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[Squirrelloid]

Preliminaries:
-This is my first post on the forums, but i've been playing for ~1 year and am reasonably active on the Wiki.  I've also been lurking the forums for a bit (hi).
-While some aspects of this seem to have been discussed before (local supply/demand), I could find no real proposals for global market modeling based on supply and demand (and lots of random stuff also popped up in my search, which made finding relevant links hard).  I acknowledge previous discussions when I get to local markets.  (If you know of a previous discussion on global modelling, a link would be handy).

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Motivation:
-The Caravan arc, while proposing to allow caravans to physically move around the world, doesn't propose altering the way the economy is handled.
-The long-term Merchant Arc proposes that the real economy is somehow set by these caravans.  There are no details as to how.  By this statement I greatly doubt ToadyOne means to actually alter how prices are calculated, and instead means that goods must be produced in one location and moved to another by a caravan, all of which are to be actually simulated by the game.
-The pricing scheme in DF is horribly naive and behaves in a counter-intuitive way.  In effect, the game assumes an absolute theory of value, with predictable headbreaking consequences.  I have made my thoughts on the current economy well-known on the DF Wiki
-Despite the rather recent date for a good formulation of the Supply and Demand theory (certainly no earlier than the 18th century), it has always been the way the real world economy has actually functioned, regardless what governments have pretended.
-The current economic model receives a lot of abuse ('action X is an exploit') because people don't understand how an absolute model value works *because they've never seen one in practice*.  On the other hand, its impossible to pretend its a Supply and Demand economy because there are then 'exploits' which are foisted upon you (room pricing invariant in the face of demand, for example) with no work around.
-Current prices are unreasonable for the known availability of particular commodities.  For example, the price of Iron is ridiculously high relative to some other alloys (for example, Nickel) given the frequency and size of Magnetite deposits (in appropriate strata).

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Proposal:
Implement a new model of pricing which takes into account supply and demand at local and global levels.

-------------

Thoughts:

Determining Local or Global.
Some good types are only traded locally (eg, Rooms) while others are generally traded globally via the caravans (eg, metals) but could be traded locally.  In general, anything traded through the Depot is being globally traded, and anything else is traded locally.

Local goods which cannot be traded globally have no global market (eg, Rooms).  (Ok, actually, supply of rooms being high relative to local demand as compared to other settlements should apply upward pressure on immigration... but that's another post in its own right).

Determining Supply
-Local supply is obviously the number present in the fortress, a quantity already indexed by the game.
##Note: Game will need to stop recording lumber, metal, and stone used as elements of constructions and buildings in the same location in the stock menu as similar items which are still available for use##
-Global supply is going to receive input from every settlement in the world.  For the moment i'm going to discuss a naive version which assumes the Caravan Arc isn't finished.  This can be adapted to a distance-sensitive metric by applying an exponentially decaying weight based on distance to the supply contributed by each settlement, and calculating global supply for each location separately.  I'm also going to assume the Bustling Towns Arc isn't finished (obviously if towns are actively producing goods then we can just count them).
-Each town sits on a particular plot of land with particular local resources.  In addition, each race has variable affinities for particular activities, such as mining, and each town has some known population.  We define a production function for each good which takes as arguments Population, Race, and Local Resource Abundance and generates a number of units produced per year. 
-It may be desirable in some cases to also account for ease of accessing a resource.  For instance, Iron ores are generally deposited near the surface, whereas Nickel is deep underground - making it plausible that Iron is easier to mine and therefore has higher effective supply.  This could be done on a tile by tile basis if necessary, but probably best done by making some generalizations for each resource if handled at all.
-Good with multiple sources should account for all those sources.  (ie, trade in iron ores would treat limonite, hematite, and magnetite as distinct, but trade in Iron Bars would account for the smelting products of all three).
-The players fortress does not use this metric, but rather the actual number traded at the Depot.  (You can't use total produced because that number is economically invisible to the rest of the world - you could if dwarves owned workshops and had to buy raw materials, but since the production economy seems to be jointly owned, materials processed internally into other goods are invisible to the market).
-Actually determining Global Supply has to wait until we have demand, but we have Supply/Settlement now.

Demand
Another place where the Bustling Town Arc would make a big difference, we'll assume the current state of the game for the purposes of the present discussion.  Thus we need to abstract demand quite a bit.
-Define a demand function that depends on Population and Race for each good. 
-The player's fortress sends as Demand a number = # purchased from the caravan + some quantity based on negotiations with the liaison + epsilon if the player bought all of the goods of that type the caravan had available for sale.

Global Supply and Demand.
-Subtract the Settlement's demand for a good from its supply of that good.  A negative number is net demand, a positive number is net supply.
-For each good, send its total either to the net Supply or net Demand set (and 0 to the other set), and sum within sets across all settlements.
-The player's fortress sends Supply and Demand of each as appropriate, and does not account for overlap between goods supplied and demanded.

Determining Price
EASY WAY
Seed initial prices

If Global Supply > Global Demand, decrease price from last year.  If Demand > Supply, increase price from last year.  Amount of increase or decrease should be a function of good type (representing price elasticity) and degree GS > GD or vice versa.

MORE AWESOME ALTERNATIVE
-In the ideal case we'd know what each settlement could turn any production good into and therefore be able to set price maximums a settlement would be willing to pay.  However, at present we have to abstract that.  Finished goods are also going to be set by end-consumer needs.  Thus we need...
(1) a function which determines the expected value of production goods.  Ie, what are all the finished products it could be turned into and how much are they worth.  Since we're modeling this, we'll assume that local markets everywhere are the same as global markets (the player will make his own decisions, so his fortress is irrelevant for this).  It should basically take a weighted average of the current price of all possible derivative goods and weighted by the Race's propensity to produce that good.  (ie, since production spread is invariant in this model, they know the distribution of good types they're actually going to make).  We should also subtract the wage paid for production of the derivative good from each term.  This gives the average value of the production good, and thus the maximum they would pay for it.

Now we have a Max Value for each settlement for production goods.

(2) Consumer goods max value are going to be set by individual buying behavior, which we can actually model.  Figure out how much the settlement exported the previous year and assume that number is the total available wealth.  Figure wealth is hugely asymmetric, and take some percentage to determine what the buying power of the wealthiest entity is (recommend ~50%).  Using the Race's demand function, figure out the percentage of wealth spent per item type, and double that (not every individual needs every item every year), multiply by buying power.  That's the max price said individual would pay for the item in question.  Figure out how many they would want (based on Demand function), that's max quantity.

We can specify out N buyers where N is local population and model each one's buying power, but probably a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and general (remainder) is more than sufficient.

(3) If Demand > Supply, create an ordered list of prices and start 'filling' orders.  The last one filled sets the price of every unit.  (Orders aren't actually 'filled', but its a useful way to think about it).

(4) If Supply > Demand, set price at some fraction of lowest max price, possibly good dependent, and certainly excess quantity dependent.  (In a properly specified model, this should never happen.  The reason economics exists is because resources are scarce - when that isn't true things are weird.)

Do note the More Awesome Alternative is even more awesome if/when the Bustling Towns Arc is completed, because then you really do know the uses the material will be put or the buying power of individual dwarves, and can create real demand lists.  (You can also check personal supply of goods and have them queue demand for an item when they need it, like a new shirt when their old one gets ratty).

-----------

Local Markets
I did find threads about local supply/demand elsewhere, such as here and here and is sort of touched on here.  I'm sure there's more.  Thus, I'm mostly going to sketch this for completeness, and because its a logical extrapolation of a global supply/demand market.  It should be noted that I consider this an extension of the global market change because it needs the global market to govern it.  (Local individual dwarves are price takers not price setters and thus somewhat subject to the whims of the global market).

Unlike global market modelling, local sellers are more likely to price wrong and adjust to perceived demand.  The following should be true:
1) The global market should be considered as a possible customer for globally traded goods at the last known global market price.  All prices should start at the global market price and adjust from there, and should never drop below the global price.  Changes in the global price should have an impact on local price if local =/= global.
2) Prices of underselling item types should decrease over time.  So if you have many empty rooms of a particular quality level, the cost of rooms at that level should decrease.
3) Jobs are a good.  Unfulfilled jobs in the queue should cause the price (wage) for performing the job to increase, and dwarves should preferentially perform high-paying jobs they are authorized to perform.  (Each job should have a minimum wage as well below which no dwarf would do the job).
4) The fortress government should be able to prioritize particular jobs or subsidize particular items.  Prioritized jobs receive a bounty from the government in addition to the normal price of the job.  Subsidized items have some fraction of the cost paid from the treasury.  Players should have some control over this.
5) Obviously rival stores should be able to compete in price
6) Obviously every individual dwarf needs some money management code (set aside money for lodging/food and then must make decisions about how to dispose of the remainder).

------------

So, that's the basics and some thoughts on implementation.  Enjoy.

Outstanding Issues:
Determining specific algorithms
Handling good substitution

[Mikademus]

Enormous combination of wall and ladder of text there. Howeverm I stopped reading at:

-Despite the rather recent date for a good formulation of the Supply and Demand theory (certainly no earlier than the 18th century), it has always been the way the real world economy has actually functioned, regardless what governments have pretended.

That's ideology. Supply/demand is a model that is part of the modern economic theory, and while the supply and demand aspect of it is one of the least problematic ones, economic theory is still a horrible patchwork with extremely little prognosticative power (in fact, it is the only "science" with less accuracy than meteorology). Claiming that the world has always worked like that is deeply problematic from historical, psychological and anthropological perspectives, and in spite of a higher present conformance to the model due to increasing automation in fact a misunderstanding even of how the present economy works.

Also, this topic was discussed in great depth a while ago. I don't remember the thread name, though.

[Squirrelloid]

Enormous combination of wall and ladder of text there. Howeverm I stopped reading at:

-Despite the rather recent date for a good formulation of the Supply and Demand theory (certainly no earlier than the 18th century), it has always been the way the real world economy has actually functioned, regardless what governments have pretended.

That's ideology. Supply/demand is a model that is part of the modern economic theory, and while the supply and demand aspect of it is one of the least problematic ones, economic theory is still a horrible patchwork with extremely little prognosticative power (in fact, it is the only "science" with less accuracy than meteorology). Claiming that the world has always worked like that is deeply problematic from historical, psychological and anthropological perspectives, and in spite of a higher present conformance to the model due to increasing automation in fact a misunderstanding even of how the present economy works.

Um, huh?

Sellers have always understood that rarity (low supply) increases value.  Governments have sometimes tried to pretend that other models of economy (if they even had one) were true (eg, Mercantilism, Communism), and these pretenses always lead to inefficiency and failure.  You may have noticed that the Soviet Union is no more, and China has been adopting rather non-communist market regulations over the last 10+ years?

And what are you measuring when you talk about predictive power?  Valuing the supply/demand model based on the performance of *all* economic theory is ridiculous, especially since its a building block and depends on little of the rest of it.  And S/D models themselves are highly predictive, certainly in the same way evolutionary models are predictive.  (Examine fits of historical data to model predictions).  The only issue with the Supply/Demand model is getting accurate input data on which to use the model.

So unless you have specific research challenging the S/D model, your comment seems to be the one that's all ideology (and no substance that I can find), because I can't find anything that expresses intrinsic problems with that model.

Also, this topic was discussed in great depth a while ago. I don't remember the thread name, though.

If you can't supply a link and I've already noted a search failed to find it, what good does it do to point that out?

[Quift]

I actually model this Here. instead of forcing a macro on top om the micro I choose to build the macro as an amalgam of the micro. A global market does not really need to be simulated since there should be none, and as the player does not come into contact with it directly either. The counter argument to this, (the fact that caranvans actually do appear) is misleading. The reason for this is that the existens of the caravans themselves are a proof of the very high transport costs plaguing the economy at both the global as well as the local level. This effectivly means that the buying price at the local level could be considered fixed, in difference to the local selling price which woiuld work as a function of the local market.

[Mel_Vixen]

Well that wasnt a real communism what Sovietunion and China used. It was a bastardchild from Communism, plain idiotism, corruption and stubbornness.

Also communism had some mayor problems from the Outside world like Tradeembargos, the cold war etc. Back then ~40% of the Money was used for weapons in both systems it was only a matter of time till one of them collapsed.

Anyway dont let us go into a argument about Capitalism contra Communism. I might have already said to much on this.

Modern Capitalistic S/D works correct only in environment were the communication and transport ways are short to instantly.

One of the Mainproblems Problems you might encounter are that not all civs have to be Capitalistic.

Other things you might have to address in a working economy and trade system:

- Splitted Markets
- Transportproblems (speed, currently not all civs build roads and roadsystems arent connected, taxes and tolls)
- no producents
- no information spread
- arbitrariness of the local goverments
- high crimerates
- Workforce might be much cheaper then Material
- Monopolism
- No mass production
(- alchemia/magics)

[Squirrelloid]

I actually model this Here. instead of forcing a macro on top om the micro I choose to build the macro as an amalgam of the micro. A global market does not really need to be simulated since there should be none, and as the player does not come into contact with it directly either. The counter argument to this, (the fact that caranvans actually do appear) is misleading. The reason for this is that the existens of the caravans themselves are a proof of the very high transport costs plaguing the economy at both the global as well as the local level. This effectivly means that the buying price at the local level could be considered fixed, in difference to the local selling price which woiuld work as a function of the local market.

While at the current level of other settlement modeling its likely true that if we ignore the global market and just assume the local market sets prices, no one would notice.  However, we can account for the costs of transportation (caravan profits == wages, variable min profits based on distance?) and the effects on perceived market caused by distance (discussed in OP - weighting by distance in supply/demand calculations), and then not only would you notice humans, elves, and dwarves bring different things, they also have different assessments of the value of different items based on real concerns that (likely) persist from year to year, rather than wholely random and arbitrary trade agreements.  I think that would be rather cool.

Furthermore, it creates the ability to add things like 'News Events', where caravans bring news of happenings elsewhere, and those happenings may impact the availability of goods and demand for them.  ("Famine struck the human city of Blazing Saddles." -> they'd pay well for food goods or "Sabre Rattling between the Rags of Excavation and The Innumerous Horde is heating up." -> weapons and armor fetch top dollar).

Inefficient connection is still connection to the outside world, and historically it required remarkable isolation to allow local markets to ignore global price trends.  I mean, the time horizon which the game is supposed to mimic (~1400AD) involved slow overland trade routes to Europe from the East for silk and spices.

Oh, in reading over your model, of which I most certainly approve, I think part of the problem is that, in general, dwarves don't get paid enough to do anything with their money, and this would probably be more noticeable if a large segment of the fortress population (nobles, legendaries) couldn't just take items for free.  In order to buy luxury goods dwarves need disposable cash, something I generally only see on dwarves about to make legendary anyway.  Of course, if you let the price of labor float with the price of goods this should be self-correcting.

[Squirrelloid]

Modern Capitalistic S/D works correct only in environment were the communication and transport ways are short to instantly.

Distance and ease of transport should only affect perceived S and D, not invalidate the model.

One of the Mainproblems Problems you might encounter are that not all civs have to be Capitalistic.

Actually, because Race is an argument in all those functions, and you're just simulating D, it really doesn't say anything about the actual economics of the culture in question.  The fact that there is Demand is already a given - they bothered to send a caravan to trade with you.  Similarly, they clearly have goods.  The question is simply what do they have and what do they want.  We can make it weird by making the function output weird - but their economic mode is completely invisible to your fortress.

Other things you might have to address in a working economy and trade system:

- Splitted Markets
- Transportproblems (speed, currently not all civs build roads and roadsystems arent connected, taxes and tolls)

At least partially being introduced in the caravan arc, and see response to Quift above.

- no producents

Producers?  Not sure what you mean.  We've abstracted it for all the other settlements, and you're in control of what you produce.

- no information spread

Well, you can either assume perfect knowledge, or time lag to last caravan. (Who can bring knowledge of the market for you).  Possibly time lag the caravan's knowledge too for when they left last town.

- arbitrariness of the local goverments

Government intervention merely artificially restricts supply or increases demand - easy to model.

- high crimerates

My fortresses don't believe in crime. *snooty look*. =)

That aside, I'm not ensure what your thrust is here - but the ultimate effect is just an inefficiency one, and can be modeled. 

- Workforce might be much cheaper then Material

Not sure I see the problem?  The model handles that because it should find the equilibrium, whatever that is.

- Monopolism

Artificially decreases supply, could be modeled.  Entering such a condition is exceedingly unlikely except for some high-end luxury goods (eg, colored diamond varieties), and even then I wouldn't expect a true monopoly in anything but a pocket world.

- No mass production

Unnecessary to the model.  At its root, the model is basically saying 'there are K units of good X, and some level of demand for that good, how does the good get distributed in a market'.  It doesn't matter how fast you produce it, the problem is still the same.  (Deviations from a free market alter effective supply or demand - model still holds).

[Granite26]

That's ideology. Supply/demand is a model that is part of the modern economic theory, and while the supply and demand aspect of it is one of the least problematic ones, economic theory is still a horrible patchwork with extremely little prognosticative power (in fact, it is the only "science" with less accuracy than meteorology). Claiming that the world has always worked like that is deeply problematic from historical, psychological and anthropological perspectives, and in spite of a higher present conformance to the model due to increasing automation in fact a misunderstanding even of how the present economy works.

Wait, what?  Claiming that supply and deman is a theory is worse than claiming evolution is a theory.

It's established truth.  It's the way things work.  Capitalism as the theory that it's a good way and we shouldn't muck with it is new, and a theory, but not the S/D side of things.  Any government system you name operates on the manipulation of supply and demand, not making the system behave differently.

[profit]

Enormous combination of wall and ladder of text there. Howeverm I stopped reading at:

-Despite the rather recent date for a good formulation of the Supply and Demand theory (certainly no earlier than the 18th century), it has always been the way the real world economy has actually functioned, regardless what governments have pretended.

That's ideology. Supply/demand is a model that is part of the modern economic theory, and while the supply and demand aspect of it is one of the least problematic ones, economic theory is still a horrible patchwork with extremely little prognosticative power (in fact, it is the only "science" with less accuracy than meteorology). Claiming that the world has always worked like that is deeply problematic from historical, psychological and anthropological perspectives, and in spite of a higher present conformance to the model due to increasing automation in fact a misunderstanding even of how the present economy works.

Also, this topic was discussed in great depth a while ago. I don't remember the thread name, though.

Actually The supply and demand model works almost perfectly if you use PERCEIVED SUPPLY AND DEMAND.

Example: People believe black pearls are rare. Only one company sells black pearls at super high prices, no other company sells black pearls yet.  Result  price of black pearls is very high.


Example2: People believe world is running out of oil. They start buying long term oil contracts to ensure their supply.   Price of oil goes way up.

Example3: People believe people will use less oil because of recession. They expect price to fall so they do not buy oil contracts waiting for price to go down. Price goes down.

Example4: People Believe food will become scare.  They buy and hoard food. Price goes up and actually becomes scare due to their actions.  Farmers see increased price and plant more.  People See well stocked shelves again and believe there is no reason to be worried. Price comes back down.


Perceptions taint the market heavily but perceived Supply and demand changes are VERY good indicators of cost changes.

[Mikademus]

Wait, what?  Claiming that supply and deman is a theory is worse than claiming evolution is a theory.

It's established truth.  It's the way things work.  Capitalism as the theory that it's a good way and we shouldn't muck with it is new, and a theory, but not the S/D side of things.  Any government system you name operates on the manipulation of supply and demand, not making the system behave differently.

It's like physics. We use models to represent reality, but no physicist worth listening to believes that the world really is like the model. The supply and demand model explains much of the market dynamics, but it is by no means perfect, and as such you beg the question if it is "true". Perhaps it is a bit like Newtonian mechanics, it works well enough for ordinary situations, but every so often the market and economy "breaks" in ways that wasn't modelled. As for evolution, you know that it was deadly delegitimising to claim that the post-Darwinian evolutionary model was wrong? Well, currently there are indications that Lemarckian aspects do play a part evolution, which would make many Evolutionary aspects "wrong".

There is definitely a systematics/pattern to observations, but claiming that we know how something works, that said systematics is nomothetic or more than epiphenomenal, or even that observed patterns aren't a product of man's desire to find patters (economics can be claimed to be forming the world as much as explaining it) is traditional human arrogance, if an understandable one: we want to believe we know how things work.

[Pilsu]

I really don't see how you're gonna model economics in a game this crude

Limiting the supply of a civ's materials realistically is inherently unrealistic considering the tiny size of settlements. You're not playing Hearts of Iron


Being able to buy anything quickly becomes impossible as the other civs are oversaturated with your fine clothes and other renewable resources. Perpetual poverty is very realistic but not a fun game mechanic

[Belteshazzar]

This could make goblins even scarier as their access to steel, obsidian and silk could crash local dwarven textile and mining ventures. Hell they do that already by putting all my weavers out of business with their silk junk. this combine with their tendency to forcefully integrate and recruit a variety of new racially different members could make them like some kind of twisted British Empire?

[Squirrelloid]

Wait, what?  Claiming that supply and deman is a theory is worse than claiming evolution is a theory.

It's established truth.  It's the way things work.  Capitalism as the theory that it's a good way and we shouldn't muck with it is new, and a theory, but not the S/D side of things.  Any government system you name operates on the manipulation of supply and demand, not making the system behave differently.

It's like physics. We use models to represent reality, but no physicist worth listening to believes that the world really is like the model. The supply and demand model explains much of the market dynamics, but it is by no means perfect, and as such you beg the question if it is "true". Perhaps it is a bit like Newtonian mechanics, it works well enough for ordinary situations, but every so often the market and economy "breaks" in ways that wasn't modelled. As for evolution, you know that it was deadly delegitimising to claim that the post-Darwinian evolutionary model was wrong? Well, currently there are indications that Lemarckian aspects do play a part evolution, which would make many Evolutionary aspects "wrong".

There is definitely a systematics/pattern to observations, but claiming that we know how something works, that said systematics is nomothetic or more than epiphenomenal, or even that observed patterns aren't a product of man's desire to find patters (economics can be claimed to be forming the world as much as explaining it) is traditional human arrogance, if an understandable one: we want to believe we know how things work.

Where to start...

(1) Grand Unified Theory, whenever the physicists finally discover it, will in fact be the way the universe actually works.  I've got a physicist friend who is reasonably certain Quantum is a true description of reality and not just a model.  Special Relativity is most likely a true description of reality. 

Newtonian physics is old news, and yes, it was an approximation.  That doesn't mean all science does is approximate.  There's also no lightbulb that goes off to tell us that we've discovered truth - but ultimately there will be a description so accurate it'll be telling us what the real thing is doing. 

(2) Natural Selection is real.  It actually happens.  Its not a theory, its a LAW derived logically.  That NS leads to evolution is a theory.  S/D models are to Natural Selection like Micro-econ is to evolution.  They're both component true statements best known for feeding into a larger model.

If you want me to prove that NS is true with logic I would be happy to do so - its a simple exercise in syllogism.  I could probably construct such a proof for S/D as well, at least as a generalized statement.  (ie, the model is a specific description of a more general S/D construction which merely says something about how supply and demand effect price without quantitative conclusions.)

(3) Your comments on Lamarkianism are disingenious.  Any genetic 'Lamarckianism' would have been accepted by Darwin (and any other evolutionary biologist) as plausible, and in fact Darwinism is, at its root, genetic 'Lamarckianism'.  What do you think *mutation* is?  I use 'Lamarkianism' in quotes because that's not what Lamarck meant at all, and if you actually bothered to read Lamarck you might know that.

(As a specialist in the field I find the buzz-word misuse disenheartening to say the least).

--------------------

I really don't see how you're gonna model economics in a game this crude

Um, I could write code to do it myself from the description I gave in the OP.  It wouldn't even be hard.  (The hard part would be tuning the functions for supply and demand, but that's ultimately an exercise in tuning, not a theoretical difficulty).

Limiting the supply of a civ's materials realistically is inherently unrealistic considering the tiny size of settlements. You're not playing Hearts of Iron

I have no idea what Hearts of Iron is...

And, um... limiting supply is even more realistic given the tiny size of settlements.  Regardless, I never actually proposed the caravans offerings be modified in their content, just that their prices reflect supply and demand, and can vary over time (rather than being absolute values).

Being able to buy anything quickly becomes impossible as the other civs are oversaturated with your fine clothes and other renewable resources. Perpetual poverty is very realistic but not a fun game mechanic.

Clothes eventually wear out, so there is turn over.    I'm not convinced your selling fine clothes has the effect you ascribe.  If they can't afford yours, they'll buy another one cheaper elsewhere.  If you produce many more than are demanded, the price will drop.  If you continue to overproduce, you'll reduce the value of those goods to next to nothing.  Markets self-correct problems like those.

So unless you'd like to develop a fully realized example that I can actually examine in detail, I don't think any such problem would be encountered.  (Unless of course you think johnny one-note fortresses should be encouraged.  Yes, they completely fail in this model because they drive their own price down into nothing.  This is a good thing).

[Urist McDetective]

So unless you'd like to develop a fully realized example that I can actually examine in detail, I don't think any such problem would be encountered.  (Unless of course you think johnny one-note fortresses should be encouraged.  Yes, they completely fail in this model because they drive their own price down into nothing.  This is a good thing).

Do you think it should not be possible for a single fortress to become well known for producing one item / group of items better than / different to the rest of whatever DF world-gen they are inhabiting?
It should be risky, but I don't agree it should be impossible to succeed with it.

[Rakeela]

For a sufficiently wide 'group' of items, that wouldn't be a problem.  It would make 'mugging' the trade caravans more difficult, though.