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[Zantan]

I'm making a fort that will only grow from reproduction.  As a consequence of this, there will be a long period in which I won't be able to properly protect my fort from ambushes safely, so I would like to make sure that either merchants can come and go unmolested, or that they do not come at all until I'm ready.  This is mostly to avoid clutter and depleting civ populations.  Any suggestions?

[Mr. Palau]

I'm making a fort that will only grow from reproduction.  As a consequence of this, there will be a long period in which I won't be able to properly protect my fort from ambushes safely, so I would like to make sure that either merchants can come and go unmolested, or that they do not come at all until I'm ready.  This is mostly to avoid clutter and depleting civ populations.  Any suggestions?

Use a system of guard dogs and draw bridges to direct abmushes to a trap filled room, while directing merchents to a safe path to the fortress.

[Babylon]

Don't build a trade depot.

[NW_Kohaku]

Diplomats will come, anyway.  They won't leave until they have a chance to complain to the mayor or whatever about how they've been waiting, and haven't been able to see them for the past 5 years, and they'll just keep waiting until they go insane if they have to. 

There is, unfortunately, no way to stop that that I know of.

[Loud Whispers]

The natural conclusion to merchant defense is; Squads of legendary marksdwarves patrolling your map through a series of tubes.

[Martin]

You can minimize trader deaths quite a lot with a bit of planning by exploiting their behavior. Find a flat space at the edge of the map. You'll need about 7x16. Build a depot as close to the edge as possible and wall it in as much as it will allow with a 1-wide path to the edge. Depots can't be closer than 10 tiles to the edge, walls closer than 5. For the last 5 tiles, build 2 raising drawbridges that extends your walls to the map edge, hook them to a lever and raise them. Since traders will only spawn where they can path to the depot, they'll only spawn in the one edge tile that you allowed. You'll occasionally get an invader spawn there as well, but it shouldn't be too often. It should look like this:


+ wall
D depot
B bridge

Code: [Select]

+++++++
+DDDDD+
+DDDDD+++++BBBBB
+DDDDD
+DDDDD+++++BBBBB
+DDDDD+
+++++++



You can also make the approach 3-wide to allow wagons. Put an extra raising bridge against the depot between it and the map edge and turn the back wall into a bridge, and then you have an airlock, can allow traders in, pull 2 levers, and seal them off to the inside of your fort.



The liaison will be more of a problem as they spawn as invaders do and path to your dining room. Protecting the liaison is much harder as there's no behavior there to exploit, and they trigger traps just like gobbos. Lots of traps there. I play almost exclusively no-immigrant forts, and I find the best solution is a dedicated trader entrance from one edge of the map and then 3 invader entrances from each of the other 3 all leading to a central trade zone. The 3 invader entrances are all trapped very near the center of the map so there's less hauling to do of drops, and the trade depot is there in the center. One invader entrance can be sealed off to be cleaned out and the good easily brought to the depot, and just rotate as needed. With 3 entrances, the liaison has better odds of not getting clobbered on the way in.

[Grax]

How can necros be detected before they appear in the middle of the fortress?
Seems they have [trapavoid] and [lockpicker] tags.

[Syndic]

Sentry towers, manned by orang-utangs.

or dogs, if you want to do it the easy way 

Build some walls to make the tower 1 z-level up, on top of the wall place an animal surrounded by a ring of windows which are again surrounded by a ring of fortifications. The fortifications keep flying building destroyers away from the windows, and the windows catch any arrows that master bowgoblins fire at your animal. Oh, and don't forget a ceiling.

The animal will detect sneaking enemies if they pass by it closely enough, to really detect them all you'll have to either build a lot of towers or place them at chokepoints.

[jellsprout]

You can minimize trader deaths quite a lot with a bit of planning by exploiting their behavior. Find a flat space at the edge of the map. You'll need about 7x16. Build a depot as close to the edge as possible and wall it in as much as it will allow with a 1-wide path to the edge. Depots can't be closer than 10 tiles to the edge, walls closer than 5. For the last 5 tiles, build 2 raising drawbridges that extends your walls to the map edge, hook them to a lever and raise them. Since traders will only spawn where they can path to the depot, they'll only spawn in the one edge tile that you allowed. You'll occasionally get an invader spawn there as well, but it shouldn't be too often. It should look like this:


+ wall
D depot
B bridge

Code: [Select]

+++++++
+DDDDD+
+DDDDD+++++BBBBB
+DDDDD
+DDDDD+++++BBBBB
+DDDDD+
+++++++



You can also make the approach 3-wide to allow wagons. Put an extra raising bridge against the depot between it and the map edge and turn the back wall into a bridge, and then you have an airlock, can allow traders in, pull 2 levers, and seal them off to the inside of your fort.



The liaison will be more of a problem as they spawn as invaders do and path to your dining room. Protecting the liaison is much harder as there's no behavior there to exploit, and they trigger traps just like gobbos. Lots of traps there. I play almost exclusively no-immigrant forts, and I find the best solution is a dedicated trader entrance from one edge of the map and then 3 invader entrances from each of the other 3 all leading to a central trade zone. The 3 invader entrances are all trapped very near the center of the map so there's less hauling to do of drops, and the trade depot is there in the center. One invader entrance can be sealed off to be cleaned out and the good easily brought to the depot, and just rotate as needed. With 3 entrances, the liaison has better odds of not getting clobbered on the way in.

I suggest this, except make the approach three tiles wide. The depot can also be located further away, as long as there is no path to the edge of the map except this one. You can then line up the entrance with traps to take down any sieges or ambushes that spawn inside the pathway. Siegers on flying mounts can then still enter your fortress, so I suggest the path going underground as soon as possible and putting the traps there, to ensure they won't be able to fly over them.
You could also construct a watchtower above this entrance to see any kobolds, but this is not necessary.

[koruth]

Sentry towers, manned by orang-utangs.

or dogs, if you want to do it the easy way 

Build some walls to make the tower 1 z-level up, on top of the wall place an animal surrounded by a ring of windows which are again surrounded by a ring of fortifications. The fortifications keep flying building destroyers away from the windows, and the windows catch any arrows that master bowgoblins fire at your animal. Oh, and don't forget a ceiling.

The animal will detect sneaking enemies if they pass by it closely enough, to really detect them all you'll have to either build a lot of towers or place them at chokepoints.

What do you do when the animals start dying of old age, and it's too ambush-y to safely replace them?  Low-pop forts may take quite a few animal generations to populate military strength.

[Syndic]

What do you do when the animals start dying of old age, and it's too ambush-y to safely replace them?  Low-pop forts may take quite a few animal generations to populate military strength.

Easy: instead of one wall holding the whole thing up, make it a 3x3 Ring, with an up/down staircase in the middle connected to an underground tunnel through which your dwarves can enter the tower and replace the animal. That way your dwarves won't be in any danger unless the invaders somehow make it into said tunnel.

[koruth]

Not a bad solution, except usually (for my forts at least) the first few soil layers are mostly used for the largest raw material storage stockpiles.  Not exactly room for a sprawling tunnel network...

Personally I prefer to go out to the edge of the map and make some downward ramps, carving a 3-wide tunnel back to the fort's heart and making the depot underground.  I then airlock it off, so the depot is never a valid path into the fort, and install a trap-tunnel entrance on the other side of the fort.  I only need one dog to keep that protected, and it's much easier to replace, no massive tunnel network needed.  And the wagons will be relatively safe since they'll be underground through most of their transit, and gobbos aren't going to be close to them.

[Grax]

Build some walls to make the tower 1 z-level up, on top of the wall place an animal surrounded by a ring of windows which are again surrounded by a ring of fortifications. The fortifications keep flying building destroyers away from the windows, and the windows catch any arrows that master bowgoblins fire at your animal. Oh, and don't forget a ceiling.

What do you do when the animals start dying of old age, and it's too ambush-y to safely replace them?  Low-pop forts may take quite a few animal generations to populate military strength.

I think i will build another stairs-tower with stone walls, next to that windowed, but higher and connected with a corridor and closed with hatch.
Assign first tower as a pit so dorfs can throw animals in it through the hatch (when they don't see enemy - they won't be scared and interrupted).

And another question - once detected, will they stay detected always or hides again in some time?

[slink]

You can edit the entity_default.txt file in the raws for the save, and remove the brackets around the seasons in which races arrive.  Then you can put the brackets back when you want the caravans and diplomats to begin arriving again.

Example line, for Dwarves:

   [ACTIVE_SEASON:AUTUMN]

 

[Girlinhat]

Dammit Slink beat me too it!  But he's wrong, I believe.  You cannot mod an entity entry once the game has been generated.

You could copy the dwarven civ entry though, and remove the ACTIVE_SEASON from one of them, and embark as the civilization that has no season.  That way you'd get dwarven caravans with no diplomat, but then again, you wouldn't get any dwarven diplomat ever.