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[saharo]

Is it possible to give a global order like "to everyone who can haul items: stop immediatly what you are doing, and trasport things to the trade depot"
I'm a total newby and it's the second time that merchants go away because I couldn't have my wares on the depot in time.
I read carefully everything about trade on the wiki and searched in this forum, but I couldn't find an answer.

Thanks in advance

[Sofaspud]

Not exactly, but you can make sure you have your preferences and job settings set up correctly to make it more likely that your stuff will get there in time.

First off, it sounds like you've got dwarves busy doing other things, as that's the only reason I can think of why you'd have trouble getting stuff to the depot in time.  Stuff like picking up exposed ore (if you have an ore stockpile) seems to take priority over hauling finished goods.  So you could (for example) forbid all the exposed ore when you notice the merchants arrive on the map, and then reclaim it later.

Another option would be to set up some dedicated haulers, and make sure they aren't busy hauling stone instead of crafts (turn off Stone Hauling for them when the merchants appear).

Also, you might consider widening pathways to your depot, if the problem is dwarves crawling over each other or animals.  That creates TREMENDOUS slowdown, since only one dwarf may walk through a square at any time; every other dwarf has to lay down for the first one to squeeze by.

If you tell us more details, we might be able to offer more suggestions.  I'm just basing these off of common newbie behavior.  How is your fort laid out?  Do you have a finished goods stockpile, and bins for it?  If you're hauling crafts one-by-one, you're probably NEVER going to be able to trade, heh.

[Eagle of Fire]

Dedicated haulers will often haul things to the depot in priority to other things. I usually go directly to the depot and order stuff to be hauled there as soon as the caravan appear on map and half the stuff minimum is usually aready in the depot before the caravan even start to unpack their stuff...

I'd say, having a stockpile nearer the depot sure help.

[Karlito]

Make bins that will go to your finished goods stockpile.  Over the course of the year the dedicated haulers(Mentioned above) will put your crafts into the bins.  Select only the bins for move to trade depot and then you will only have 2-3 move jobs instead of the 60 or so you had.

[Troas]

Under the Options menu you can also globally turn off hauling jobs (don't haul wood/stone/food) to get them to concentrate on hauling to the depot.  I have a finished goods and narrow/large (re: unusable) armor stockpile adjacent to the depot with orders to take from stockpiles near the craft workshops.  

Also don't forget to make enough bins.  For some reason I never saw the article about them and for the first year I was hauling all my crafts individually to the depot until the humans broughts bins of cloth and leather and I realized "hey that's a good idea, I should make some of those".

[saharo]

thanks for the advices, all very useful.

This is the very first fortress I made. I read A LOT of the wiki before starting, so it's not a total crap, but there is so much that I still need to figure out!

I'll let you know how will it be with the next caravan!

p.s. my plan was to sell some stone....can you imagine a merchant load his cloth filled caravan with tons of ore??? How did I planned such a thing!!!  

[saharo]

With the next merchant I had a nice conversation and we made a fair trade.
The bin suggestion has been precious; when I read that in the wiki I didn't realize how that did matter.
Thanks to the 20 immigrants that I had with the third merchant arrival but not with the two I had before, I had some peasant-hauler who did the job in a moment.

Now I have some other question, if I'm not too sleepy I give a look ad the wiki and, eventually, write another thread.

Thanks again

[Forumsdwarf]

Turning stone into crafts is the best way to sell it.  There are much better ways to make money than selling stone crafts, though.  I like to sell lavish meals.  You're going to do your darndest to overproduce food in the early years, anyway, so you might as well turn it into a profit center.