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[crazysheep]

Question's in the title, but first, some background:

Brasslens, my current fort (the same one with plenty of vampires and weapon traps) has a little problem (besides the occasional goblin siege and vampire feast orgy of blood and death). Ever since the first goblin siege turned up on its doorstep, I made a 3-wide entry for all caravans, and littered the entry with weapon and cage traps. Then came the first caravan traffic jam - the humans were trying to leave and the dwarves came in. So I did what I thought was best - deconstructed the trade depot and built a new one in a more accessible location. That solved the caravan traffic jam by redirecting traffic, but now I have a lone merchant wagon stuck in the spot of the old trade depot, and on top of that, I'm not getting any more migrants or dwarven caravans. Now I know most people dislike migrants and caravans, but I need the migrants to top up my militia pool and to feed the vampires. Any help is much appreciated to prevent the vamps from going hungry.

If it helps, the other thing that happened during this period was the mayor being locked in jail for being a vamp.


PS: sorry for the question spam, the wiki didn't have anything on this :/

[slink]

For future reference, there is no problem with two caravans being in the depot at the same time.  The game will ask you which one you want to trade with.

Are you sure that stuck wagon can get out, and that nothing is blocking the way?  Maybe the new depot?

[crazysheep]

Well it wasn't a problem of two caravans being in the same depot. The human caravan was leaving, and then the dwarven caravan entered the 3-wide entry corridor (I shoulda made it clear it was a 3-wide corridor). Both caravans brought wagons, which led to aforementioned traffic jam, blocking all wagon movement in the entry corridor.

Also yes, the stuck wagon should be able to get out, but I'll check it when I get back home. The new trade depot isn't in the way of its path.

[Alkhemia]

same thing happen to me so I covered him with magma so he die i got migrants after that

[crazysheep]

same thing happen to me so I covered him with magma so he die i got migrants after that

I know magma is meant to be the dwarven solution to everything but I'm trying not to take that path because the magma depth in Brasslens is >150 z-levels down, and the associated power requirements for a magma pump stack that deep is gonna be COLOSSAL.

[Alkhemia]

it a bug and I use DF hack no need to dig

[i2amroy]

For future reference don't ever deconstruct your Trade Depot while you have merchants on the map. It really screws up their pathfinding algorithms (doubly so if they have wagons) and can cause bugs like this to appear.

And wagons can path over each other just fine, it just takes quite a while for them to complete the procedure.

[crazysheep]

For future reference don't ever deconstruct your Trade Depot while you have merchants on the map. It really screws up their pathfinding algorithms (doubly so if they have wagons) and can cause bugs like this to appear.

And wagons can path over each other just fine, it just takes quite a while for them to complete the procedure.

Holy balls. I'll keep that in mind then, so that I don't mess up trade this badly again.
Also, I didn't know that wagons could path over each other D:

[Saiko Kila]

Holy balls. I'll keep that in mind then, so that I don't mess up trade this badly again.
Also, I didn't know that wagons could path over each other D:

When they are piling on top of your depot they do just that. And even when moving in open area they often overlap one another, trying only to not cover the central part. I don't know if it helps, but I'd try to widen the corridor to 4 tiles, so the central tiles of two wagons fit in the corridor without the outer tiles to go into the walls.

[crazysheep]

Will take on that advice and see how it goes.

@Alkhemia: dumping magma on the merchant caused a bushfire only :/

[Niyazov]

A cave-in, or just ordering your military to massacre the guy, usually works.

[Starver]

Also, I didn't know that wagons could path over each other D:

I remember a 40d fort where I had a wagon entrance guarded with a 1xN raising-bridge wall/gateway, and a few other "death maze" entrances.  In response to a hostile siege I'd closed the gateway, whereupon the fast siegers quickly hit the wall and re-routed to one of the other entrances (the fast non-wagon traders re-routing to yet another, but it wasn't deadly to them, and never being close enough to cause conflict between the two groups).  Of course, when the slow wagons hit the wall-gate, I'd not yet ordered the level pulled to re-open it, so they all jammed up on the exact same spot, awaiting me doing something about the mess.

When I opened the gate, the wagons started once more to thread into the internals of my fort (a windy wagon-capable corridor[2]) in a conga-line where they were overlapping by two of their three tiles with the nearest (visible) wagons front and back.  It ended up looking a bit like:

Spoiler: image (whoops, bigger than I thought!) (click to show/hide)

Not that I'm sure that would still be the case, as I haven't forced the issue recently.

[1] Well, it's technically a "string of horses", or related creatures, but they acted the same...

[2] I later had a straighter set of entrances (from a couple of different map-edges) with a different defence mechanism.

[crazysheep]

Ok so there's nothing in the way of the merchant leaving the map, checked wagon accessibility and ensured there wasn't anything blocking him from leaving (statues, other buildings).

A cave-in, or just ordering your military to massacre the guy, usually works.

Won't the military bit cause a loyalty cascade? I like the cave-in idea though, think I have a bridge above the trade depot that I could collapse over his head

[i2amroy]

If you wait long enough the merchants might go insane and then you can kill them/they will starve to death. Other then that I'd go with the collapsing method, but make sure that you have solid ground beneath your depot by filling in any empty space on the level below with walls or that collapse can get a lot more !!FUN!! when it plunges through the middle of your fortress.

[crazysheep]

Sitrep: I sent a couple of marksdwarves to take care of the lone merchant. No loyalty cascade occurred, the horses belonging to the dead merchant went berserk and died to marksdwarves, and I got some migrants in the next season. Now to see if the dwarven caravan will come.

Thanks for everyone's help