Come here without much to offer other than to say I would really appreciate this issue resolved as well.

As I understand it, the issue is that multipliers exist universally. A lavish meal has more multipliers than a fine meal, and more are added on by putting a few of them into a masterwork, steel, gem studded, barrel.


Making multipliers category specific seems like a complicated solution which probably requires modifying the hard-code of the game, which is currently unavailable.

Another solution would be to significantly lower the base value of meals/ingredients to a point where their value didn't make sense logically. This also probably requires access to the hard-code.

A final work-around solution could be to somehow create a permanent export ban of meals. So if you do trade them, the fortress receives a punishment. If even possible, this would take several steps of editing since meals don't, and possibly can't, have [PREFSTRING] tokens.


My current solution unfortunately is don't trade meals, period. It's a personal mandate. If I do, I do so only as "Offer gift", but that itself feels like exploiting game mechanics.

All of this said with the disclaimer of despite years of experience, I barely know what I'm talking about.

Ideally the best solution would be a MOD which provides an additional calculation for all items being traded. This would then allow an easy way for players to fix the solution for meals and any other products being sold.

EXAMPLE
Items being sold at the Trader:
Barrels: game price multiplied by MOD pricing: X 1 = same price
Prepared Meals: game price multiplied by MOD pricing: X 0.1 = 10% of the price


While this doesn't fix the increased value of your civilization because of prepared meals it does provide an easy fix for the economy issue.

Value of prepared meals are calculated based off the value of the ingredients used. I don't personally know of any way to reduce an items value, since it seems kitchen reactions (and their products) are hard coded.

You'd have to edit other parts of the game like value modifiers on creatures, since there isn't a material version like [PETVALUE_DIVISOR:1000] on honeybees to divide the minimum value of 1, so you can't sell a 1000 bumblebees in a cage for 1 value each.

There are more exploitative industries anyway, like trap parts which have maximized value with the modifiers of how well made they are.