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[cynar]

Something I have noticed a lot is traders turning up at the most annoying times. If you are locked down with a siege, you don't want the caravan turning up and dumping their gear where they die.

It is also possible though that you might have the military might to see off the 'siege' before it gets to the caravan.

What would therefore be useful is a way of signalling to the caravan if it is safe to approach. A beacon, to modify how the caravan approaches. It could take the form of a lighthouse, or a flag etc and should have to be placed so it is visible from the map edge (ie above ground in a tower etc) possibly with it's effectiveness set by it's hight.

It should have maybe 4 modes.

Green - Fortress is totally safe.
Caravans will tend to arrive with more stuff and be happier in trading, but turn up without much, if any, of an escort.

Yellow - Safe, but at risk.
This is the default, and as it stands now. The caravan will arrive with a normal out-load and guard.

Red - Danger.
The caravan is very much reduced in size and turns up with a far larger escort, if at all. traders will charge a premium on goods due to this.

Black - Help needed.
Less a trade convoy and more a military relief force. Designed for when you need help clearing out the 500+ undead that have your last dwarves holed up. Will expect payment for their help.


The odds of a caravan turning up at all should scale with the danger level. If you have traded well for years then a help request might be acknowledged, but in general will just stop anyone arriving.

The beacon's hight etc should have some effect on how reliable it is. One hidden in a valley will only be seen too late and not be affective. One at the top of the mountain, in a 40 layer high tower will be seen from a long way away.

[XXSockXX]

With the upcoming changes in the next release(s) there is probably going to be some possibility to communicate with your civ and get military help. I speculate it would work with messenger dwarfs.

Your idea is not bad, but the problem with lighthouse communication is: Depending on how far you are from the mountainhome, the traders might have to travel across half the world only to see that your fort is in danger, go back to get escorts, travel back again to see that the danger is over and so on.

[cynar]

I agree it might become redundant, depending on how trade works out. It would also obviously be a slow response time, but would still be useful in any case to be able to warn a caravan away if it cannot handle being mobbed on arrival.

IT would also be useful in the situation where you have 5 dwarves walled in and all the migrants and traders are just being converted by the necro outside. (We're F&%$ed, send help).

[Trif]

Something I have noticed a lot is traders turning up at the most annoying times. If you are locked down with a siege, you don't want the caravan turning up and dumping their gear where they die.

Small correction: the traders always follow their schedule and arrive every year in the same season. The goblins are the annoying ones, they try to attack when the traders are due to force you to open the gates.

That said, I like the idea of a beacon of warning. I also thought of some sort of lighthouse, like a vantage point with a burning fire, and depending on the color of smoke or maybe the color of panes of glass that can be placed in front of it, it could mean different things.
Like XXSockXX pointed out, most caravans wouldn't see the beacon before they're close to the fortress, so it would be too late to change the escort. I would suggest the following modes:

• No beacon / neutral beacon: trading is safe, come on in.
  
• Grey smoke or something: we're under attack, stay away. Very few diehard merchants could maybe try to sneak through enemy lines and sell weapons and supplies for massive profits.
• Black smoke / emergency signal: send help. The merchants would leave and deliver that message to the home civilization, and then the ruler would decide, depending on your diplomatic relationship, past profits, strategic value etc. whether or not he'll send troops to support you.

How much of an escort they should bring could be an automatic decision on the merchants' side. Say you put up the attack beacon. In the following year, the merchants might decide to bring a bigger escort. They arrive at your fortress and find fields littered with goblin corpses, troll blood everywhere, and if you trade them blood-stained goblin sized armor and some +jabberer bone earrings+, too; maybe next year the diplomat will offer you an alliance against the goblins. Or they might declare war on you because you've grown too mighty.
On the other hand, if the traders see many destroyed buildings and few dwarfs hauling trade goods because most of them are in the hospital or the corpse stockpile; the traders might increase their escort or stop coming altogether because they don't think that your profits are worth the risk.

But back to the beacons, some cool game mechanics could be connected to them. For example if you use a smoke signal when the elven caravan comes around, they'll be very grumpy next year.
The signal should have an effect on the attackers, too. It has to be exposed to be visible, so it'll be a popular point of attack for flying invaders (not to mention the strategic value). Or if your fortress puts up the emergency signal, it should boost the attackers' morale, and they could rush in to finish you off.

[XXSockXX]

I agree it might become redundant, depending on how trade works out. It would also obviously be a slow response time, but would still be useful in any case to be able to warn a caravan away if it cannot handle being mobbed on arrival.

IT would also be useful in the situation where you have 5 dwarves walled in and all the migrants and traders are just being converted by the necro outside. (We're F&%$ed, send help).

I like the idea of lighthouses, but light or smoke signals are only good for short distance warnings. So I agree with the "stay away" part, if a caravan or migrants are already near, but I think the "send help" part has to be more complicated to be realistic.

Since it seems that you will be able to send dwarfs off the map in future versions I imagine you will have some administrator positions to function as messengers. The question here is how the time difference is handled to simulate realism, as currently a caravan always needs a year to reach a fort, no matter how distant it is from the civ, while you can travel across a small world in a few days in adventure mode.
So you could have a Scout who travels the area around your map, he detects sieges a week in advance and depending on his tracking skill also ambushes, MBs and thiefs. If he is bad at tracking and ambushing he might also get killed off map ("Urist McScout has not reported back in a month.")
An Ambassador would be basically what the Outpost Liason is now, travel between your fort and the mountainhome, or when you are the capital between you and the next biggest cities. He would make trade agreements, spread news ("A goblin army has pillaged X and is now moving south.") and be able to rally an army from the homelands. Rallying an army would be a big deal and take a lot of time, so you could not call upon them for a small siege and hope to be rescued in time.
Then you'd have your own Outpost Liason, who would travel between the fort and the hill dwarf and deep sites that you founded near your fort or that are directly subordinate to you. With him you could bully your hill dwarfs around give your hill dwarfs production orders ("We need more wood!") or ask for military help, which could come fast but would be rather small in size.

Sorry, didn't intend to hijack your thread, I was just in the mood to elaborate on my thoughts about messengers...