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[jpolchlopek]

Is it just me, or is trading in DF starting to feel like that scene in Waterworld?

You know the one -- Kevin Costner's character cleans out every single good from the shelves of a human trading post (and then takes the shelves, too) by trading ... a handful of dirt.  Something that costs him effectively nothing to get and he annihiliates an entire economy over it.

I thought of this while my dorfs were emptying the trading depot of every last scrap of stuff (for the fourth time that year) in return for a half-a-dozen Lavish Prepared Meals.  But the problem is that ... it's so hard to stop!

This is like trying to kick a bad drug habit.  I've tried everything I can to quit!  Tried trading booze, crafts, weapons, and on and on.  Nothing gives the return-on-investment that meals do.

Share your thoughts gentledwarfs: Do you consider trading meals to be exploiting the trade algorithms?  Is there a way I can get a decent return on my investment without having to trade 100 barrels of masterwork booze?

[Makigall]

I usually feel a bit of guilt when I trade caravan a truckload of kid sized clothing with goblin blood all over them and they leave ecstatic.  It makes me wonder what kind of city they live in that they can't clothe their children.  Of course my dwarven children run around naked.  But that's another matter all together.

[beorn080]

Define investment.

You can get similar results with a single stonecrafter pumping out instruments. Or a clothier pumping out shirts. Even masterwork mechanisms are worth a good deal.

There really isn't an industry that you can't dedicate a couple of dwarves to and buy out the entire caravan.

[Urist Imiknorris]

There really isn't an industry that you can't dedicate a couple of dwarves to and buy out the entire caravan.

Including goblinite harvesting.

[Dutchling]

I never trade at all :S

[Ahra]

always die before first caravan

[jpolchlopek]

Hrmm.  So, short of a dose of self-control, there's no one product that can't have traders prancing back (minus their clothes, having trading them away, too) to their civilization with a pile of [PRODUCT]?

Are we back to a "Code of Dwarfliness" thread?  Or a variation on the "What do you consider cheating/exploits?"

Maybe I can turn the thread into this: How badly does pumping out Masterwork-quality, jewel-encrusted [PRODUCT] break the game? 

In other words, how much of Dwarf Fortress is about resource scarcity, and how much FUN are we depriving ourselves by buying everying that anyone has to offer?

[plisskin]

It's much better to cut all traders a gigantic deal and just give them most or all of the trade goods you've produced since it effectively atom smashes all those things out of your fort and thus helps your FPS. I give away extra trade goods sometimes just because it gets them off the map.

I hear .19, besides bees being made of gold, is much more resource scarce than .18 unless you ARE using the latest version.

[jpolchlopek]

I hear .19, besides bees being made of gold, is much more resource scarce than .18 unless you ARE using the latest version.

Nope, I'm still using .18 until the bugs (bees?) get hammered out.  The idea of resource scarcity (i.e. metals) is nice, but from what I've read, .19 goes a bit too far.

Besides, if I can just pump out some Product and buy out the caravans in that version, too, the topic still stands

[Lamphare]

every year i give out tonnes of prepared meals to all caravans, enough to fill everyone of them
just to keep me dwarves somewhat busy, without flooding my stockpile with essentially twenty-year worth of food and booze.

[Mister Always]

I trade stone crafts to all caravans. With the elves and humans, I think like "Well, they must have a shortage of...stuff. They must need our finely crafted goods to supply their own lack of stuff."

When I trade with the Mountainhome, I like to think the goblets and scepters and stuff all get hoarded away somewhere...and then they send out caravans full of the crap to the other civs.

[Urist Imiknorris]

"Merchants" is a more respectable name for them than "garbage removers."

[Berekän]

Hopefully when the Caravan Arc is complete the economy will be dynamic enough so you can't "exploit it" selling the same object a billion of times.

[ledgekindred]

I don't see it as an "exploit" at all.  I have the equivalents of an Urist McFlay and Urist McBatalio churning out masterwork prepared meals that are worth piles and piles.  In exchange I buy piles and piles of meat and prepared guts from the caravans, along with whatever else I need.  If you think about it, go to any fancy restaurant and you can easily pay $120 for $12 worth of raw ingredients.  Then another $100 for that bottle of fine plump helmet wine that came from a pile of mushrooms and a wooden barrel.

I think of the caravans as my own regular farmers' market that comes to visit every other season or so, where my chefs can pick out the tasties (you know, like prepared cockroach brains.  Urist McBourdain loves that kind of thing.) for the next season's fine dining menu.  And the trader caravan takes all that fine dining back to the dwarven equivalent of those little hole-in-the-wall bistros that serve tiny portions of food for exorbitant prices, and are rolling in it by inflating my meals' prices even more.

If anything, the idea of turning out masterwork meals for your caravans is realistic wayyyy more than it is an exploit.

[Ace_Warbringer]

if and when the caravan arc is completed, production of the same item over and over might depress the market. So all those masterwork meals in a few trades might be wothless. and you'll have to find another item to hawk. or you might become the only food producer in the world if you keep it up long enough. depends on the depth toady goes for.