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[Yncke]

I'm building my first fortress (having tremendous fun, great game!), so please excuse my perhaps stupid question.

I'm trying to protect my outside trade depot. I first built a big wall around it (which is not totally around it, since there's a mountain wall at one side), with doors, resulting in the wagons not wanting to come along any more. So I tried another approach: a channel all around the walls and a 6 tiles wide bridge connected to a lever, so that I can pull it up if necessary.

I now have the bridge I can pull up, and a channel which goes round the wall with the exception of the three right hand side tiles under the bridge. I can't select these to be dug out as a channel. I've tried to make a detour with my channel, thinking I may be blocked by the bridge, but that doesn't work either. Any idea of what I'm doing wrong?

(And can I tell my dwarves to grab a bucket and fill the channel with water? )

[Jim Groovester]

You'll have to remove the bridge first if you want to channel those tiles. They protect the ground beneath them, even withdrawn.

Yes, you can tell your dwarves to grab a bucket of water. First you'll need available buckets. Then you will need to overlay a zone with 'i' and select it as a pit/pond. Hit 'P' (case is important) and select it as a pond, and then your dwarves should spend all their time filling whatever you've designated.

[Yncke]

Fantastic! Thank you very much for the fast reply!

[DeathOfRats]

Yes, you can tell your dwarves to grab a bucket of water. First you'll need available buckets. Then you will need to overlay a zone with 'i' and select it as a pit/pond. Hit 'P' (case is important) and select it as a pond, and then your dwarves should spend all their time filling whatever you've designated.

There's a couple of things to keep in mind there: if the moat is too big, or the water source too far away, you're likely to never fill the moat like that, since the water will evaporate before it reaches 2/7 all along the moat. If you have the spare dwarves, you can set multiple zones, the way Jim said to, and you'll get multiple dwarves trying to  fill the pond. This might make it go fast enough to avoid evaporation.

Also, depending on the temperature, your dwarves might have to keep filling the moat every year or so, due to water evaporation (at least if it's outside. A roof over it will stop that, so you can maybe build a sort of overhand along your entrance that covers the moat).

[Jim Groovester]

Fantastic! Thank you very much for the fast reply!

Yes, we are gameplay question answering ninjas. Not that you were asking, of course.

[kalida99]

Fantastic! Thank you very much for the fast reply!

Yes, we are gameplay question answering ninjas. Not that you were asking, of course.

Yerp, and ye managed to answer before i could ye bugger.

you might (through some slightly more difficult ways) make a more dangerous moat, one of which filling it with dangerous TAME! creatures, maybe with traps for the meaner creatures who can swim, etc.
i'd go with the traps just a a precaution, as if something does really fall into the moat it's better it dies fast than distracting traders

[XSI]

Seeing mean creatures(Like carp) scares off civilians, and traders are civilians. It is a good way to get the trader's guards to jump in and drown though, just empty the moat afterwards and collect your new bone bolts and armour.

It might be better to just keep a simple moat for now

[Quatch]

You can check to make sure your depot is accessible by pressing D.

[Rakonas]

Hmm, considering a channel around a trade depot, If I were to channel around a trade depot while the traders were in it, would they eventually go insane and kill each other so I could take their stuff, or would they just jump over the channel?

[kalida99]

If they had no means of getting off-map they would go insane and kill anything that looks at them, or go melancholy and stand around till they starve to death, but that would take 1 maybe 2 seasons. nothing can really "jump" currently.

[XSI]

Sure, eventually they will go insane and die, but until then they're stuck in your trade depot, I'd suggest walls, a ceiling, a floodgate, pumps, and either magma or water, whichever you prefer.

It's really a lot easier to just kill them outright instead of waiting for them to die by insanity.

[Albedo]

Since it's a (VERY) good idea to have running water and a well inside/below your fortress, you could just bite the bullet now, dig your aquaduct system, and pump more massive amounts of water into that moat directly.  You'll most likely find other uses for the water once it's handy.