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[ral]

Urist McDwarf has been content lately. He has admired a fine hickory pipe recently. He has had a good smoke of finely shredded marijuana lately. He has complained of hunger recently.

I think Urist would be more than content under those circumstances.

[Brian]

I buy every booze available except for dwarven wine, since that's what plump helmets give you and dwarves like variety. For food, I sometimes buy high quality ingredients.

[BurnedToast]

Yes.

Why bother farming? I've got extra stones to turn into toys. The caravans always bring TONS of food and enough drink to feed everyone. 1 crafter making toys to trade for food is much less dwarfpower required to feed the fortress then making it yourself.

They are going to bring that food if you want it or not, might as well take advantage.

[MarcAFK]

In the beginning when i have barrel shortages i buy all the booze i can, food i don't because i usually sell my own(minus the barrels) to pay for the booze.
Later on when i have access to either magma or coal i'll make barrels from lead or nickel or whatever junk ore is about and won't worry about buying boze from traders...

[Angel Of Death]

Buy stuff? Ha! I wrench it from their cold, dead hands.

[Valkyrie]

I used to buy the caravan drink for the barrels, since wood was usually relatively rare for my forts and therefore precious.

With the caverns and such in more recent times, though, wood is far easier to come by.  I still buy the booze, though, and now usually buy most of the >10 dwarfbuck food as well.  My main export is roasts.  For the first caravan or two, if short on exportable value, you can quickly buy some expensive ingredients (like cheese), turn them into roasts, and then sell (at a huge markup) the now-processed food to the caravan you'd just bought it from a few days prior.

Later on in a fort's life, I'm usually overflowing in roasts and goblin-dropped clothing, so I'm searching for anything of any value at all to buy off a caravan so I can get more stuff sold & out of my fort, and food & drink have at least some utility.  It does mean that my farms shrink as my forts grow, which feels rather odd - a ~10 dwarf fort might have a 3x9 farm, but a ~60 dwarf fort usually has a 2x2 farm or smaller.

I'm slowly convincing myself to just atom-smash or LavaFlow-dump more and more of the invader clothing and dead merchant droppings, which means less stuff I need to get sold.  With less desperation to maximize imported value and caravan weight loss, I'm being pickier about what food to buy - it's a lot of hauling for minimal gain - but still tend to grab the booze, as it's nice for variety in case my own small booze industry has gotten skewed, and for the dwarves that like surface-crop drinks.

[Lielac]

Later on in a fort's life, I'm usually overflowing in roasts and goblin-dropped clothing, so I'm searching for anything of any value at all to buy off a caravan so I can get more stuff sold & out of my fort, and food & drink have at least some utility.

You do know you can give stuff away, right?

[Urist Imiknorris]

Only things native to your fort, which means bins with even a single piece of goblinite in them can't be offered.

[ral]

Well, you can also just get a really really bad deal on a trade which effectively gives the stuff away, just not to a civilization leader.

[Valkyrie]

Later on in a fort's life, I'm usually overflowing in roasts and goblin-dropped clothing, so I'm searching for anything of any value at all to buy off a caravan so I can get more stuff sold & out of my fort, and food & drink have at least some utility.

You do know you can give stuff away, right?

Aye, though as Urist Imiknorris mentions, that doesn't help with the goblin droppings (unless you decorate them first, which is a logistics pain in and of itself), which are the main thing I'm trying to get rid of (since their value-per-item is so low, and their utility is essentially nil).  It also still feels silly when I haggle over a 5000-value 10% profit margin for the caravan, then Offer them 100000-value of free food ><  From a relations / improving-what-they-bring-next-time perspective, I'm still unclear on if it's better to Offer them a ton of goods, or to Sell them the same goods in exchange for a random trinket ("hm, 200000db of roasts, in exchange for a 3db log?  You drive a hard bargain, mayor, but I think we can work something out ...").  The latter form does work for goblinite and for dwarven caravans after you become the Mountainhome, though, which makes it rather handy.

[Lagslayer]

Sew images into everything. Legendary clothesmaking dwarves are a godsend when you are swimming in goblinite. If you decorate the goblinite, then it counts towards your created wealth. Maybe this will let you offer it as well (but why offer when a really, really good profit margin on a trade is better?)

[Polar_Atom]

Food and Booze is all I buy from the Caravan in the first year, as its easier to produce crafts early than set up a farm.

[ThrowerOfStones]

It used to be my priority, but now I usually prioritize metal equipment over it unless I'm running low for some reason (which hasn't really happened since .18, now that we can farm from the start and use stone pots). Still, by year 2 I'm usually buying all the food and booze, just on the principle of it might come in handy.

[Haspen]

My kittens, puppies, plump helmets and dwarven wine are nice for a fortress - but most often I do buy other foodz and alcohol for a change for my little bearded friends.

[Girlinhat]

I always have thriving farms.  Too often, I've had a caravan die and cost me a shipment.