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[Derakon]

Right now, the consequence for stealing from caravans is that they don't bring as much stuff next time. That's pretty tame. And while I'm aware that civilizations are supposed to siege you if you steal from them, that's a long-term consequence. I want something shorter-term. So I propose that the traders regularly poll their possessions, and if they're coming up excessively short, then they all turn hostile. This does a few things:

* Rebalances theft a bit; young fortresses can't afford to piss off the caravan because they don't have militaries yet
* Provides some player-triggerable combat (but you might want to use an expendable dwarf to do the seizing)
* Improve realism (or at least plausibility)

For bonus points, traders should be immune to traps that they've seen when they weren't hostile, like the human sieges are supposed to be according to the wiki. And escort sizes should increase the more you steal.

[Neonivek]

What exactly do you expect the traders to do? They are inside your fort while you have an unknown number of soldiers. I could see rash and hotheaded merchants doing something immediately, however as a whole just allowing you to steal their stuff and leaving is the best course of action.

They already do the most devistating attack in the game which is Trap scouted Ambushes and later seiges... something goblins have yet to do themselves.

Note I am not speaking rhetorically... What do you expect the traders to do?

I guess other then that they could ruin your reputation to all traders, hire assasines/beastmen, or dam up your rivers

[Derakon]

I think the traders should attack you. Sure, it's not particularly rational for a few escorts and civilians to attack a well-established fort, but without their goods, the traders won't get paid (and depending on how marginal their livelihood is, they might starve, which is a death sentence anyway). The escorts are there to protect the caravan from thieves, no matter if the thieves are the people they're supposed to be trading with. And those escorts could easily beat up a young fortress that didn't prepare specifically for pissing the traders off. Even then you'd need a sacrificial broker.

Also, trader-driven sieges aren't implemented currently, and as I noted, that's a long-term consequence. I want something more immediate.

[Erk]

But it's ridiculous. You're a caravan with seven guards, deep underground, surrounded by foreign dwarves. They tell you to hand over what you have, grinning toothlessly through their tangled beards. You look around and notice the walls are crisscrossed with crossbow fortification holes. It's too dark to tell how many bows might be pressed up against those holes, but from the workforce you've seen coming to and from the trade depot, you'd guess it's a hell of a lot more than your seven escorts.

So, are you gonna attack, risking more than your profits? Or are you going to feign kowtowing to the thieves, hand over what you have, and return next season with a full mercenary militia armed with the knowledge of the dwarves' defenses, to take back what they took and more?

Dwarf fortress is not about the short term.

[Derakon]

It should be reasonably easy to tell the quality of a fort from the goods they bring out for trade and the personality of their traders, if nothing else. That should give the traders enough knowledge to make a pretty damned educated guess as to whether or not a fight is worthwhile. Keep in mind the consequences here - everywhere except your fort is operating under an economy system, and a lack of profits means your life pretty well sucks. Among other things, they need to buy food.

Yes, sometimes the traders are going to make mistakes - it turns out that you'd set up a flood just in case the traders turned on you, or your seven starting dwarves all had ranks in kicking ass. And sometimes the traders will be the ones punting posteriors. And sometimes, the traders will decide that, you know, on second thought you can have the booze, we weren't going to use it for anything anyway.

The point is, sometimes when you try to steal, you get caught and have to deal with the consequences. Yes, immediately. Especially since trader-motivated sieges aren't on right now.

[Erk]

Perhaps you've been encountering different merchants from me. The ones I see tend to be hard-pressed not to run screaming, mangled, and half-dead after a single goblin ambush squad gets 'em. Since any dwarf fortress is well prepared against goblin sieges, or at least a merchant would assume so, attacking the fortress just wouldn't be reasonable.

Even a better prepared and armed squad, though, is not going to a fortress to fight the entire population on their own grounds under their own terms. It just doesn't fit: they are merchants, not militia. A more appropriate short-term restitution is for them to simply not come back the next year (not "come back with a worse caravan", rather not come back at all). When they do come back, they come with a siege. This is how it ought to be in my opinion.

[Techhead]

Of course, if you steal from them in the first autumn, their escorts mercenaries might actually outnumber you in the second.

[axus]

How about they demand their stuff back, like the elves demand you stop cutting trees?  That would make sense, you can have the same responses as you do with the elves.  It seems like they should never come back until you've made a peace treaty or something.

[Jamuk]

Your forgetting that creatures other than your character in adventuremode have psychic powers and can 'see' everything!
sorry not a very helpful comment but I couldn't resist.

[Footkerchief]

Perhaps you've been encountering different merchants from me. The ones I see tend to be hard-pressed not to run screaming, mangled, and half-dead after a single goblin ambush squad gets 'em. Since any dwarf fortress is well prepared against goblin sieges, or at least a merchant would assume so, attacking the fortress just wouldn't be reasonable.

Uh, no, that's a pretty flawed assumption.  The chance of encountering goblins in the first year is practically zero, and I never put up any traps or sophisticated defenses that soon.  It seems reasonable to say that under SOME circumstances the merchants should attack.

[Joseph Miles]

Perhaps you've been encountering different merchants from me. The ones I see tend to be hard-pressed not to run screaming, mangled, and half-dead after a single goblin ambush squad gets 'em. Since any dwarf fortress is well prepared against goblin sieges, or at least a merchant would assume so, attacking the fortress just wouldn't be reasonable.

Uh, no, that's a pretty flawed assumption.  The chance of encountering goblins in the first year is practically zero, and I never put up any traps or sophisticated defenses that soon.  It seems reasonable to say that under SOME circumstances the merchants should attack.

You didn't take into account the part right after that "Or at least the merchant would assume so."

[Derakon]

You didn't take into account the part right after that "Or at least the merchant would assume so."

So me and my wagon team have arrived at this place. As far as we can tell, there's just the depot and a hole in the ground. Not much to look at, anyway. I went into the hole to find the mayor so we can talk about a trade agreement - these guys are still living in the dirt layers! There's no statues, and what stone they do have hasn't been smoothed yet. Certainly no weapons aside from the woodcutter's axe. Their dining room is just a couple of tables and chairs tucked into a corner of one of the stockpiles. I don't hear any heavy industry aside from the miners - no smithies, no glassworks, no windmills or water wheels. There's a guy chipping away at some stone blocks to make a pretty crude-looking toy anvil; if that's the best they have for trade, I don't think we're going to be giving them much.

I mean really, should I expect to be frightened of these people?

In short, traders will have some knowledge of the details of your fort. If nothing else, they will have heard from other traders (and if they find a site that nobody's told them about, they can reasonably assume that it's brand-new). If we assume that the liaison talks with the traders, which is reasonable as they set prices for goods, then the traders will have detailed knowledge of everything the liaison has seen, which is pretty much every aspect of your fort. More generally, we can assume that the traders don't spend all their time locked up in the depot; they wander around a bit and see the sights while they're in the area. That part's just not being simulated yet.

Even if the traders don't know specifics of your defenses, they'll know roughly how wealthy you are, which is a good indicator of how well-defended you are by whatever means (since wealth also means goblin depredations).

[Dwarf Fanatic]

I think that they will swear and 'Slap' the trader. Possibly wounding the guy or sending him flying. it will get stronger every time and around the time when they lose 10-20k or 3 in a row seigures they will yell 'Get them!' and 9 almost 'wepeon'master warriors should leap out the caravan. 9 per wagon. . Then they will charge.

[Erk]

So, then, merchants should make a calculation based on fortress wealth to see how they react to theft attempts? I could see an algorithm based on that working, but I can't see how they should attack. It still doesn't fit. More likely if your fortress was too small they'd just laugh at you and leave. Then YOU would have to attack THEM if you wanted combat. I just don't see merchants attacking because a piddly backwater settlement demanded they hand over ten iron puzzleboxes.

I really like the idea of having to negotiate with the merchants to cease hostilities and get a caravan again. That is a wicked idea. Then you'd face sieges and diplomats until you either got them to abandon you altogether or finally paid them restitution.

[Derakon]

Hmm...the problem with having merchants just laugh off your attempt to steal from them is that there's currently no way to attack a non-hostile unit - you can't provoke combat. If there was a way to do that, then sure, I could see that working.

And yes, having to negotiate with diplomats to get trading started up again after you disrupt it would be awesome as a long-term goal.