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[madpathmoth]

I am still pretty new to this, but this is the second fort in a row where dwarven merchants keep screwing themselves over in ways that endanger me or make it so they will be upset and not bring traders next year.  This time is really annoying; it's nearly winter and they won't leave despite having "departed" a month ago; two merchants pulling horses just laid on the ground and refused to move even though nothing is wrong with them; one of them is just laying down in my kitchen for no reason.



The diplomat is one z-level up in my tavern just having a good time.  I'm really kind of annoyed; I don't want to have to go without the best source of trade again for years for no reason.  Is there anything I can do to get them to leave?  DFhack included, I don't care about cheating to fix broken AI.

[Thisfox]

They might be walled in. Is that a wall there where the cart is meant to go out of the enclosure there? It sure looks like one...

Otherwise it could be that a tree grew in the way when they were parked in the trade depot, and now they can't make it to the edge of the map. Future prevention measures could be as simple as a nice, wide paved r{o}ad to-and-from the edge of the map.

[madpathmoth]

They might be walled in. Is that a wall there where the cart is meant to go out of the enclosure there? It sure looks like one...

You mean my retracting wooden bridge on the north side? It's not up, give me some credit.

Otherwise it could be that a tree grew in the way when they were parked in the trade depot, and now they can't make it to the edge of the map. Future prevention measures could be as simple as a nice, wide paved r{o}ad to-and-from the edge of the map.

Here is the tiny distance to the left side of the map, with no trees in the way.


And to prove it, here is the game showing my accessible depot route, nothing is in the way for this extremely small voyage.

[Thisfox]

Did you build that after the caravan arrived? I've had a road be the downfall of one caravan: We built it while they were unloading. I had had it queued for ages, but for some reason that was the moment the builderdorfs finally decided to finalise the thing.

[madpathmoth]

I had it built before the autumn arrived.  I don't understand why there's two merchant with horses doing nothing; one of them is already outside the walls and needs to just NOT lay on the ground doing nothing! The other in my kitchen has me more concerned; should he, his axedwarf companion, or his horse go berserk I will lose a lot more than future trading opportunities.

This is so frustrating.  I'm afraid to even use DFhack to teleport them, because it would forcibly separate the merchants from their horses, and I'd rather avoid provoking yet more bugs.  Can I just delete, not kill, them?  I'm so sick of bugs on top of bullshit like stress making nothing in this game work right until your fortress dies.

[anewaname]

Maybe deconstruct the depot?

It is normal that the merchants will take a long time to leave if they have to load many items, but merchants getting stuck is also normal.

[madpathmoth]

I only sold them three items, so I doubt they'd struggling to load the wagon.  I'll deconstruct the depot, though.  I'm a bit embarrassed I didn't think to try that on my own.

UPDATE:  Removing the depot worked.  However, there's now a bunch of stuff from the merchants on the ground all around where the depot was.  I'd be happy about this, but in my previous fortress, anything the merchants dropped, my dwarves would refuse to haul EVER even after I unforbid everything...  This would now mean I have a huge space where the depot was that I'll never be able to use for anything, because it'll be full of trash my dwarves won't pick up.  Thankfully, it doesn't seem to be going that way this time.  Well, I hope the mountainhome doesn't think I'm some kind of shifty for this.

Also one of the axedwarf bodyguards sunk into a depression standing in my depot, so they didn't leave right away.  Coulda been worse, I guess...

[PatrikLundell]

The bad news is: The mountainhome thinks you're shifty, because all losses while the caravan is supposedly under your protection are blamed on you.
The good news are that this results in smaller caravans down to some minimum size only if repeated (with the mountainhome: other civs shrink their caravans too, but may also eventually go to war), and they won't stop sending caravans your way.