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[DwarfMan69]

All three of the goblin seiges I've had came at the same time as a caravan. The caravan gets massacred by bowgobs every time. My military consists of my fortress guard. (aka I have none), but I have awesome traps in my entrance, each with 10 obsidian shortswords and the one in front of the most vital chokepoint has an artifact mechanism. So I'm safe. But the elven caravan just got massacred and I think they might be pissed. How do I prevent this?

[Awayfarer]

Sieges and ambushes don't neccessarily happen during every caravan but it seems to me that ambushes are much more likely too. Definitelyt build up a military, and always put them on duty when you get the message "A caravan from The Natural Empire of Hugging has arrived" or somesuch.

[RogerN]

Putting your military on duty is about the best you can do.  Patrols can also help, but it's difficult to cover all of the ground at the edges of the map.  If a goblin ambush spawns too close to the merchants then there's nothing you can do.

Well, maybe not *nothing*... I suppose you could build rows of traps along every edge of the map.  But that's so work-intensive that I've never seen it done.

I feel your pain, though... despite my best efforts I just lost a dwarven caravan to a skeletal giant eagle.

[Derakon]

I don't think ambushes are more likely to happen when the traders arrive, but traders will be attacked by any ambush squads that are already on the map.

[Jude]

Ugh. I just had an ambush kill some of the dwarven traders and chase away the rest...but I think worse than losing the caravan, and worse than the several military casualties, is the fact that now there's tons of crap lying all over the map that my dwarves are hell-bent on collecting. I didn't like the idea of having shit everywhere so I figured I would let them just pick the stuff up and be done with it, but they're ending up taking ages to do it...and meanwhile, I lost 3 wounded dwarves because apparently the morons are too busy collecting bone bolts and pig tail caps to bring them water.

The aftermath of anything is made 1027x worse by dwarves' determination to loot the bodies. Is there a logical reason for that or is it just in there to make the game more difficult?

[Granite26]

I haven't had any problems since I finished the moat lined road to my trade depot.  Since the gobbos spawn looking for dwarves and the caravans spawn looking for the depot, it's not too hard to keep them spawning in different points

[Dwarfu]

This is happening in my current fortress.  The gobbos have it timed perfectly - either an ambush or invasion right after the dwarf wagons make it in, but the donkey train is still filing in.

Its been 12 years - I have more merchants & guards in my catacombs than I do actual citizens.

At this point, I'm practically making everything myself - just need ores & gems brought in.  And the big reason I need them to make it is so I can get rid of some of the garbage lying around.  I've taken to giving the humans bins full of decorated goblin skulls just for helping me get rid of junk.

[Mephansteras]

Best advice I can give is to have directed roads and watchtowers.

Basically, you have specific avenues that FORCE the merchants to follow particular paths into your fortress. I like to use statues spaced every few tiles so that wagon's can't get through them. You an also use walls, channels, or anything else that tickles your fancy. As long as it's impassible, it'll work.

Like so:
s = statue
+ = road square

Code: [Select]

s  s  s
+++++++
+++++++
+++++++
s  s  s

You can see from the above that wagons (3x3) can't fit in between the statues.

This forces them to get to the same point to every time to get to my road and into my fortress. Most maps, that means I have only 4 areas that I really need to worry about. Depends on the map, but doing this usually forces the traders to show up right at the start of the road, since they can't get to your fortress any other way. Just make sure that road NEVER gets blocked off, otherwise they'll just bypass your site.

At the start of each road I have watchtowers manned with military dwarves to help out with any ambushes that show up. The trick here is have their beds IN the watchtower (even barracks beds can be assigned). I usually have a few levels of living quarters, as it were. Beds, tables, chairs, food stockpiles, etc. Oh, and put up some archery targets for your marksdwarves so they stick around when training as well. All of this usually keeps that squad in the area even when off duty. You also get the occasional fortress guard wandering over as well, which can make them useful for a change.

This isn't foolproof, of course. Sometimes the towers just get overrun. Sometimes the goblins manage to sneak past the tower and attack the merchants halfway along the road. But most of the time it gives me the opportunity to save them.

Oh, and my watchtowers usually use drawbridges as their entrance. I started doing this after a few doors got suck open by dropped items or corpses, and the poor marksdwarves inside got slaughter during the next ambush because I couldn't lock the doors. If it's just going to be marksdwarves stationed there (safer, but not always as effective) you can have a sealed tower that only has access through underground tunnels to your fortress.

[Boatmurderer]

I've got a setup a lot like that. Latest map I loaded had both sand and a magma pipe, so I'm making unbelievable amounts of crap out of glass. My road is paved with green glass blocks with interspaced green glass pillars and weapon traps (serrated green glass discs). I usually have it like so:
I^^I^^I^^
+++++++++
+++++++++
+++++++++
I^^I^^I^^
Yeah, no grunts, but grunts can be unreliable since they always seem to need to sleep or eat right when they're needed.