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[Michael]

Before investing complexity into solving this problem, one must ask if it's worthwhile.  Forcing the player to use shallower ramps (say, by requiring that the nine squares of a wagon may only span at most two Z-levels) wouldn't change gameplay significantly.  The only way a really steep ramp intended for wagons could appear, is if you had a trade depot deep underground.

I use underground depots (but not very deep), but my wagon tunnels are so long that I would have plenty of room to have a realistic average grade to the bottom level DF allows.  This is because I want the mouth of the tunnel at the map edge so that the caravan path is naturally protected from ambushers.
 

That way, Wagons aren't climbing the kinds of paths that humans wouldn't even take, and winding mountain roads would have value to be built even by players.

It would be easier just to go through any inconvenient mountains - digging a three-wide tunnel is easy.

[Draco18s]

It would be easier just to go through any inconvenient mountains - digging a three-wide tunnel is easy.

For Dwarves.  Keep in mind that in real life we didn't get tunnels under the various mountain ranges until steam locomotives, which couldn't turn sharp enough to use switchbacks (there are other ways, such as reversing, etc. etc. but tunnels only became viable because of the steam engine).

[Zwebie]

1 tile holds up to 7 water.  When a bucket is filled for a sick dwarf, it takes 1 of that water and turns it into 10 drinkable water units.  Based on how much water a human drinks in a day, and some math, we come up with a volume of about 40 cubic feet.

Of course, by that logic, 1 bucket of water has a volume of not quite 6 cubic feet, or about 44 gallons, which would weigh 375 pounds. That's closer to a bathtub than a bucket.

Which may explain why a dwarf takes an entire tree to make a single bucket.

I'm pretty happy with thinking of the tiles as an abstract distance, currently. Until the game gets polished, those of us who want real measurements will need to wait.

[Michael]

Lately I'm thinking it would be a good idea to set things up so that a 3x3 block of tiles can at most span two adjacent Z-levels if it is to be wagon-accessible.  This would force the player to place at least two tiles of flat road between each line of ramps.

Not because it's urgently needed, but because the next release is going to break save compatibility anyway, so we have one opportunity to make this change without breaking the depot access of existing forts.  The change shouldn't be difficult to program, so I doubt it would noticeably delay the release.