So, I embarked good. I've got like EVERYTHING available, in .19. Well not everything, but enough. Point is, I'm looking at my regular embark profile, where I bring along malachite and cassiterite, and realized that I have access to bismunthinite. Normally not a fan of it's funky yellow color, I realized that it's cheaper. Malachite is 6, so is cassiterite, but bismunthinite is 3. Now, when crafting bars for use in armor, it takes 1 copper and 1 tin for 2 bars of bronze, which means 1 cassiterite and 1 malachite, totaling 12 cost, or 6 per bar. Bismuth Bronze, takes 2 copper, 1 tin, and 1 bismuth. That's 2 malachite, 1 cassiterite, 1 bismunthinite, totaling 21, giving 4 bars for 5.25 per bar. That means you can save .75 embark points by taking the ingredients for bismuth bronze instead of regular bronze. While not a big deal in itself, I'm looking at about 100 bars for this embark, which is a full 75 points saved, although it will cost me extra steps in smelting (more trees to burn!). That's enough to bring along a slew of butcherable animals, or egg-layers, or assign points to combat dwarves, etc. It's also easier to buy bismuth bronze ingredients from caravans, since you can order 2 copper ores, 1 tin ore, and 1 bismuth ore. Since there's only 1 tin ore, you'll only get so much tin, and have leftover copper normally, unless you make it bismuth, and you can pull in more ore per caravan and more production power.
So, that little 2:30AM epiphany aside, anyone else found interesting cost-shaving methods to extort your economy?