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[Neruz]

I can't help but wonder if Toady deliberately hardcoded awesome animals in cages to be rare and cloth to be common.

Because if i give other races the [USE_ANY_PET_RACE] tag, they turn up with billions of animals in cages. But not the Elves. Never the Elves.

[Ubiq]

It may just be coincidental, but it sometimes seems that requesting a specific item from the Human Trade Representative occasionally results in the elves bringing a lot more of their equivalent of that item; requesting logs from the human caravan results in the elves bringing a lot more logs.

Similarly, I've noticed that the first human caravan often shows up with many of the items that I requested from the Dwarven Liason after the first fall caravan.

[Quietust]

I can't help but wonder if Toady deliberately hardcoded awesome animals in cages to be rare and cloth to be common.

Because if i give other races the [USE_ANY_PET_RACE] tag, they turn up with billions of animals in cages. But not the Elves. Never the Elves.

I'm betting that's simply a result of Elves refusing to use wagons (which can carry LOTS AND LOTS of stuff).

[Evil One]

There's an easy solution to elves only bringing cloth... Kill them and let their bodies rot away, then you can use the Elf bones for whatever you want, you see Elves don't only bring cloth you just aren't seeing things in a Dwarfy fashion.

Always remember these words of wisdom:
Just because it's alive and/or sentient, doesn't mean it isn't a usable resource.

[Satarus]

I wonder if perhaps it is a result of priority.  The more profit they get the more stuff they bring. But wait!  They can't use wagons so they bring the higher priority stuff like food, wood, and cloth.  Cages get left out because they don't have enough room.  Try experimenting with the other 2 races by not having wagon access and see what they bring/don't bring

[2xMachina]

I'm pretty sure wood isn't very efficient. It's what? 3 dwarf bucks? Crafts are lighter for more money.

But I guess they'd definitely be killed if they brought only wood crafts. That's even more useless than wood/cloth.

[Malibu Stacey]

In my current game I didn't get any Elven caravans at all.
One day (about 3 or 4 years in) an Elf ambush showed up & when I checked the civilizations page it showed the Elves as being at war with the Dwarves.

Unfortunately Elves wear useless wood armour & carry wooden weapons (which I have to forbid so the dumb recruits don't try to wear/use it instead of the lovely Steel equipment made by my Legenday Armour & Weapon smiths). Can't even melt that stuff down like I can when the Goblins repeatedly fail at sieging my fortress & leave loads of nice Iron armour & weapons to feed the magma smelters. Might try selling it to the humans to get rid of it.

[Quietust]

The next version might make Elf wars a bit less annoying, since it might become possible to mark their wooden items for burning (akin to melting goblinite) into charcoal or ashes. I personally would love to make clear glass and/or soap from the ashes of burned elven goods...

[kenken244]

In my experience, Elves tend to bring something more when you buy more of it. in my current fort, I exclusively bought animal cages right from the start, even for common animals like dogs, and now I get at least 3-5 animals per caravan. In other forts where I bought wood or other things, I would almost never get an animal. I also tried buying plants as well for a few years, they started bringing more plants after that. It seems that aside from elves bringing less wood when you have lots of it, they seem to like bringing things you repeatedly buy.

[andrea]

i remember my last fortress, where i needed wood, and bought all i could from all the caravans, including elves.
i bought only wood from them.
after few years of buying only wood, they finally started taking more... cloth.
yes, that is right. if i buy only wood, they decide to scrap wood and take cloth instead, despite me being one of the biggest producers of rope reed of the region.
crazy elves. luckily in this fort i don't get them, since i have an even bigger cloth industry ( hundreds of tiles split between rope reed , blade weed and hide root, even if i only have more or less 10 farmers. but i'll get more.)

[Malibu Stacey]

In my experience, Elves tend to bring something more when you buy more of it. in my current fort, I exclusively bought animal cages right from the start, even for common animals like dogs, and now I get at least 3-5 animals per caravan. In other forts where I bought wood or other things, I would almost never get an animal. I also tried buying plants as well for a few years, they started bringing more plants after that. It seems that aside from elves bringing less wood when you have lots of it, they seem to like bringing things you repeatedly buy.

This appears to hold true for all traders not just Elves in my experience.
I've got tons of narrow clothing to get rid of so I buy almost everything I can use from the Human & Dwarven traders (all the metal bars, gems, wood, clothing & armour from the dwarves, bolts, drink, meat & empty bags) & let them leave with a little profit (like 200-300 dwarfbux worth, never more than 500) & they bring more of the same things every year. These days the Humans have 3 or 4 pages of just wood in the trade window.
Last year I bought 4 Steel Anvils from the Dwarves just because they had them (and I had tons of goblin clothing to get rid of) so I could replace the Iron ones in my 4 Magma Forges. This year they've turned up with at least 7 Steel Anvils & more Iron ones than I've seen before. Hopefully if I ignore the anvils for long enough they'll start to bring fewer of them. Might try this with the metal bars too since they're heavy but I can't resist trading useless crap for good stuff I can use.

[Malibu Stacey]

The next version might make Elf wars a bit less annoying, since it might become possible to mark their wooden items for burning (akin to melting goblinite) into charcoal or ashes. I personally would love to make clear glass and/or soap from the ashes of burned elven goods...

That would be nice, even if you can only make Ash from burning wooden items (theory being Charcoal may need a proper chunk of wood to make a usable amount) it'd give the stuff a use other than "yet more crap for trading".

Same goes for small/narrow/large clothing. Why can't the dwarves unpick the stiching & turn it back into cloth to then use to make their own clothes out of instead of walking around half naked? My weaver was a glorified hauler for the majority of the time even with 2 farm plots dedicated to pig tails until I found an underground river & got cave spiders spawning in my tower cap farm. Although that could have been my brewers at fault using up a heavy chunk of the pig tail harvest I guess.

[Neruz]

I just sell that shit to the Traders. I usually don't even bother melting down goblinite unless i'm low on iron.

[Hyndis]

I throw the cloth into magma, then use the bins to store useful things.

Like *elf skull totems*.


If they bring nice things, like exotic caged animals, then I will let them live. However if they bring just cloth...well...I'll keep the bins at least.

[KenboCalrissian]

So, if I seized all their goods, this would count as negative profit? I don't need to have a super-broker that can cheat them out of their shit for a claystone block?

Thanks for the answers!

Yes.  I did this for two years, and then the next year they brought me a wide variety of stuff that I wanted, and practically no cloth.

Don't overdo it though, because a few years later they brought all cloth again, I seized it all, and then the following year I had my first elven ambush.  Unless you want to fight elves, which is fun but not as profitable as goblins.