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[Randomizer]

My current fort is on an evil biome with plenty of hostile undead.  I would like to accommodate traders with wagons, but I have no idea how to protect them. They get attacked as soon as they enter the map. The ideal solution would be to force the wagons to spawn at a location of my choice close to my fort's entrance. My attempts to do this have failed. Is there a workable solution?

[NordicNooob]

They will spawn in whatever path can reach your fort. Raised bridges can reach the edge of the map, so with those you can make a tunnel (with a bridge roof, of course) that reaches to the edge of the map and continues on to your depot.

[Sarmatian123]

In evil biomes people usually put Trade Depot in caves. Evil biomes are only on surface?

[Mechanoid]

They get attacked as soon as they enter the map.

There are probably too many undead on the surface of your map, as caravan guards should be able to punch their way through smaller common undead wildlife. You should build weapon traps in a trap hallway or other defense that will mulch the undead for you as they attempt to reach the majority of your citizens. Automating the process is advised since military dwarves should be reserved for fighting trap-avoiding monsters or overwhelmingly large sieges.

The ideal solution would be to force the wagons to spawn at a location of my choice close to my fort's entrance. My attempts to do this have failed. Is there a workable solution?

As stated on the wiki page for the Trade Depot, any location where the depot accessibility indicator shows wagon access, the game can spawn a wagon. What the wiki does not say is that any location which is "not wagon accessible" but also not completely blocked, is still capable of spawning pack animal traders. This results in a scenario where the wagon can spawn only at the available spot but the pack animals spawn at their intended location; walking the entire map surface with slow animals. If the task is to absolutely block all trader spawning anywhere you do not want them to be, there are very few options available:

The most reliable method and the one you should attempt in blocking the map edge, is with placement of the thinnest possible raising bridges on the map edge, raising towards the map edge. Once raised, bridges form a wall that completely blocks pathing, sight and spawning. Just keep in mind that by blocking the map edge, you're now forcing all ground-based spawns to appear on the remaining unblocked tiles; using your military may be required to clear any undead prior to the caravan arriving.

If the goal though is only to block the wagons from spawning, you can very quickly dig a simple pattern of trenches to block them from spawning where you don't want them:

Code: [Select]

..........
V..V..V..V
 .. .. ..
---------- UNDIGGABLE MAP EDGEPeriod is ground, V is down ramp, space is rampless ground 1z-level below.
Keep in mind that the reason this works in blocking wagons is the rampless 1z-level cliff the trench creates. You can absolutely dig an entire map-spanning continuous trench (remember, that has no ramps in it on the map edge side) that forces all spawns to walk around to the nearest bridge; but it could take a great deal of time depending on the number of miners you have. (and more dwarves on the surface means more risk for attack by undead... or more dwarves lost to an "fog of evil" event) By putting spaces in the design you allow full pathing for non-wagon units and make the job much faster. You can even revisit the trench later and extend it to a full border trench if things get too dangerous.

In evil biomes people usually put Trade Depot in caves. Evil biomes are only on surface?

Evil biomes extend all the way down into the caverns, which includes any kind of undead-raising biome effect. Trade caravans only spawn on the surface, but can also be allowed to exit the map through the caverns; surface entries are required, surface exits are not.

[anewaname]

Underground depot. Tunnels to corners of map, with gates. Guide them to the safest tunnel using the gates.

[Uthimienure]

Underground depot. Tunnels to corners of map, with gates. Guide them to the safest tunnel using the gates.

If you have all your gates closed, will caravans bypass you?

[Starver]

Unless something's changed, that I haven't spotted yet, if instantaneously inaccessible to wagons (all possible entry positions, the moment the caravan checks this availability) then the wagons by-pass you though anything else that conceivably can reach you will do so.

If I have time (in a "really locked-down" mostly-turtled fort) I will ensure there is always a wagon-path (at least by default), but make it tortuously labyrinthine with plenty of murder-holes of either manned or other varieties. It 'attracts' at least the wagons (maybe everything else) but when I see them appear and it is safe to do so I'll pull a few appropriate levers and various airlocks close behind them and shortcuts open up before them (perhaps with closing the long-route beyond that cut-across as standard, especially if I'm 'entertaining' non-traders in the bowels of that time-wasting set of loops) so they get quickly enough to my depot but nothing else external can.

For example:  A loop-tunnel that spirals in through all four corners and a turn or two more for good measure, linked to various corner- and edge-based entryways to service all incomers, drawbridged-gated tween-corridors for quicker ingress, sallyports aplenty at various localities for troop deployment and leading friendlies to (relative, measured) safety and at least one trap-corridor to blunt an invasion, usually configured to lead them through both when they're striking towards my core and also (if they lose morale and decide to leave) by some route-switching magic makes them travel through it again/still when trying to get back to the map-edge.

A lot of effort to do, but then that's one of the challenges!

[Randomizer]

Wont building destroyers destroy your bridges and flood gates?

[Libash_Thunderhead]

How about trapping one or more undead without killing them? Because new groups usually don't spawn before the previous one leave the map.
I recall I once had a group of wild boars stuck on top of trees for years, they gave birth to piglets and the piglets became boars.
So if undead animals follow the same rule, maybe we can exploit that?

[Uthimienure]

Wont building destroyers destroy your bridges and flood gates?

They can't destroy bridges, which is why I use them liberally.

The full rundown is here: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Building_destroyer

[PatrikLundell]

Unless things have changed, it's not true that wagons spawn only where they can reach the trade depot. I had a case where I built a single tile wide floor or bridge to cross a stream and build the fortress on the other side. Either the wagons spawned on the embark wagon side, or bypassed my fortress (I don't remember which).

Narrow paths along the map edge guided by a trench is risky. When I tried that the trade liaison spawn blocked by a trench in front and a tree on either side, forcing me to send a wood cutter to free the bugger. Note that there was room for wagons at the intended entry location (and they spawned "correctly"), so it wasn't a matter of there not being a pathable location.

You can exploit the rule for how many groups you can have on the embark concurrently to block further groups from entering (weres, (semi)megabests, titans, and FBs are not covered by that rule) by having some critters contained but not restrained. This works everywhere.

[Starver]

Unless things have changed, it's not true that wagons spawn only where they can reach the trade depot. I had a case where I built a single tile wide floor or bridge to cross a stream and build the fortress on the other side. Either the wagons spawned on the embark wagon side, or bypassed my fortress (I don't remember which).

Probably this, if my experience is still valid and I don't misunderstajd your scenario too horribly.

(Though do streams of that kind block travel? Aren't they a "floor" covering their one tile of width, or is that a long-changed thing once you got (multi-tile wide) rivers with ramps (albeit 7/7ths flooded, so not passable) down one side and up the other... I must admit that I avoid all surface watercourses habitually, for a number of years now...)

And a prior post pointed out that non-wagon arrivals just ignored wagon-friendly entrypoints and chose their own without regard of routing once the problem of arriving there is soluble.  One reason I tend to dot a 'bunker entrance' at somewhere near each cardinal and intercardinal points of the map.  Typically a lever-controlled drawbridge-door into a minimal building (or occasionally just sunk into the ground, especially on sloping terrain) leading down into to a fast-route/slow-route choice of tunnel towards the core, or from it if I wish to sally forth as well as invite stranded guests (or 'guests') inwards.

[Fleeting Frames]

Yeah, the caravans can want to access your fort from particular side of river, if your embark has one. Otherwise it seems the rule holds, though has been suspected to cause more "stuck merchants" bug. Which, if so, is fair tradeoff for almost always getting one that spawns to depot.

[PatrikLundell]

Streams can not be crossed without a bridge/floor or by swimming. I think Starver is thinking of a brook. DF only generates brooks for the smallest water course size, although it's technically capable of having 48 tile wide "brooks". However, streams can be of the minimum size as well. In my case it was a stream (or I wouldn't have had to build a bridge to cross it).

[anewaname]

Underground depot. Tunnels to corners of map, with gates. Guide them to the safest tunnel using the gates.

If you have all your gates closed, will caravans bypass you?

Yes, but you keep all of the tunnel gates open until the caravan arrives, then you guide the caravan by closing all gates except for those in the desired tunnel. The depot room is also separated from the main fort by another gate, which is the inner door that stays closed until the caravan is safely inside and the tunnels are all locked. Migrants are allowed in the same way.