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[Trails]

So--my summer human caravan just arrived at my duchy with 30k worth of trade goods in tow. I traded their entire stock for three (3) quarrybush roasts from my legendary cook (leaving the merchants with +30k profit).

I then proceeded to give them forty (40) more such roasts as an offering, because

1) That was only half of the amount I hauled to the depot, which was less than half of what I have sitting in my stockpile. My farms are spewing food faster than my cooks can process it, and the roast stockpile is filling up quickly, so I need to be rid of the stuff.

2) I'm desperately hoping that the humans take a look at my several-hundred-thousand-value offering and think "Oh hey, maybe we should bring more swag next time!"

This has been a consistent problem...I expect it from the elves, because wood etc. just isn't that valuable, but the dwarves and humans continue to send me really scraggly caravans. I'm hoping my latest chat with the liaison will help remedy this on the dwarven side, but I'm not sure what to do about the humans.

I suppose I could just cut the farms, let them go fallow for a while, and wait for my dwarves to eat up the excess wealth, but since I'm already battling a high unemployment rate, that's not as preferable.

So I appeal to higher wisdom! Is there anything lucrative I can do with all these masterpiece roasts?

[Mister Always]

Mod them to be used as catapult ammo.

[tolkafox]

Put them in a large storage stockpile deep underground and forbid them.

[bobhayes]

So I appeal to higher wisdom! Is there anything lucrative I can do with all these masterpiece roasts?

Well, eat 'em. That will make dwarves happy. When I get to the point of having a good cook I usually end up mass dumping everything that isn't masterpiece quality, since the dwarves are morons and will walk past a meal worth more than a caravan to gnaw on raw plump helmets.

You could set some out for the wildlife, I guess. Monkeys deserve gourmet meals too, you know.

Other than racking up fortress value, though, and the amusing prospect of buying caravans out in exchange for a meal, there's nothing much to do with 'em.

[Fredd]

A deep food stockpile never hurts, especially if you get into trouble with seiges. As for the unemployment, draft some new engravers, make your fort shiney. Create some new squads, a large military will help the economy, or start a building project topside. As for the roasts, build a temple to the dwarven god of gluttony, and store the roasts there.

[fervor]

I always end up having the same problem with high unemployment.  Happens sooner and sooner as I get better playing this game too.

Unfortunately, this is just an example of balance issues with the core game.  Your industry grows and grows far faster than the needs of your dwarves.  As time passes, the problem just becomes worse as your craftsmen become more skilled.  One legendary+5 dwarf can churn out an incredible amount of stuff in a very short period of time.  One or two dozen legendary dwarves can easily support your entire fortress, leaving everyone else with little to do.

Trade has a similar balance issue.  After a while, your fortress can become completely self sufficient.  And various items are vastly overvalued, which makes it easy to buy a whole caravan's worth of stuff with just one or two items.

You really have no choice but to take on megaprojects, unless you stacked the cards against yourself to make the game much more difficult.

[Hans Lemurson]

Agricultural overproduction coupled with rampant unemployment?  Sounds like the Great Depression.

What you're going to have to do is get ALL of your dwarves employed on the farms and then deliver all of their produce straight to the atom-smasher so that supply won't outstrip demand and farming can remain profitable.

Either that or just shut down your 100-tile farm-plot and realize that you're living in a perfect communist state where unemployment doesn't matter.  Live off of your stores for a few years, and only buy the occasional exotic drinks or meat from passing caravans to maintain variety.

[Lagslayer]

You could always just make smaller farm plots. Also, if you allow all your dwarves to harvest and have more farmers than is needed, each farmer will get less experiance at a time and each stack of food will be smaller, lowering production in the short term. If you wanna keep producing it anyways, I think offering to human, elven, and goblin caravans does nothing right now, and you may get better results by trading it to them instead. More profit = more stuff the next year and offerings do not count as profit.

[zephyr_hound]

I close down my farms when I get a food surplus and wait for it to get eaten before I start producing more. At some point most of my forts end up having a skeleton farming staff running one tiny farm plot for booze, and all the food comes from butchering mounts after sieges. Then I usually end up with an overproduction of ☼voracious cave crawler meat roast☼s instead, of course. I hate wasting corpses so I've gotta butcher as many as I can before they go rotten

[assimilateur]

perfect communist state where unemployment doesn't matter.

Came here to say something like this. Unless you're using the terribly broken economy feature, you shouldn't worry about unemployment, and a small plot (let's say 3-4 tiles per crop) plus some livestock should be enough to feed everyone in a medium to large fort. If you're interested in exporting a large amount of food, you should probably make your plot twice as large as described above.

Also, if you want traders to bring more goods, make sure they have a huge profit margin. This is not the same as offering gifts, it's "overpaying" several times the listed price.

[BaronBalloon]

perfect communist state where unemployment doesn't matter.

Came here to say something like this. Unless you're using the terribly broken economy feature, you shouldn't worry about unemployment, and a small plot (let's say 3-4 tiles per crop) plus some livestock should be enough to feed everyone in a medium to large fort. If you're interested in exporting a large amount of food, you should probably make your plot twice as large as described above.

Also, if you want traders to bring more goods, make sure they have a huge profit margin. This is not the same as offering gifts, it's "overpaying" several times the listed price.

Idleness makes dwarves sad.

[assimilateur]

Idleness makes dwarves sad.

That may be, but I'm sure you'd think of something for them to do, like working out at the pumps. That even increases some of their attributes, so it's not useless in itself as some other make-work schemes potentially are.

[FearfulJesuit]

If I were you, I'd dig out most of a Z-level in a fractal patter, with all dwarves mining, and then smooth it all, with them engraving. Even with lots of dwarves it'll take lots of time.