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[MMad]

The key fact in the above plan is that if the trade depot can be reached by wagons, the caravan will always spawn at a point that can reach the depot. So if you wall of the rest of the map so there's only one narrow passage from the depot to the edge of the map, that's where the wagons will appear.

Of course, some might consider this to be a bit of an exploit.

[MuonDecay]

It would be a bit of an exploit, yes... but then again it would be cathartic, given that somehow the ambush always manages to get the pounce on my caravans. (they have better intel than the US military, it seems... they at least make mistakes  )


Then again, my melee champions so very rarely get to spill blood, and I am getting curious how they'd fare against an ambush group (my guess is they'd spill a gallon of goblin blood a second), so I think I'll send them to patrol.

I still haven't gone back to my savegame to see if I can fix the wagon jam, though.

[Iapetus]

[quote author=MuonDecay link=topic=27967.msg347618#msg347618 date=1228177395
Then again, my melee champions so very rarely get to spill blood, and I am getting curious how they'd fare against an ambush group (my guess is they'd spill a gallon of goblin blood a second), so I think I'll send them to patrol.
[/quote]

One of my hunters (Master marksman, Hammerdwarf, Shield user, Novice armour user, with 71 animal kills under his belt) got ambushed once by goblins.  They killed his dog almost instantly, but he then wiped out the entire ambush party single-handedly, without taking a single injury.

[Hamster Man]

Aw... poor doggie.

[LegacyCWAL]

You don't even have to wall off that much in most situations.  What I do is find a spot on the edge of the map that's easy to cut off from the rest of the map.  Not even cut off entirely, just cut off from wagon access.  Then build a 3-wide accessway (I prefer an elevated roadway, but a tunnel works as well) that wagons can ONLY access via your gates and that one single easy-to-cut-off spot.  Next, it's a simple matter to cut off each end so that the ONLY way wagons can get from the edge of the map to your trade depot is by entering at the start of your access road and then travelling along it.

You don't even have to wall off either end entirely.  Just a few stragetically-placed statues, walls, or pits around either end is enough to cut off wagon access.

As a crude illustration:

Code: [Select]


[     ]....................................[EDGE OF MAP]
[DEPOT]************************************[EDGE OF MAP]
[     ]....................................[EDGE OF MAP]


. = wagons can't go through
* = wagons CAN go through
The dots in the above picture can be made so that people can go through them, but wagons can't (such as by putting statues 2 tiles apart).  This will guarantee that wagons can enter from one spot and one spot only.

[MuonDecay]

So far, my champion patrols have succeeded this season, and the dwarven caravan managed to arrive unharmed. The patrols found half of the ambush group and the other half was either caged or pincushioned.

The champions made quick work of the goblins indeed, as I expected (the leaders of the two squads are both legendary in all of their combat skills: shield user, armor user, wrestling, and their weapon of choice... so they're basically stumpy little demigods with a similarly badass escort of other champions).

As a pleasant side effect, having 7 speedy champions constantly buzzing around the edges of the map keeps a rather well-cleared 3-wide path in which saplings do not grow and where there is a great deal of ground worn down to bare soil. It's a sort of self-maintaining dirt road for the caravans.