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[Martin]

I've never seen two caravans collide and cause a wagon of one to deconstruct.   

Happens to me in this version quite a lot. I had a long 3-wide approach to the trade depot, smack dab in the middle of a 4x4 embark. The human wagons would take a whole season to load up all of the gobbo socks I sold them and would leave right as the dwarven caravan would arrive. With the 3 wide approach, they can't go around each other and when the two head-approaching wagons collide, they just stop and get stuck, and all of the other wagons just park behind them. They stay like that for maybe a month until one of them deconstructs (usually the human one, just to piss me off) dumping all of those socks all over the place. The wagons start moving again until they collide again, and this repeats.


The key is to either trade fewer or more items to cause them to depart much sooner or later, or use two trade depots and route them appropriately, or shorten the approach so it's less likely they'll collide, or provide a more than 3-wide approach so they can go around each other. I don't like the wider approaches - I like bottling up the invaders - so I'm going back to the design above. I developed that solution back in the .33 days to solve some problem or another. 

[Martin]

My design is basically foolproof (and therefore slightly unfun) because it exploits the fact that traders always path to the depot while invaders always path to your dining room. The depot is always in a dead-end - viewed either from the inside or the outside - it's a basic airlock. The only time you'll ever get invaders in there is if they are chasing some traders, and you can always station a squad of ranged units there to help the traders fight them off. Once the traders get inside, you seal them off so any later ambushers can't get to them.


It's a very, very effective system at protecting the fortress at the expense of somewhat higher trader casualties because a long caravan can't have the earlier wagons reach the safety of the traps - they live or die as a group. If you can get it very close to the map edge, you can even minimize the amount of outside-the-perimeter cleanup you'll need to perform. Add in a corner and a ramp, and you can further minimize their exposure to ranged ambushers. An ideal setup will allow them to get one z-level up and out of visual range of the edge of the map in about 10-12 tiles. I then try and maximize tree growth around the opening by harvesting plants there, providing a bit of additional protection from ranged ambushers.


Most of my annoyance at the caravans getting wiped out was just the sheer work involved in cleaning up after it. That should be MUCH better now, so perhaps I'll try less hard to protect them.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Put archery towers outside along the routes that the traders use, and schedule marksdwarves to be there for the months when the caravans arrive and leave.

[slaytanic]

Kind of a strange occurrence....
when I started my last fortress my dwarves were mucking around and hadn't built the bridge to allow access to the trade depot. Well the trader went mad and ended up dead. Immediately afterwards my dwarves ran over to finish the bridge and started loading all of the traders goods into my stockpiles. It was kinda handy because winter was upon me !!!

[FearfulJesuit]

Does anybody know what happens when a wagon is hit with a minecart at high velocity?

[i2amroy]

Does anybody know what happens when a wagon is hit with a minecart at high velocity?

My guess is that the wagon takes damage and if it takes more then just a little bit deconstructs in death. Wagons are extremely fragile creatures and are fairly easy to kill, causing deconstruction when they die. (That's why I used to edit my wagons to be a little more realistic, so that they could take a bit more damage before collapsing.)

[Putnam]

I've always just put my trade depot outside my trap hallway...

[Sabreur]

I've always just put my trade depot outside my trap hallway...

I do something similar - a main trap/magma flood hallway entrance, and a separate 'airlock' entrance consisting of two bridges with space for a trade depot in-between.  If I keep the inner bridge shut, it allows the traders to path to the depot without exposing the fortress.  Very handy when a siege arrives at a bad time and I need to give the caravan someplace safe to run to.  Once the caravan is safely inside, I can shut the outer bridge and open the inner bridge to trade in safety, even if the exterior is currently covered in goblins and/or magma.

I haven't had time to play with minecarts yet, but from what I'm reading minecarts can path over bridges just fine.  So I guess you could just seal your minecart entrance off with a bridge whenever a siege arrives.  I like the 'ballistic ramp' idea better, though.

[GoldenShadow]

Just build your Trade depot as close as possible to the edge of the map and wall it in so only 3 tiles are exposed to the map edge. You have to build drawbridges and raise them to form the walls at the edge of the map since you are prevented from building other types of constructions. You can then roof it over easily and dig tunnels to connect it to your fort.

[Cyroth]

Just build your Trade depot as close as possible to the edge of the map and wall it in so only 3 tiles are exposed to the map edge. You have to build drawbridges and raise them to form the walls at the edge of the map since you are prevented from building other types of constructions. You can then roof it over easily and dig tunnels to connect it to your fort.

Where is the Fun in that?


I usually have a 2 z high, 5 tile wide and 15 tile long entrance hallway with traps on the sides. the Hallway ends in a 9x9 sized room with the depot in the center. On the opposite side of the room is a 1z high entrance that leads to a few lines of traps and into my barracks, and behind them is the entrance to my fort. Its always open and I usually have no way to completely seal my fortress.
A small side room to the 9x9 hall contains the "sellable crap" stockpile.

Oh and wonder why the hallway and depot hall are 2z high? The upper level is having fortifications with at least 10 marksdorfs behind them all year long.

Minecart tracks from the outside are always at least 2z above ground on some sort of above ground street like structure. The whole track is restricted so that my dorfs will not wander up there. The point where the outside tracks enter my fort are 2z high hallways as well, with the upper level having fortifications and having 2 or 3 marksdorfs behind them to keep birds out.


Only time when I am not building similar to this is when I am embarking on evil areas with lots of reviving or husks/thralls. Thats the only time when I consider sealing to be okay.

[ThatAussieGuy]

Control the minecart entrance with a pressure plate-rigged bridge.  It opens when a loaded cart approaches just long enough for it to pass, then closes.  Then you can use whatever you like to defend your fort as you did previously due to closed bridges being indestructable

[terko]

Using 2 entrances.

One entrance is 1 tile wide for all those going by foot and is a winding way with a lot of cage traps, sealable with a bridge. The other on is a 5 tiles wide hallway to the trade depot, one bridge for sealing at the outer part, another bridge in between to atom smash eventual existing ambushers that sneaked behind the caravan and another 2 bridges towards the fortress itself.

I keep the outer two ones open all the time so that caravans can always access the trade depot. As soon as a caravan is in I close the outer bridges, open the inner ones and start trading. After everything has been moved to and from the fort I seal the inner bridges again and open the outer ones.

Works pretty fine. Boring, yes, but hey, if you need entertainment -> go visit the circus.

[SAFry]

One really quick way of getting some traps out early on, a combination of methods already suggested, I now build a mini labyrinth of traps just outside the entrance. The smallest version is just 3 traps either side of the entrance, then add 6 more to make a L shape caravan path. So far that's trapped all but one of nuisance mobs and wild animals getting past the front gate. If you can be bothered you can continue the pattern on ad infinitum, soon I had loads of animals for my arena.

[GetAssista]

I don't have problems with wagons for one simple reason - I don't use traps, them'r for pussies =)

In case I did, I would just put depot in an airlock system separated from main entrance

[Callista]

I've had two separate entrances for ages--one an "airlock" type for caravans and migrants, one a fake entrance to tempt sieges. Depending on what I want to do with the fort, the fake entrance (which has a real passage to the fort, but one that can be easily closed off at will) may be trapped, may contain the military, or may be a water or magma trap. In one fort I used a pit and a forgotten beast made of stone until a lucky shot lopped its head off; after that I used war giant jaguars. I like to try different things.

And I don't think traps are "for pussies". Designing trap setups takes some thought. Caged squad leaders grouping their squads around them, weapon traps getting stuck, reloadable traps; timing pressure plates and bridges; handling the fluids in a drowning or magma trap--all of that you've got to use your brain to do. Different enemies behave differently too, especially flyers and building destroyers. Sure, once you get the setup right, it's child's play to sit there and watch it go off, but designing it isn't exactly something that's so simple that you'll do it right your first (or even tenth) try. Even a field of cage traps requires you to deal with the animal haulers going out there mid-siege to drag the filled cages in, or if you stop them from doing that, then dealing with the possibility that your ten-deep trap field will have ten goblins trapped in a line, making a path for the fifty goblins after them to get in. You can atom-smash things, but not very large ones. Bridges have delays on them, and different enemies move at different speeds, so you have to deal with that too. The only way I'd be calling somebody out for using too many traps is if they're using the exact same boringly simple setup every time.