Ok, recap:
So if I double [trade_capacity] of (What do dwarves use, wagons also?) I'll get double the amount of trade goods?
Sounds perfect for my mini-fortress I'm planning! It will need many, many external ores to be brought in!
Well, you see, traders have a certain rate at which they will "unload goods". If you set your trade capacity too high, they will take the entire month that they'll stay on the map before turning around to try unloading the goods, and you won't ever get to trade.
So yeah, you can double the [trade_capacity] on a wagon (it's naturally 15,000) and probably get away with it. Just don't go into anything 6 digit.
I had it at 20,000 last time, though, and it took about an hour just going through all the crap that the dwarves brought to trade, though. (MAN I wish we had wildcard searches and "select alls" on the actual trade screen.) If you make a habit of trading away stuff at about a 3:1 ratio in value of your goods for the value of their goods, you will already be naturally getting a pretty insane amount of goods for trade.
So now you know - when the Elves start bringing caravans consisting entirely of cloth bins, this is what they're trying to bring...
Oh, and speaking of trade capacity, simply setting camels, donkeys, mules, and muskoxen to have a trade_capacity of 15000 will pretty much give you what Elves were "supposed to bring".
which would probably be some pretty uncomfortable underwear if it had that much wood in it
I SO read that the wrong way.
... It actually took me a couple seconds to get that... heh...
Dwarves would give you a medal. humans are such racist bastards (by what they are in most fantasy settings) that they wouldn't care, other than possibly to use it as propaganda to show how much better they are... but no one cares. and the elves.... no one cares about the elves. though you could always use firehound's idea to get off scot free by everyone. and the elves would make sure to bring better stuff next time. or bombs. but that's a risk you'll have to take.
Considering how wars seem to go in my world, where an army of 98 elves attacked a goblin city that was defended by 1 elf who was kidnapped as a child, and the 1 elf won, killing 37 elves... and these sorts of battles happen EVERY YEAR, I'm pretty firmly convinced elves place absolutely no value on life in their culture. They are even more of a zerg rush race than the goblins.