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[Zantan]

I had two quick questions:

Firstly, will elves get mad at me if I do a lot of tower cap farming?

Secondly, do giant cave animals spawn after embark?  I started a map with an exposed cave and an exposed bottomless pit, and there were lots of giant cave spiders, bats, toads, and moles.  But one season in, and several of them have already killed each other.  I was hoping to trap some, but am worried that I won't have any mating pairs by the time I'm ready to catch them.

[Chewykittens]

1) Yes, they treat towercaps just like normal trees for some odd reason

2) As far as I know, once you clear anything underground out, it's clean. Only migrating animals come and go from your embark area.

[Untelligent]

As to the first question, they won't give a crap about what you do with any of your trees until they start sending diplomats (which I believe they start doing when you get a baron).

[Megaman]

hmm, what happens if you 'accedently' kill the diplomat?

[Elvin]

Almost certainly a siege. And Elven sieges are sneaky.

[Holy Mittens]

And chances are, the cavern creatures aren't killing each other. Most of them have extremely short lifespans on the order of 4 years or so and few have tags for children. So they're likely to just start dying of old age pretty quickly.

[Albedo]

To be clear, elves don't seem to give a crap about how many trees (or TC's) you've cut down - only how many you have in stock at the time.

If you use what you cut, they don't notice.

Use that to your advantage either to avoid or invite war, as you choose. 

[Ashmore]

Sure about that, Albedo? After accepting an agreement I get a lumber limits page on the related elven civ screen that seems to change as trees are cut and not taking imported logs into account.

[Albedo]

No - Haven't done extensive personal testing, but that's the word from those who have (or claim to have).   

Lots of trees in stock = angry elves, even if none additional have been cut down.  Few trees in stock = no quota demands.  That's the word.

[Ashmore]

Hmm, I've had no problems importing and stockpiling hundreds of logs in addition to those cut down within the limits. Checked the wiki, which says the same as you, but the page is marked 38c so maybe it's new.

[bluea]

There seems to be a different set of rules for the "before ticking the elves off" and "after ticking the elves off".

People are pretty firm that that logs in your stockpile are "seen" by any elven caravan when they visit every spring. If they see too many - that's what triggers the whole "Elven Diplomat brings forestry treaty" line.

Once you've -got- the treaty, the 'civilization/treaty' page seems to work as Ashmore describes for me. That is: Once you've -got- a tree-cutting treaty, the important part is how many trees you cut. They have a spy reporting back, or something.

At least, it sure did for me. Until the stupid Elf Diplomat managed to appear right between two squads of beak dog-riding goblin marksmen. It wasn't pretty.

But... I didn't get sieged by the elves. It might have something to do with the fact that I'm an 'old' fort and am basically dumping ridiculous piles of crap on all of the traders. It might also have to do with me -acting- like they 'see' all my wood on the first of spring. I always have exactly zero in the spring. (I'll have 2300 by the middle of autumn though. And zero by spring first. Piles of legendary woodcutters and wood burners FTW.)

The civilization screen no longer lists any lumber restrictions. The first elven caravan after the diplomat's death really sucked: 200 ducks worth of lumber. Woo. The second had a ridiculous pile of rope reed cloth. The third had an outrageously ridiculous pile of cloth. I've bought out every caravan, given generous bribes, and overpaid like the dickens. (Getting sunshine and/or exotic animals imported being some of the few non-megaproject goals remaining in this fort.) The fourth caravan had a whole lot of rope reed cloth... and a very small pile of plants.

I still can't decide if I'm actually making progress or not. Or whether it is even possible to make progress with the diplomat dead. But it really isn't that much of a hardship for me to just plan on being 'completely out' whenever I'm not actively filling large slices of the underground with charcoal. If there's a mood, there's plenty of living trees for me to quickly cut a couple as needed.

[zooeyglass]

The civilization screen no longer lists any lumber restrictions. The first elven caravan after the diplomat's death really sucked: 200 ducks worth of lumber. Woo. The second had a ridiculous pile of rope reed cloth. The third had an outrageously ridiculous pile of cloth. I've bought out every caravan, given generous bribes, and overpaid like the dickens. (Getting sunshine and/or exotic animals imported being some of the few non-megaproject goals remaining in this fort.) The fourth caravan had a whole lot of rope reed cloth... and a very small pile of plants.

my experiences are the same as bluea's regarding -before- and -after- the elven diplomat/lumber restrictions kick in. once they have, the 'c'iv screen for your restrictions is your friend.

bluea, regarding the above quoted text, what were the elven caravans bringing the years that the diplomat was also asking for lumber restrictions? for me for the last 4 years they only bring mules with wood. no cloth, no animals, no food, nothing. just mules (7 of them) with lumber on....was that the same for you? i am paying them through the nose with stuff in the hope that it'll encourage them to bring a jaguar/scorpion/awesome creature or two, but nothing yet....wondered if it was in fact standard that while a dwarven fort engages in diplomatic relations with the elves, they don't send anything more than mules...

[Ashmore]

There seems to be a different set of rules for the "before ticking the elves off" and "after ticking the elves off".

That makes sense, though I just assumed they would do that to anyone who might remove their arboreal darlings before they've had the opportunity to stick... their pointy ears into them.

One thing I've noticed is that the limits seemed to increase when I decided to play along for a while. I assume that's more to do with the noble's negotiation skill increasing than with the elf diplomat getting happier.

[bluea]

what were the elven caravans bringing the years that the diplomat was also asking for lumber restrictions?

My fort started out with a craftsdwarf being in charge of "dealing with" this serious problem of way too much mudstone. So, I've always had crafts coming completely out the wazzu. As time has passed, I've added leather goods (quivers, backpacks, boots, cloaks, waterskins only), then both rope reed and pig tail weaving kicked in.

But... I didn't focus on bribing and overpaying everyone initially. I was busy surviving the waves of goblinite riding beak dogs.

It took like ten years for the elves to get ticked off enough to send a diplomat - I hadn't really been too worried about the pansies, I'd just been making consuming the wood I cut pretty well.

I made the wood cutting treaty for like five years straight. A couple years I checked the civilization menu - on one I had "-1300" on my wood allowance. So... I wasn't really very good at following the treaty restrictions. But I did start bribing the snot out of them. The poncy elf would just appear again next year and make a new treaty. This is where I started reading up and trying to figure out what I could do exactly. So here I kicked off my "Cut all you like, but no wood in spring" policy. Then he made a bad choice of where to appear.

I never saw any real difference in my elf caravans all the way up until I started breaking treaties yearly. It's possible they even skipped a year or two. I dunno.

But the caravans during all the non-pissed-off years still weren't that exciting. logs, cloth, plants, the occasional seed.

I don't remember -ever- seeing an animal. It is quite possible I've overlooked cages of dog/cat/mule/cow, etc. as too normal to care about.

I really can't say what, precisely, they were bringing in the trade restriction years. It sucked. But the elven caravans most always suck - so that doesn't limit things much.

After the death of the diplomat, the caravans -seem- to have improved. Slightly. I can't decide if I'm on the path to animals-from-elves or not. And it has been at least four years since the diplomat's death of zero-lumber-in-spring + overpay-and-massive-bribes.

[corvvs]

I'm pretty sure what animals the elves bring is related to what animals they have access to. If the elves you're trading with haven't taken over any human cities on the edge of a desert, you won't get giant scorpions. Same as the goblins bringing beak dogs - they can only give you what they have.

I've had an embark where the first time the elves showed up they brought grizzly bears and a giant scorpion. My current fortress is on a small worldmap, worldgen only lasted 50 years, I'm 5 years into it and they still just bring cloth. I don't expect them to ever bring any animals. Even if I offered them a million masterfully woven pig tail bags dyed midnight blue with dimple dye and decorated with goblin bone, they won't ever bring me a giant scorpion. Because there aren't any deserts in this world.