I played almost a full in-game year last night. Winter came & went without any goblin caravan arriving. Elves still haven't brought any caged animals even though I've been siezing their entire caravans goods for the last 4 or 5 years (they were blocked last year by the last ever goblin siege) & their diplomat is beginning to get annoying so I may anger them for the ambush fun but I keep wanting to hold out in the hope that they'll eventually bring some good animals.
I have had some goblin snatchers this Spring & Summer & 2 goblin ambush squads with 8-10 enemies each so all hope is not lost even though the civ's screen still shows everyone at peace. No kobolds so far. Did get my 2nd megabeast though which was another dragon. It killed the original one I'd tamed & was promptly taken to pieces by my 5 melee champions.
My created wealth has gone up by over 1 million in that year as anyone who makes anything now is legendary in their profession (it's 7 million+) even though I don't make much in the way of non-consumable items anymore.
I may just get around to making some roads to bring the king & then go hunting for the clownite/clowns. Knowing my luck the massive created wealth boost will bring a huge goblin siege while my military are busy taking on the clowns. There's an underground lake in the tile east of the magma pipe too so I may go see what fun I can find in there & maybe hunt down the last surviving Troll which has been stuck on a chasm ledge since I embarked (killed the 3 non-stuck ones long ago).
You know, when I
tried playing around with elven pack animal trade capacity (with hilarious consequences), I managed to get basically a breeding pair of every single animal that would spawn in the elven home tiles... I just haven't been able to do anything with them, as I've yet to clean this mess up.
Basically, if you don't meddle with nature TOO much, just triple the carrying capacity of a camel, or just set all the pack animals to carry 15,000 dwarfweight, the same as a wagon, you shouldn't have to worry so much about entire caravans that consist of nothing but cloth bins and maybe some wood. (You WILL get insane amounts of arrows and wooden armor, though...)
Is it cheating? Well, in a sense, yes, you're modding the game to your advantage, but it can also be seen as correcting a bug in the game to begin with, since I seriously doubt that Toady INTENDED for elven trading to behave this way.