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[PatrikLundell]

I have a 100% loss rate in my attempts (about a dozen, although only one "real" attempt I haven't save scummed from after a few months). My squad was sent out some 5 years ago to a an enemy gobbo site 1 day's walk away and has never arrived (there's nothing in legends viewer). I've also sent a squad to get an artifact 1 days away at a necro tower with one necro in it, and it hasn't arrived either (last entry for that site was 8 days before the end of world gen), although that squad had only been on the road for 5 months or so, and I haven't even reloaded since they were sent out. And no, they're not stuck in trees or anything like that: I made sure all of them are gone from the Units view and saw the last one of each squad leave the embark (it took the slowpoke over a month to do so for the raid).

Are there any known "don't do this" or "make sure to do that" to ensure it works apart from "chasing held artifacts results in an immediate failure and return of the squad" (which still is better than what I get...)?

In my save scummed attempts I've tried various parameters (my "real" one uses default, i.e. everything enabled), as well as conquest, and I also tried to raid a necro tower (with no undead left, as they have all been sent to my fortress).

[Adequate Swimmer]

When you set up a mission, "d" determines combat intensity, eg. difficulty. If your dwarves are inexperienced or the site you are attacking has 791 trolls, stick to laying low and sneaking around until you have a decent squad.
Don't bother openly attacking a strong position with dancers and fishermen armed with wooden shields. Also the combat report will reveal the presence of demons and other hard targets. More often than not a successful ruler is also a competent soldier that's going to make your life difficult.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Artifact hunting can take a long, long time.
If they don't find the artifact where they expected it to be, they'll travel the world searching for it (and drinking in taverns, a lot).
In current version, if someone is holding the artifact, they won't find it.

[thefinn]

Artifact hunting can take a long, long time.
If they don't find the artifact where they expected it to be, they'll travel the world searching for it (and drinking in taverns, a lot).
In current version, if someone is holding the artifact, they won't find it.

lol this explains a lot. I sent out my best group in a previous game, the artifact was APPARENTLY in the very next tile to my fort. They never returned with their adamantine weapons.

I was pretty miffed.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Artifact hunting can take a long, long time.
If they don't find the artifact where they expected it to be, they'll travel the world searching for it (and drinking in taverns, a lot).
In current version, if someone is holding the artifact, they won't find it.

lol this explains a lot. I sent out my best group in a previous game, the artifact was APPARENTLY in the very next tile to my fort. They never returned with their adamantine weapons.

I was pretty miffed.

How long have they been out?
Tavern hopping can take years. They will give up and come home eventually.

[PatrikLundell]

Unfortunately, none of the answers actually relate to the question of how to get the buggers to reach the target in the first place, or how to determine that they won't reach it so you can avoid losing them to the void.

Legends Viewer claims my target has 3 goblins, 1 human, and 1 goblin outcast, with no animals, so I expect any possible fight if eventually getting there to end with at least someone getting away to report failure back (and the realistic result to be a victory for my 10 strong squad). I'm not completely surprised my artifact recovery squad hasn't returned, but I had expected them to go to the location where it was rumored to be and look for it before bar hopping (and I think they should return with it, as I think the item actually is there).

I really need raiding to work, as I need to conquer a site to have somewhere to send my nervous breakdown cases, as dead civs apparently (and not unsurprisingly) won't generate hillocks.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Unfortunately, none of the answers actually relate to the question of how to get the buggers to reach the target in the first place, or how to determine that they won't reach it so you can avoid losing them to the void.

Legends Viewer claims my target has 3 goblins, 1 human, and 1 goblin outcast, with no animals, so I expect any possible fight if eventually getting there to end with at least someone getting away to report failure back (and the realistic result to be a victory for my 10 strong squad). I'm not completely surprised my artifact recovery squad hasn't returned, but I had expected them to go to the location where it was rumored to be and look for it before bar hopping (and I think they should return with it, as I think the item actually is there).

I really need raiding to work, as I need to conquer a site to have somewhere to send my nervous breakdown cases, as dead civs apparently (and not unsurprisingly) won't generate hillocks.

Besides artifact hunting, raiding is Just Working for most people now. That's probably why there aren't too many answers right now. You're better off looking at what's going on specifically in those world 's where it's still not working and trying to replicate it.

Exile is an option even in dead civs (although 'child not present' bug effects both sending away to hillocks and exile).

[Robsoie]

Are you certain your dwarves have not been killed at location ?
I mean if all your dwarves have been killed (or some maybe captured), they can't come back to give you report about what happened, so you'll never be able to know what happened ?

Maybe make a copy of your save (so you don't temporarly retire/reclaim with all the bugs it has) and retire to check the legends (not legend viewer in case that program miss the entries about them, the actual legend within df)  looking at the historical figure list and check the name of the dwarves that were in those lost squad to see if something actually happened to them.

[Bumber]

Pretty sure you can recall raiders by removing them from their squad, adding a present fort member to the squad and ordering a new mission, then canceling before they get to the edge of the map. Something like that.

[PatrikLundell]

@Shonai_Dweller: The common factor in the worlds I know of where raiding doesn't work is that they're my PSV worlds, but I have no clue as to what may be causing the problem. However, it's sort of a consolation that it's not a problem for the community in general.

@Robsoie: Yes, I've checked with Legends Viewer several times (and obviously exported fresh sets). There is no indication they've ever reached the destination.

@Bumber: I may want to try that. I actually want one of the mercs back, as it's the spouse of the only goblin I've managed to recruit (with the criterion that there's a chance the spouse can be recruited).

[Quicunque]

I had a raiding party that seemed to be always traveling toward, but never reaching its destination for many months. It turned out that ONE member of the squad was still in the hospital, in traction, going nowhere. As soon as I removed the invalid from the squad, it successfully conquered the site with no losses.

If you haven't already, check to see if ALL the squad members have left. If any are hanging around (present on the "u" screen), remove them from the squad.

[PatrikLundell]

As I've said above, I have already checked for any raid members still on the map, and I saw the last one leaving, after checking it actually was the last one. And yes, I had one save scummed attempt where I tried to send off someone who was in hospital, and scummed after the bugger didn't recover in a timely manner.

Anyway, I've issued a bug report http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=10891.

My current best guess is that it's somehow a dead civ issue, so I'm going to see if I can reproduce the problem with an almost* vanilla dead civ.

*Almost = Push the civ over the brink, as it takes an eternity for the semi broken vanilla process to realize a civ is dead.

Edit: I strongly suspect a dead civ is the cause, possibly because army movement might be part of civ level processing, which probably is skipped when the civ is dead. I've managed to generate a dead (vanilla!) civ embarked, and had my raids fail to return or report for a raid on a dark pit half a day's walk away. I decided the raiding party was AWOL when the first migrant wave arrived.

[alexsa2015sa]

Hello everyone, I'd like to chime in and say that in my experience from 44.08-10 extinct civs did indeed seem to prevent any raiding altogether. It was really disappointing.

I wanted to played with modded elves (to get a 'fortress' full of immortal badass warriors conquering the world with wooden sticks and stolen copper, iron, and steel), I consistently couldn't get an embark from dead civilization to send raids - of seven different dead-civs I generated at the time no squads (6 of starting 7, in all possibly combinations) sent to 1 (one) local tile away (that is, literally a stone throw away) dark pits have returned in reasonable timeframe of 1 year. I tried to use vanilla raws to ensure it's not modding-related problem; no cookie, same result for all four worlds I tested.

When I tried regenerating worlds with same seeds (not perfect method, I know), it went that way: simply aborting generation while civilization is still alive allowed sending raids no problem and they're instantly back to my 1x1 embark started near goblins (or get caught and report losses correctly), but once they're extinct past year 17 or whatever, I couldn't get anyone returning anymore, ever, no exception, 100%, stuck on travelling. And yes, I read legends for those worlds and the lost dwarves, elves, whatever - they are 'in travel limbo' and don't even become refugees after outright abandoning fortress, nor do they arrive to destination past 5 years. I wanted to submit a bug report for this exact issue, but I kind of got distracted, forgot about it and cleared all saves after running out of space. I'll probably reroll several new dead civs for 44.12 to add to the bug report when I'll have time.

(Also, I recall having severe issues with pushing civs into the extinction which annoyed me to no end so I preferred to keep rerolling hostile worlds several times per hour until playable civ died on their own, but that's another issue)

[alexsa2015sa]

Edit: for some reason there was a zero-content self-quote here, I removed it. Probably misclick.

[PatrikLundell]

@alexsa2015sa: It's good, from a technical perspective, to get a confirmation of the cause of the problem, and frustrating in practice, of course, as I don't see any way around it. It would probably require some kind of patching of DF to fix/work around the problem, and that's probably not going to be researched and implemented.

I've made a couple of scripts to get dead civs to play with http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=165084.msg7526484#msg7526484. Slabciv is started before world gen and has a callback every frame to determine if any playable civ ought to be dead (100 years of no pop change and no hist figs), and if that's the case, the entity population for that civ is set to 0 (Toady is aware that it doesn't work properly currently). The script occasionally sets civs to 0 pop only for them to somehow get a hist fig later, so it's not bug free. permit_dead adds dead playable civs to the list of civs you can select on embark to allow you to play a dead civ even when all playable civs aren't dead.