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[oso]

So I've been wanting to create an access for trading wagons that is not accessible from any other part of the map, I tried building a floor suspended in the air that runs from my bases tower to the edge of the map and [D]epot access showed it as a valid access, but when the gnomes showed up (I'm playing relentless assault) their wagons bypassed my site. I read somewhere in the wiki that as long as there is a point that the wagons can spawn at that leads to your depot they will spawn there. I'm kind of assuming now that it has to spawn on natural land. Would it be possible to make this if my map had a natural cliff with two sides running off the edge of the map that I could build a road out to from my base? Is there any way to make an exclusive entrance for trade caravans?

-oso

[Sphalerite]

From previous experiments, it appears that wagons will only enter the map via naturally occurring terrain.  They won't spawn on constructed floors or bridges over open space (although they will spawn on constructed floors or bridges built directly on top of natural terrain) or on poured-obsidian surfaces, or on underground openings such as underground rivers.  They also will sometimes only appear on certain edges of the map.  This appears to be due to the game deciding that some terrain is not wagon-passable or reachable by that civilization, so if your embark area includes a river or chasm or mountain you might me limited in where on the map a wagon can appear.  It may take trial and error in your case to determine where on the map a wagon will be able to enter.

[NecroRebel]

You can take advantage of a bug and normal caravan behavior to manage something like this. First, you are correct in your guess that caravans must spawn on natural map-edge squares, so you've gotta set it up so that your skyway comes down to ground level 5 squares before the map edge (5 so that the wagons actually have a place to spawn; they need 4x4 minimum, IIRC). Then, just arrange it such that that is the only place that is accessible to the wagons through whatever means you need to. Now that spot is the only place caravans will come.

Now, the bug. It turns out that wagons can use any 3 ramps that are adjacent to one another in a line to go up and down z-levels. That may not seem like a bug, but it is, because every non-wagon creature needs the ramps to be supported by a wall to use them. Thus, if you have 3 constructed ramps (which can be built without an adjacent wall), you can have an up-ramp that wagons can use and nothing else can that goes up onto your skyway and into your fort.

Do note that you'll need a second path to allow the pack animals up, so this solution isn't perfect, but since you can make the second path 1 tile wide, it's much easier to trap and much harder for ambushes to catch the rest of the caravan.

[Retro]

As an aside, even casting obsidian in the water to the edge of the map won't allow caravans to spawn there. Haven't tried testing obsidian-casting the water on a separate adjacent embark but it'd be pretty cool if that was possible.

[oso]

omfg, YES! thank you! My skyway shall live for the glory of Armok!

[Kyronea]

As a side note, if you're on a glacier and your brook/river is frozen all year, you can turn it into a wagon highway, as evidenced in the Let's Play of Syrupleaf.

[orbcontrolled]

A useful thing to note is that while wagons/traders will never spawn on a skyway that doesn't lead anywhere, you can usually get them to leave by it.
Whatever check is performed for "Does this path anywhere" is only performed when spawning things. Wagons, traders, diplomats, etc. seem to be perfectly willing to walk off into oblivion.
The one exception I've found is that I couldn't get my liason to leave via an edge that was part of a chasm, so features must be treated differently.