With the caravan arc being developed and more realistic supply and demand, knowing what the other forts and civs demanded will become more important. This seems like the kind of thing that a skilled broker would ask the merchants about and record, so the fortress could make goods the traders will actually take.
So my suggestion is three fold:
1. The liaison remains to negotiate trade agreements. These are the large scale demands of high nobles, things that the civilizations are desperate for. Some items should be removed from the list, the mayor of a human civ probably doesn't care much about how much jewelry their people have to wear, but may want high quality dwarven weaponry to defend the town from the goblins, or may request large amounts of food to help with a famine. These would increase the value by a lot and mandate an almost endless demand.
2. The broker's social skills determine how much information he can get about small demands, the idea being that while he's trading he's making small talk with the guards and other members of the trade caravan. These are the things the smaller outposts they visit want, or possibly just less important demands from large civs. These increase value less than the trade agreement requests, but ensure demands for moderate amounts of the goods.
3. All of the demands would be listed under the broker's settings page in the nobles menu, so you could check them and tailor your seasonal economy to whatever the other civilizations want.
I'm writing this with the assumption that as the trade and caravan arcs are developed eventually traders won't want your 20 bins of stone mugs and demand may actually be something worth checking.
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Topic: Merchant requests recorded on the broker screen (Read 1726 times)