40d Talk:Broker skills

I combined these skills since all the entries are the same. Jikor 08:02, 8 November 2007 (EST)

It is gained by:
* Proposing an unsuccessful trade at the depot.

This seem to controdict the earlier statement that this is a way that the skills are not gained. Is this skill an exception or what? I think we should make this article clearer. --Mizipzor 09:25, 8 November 2007 (EST)

In my first fort I tried to buy out the dwarven caravan with not enough goods, after enough attempts (removing one item each time), the caravan took offence and left. My broker gained the comedian skill after that. So unsuccessful trades do gain skills (not sure if its a random skill or depends how you offended the caravan), anyway the assertion in this article appears to be wrong. Coelocanth

I just copied the text from the previous articles on the subject I haven't really tested these yet. Jikor 06:09, 9 November 2007 (EST)

I am sure that the 'appraiser' skill is trained before the actual trade. My broker went to sleep at the unlucky moment and I allowed anyone to trade with 6-wagon human caravan. The dwarf that came to trade wasn't even dabbling at appraising and when I pressed 'trade' at the depot - he saw all the items' prices. So I actually cancelled trade that time and looked at the dwarf again - he was now competent appraiser. I guess that some experience in appraising skill (maybe 1?) is gained when a dwarf determines the price of each single merchant item for the first time. Later I bought out that whole caravan and the dwarf became dabbling in a handful of other skills. I guess that each successfull and each rejected trade attempt gives some amount(10?, 20?, 50?) in their corresponding 2 partially overlapping sets of social skills. Some experiments can be conducted to determine the exact amounts of skill gains.--Another 07:55, 9 November 2007 (EST)

I can confirm this. Appraiser goes up just from opening the trading menu, before you've even started putting together an offer. As a result it goes up much faster than any of the other skills, especially once the big caravans start rolling in.

Judge of Intent seems to go up on just about every attempted trade, even failed attempts. It seems to go up slightly faster than most of the other skills, which seem to be applied somewhat randomly, based off your broker's personality and possibly other factors (personalities of the foreign merchants?) For instance, my broker has been gaining Persuader, Negotiator, and Intimidator, with ocassional smaller gains in Comedian. Rpb 20:21, 10 November 2007 (EST)

Do any of the broker skills actually do anything past novice? I had thought appraiser (or maybe another one) gave a bonus to the value of your goods but I'm not seeing it anymore - probably I had been trading something they asked for without realizing it. Unless you order something heavy (like stone blocks or metal bars) caravans almost always seem to bring enough to enable novice appraiser so you can see the prices, and seeing as the mood thing doesn't really matter much there does not seem to be a lot of point in using a dedicated broker at all. --BurnedToast 23:51, 11 November 2007 (EST)

I don't know if appraiser or judge of intent do anything once past novice. Getting the other skills up a couple ranks does make it a lot easier to get full value on your trades (the traders are much less likely to reject deals or make counter-offers asking for more stuff), so if you're stingy about what you trade away you might as well have a dedicated broker. Even then there seems to be a definite point of diminishing returns, though, as my broker only has 2-4 ranks in four skills and he almost always gets the traders to accept on profit margins of 1-5% or less. Which is probably a good considering their slow rate of advancement, since he started with 5 ranks in negotiation skills and has taken 6 years of dedicated brokering to get the other ranks.Rpb 23:59, 11 November 2007 (EST)

I noticed that, with a low skill, the trader would often ask for more of what you are presenting him before he agrees to trade. Which is probably because I always try to give them the same kind of stone stuff, mainly stone crafts, and the trader look for profit and diversity. At a time, in a map in which I had no wood and was bent on trying to purchase bins and barrels only to have them in my inventory 'cause I wasn't able to start my metal industry yet, the merchant was also bent in asking for the bins of my trade goods also, along with a few other items I would have rather prefered keeping in stock but didn't mind that much. I had to raise his profit for him to be willing to oversee those demands. In my current fortress, the highest starting skill I gave to my leader was judge of intent. I'll see later on if it make a difference in the haggling process. I am guessing that, with a high enough skill level, my leader will be the one asking for more stuff instead of the inverse. Or maybe it's also related to another talk skill... --Eagle of Fire 13:14, 12 November 2007 (EST)

Judge of Intent most probably determines a change in the mood of the trader, so far i was very persistent in not giving human traders the goods they asked for and their status "merchants seems to be willing to trade" changed to "merchant is impatient"(or something like that), I believe Judge of Intent is what detects these changes of mood. Basically it shows you where the safe bargaining zone is over. --Digger 02:51, 5 March 2008 (EST)

Does it make sense for the "Liar' skill to redirect to the broker skills page? From what I can tell the liar skill isn't trained by trading, or any current noble function.

I'm pretty sure that it is, but your broker's skill usage is determined by their personality. i.e. if you put someone who is dishonest towards others in charge of trading, then they'll use the Liar skill.Rpb 11:38, 16 November 2007 (EST)

Effect of skills

This article says how dwarves learn, but not what the skills *do*. Problem is, I was looking it up because I didn't know, so I can't fill in that info. Bhudson 21:18, 2 February 2008 (EST)

Skill gain from idle chatter

It appears that dwarves also gain most of the broker skills (albeit slowly) from time spent in idle conversation with each other. Leave a few dwarfs sitting around the dining room with no job for a bit, and you'll see that they've gained Dabbling in most of these. While it's not enough to really be useful for trade, the extra few XP often are enough to give a new dwarf a stat gain. Has anyone tested this to see how the XP gain is accrued? Part of the problem is that without some dissection of the code as it's running, it's hard to tell how long a single "conversation" lasts. RedKing 23:47, 4 March 2008 (EST)

-- It seems that some of these skills also alow the dwarves to comfort each other, generating happy thoughts. I belive Conversationalist, Comedian and Flatterer are used for this, based on the thought text but I have no specific evidence of that.

Duo 11 March 2008

Value of Multiple Trades

Does the skill increase every time you trade, or every time you open/close the trade window? In other words, can you try to level your Broker by haggling over each individual scrap of cloth? If so, this makes Elves actually useful. RomeoFalling 22:11, 13 October 2008 (EDT)

I've only trained up one dwarf in trading, but I seemed to get the best training and trader response by making an offer, having it rejected, then making a more generous offer (but still less than their counteroffer) which was accepted. Try 110% followed by 150% on a series of trades.

Now that my broker's at "Skilled" in all broker skills, the traders no longer reject any offer as long as it's not a loss for them, and I no longer gain skill from trading -- though that is moot.--Maximus 01:36, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

So the skill only trains if you fail? That's seems weird. By this logic, though. My initial assumption seems correct, although slightly more complex. In the same trading period, I could haggle over every item tit-for-tat, and quickly level the broker up. Although I decided to make my dwarves unusually social this build, so my broker has average Judge of Intent, average Appraiser and Novice Flatterer, so I'm not going to be able to test it anytime soon. RomeoFalling 02:17, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Novice Judge of Intent is all that's really needed initially, although even that you can learn by trading. But being able to see the mood of the traders is useful.

I trained up my broker by doing small trades at first, but once he was getting the traders to accept break-even most of the time, I switched to bulk trades. I'm not positive that the small trades produced more skill than one big trade would have, but it wouldn't surprise me. A set of modestly generous initial trades help to massage the traders' mood up to ecstatic so that you can cut things closer with the big stuff.--Maximus 03:17, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Due to a profound lack of bins and an overproductive craftdwarf, I got to try this after all. A dwarf went from zero skill in Appraiser to Skilled in 3 exchanges in the same trade exchange (in order: success, reoffer/success, donation). Based on this, I'm updating the page. RomeoFalling 07:32, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Huh?

Does this article really make sense to have? It's just a subset of social skills, and Appraiser isn't listed. Random832 16:13, 16 November 2008 (EST)

Agreed. "Broker skills" is certainly an archaic concept and as the broker page should dealing with all this, there's not point for this page to exist. ~Rep