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[Halnoth]

Ya Q I don't think it does degrade over time. Clothing will degrade if it is being worn but in the stockpile cloth shouldn't degrade.

[FuzzyZergling]

Do cloth bags degrade?
I've never seen it, but my fortresses tend to end rather shortly.

[Halnoth]

Do cloth bags degrade?
I've never seen it, but my fortresses tend to end rather shortly.

No, at least I don't believe so. A quick check of my stocks in a 50 year old fortress shows no bags with XX.

[SkyRender]

Do cloth bags degrade?
I've never seen it, but my fortresses tend to end rather shortly.

 As far as I've ever noticed, only clothing degrades.  And that's regardless of material used, at that.  Not sure if clothes not being worn degrade, but it wouldn't surprise me.

[Quietust]

I've seen cloth degrade in 40d, but it takes at least thirty years to do so - my forts tend to be very long-lived.

[Quietust]

A bit of a bump, but I think it's worth it: while studying part of the caravan code in version 0.23.130.23a (i.e. the old 2D version), I located the code responsible for this behavior. Better yet, I looked in the same place in version 0.34.11 and it's still there (and with one extra bit).

Here is exactly how "emergency supplies" appear to work:
1. The caravan will try to bring enough meat/fish so that you have 5 units of food for each "carnivore" in your fortress. With stock raws, this does nothing at all (because dwarves are omnivores).
2. The caravan will try to bring enough assorted food (meat, fish, cheese, plants, and possibly others) so that you have 5 units of food for each citizen of your fortress.
3. The caravan will try to bring enough cloth and leather so that you have enough to have 5 pristine sets of clothes (1 shirt/cloak, 1 trousers/loincloth, and 1 shoe) for each citizen of your fortress.
4. The caravan will try to bring enough wood logs so that you have 1 log per citizen of your fortress. This didn't happen in 23a since caravans didn't bring wood logs back then.

All items in your fortress which are forbidden, rotten, or trader-owned are ignored.
For cases #1 and #2, it actually just uses the numbers displayed on your Z-Status screen - meat+fish for #1, and meat+fish+plant+other for #2 (yes, this includes fat and tallow, even though you can't eat them directly).
For cases #3 and #4, items which have wear ("x", "X", or "XX") are excluded.
For case #4, items which are considered to be armor (having a nonzero ARMORLEVEL) are ignored. The actual formula for the amount of cloth/leather to bring is "(population * 5) - (num_cloth + num_leather + min(num_armor, num_pants, num_shoes))", so keeping a large amount of stockpiled cloth and leather will stop caravans from bringing more. Interestingly, it doesn't seem to check clothing size, so having a bunch of stockpiled goblinite back in 40d was sufficient to stop this behavior (in 0.31 and later, only stuff from Humans, Kobolds, and Trolls will trigger this oddity).

Thus, the real reason why Elves (and all other caravans) bring so much cloth with their caravans is that they don't want your dwarves to be naked. Back when this behavior was first added, Dwarves got unhappy when their clothes wore out and even more unhappy when they were naked; by 40d all of the unhappy thoughts related to clothing were gone, but since version 0.34.06 brought them back, this behavior is much more useful than it used to be.

[Talvieno]

+1 internet, and thanks for the bump. I'd suspected that wood shipments depended on the scarcity of wood in your fortress, and considered that it might work for other things, but I never had such a solid confirmation. This is a very valuable piece of information, and one I'll be sure to take into account.

[Urist McDwarfFortress]

I've seen cloth degrade in 40d

Are you sure the cloth wasn't in a stockpile which also allows refuse? Like, did you have a cloth AND bone stockpile?

[Quietust]

I've seen cloth degrade in 40d

Are you sure the cloth wasn't in a stockpile which also allows refuse? Like, did you have a cloth AND bone stockpile?

That behavior wasn't added until version 0.34.06 - "(*) Clothing deterioration in refuse pile".

I've also since confirmed that back in 40d and earlier, all improvable items made from cloth/silk/leather gained 1 level of wear every 20 years, while items made of wood gained 1 level of wear every 100 years. In version 0.31.01 and later, though, cloth/leather goods are bugged and wear out at the same speed as wood (1 level per 100 years).

[Sutremaine]

Here is exactly how "emergency supplies" appear to work:
1. The caravan will try to bring enough meat/fish so that you have 5 units of food for each "carnivore" in your fortress. With stock raws, this does nothing at all (because dwarves are omnivores).
2. The caravan will try to bring enough assorted food (meat, fish, cheese, plants, and possibly others) so that you have 5 units of food for each citizen of your fortress.

[....]

For cases #1 and #2, it actually just uses the numbers displayed on your Z-Status screen - meat+fish for #1, and meat+fish+plant+other for #2 (yes, this includes fat and tallow, even though you can't eat them directly).

And dye as well, it being listed under Other?

[Quietust]

And dye as well, it being listed under Other?

Yes.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Are there alcohol "emergency supplies"?

[javierpwn]

Maybe you cut down 1 to many trees that year

I know they get angry and bring less stuff when angered

Liason says: We will allow you to cut down 5 trees this year

[Quietust]

Are there alcohol "emergency supplies"?

No.

Maybe you cut down 1 to many trees that year

I know they get angry and bring less stuff when angered

Liason says: We will allow you to cut down 5 trees this year

Who are you talking to? Also, that advice is rather flawed now that the actual behavior is clear - if you anger the Elves, they'll bring fewer normal trade goods (and fewer pack animals) but they'll still try to bring the same amount of emergency supplies, so it'll only make things worse for you. You want them to bring as many pack animals as possible so that you can purchase enough cloth in the fewest visits necessary (while also producing your own cloth+leather) so that they go back to bringing normal trade goods sonner.