I wrote a whole detailed post on embark profiles that now I won't be able to use because you asked about trade agreements.
So my actual answer will be shorter, but interestingly, pretty similar in actual objects.
I ask for massive amounts of cheap raw materials, some of them because of rarity but some just because it's easier to buy them than wait around on a smelter and all but free. So it's whatever I'm missing but want. The only expensive raw materials I get are after having squandered all mine or shown up in an embark lacking something critical, like flux or iron ore.
I also usually have a list of instruments and parts I need (if people in the tavern are "simulating" an instrument they will play that instrument if you get one for them and store it in the tavern). These are usually expensive to buy so it's often better to build them internally but if you find that whole process incredibly annoying, it's worth a shot if you have tons of spiked bronze balls and other game-breakingly profitable stuff, or even if you don't exploit to that extent, high quality weapons but made of cheap metals are really good export goods.
I also usually just buy all the food, but rarely request anything unless a dwarf has a preference.
Similarly, I request all metal ores I'm not drowning in. I'll buy bars if I have to but I am generally not buying nonsense like platinum bars. There's also relatively rare ore like bismuthinite that you might have a couple veins in a 3x3 embark. Cassiterite if I'm not drowning in it. Tetrahedrite too but I usually am drowning in that junk. Oddball substances some dwarf prefers. Stone of unusual colors I can use for bridges and mechanisms to color code my levers and what they move. I always bump seeds up a notch or two, not all the way to high priority. Somehow even with seedwatch I somehow run out of seeds.
After that it really depends on specific needs. A lot of these kinds of orders are recurring because I want as much steel, for instance, as I can practically get. I always want food and drink if there's some disaster. My almost never requests are things like gems, originals of books I don't care about, extremely expensive instruments, high quality steel weapons (that I can make better anyway), same with armor
Damn thanks, that's much more indepth than I was expecting at all, but I'll definitely keep these in mind for later. You should def make that embark profiles post anyway, why can't you do it anymore?
Might as well I suppose. I clipboarded it in case it came in handy again.
I tend to always be a little bit lost at what to ask for whenever I have to go over trade agreements, and was wondering what everyone else tends to do. Sometimes there's a real lack of something I want, but a lot of the time I'm just completely at a lost.
I try to have at least one of every moodable substance available from the embark civilization. So all kinds of thread (which can be turned into cloth), at least one tanned hide, and all kinds of glass. I also generally embark with cassiterite and tetrahedrite as well as maybe bismuthinite, to be able to make bronze/bismuth bronze immediately. Maybe a single copper bar, to forge a pick immediately if things are deadly dangerous, or even 1 refined coal too. That also immediately meets a moodable demand if for some reason you don't have metal later. I don't bother with stone, gems, or anything that's at any site. Skulls are pretty easy to get and worst case you can just kill an animal with a skull. The absolute worst (that you generally cannot embark with) is shells so protect those if you ever find them, you can get them sometimes from fishing vermin.
Also get just one of a lot of meats and other items that come in barrels. For each one you get a free barrel. This is good for getting your brewing industry going. Same with sand, cheap and gets you bags. I also usually look at the preferences of the dwarves and if there's some easy preference to satisfy, embark with that food or drink or raw material too.
This is a really good article on starting builds:
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Starting_buildAnd this is a good collection of starting builds (that are built into 0.47.05):
https://pastebin.com/vsQgfWNH (I particularly like the last by dev clinodev).
A major thing, don't come with expensive finished goods, weapons, etc. (unless you know combat is going to be immediate), especially ones you can just as easily make once you arrive. That last profile I mentioned doesn't come with a pick but it does with an axe. You can omit that if you make sure you have coal, or come with wood and turn it into coal. The axe is mainly there to start chopping immediately, but is not strictly necessary either, and it's an expensive item you can omit and make on-site.
I think that's a bit sketchy because it's also your only immediate means of self-defense if anything weird happens immediately on embark.
The more important part of this embark is the actual starting seven, though. You start with weaponsmith, armorer, and a number of usefully skilled dwarves, including reasonable combat ability immediately. So you can essentially immediately start cranking out high quality bronze weapons and armor, working your already skilled dwarves up to legendaries surprisingly quickly. Also your room furniture and other objects for dwarves to look at and rank up happy thoughts will generally be of high quality. And the core skills are moodable, too, so whoever doesn't get trained up to Legendary can probably get it in a mood at some point.
So what you need to think about with an embark is what will you be able to do
immediately when you arrive. This is the one period in the game whether you can't really control the situation. So you need to fix that. And with this, you can immediately start chopping wood, make a wood furnace to make charcoal, make a smelter to make bronze bars, make a magma force to make six or more picks and as many axes as seems appropriate, while doing anything necessary to get your wagon unloaded and underground. Then you can turtle up and start building personal palaces for the starting seven, or just assess it from there.
Incidentally that clinodev embark is considered "advanced," although if you just read the extensive comments in it you'll be halfway to being an expert too. There are also easy embarks, which are usually just well designed enough you can embark on them without even looking. Specialized embark profiles are usually more complicated.
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Topic: What do you guys ask for in trade agreements (Read 2531 times)