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[Asehujiko]

My year 2 caravan showed up, carrying the drinks, plump helmet, turtle and pearlash i desperatly needed. I traded them all the non-silk cloth i had, along with a metric ton of bone and shell trinkets.

The traders profit was ~150 and he rejected.
I increased it to ~300 and he still rejected.
Desperate for the alcohol(farm bug), i gave him a profit of ~1000 and he left.

I tried to buy 2500 and offered 3500 in return. The result being my fort collapsing due lack of drinks and food by the start of winter.

Bug or arrogant prick trader?

[martinuzz]

Arrogant prick trader. No bug.

[Shades]

Thats supply and demand for you, he knew how badly you wanted the food and was willing to overcharge you massively  

[Wolfius]

I find that a 50% profit always works, with 25-30% being more normal.

And, yeah - counter-offers are stupid-high. Just knock it down to 50% profit and you should be fine.

As for greed, well, look at the flip side, and think of their loss rates; not only is the trip dangerous, but at alot of forts, there are, *ahem* "unfortunate accidents" that plague traders. Think of it as paying for all the stuff everyone else steals off their coprses.  

[Asehujiko]

He didn't counteroffer anything. He just said "with these trade goods as they are, i can't phantom you having them" twice and the third time "i have enough of these childish games, maybe i'll take you seriously the next time i come" and left.

He would have gotten 40% profit of that last trade but he refused and let my fort get destroyed.

[AlStar]

quote: ... i can't phantom you having them ...

That's 'fathom.'

But yeah, it sounds like you just had a greedy merchant coupled possibly with a not-terribly-good trader dwarf.

[Jothki]

I've gotten pretty much exactly the same thing with an elven trader in 33d. If it's a bug, I doubt it's unique to the newest release.

[ein Syndication]

I'm still not quite sure what that "I can't fathom you having trade goods as good as these" message is for, but in my (very minor) experimenting with it, it seems to be somewhat related to the quality of items you're giving/recieving, and tends to happen more often when you're offering one or two items for a load of theirs. Might also be related to how many items you have at the depot.

[Align]

When you make an offer, there's a chance (proportional to the profit for the trader, the mood of the trader, and the skill of your trading dwarf) for it to be accepted. If it is, trade success and you can go on with your life. If it's rejected, the mood of the trader goes down, so the chance of the next offer succeeding is lessened.
The chance isn't static though, so you can in theory make an offer and have it rejected twice, then succeed the third time.

tl;dr poor deals annoys trader, annoyed traders demand more profit

[polpoint]

I don't know if this is for true, but I have always seemed to have more luck (with less profit to the traders) trading small amounts of items - When I would trade a big chunk of stuff, they would always ask for what seemed like an excessive amount from me in return.

[Fenrir]

Don't bother with traders, just disassemble the depot after they've unloaded. The goods will scatter over the ground and you can just take em'.

[RedWick]

Generally, I concentrate on buying the booze and food first, then I move on to the non-essentials.  I also make lots of little trades rather than one big one as lots of small trades helps to train up your trader's skill.  At higher levels, you can usually get around a 1 to 1 trade for most goods, even in large trades, no matter how ornery the merchant is.  Plus, I don't worry too much about losing money on the trades as I'm usually swimming in trade goods after a year or so.

[Devastator]

quote:Originally posted by Fenrir:
<STRONG>Don't bother with traders, just disassemble the depot after they've unloaded. The goods will scatter over the ground and you can just take em'.</STRONG>

Why do people keep suggesting this?  If you want to steal their goods, that is what the "seize marked" selection is for.

[puffs]

quote:Originally posted by Devastator:
<STRONG>

Why do people keep suggesting this?  If you want to steal their goods, that is what the "seize marked" selection is for.</STRONG>

can't steal from the dwarf caravan

[Wooty]

Do they get annoyed over these "accidents" and disassembled trad depots?