefer a REAL caravan, that has a specific origin and route, with stops along the way, and whose inventory changes to reflect each stop--according to the caravan drivers' profit-making intentions. And I applaud Toady for committing to such a task.

The thing about the economy is that a real caravan may not even arrive at all.  Part of the benefits of not having an economy but instead the magically generated fortress mode caravan is that we can always depend upon being able to buy certain goods.  As soon as there is an economy we end not necessarily with more apparent trade and economic activity in fortress mode, but potentially even less then we currently do. 

Finished goods are a bad bet for trade in general in any non-distorted economy (I do not consider the present 21st century economy non-distorted).  What would probably happen is that if we lived in a desert we would end up trading ore for wood and then making use of the wood ourselves locally; long-distance trade would consist of these kind of raw material/base foodstuff transfers as the actual medieval economy did.  The only situation where manufactured goods would be traded by caravans is where they are more durable/portable than the raw materials they are made from, so we trade cheese rather than milk because the latter goes off quicker. 

The only way to distort the economy so that finished goods are traded is to forcibly overspecialize everything.  Starting scenarios come in useful here, if I am a mining fortress I must be forced to simply extract ore from the ground, I *may not* smelt said ore into metal and then into picks, that is FORBIDDEN!  Essentially the only way to make a trade in most finished goods actually happen once the economy exists beyond fortress mod would be for the devs to use some heavy-handed mechanic restrict what everyone can do. 

But--that's exactly what the Shops plan (as well as the Trade Depot) does as well, it takes goods from off the map and moves them to where your citizens can access them. The shopkeeper benefits by trading at a profit, the fort benefits by obtaining goods not available in the immediate vicinity. As long as the goods enter or exit the map, the Shop/Trade Depot serves a legitimate purpose and is not just for show. (As for a market where goods don't enter or leave, it's just your dwarves selling your items to more of your dwarves, that's a zero-sum game played essentially just for flavor, although individual dwarves can still get rich.)

    We don't need actual shops in order to move goods from one stockpile to another which is what we are doing.  Shops are a downwards move, the shops take from the central depots which are remote to wherever the actual consumers are; the key problem with fortress mode shops is that shops are an economic inefficiency since the shop itself takes up resources, shops then only exist because of the distance between the central depot and the consumer makes them necessary.

In fortress mode however we control only a small number of people who live in close proximity to the central stockpiles.  This means shops are redundant since everybody can simply take goods directly from the depot the shops would be taking their goods from anyway.  That is why I am saying that shops niche is actually the surrounding villages, dwarf or otherwise in the surrounding area. 

That's a good idea--although personally, I'd prefer it the other way round, with the hill dwarves coming to the fort, because it's more fun if we can see them. If the village is close enough, average citizens might come; little Dodok is here to sell the family cow on market day, it'll fetch a better price in the city than at home. If the village is a bit further away, you might only get monthly visits from a trader with her pack llama, browsing through every shop for useful wares before she heads back home. Flavor.

You might prefer them to do so, but they don't prefer to do so; hence the need for shops.  They don't want to have to treck all the way across the trackless wilderness dodging hungry wolves and god-knows what monsters you modded into the game  in order to get to your fortress.  They would prefer that the goods are all sent from the fortress to a smaller local depot/stockpile (aka a shop) in the hillocks so they do have to do this. 

The problem is the hillocks themselves have to have stockpiles for the products *they* produce.  Why would we set up a shop in the hillocks rather than have the hillocks dwarves ship some of our goods from our depots/stockpiles to their own version.  Does it really just come down to the cosmetics of the hillocks have shops and stockpiles while we have depots and stockpiles, the two differing simply in scale?

The easiest way to set up the basis for this, would be to just make use on economic theory related to auctions. At each time slice, a number of tasks need to be done, and a number of workers are available to do each task. You start with a concept of "utility" to the settlement, e.g. abstract-away money altogether until much later.

Say that there's a rock to be mined, then the utility for that is set in a reverse auction. A rookie miner would need e.g. 1 hour to mine the rock, while an expert might only need 5 minutes to mine the same rock. So, the expert miner wouldn't need as much utility per rock to make it an attractive task, compared to the rookie. The worker would also take into account distance - if a task requires a lot of travel, then it's less attractive, so the utility offered would have to rise for it to be attractive. Meanwhile, the workers each look at every available job they have labors for, and decided which one is the most beneficial in terms of utility. There could be priorities built into the system, e.g. if there's a booze shortage, then all brewing tasks get additional utility value to allocate to dwarfs who can take brewing tasks. So, each worker is trying to maximize their own utility, but the owners of the resource, in this case the entire colony, is trying to minimize the overall utility paid out. The same idea can then be extended to multiple owners of productive capacity, e.g. guilds and the like, so that they compete for labor. Money can be added later as the player-facing justification.

It might work best if there's a "base" utility. e.g. dwarfs value relaxing at e.g. 100 utility per hour. Then, if there's a job that offers them more utility per hour than that, they will take it (taking into account their personal speed at the task, and travel time). Wages would rise until it hits the point where all available labor is utilized, but then you'd get downward pressure on wages if there's a high utilization. So, if there's a doctor shortage, then medical jobs will go unfulfilled, then the utility value for each doctor job would start to rise, and it would look at the utility for similar tasks when making a new task. But then once doctor task become scarce again, the utility on those tasks will fall until it hits the level at which backlogs start to rise again.

You are applying abstract economic theory to do something that does not even need to be done as there is simply no relationship between the value anyone contributes to anything and the amount that anyone gets 'paid' for doing anything. 

The situation is far simpler and does not require such arcane calculations to be.  We either give everyone the same 'wage', which is the mostly the current situation or we give the more powerful people more stuff (also the current situation in a minor way). 

[Sarmatian123]

In fortress mode however we control only a small number of people who live in close proximity to the central stockpiles.  This means shops are redundant since everybody can simply take goods directly from the depot the shops would be taking their goods from anyway.  That is why I am saying that shops niche is actually the surrounding villages, dwarf or otherwise in the surrounding area. 

You mean like a dispensary in this corporate situation of Dwarven settlement? I guess shops are also a form of dispensary. Workers are payed wages in coins and so they simply shop with those. Shops do differ from dispensaries. Goods in dispensaries are not available for purchase to everyone, but only to entitled ones. Shop is open to business for everyone.

[GoblinCookie]

You mean like a dispensary in this corporate situation of Dwarven settlement? I guess shops are also a form of dispensary. Workers are payed wages in coins and so they simply shop with those. Shops do differ from dispensaries. Goods in dispensaries are not available for purchase to everyone, but only to entitled ones. Shop is open to business for everyone.

I am not talking about wages or coins or purchasing. 

[SixOfSpades]

. . . Say that there's a rock to be mined, then the utility for that is set in a reverse auction. A rookie miner would need e.g. 1 hour to mine the rock, while an expert might only need 5 minutes . . .

I'm not discouraging discussion of the Economy problem, or its possible solutions. Just, please, not in THIS thread.

[The store] would have also limited offer to sell and limited offer to buy items of same type, in comparison to what is currently offered, which is depending on weight of items.

     I'm not exactly sure what you're saying here. Do you mean that the Shop should only stock a certain number of each item type, and refuse to go much above or below that? That seems a bit unrealistic--for one thing, they should want to SELL every single thing they have, that's why they brought it here. As for the goods they receive, it should depend more on the type than the volume, and the markets they expect the caravan to visit afterwards. If it's a real caravan with actual destinations, and it's going to be passing through towns at least as developed as your fortress, then the Shop should be willing accept large quantities of non-finished goods only: metal bars, stone blocks, cloth, leather, etc.
     I think only an elf-run Shop would worry about weight: in most forts, dwarves & humans would be using wagons well before you could get a Shop moving large quantities of goods. And even for elves, it's the caravan that has to consider weight, not the Shop itself.

[The store] could sell materials like cloth all year around without fear Dwarves snatching those for own use, which is an annoying left over of last economy implementation attempt.

Yeah, I'm assuming that if/when Toady makes any significant changes to trading at all, he's going to remove exploits like deconstructing the Trade Depot, and accidental shoplifting because dwarves can't tell that the Depot isn't a stockpile. I'm not opposed to actual theft, however, but there should be balances: For instance, your broker shouldn't be able to just seize the caravan's goods, unless he has enough militia there to back him up and intimidate the caravan guards.

The thing about the economy is that a real caravan may not even arrive at all. . . . As soon as there is an economy we end not necessarily with more apparent trade and economic activity in fortress mode, but potentially even less then we currently do.

And I for one would be fine with that. If the goblins are currently active in my corner of the world, I would prefer that caravans avoid that unsafe area entirely, rather than see them enter my map and immediately die to an ambush squad. And if the caravan doesn't come because there simply isn't enough economic incentive yet . . . then I'll just have to send my own, to get things started.

Finished goods are a bad bet for trade in general in any non-distorted economy. . . . The only situation where manufactured goods would be traded by caravans is where they are more durable/portable than the raw materials they are made from.

     Gotta disagree with you there, as finished goods have been successfully traded for pretty much EVER. Arabian jewelry ends up in Viking graves. Greco-Roman statues shipped to England. Dutch pottery gets sent to Indonesia. To say nothing of all the Bibles that have been shoved into every corner of the globe. And these examples are all pre-Industrial Revolution. And even long afterward, there still continues to be a market for finished goods: The prairie settler visits the general store and buys a good steel plowshare. Or a mouth organ for his kid. Or a dress made of printed fabric for his wife. Or a pocket watch. Or a gun. Because these are goods that 99.9% of people cannot make for themselves, as their skills are all focused in other areas, so these items MUST be imported. And what do the settlers send back in return? Grain. Lumber. Cattle. Metal ingots, if they live in a mining town. It's finished goods from the city, traded for raw materials from the country, like I said earlier.
     What's important, though, is to remember that the flow makes no sense in the opposite direction: No one is going to ship copies of a movie produced in Laos, in trade for rice that was grown in Hollywood. That would literally be like shipping coals to Newcastle. (Fun Fact: Coal actually WAS once shipped to Newcastle. A fully-loaded barge had just left the city when a coal-workers' strike began, leaving most of the city with little access to heat. When word of this reached the captain, he promptly turned his ship around, docked, and sold his coal at a good profit.) Which is Reason #1 why any caravan heading right back to the Mountainhome absolutely should NOT want your damn -mug- . . . but the hill dwarves might.

But--that's exactly what the Shops plan (as well as the Trade Depot) does as well, it takes goods from off the map and moves them to where your citizens can access them.

In fortress mode however we control only a small number of people who live in close proximity to the central stockpiles.  This means shops are redundant since everybody can simply take goods directly from the depot the shops would be taking their goods from anyway.

     I may not have made myself clear. The importance of Shops is not the difference between stockpiles--I agree, that would be irrelevant. The importance of Shops is the difference between on the map and off the map, the difference between fortress-owned and foreign-owned. And everybody can't "simply take goods directly from the depot" because, half the time, the items wen't delivered to the Trade Depot--they were delivered to the Shop. And the other half of the time, just because the broker could have bought them doesn't mean that she did. Put the sock DOWN, Urist. Move along.
     Now, as I said earlier, there are circumstances where Shops would be a zero-sum game, where your own dwarves selling your own stuff to your own dwarves would be, essentially, doing a lot of work to just move stuff from one stockpile to another. Pointless. (In that setup, the only possible advantage would be convenience: If a dwarf wants a cave spider silk tunic, he doesn't have to ask 199 people, "Do you have a cave spider silk tunic you'd like to trade", he can just go to the Big & Short store, they'll probably have his exact size.) But if goods cross the map edge, or their ownership changes, as a result of the trade, then Shops DO serve a purpose.

personally, I'd prefer it the other way round, with the hill dwarves coming to the fort, because it's more fun if we can see them.

You might prefer them to do so, but they don't prefer to do so; hence the need for shops.  They don't want to have to treck all the way across the trackless wilderness dodging hungry wolves and god-knows what monsters . . . They would prefer that the goods are all sent from the fortress to a smaller local depot/stockpile (aka a shop) in the hillocks.

Fair enough, although who says they have to come above ground? (Answer: Toady does, at least for now.) If we're able to send warriors to specific locations off the map, then we should also be able to send merchants, with caravan guards. We should be able to send missionaries. And we should be able to send Miners, to dig a (reasonably shallow) road that connects their hamlet with our city, without fear of ambush. It would also double as a safe escape route: If their town gets overrun by enemies, they have a direct path to a secure fortress.