Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[SixOfSpades]

I'll admit it--not only have I not installed any of the 0.40 revisions, I'm still playing 0.34 or whatever . . . that's right, I don't even know from zombies or minecarts. Which may or may not be relevant.

I hear folks talking of making a long, circuitous, trap-free route into the fort, for the coming & going of human & dwarven merchant caravans, while the goblins take the trap-filled "short cut" that slices them to ribbons. I also hear of particularly item-laden human traders that take so long to pack up, they're still in the depot when the dwarves arrive, and 2 wagons trying to pass through a tunnel that's only 1 wagon wide leads to insurmountable headaches.

And then I look at my fort, with its entryways that are only 2 tiles wide, and reflect on how these problems in fort design & logistics don't apply to me. All 3 races bring 6 or 7 pack animals to my site--they walk down my heavily-trapped corridors without a hitch, and traffic jams are impossible. Sure, wagons would be able to carry more stuff than pack animals, but since the quantity of all of your requested trade goods (which is only a possibility with the dwarven caravan anyway) is capped at 4, is larger carrying capacity even a factor? Do you really need MORE rope reed fiber cloth and capybara leather?

In short, why does anyone give a fart about wagons?

[Spacespinner]

You get a LOT more supplies, probably several times more if the wagons make it. I just have a room containing the Depot with a 3 wide passage outside that's only unlocked when traders arrive. I have a bridge with a lever in the main room to seal it off if I have to as well. Couple minutes work at most for all the goods my many *Large Serrated Green Glass Disc* can buy, since I'm on a volcano with sand so I churn them out non stop.

[Spacespinner]

Also I THINK the variety is expanded more if wagons are able to make it.

[Rince Wind]

If you order stones or bars the weight limit of pack animals is quickly reached.

Also, I order a lot of leather in the first year, so that I will never have to worry about it again. And 1k leather doesn't fit on the animals.
If they come with wagons and see they can't get to you you have no control on what goods reach your fortress.
Also it seems that in the new version the traders pack up way more quickly so it shouldn't come to traffic jams even if you sell them hundreds of XXpig tail fibre sockXX.

[Spacespinner]

Yeah, traders instantly pack up regardless of number of goods now which makes it a lot faster.

[Button]

It depends how much you need to import. If you have everything you're likely to need, go ahead and limit your entrance to pack animals. But if you're missing something important on your embark - say, trees, or iron, or flux - the wagons will help a lot.

[Dirst]

So for those of who keep your depot behind a door, how do you know when to open it?  I have no clue the caravan is arriving until I get the "bypassed your inaccessible depot" message.

[KtosoX]

Yeah, wagons bring a lot more stuff. May I suggest building a simple air-lock system? Make a room with a depot and 2 gates, one leads outside, the other one leads inside your fort. Invaders don't path in to the Trade depot, and once the wagons are in place you can close them in till the trade is done.

[Symmetry]

So for those of who keep your depot behind a door, how do you know when to open it?  I have no clue the caravan is arriving until I get the "bypassed your inaccessible depot" message.

As KtosoX says, you need an airlock and have the depot accessible normally.  You can also have multiple depots and allow one to be accessible at a time, in case you're concerned about multiple caravans arriving at once.

[SixOfSpades]

Yeah, my fortress design includes multiple depots, each with its own airlock . . . but the fort is 36 years old now, and I've yet to see any real reason to turn that design detail into a reality.

For me, a typical caravan sells me 250+ wood (I try to have used up ALL of my native logs / the previous caravan's load, as I'm making a ton of clear glass & I don't have magma), a few barrels of booze, a couple of bags of flour / sugar, about 2 dozen units of fish from the humans, the caravan's cheapest bin of cloth & ditto leather, and a handful of muck roots & bloated tubers (as these won't grow on my site & I like the variety). I'm about to start ordering tin, but even at maximum demand that's 4 bars of tin & 4 lumps of cassiterite--hardly a noticeable spike in the weight that the animals have to carry.

If I opened up my outer depots to allow wagon access, that would give me the opportunity to buy "a LOT more supplies" -- like what? As far as I know, the amount of wood (cloth, leather) they bring is determined by your fortress population minus your fort's current stockpile of said material, so switching to a wagon's expanded capacity would do nothing. More booze / fish / foreign plants might be nice, but it's not like I need them. What exactly would wagons bring me MORE of? Ilmenite blocks? Anvils? Large gems? Silver arrows? Thread? Wooden armor? Large iron left gauntlets? Copper ladles? Through random chance, I might be able to buy a fifth unit of tin / cassiterite? Having a greater selection might mean I could FINALLY be able to purchase a decent war animal from the elves, but as they never bring wagons anyway, that's a moot point.

As far as I can tell, my fort's only reasons for opening up wagon access are:
1) By switching from 4 outer gates to 8, I would potentially halve the time that caravans spend outside & exposed to goblins.
2) Expanded load means I'd be able to buy more (maybe a lot more) useless tin / bronze crap and melt it down.
That's it. I'll do it eventually, but it's waaaaay down my priorities list.

[Moonshadow101]

Worth pointing out that 40.X has radically increased the speed at which caravans pack up when they're finished.

[SixOfSpades]

Worth pointing out that 40.X has radically increased the speed at which caravans pack up when they're finished.

True. And if that's only the case for wagons (not pack animals), that gives me a third reason:
3) Merchants sold items that my duke / mayor likes have a better chance of leaving the map before the item is export-restricted again.

[Moogie]

... since the quantity of all of your requested trade goods (which is only a possibility with the dwarven caravan anyway) is capped at 4 ...

Either you're misunderstanding something here, or I am. The slider set in the diplomatic meetings is not "quantity". I believe it's more akin to the urgency you require said goods, such that there is likely to be more of the caravan's weigh limit devoted to bringing you numbers of that particular item. Setting the slider to max iron anvils may only bring you a couple (sans wagons, more if wagons are allowed), because anvils are heavy. But setting the slider to max for something like pig tail fibre cloth will bring you hundreds.

[Quietust]

... since the quantity of all of your requested trade goods (which is only a possibility with the dwarven caravan anyway) is capped at 4 ...

Either you're misunderstanding something here, or I am. The slider set in the diplomatic meetings is not "quantity". I believe it's more akin to the urgency you require said goods, such that there is likely to be more of the caravan's weigh limit devoted to bringing you numbers of that particular item. Setting the slider to max iron anvils may only bring you a couple (sans wagons, more if wagons are allowed), because anvils are heavy. But setting the slider to max for something like pig tail fibre cloth will bring you hundreds.

You are the one misunderstanding.

Each Priority slider setting makes them bring 1 more "unit" of that item - for food, this is 1 Stack (size 5), for alcohol this is 1 Barrel (size 25), and for cloth/leather this is 1 Bin (capacity 10).

Remember, though, that caravans will also bring extra food, cloth/leather, and wood logs if they perceive that you are in need of them (i.e. if your supplies are sufficiently low), so careful use of Forbidding before their arrival can be used to trick them into bringing more of those particular items without increasing prices. Read more here (advice is for version 0.34.11, but it's likely still true in 0.40.03).

[Dorf and Dumb]

There are a near-infinite number of bad hacks for this.

To begin with, even in .40 you can sometimes have a virtually monster free entry for the caravans.  Take a low corner of the map and completely floor it over, then allow it 3-wide access underground to a centrally located depot.  The caravans will always show up there.  If they come on mules they could be anywhere.  A little less optimally, any steep slope at the edge allows spots where you can have 3 or so tiles which you can separate from the rest of the edge of the map by building floors on the ramps.

In the old version you could also split the wagons and the mules by having ramps leading up to floors with nothing underneath.  No dorf can take the ramp... but wagons will.  Haven't tested if that still works.