I'm curious about the general opinion of foreign clothing and how it balances out with trading. Just recently, I bought every single usable item from a human caravan using every single item I had available for trade. The only things I didn't buy were their crafts and large clothing/armor, and there were even a few exceptions among those for melting down. Here was the rundown on my exports:
3% from crafts by my dwarves (pretty much just rock mugs worth dirt)
2% from foreign clothing reworked by my dwarves with gems
95% from narrow and large clothing, collected from goblin sieges/one elf ambush.
I look at these numbers and think there must be something wrong with the balance here. Especially considering that at worst I'd lose maybe one or two dwarves and eight war dogs (most of the time, it's not even half that), it feels like I just got away with murder. So in my case, there's practically no reason to craft anything at all - I pretty much do it only because I don't want my dwarves to befriend each other, so I assign craft jobs to keep my idlers at an absolute minimum.
On the other hand, I also find these conditions preferable because I'm trying to build a huge castle (we're talking at least six z-levels and very wide dimensions), so the less time I need to spend worrying about what to craft for the next trader, the better.
Of course, my economy didn't get like this overnight either. I'm getting these results from a fortress that's currently on its 13th year. Prior to that, there was significantly more management of crafting to make sure I got what I needed from the caravans, because at times there were serious threats like lack of seeds or mood-fodder that I absolutely needed the caravans for. So in a way, I've earned access to near limitless funds for little investment as a reward for keeping the fort alive for so long. Perhaps the system was designed this way on purpose.
So, what do you think?