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[Magick]

The enemies in Dwarf Fortress aren't nearly sneaky enough. Sieges, ambushes, thieves, and babysnatchers, they all have to come through that front door. My suggestion is to give them more ways to get into your fortress, making them more of a thorn in your side instead of, "Oh, look, a siege. Pull the lever!"

-The first step would obviously be to de-solidify the brooks. I don't know how many times I've dug a short channel from the brook into my fort, without digging into the surface of said brook. Since invaders can swim, they would swim through and suddenly you have a band of goblins climbing up your well. Would only work with short distances, and grates would serve as an early warning system(i.e., you discover them if they try to remove a grate, or if they succeed in removing one.)

-Caravan deathtraps. Basically fake caravans, which you get if you rip the elves/humans off one too many times. The goblins would hide under the wagons, or inside the cargo. Everyone in the caravan would be armed. When the caravan reaches the depot, the goblins pop out and/or the entire caravan attacks your fort from the inside. They also light the caravan goods on fire, which were already worthless. Could also be a random thing when your fort is extremely rich.

-Digging would be extremely obnoxious, but also obvious, because when a person is confronted with a wall of stone in real life, they don't just sit there and wait. They dig. And a sieging army would probably have one or two picks anyway.  Ambush squads with miners would be capable of digging into your fort or

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 breaching the HFS

if left alone long enough. Their digging would show up on the map if the tunnel is discovered by a dwarf(With a zoom announcement, such as,"One of your dwarves discovers a tunnel that wasn't here before."

-  Trying to assemble constructions to get over walls.(I put trying here because, let's face it, who can build things when you have a bunch of ballistae aimed at you?)

-Destroying natural resources(Overfishing during sieges, deforestation during sieges, setting the forest ablaze as they leave, etc.)

[nbonaparte]

I love the idea of caravan ambushes, trojan horse style. And I would advise against the tunneling invaders suggestion. It tends to get a lot of flaming, and has a nice long dedicated thread.

I think that the reason brooks are solid is to simulate how shallow they are. That's kind of a necessary feature. Brooks are not difficult to cross.

[NW_Kohaku]

Digging/sapping, building bridges and seige engines, and generally smarter seiges are already part of Toady's devpage (scroll to the bottom).

Caravan traps sounds amusing, although it involves the humans or elves sending goblins in their place, which seems odd.  Also, keep in mind that many players who kill off elven caravans do so by setting up magma traps to just burn the whole caravan so that they don't have to clean up all the wooden crap or bins full of cloth. 

"HAHA! WE TRICKS YOU STUMPIES NOW DI---- AAAAAAGH OH LORD SAURON, IT BUUUUURNS!"

[Magick]

Caravan traps sounds amusing, although it involves the humans or elves sending goblins in their place, which seems odd.

I think you misunderstood:

The goblins would hide under the wagons, or inside the cargo.

Y'know, goblins in a barrel.

"HAHA! WE TRICKS YOU STUMPIES NOW DI---- AAAAAAGH OH LORD SAURON, IT BUUUUURNS!"

I fell off my chair at that! I have a bruised head thanks to you!

Edit: It also mentions nothing about the losing bastards setting things alight as they left, as to devastate your economy or something. Or just make the elves mad at you.

-Destroying natural resources(Overfishing during sieges, deforestation during sieges, setting the forest ablaze as they leave, etc.)

[Kiwi]

How's about when a caravan doesn't return after a certain time, the civ does something about it, of course maybe only if only more than say 3 never come back and or are never herd from again, they send enforcers or something, and you have to tell them that they never showed up or something with the lie skill... Now breath.
Of course, i have no clue if this would even be near possible.
 

[Magick]

That's a lot like this system, except for caravans instead of nobles.

Consider this situation: you have a caravan that runs from your fort, to the human town, to the elves(where they steal everything) , to the mountainhomes, and back, but the caravan never returns. You ask the mountainhomes what happened, they say the caravan never showed up. You ask the humans. They say that the caravan showed up and traded with them. Hmmm, who stole your valuable merchandise?

[Zalminen]

Caravan traps sounds amusing, although it involves the humans or elves sending goblins in their place, which seems odd.

I think you misunderstood:

The goblins would hide under the wagons, or inside the cargo.

Y'know, goblins in a barrel.

I'm pretty sure NW_Kohaku meant that if the human/elf traders know about the hidden goblins, then this implies them working together. And that sounds a bit unusual.

[Pilsu]

Goblins kidnap children all the time. They aren't eaten of sacrificed if that's what you thought. They're raised among the goblins and it seems likely they'd be utilized as decoys often.

[NW_Kohaku]

Goblins kidnap children all the time. They aren't eaten of sacrificed if that's what you thought. They're raised among the goblins and it seems likely they'd be utilized as decoys often.

But if they will come at the time that the elven caravans would otherwise come, and specifically because the elves are upset that you have sacked their caravan (meaning it's an elven revenge plot, not a goblin one), then it implies cooperation between two cultures that are essentially locked in eternal genocidal war.

[fanatic]

I'm pretty sure NW_Kohaku meant that if the human/elf traders know about the hidden goblins, then this implies them working together. And that sounds a bit unusual.

If they know about it it doesnt mean they agree with it. Imagine the situation : elven caravan gets ambushed by goblins (far far away). Elves have the choice of helping gobbos or being elf sushi. Obviously the cowards will help.  In case of "hijacked" human caravan, the may come with no guards, or maybe just one or two who are actually the gobbo squad leaders. Which could be a way of raising the players suspicion.

We might even consider you will still get the relation penalty if you burn the whole thing to hell. Some races may consider such methods ethically inappropriate for hostage situations, and expect you to "free" the traders. Damn Hippies.

[NW_Kohaku]

I'm pretty sure NW_Kohaku meant that if the human/elf traders know about the hidden goblins, then this implies them working together. And that sounds a bit unusual.

If they know about it it doesnt mean they agree with it. Imagine the situation : elven caravan gets ambushed by goblins (far far away). Elves have the choice of helping gobbos or being elf sushi. Obviously the cowards will help.  In case of "hijacked" human caravan, the may come with no guards, or maybe just one or two who are actually the gobbo squad leaders. Which could be a way of raising the players suspicion.

We might even consider you will still get the relation penalty if you burn the whole thing to hell. Some races may consider such methods ethically inappropriate for hostage situations, and expect you to "free" the traders. Damn Hippies.

But why would this happen only when you "rip the elves/humans off one too many times"?  If it is entirely the goblin's plan, it would make no difference how you treated the elves or the humans, because the goblins wouldn't care.  In fact, it would make more sense to use a caravan ambush against a fort that was known for not attacking the incoming caravans, as that would mean it would be less likely that there would be a military already at the trade depot, ready to slaughter everyone there.

[Mckee]

I do Like the idea of Goblins in caravans, either with normal traders held hostage or grown up slaves pretending to be traders. I can imagine it wouldn't be tried if you often killed caravans outright, but if you were rich or very friendly with traders, it would become more common.

Ideally the player would have to reach a balance between letting in caravans and risking a lot of chaos, or torching them and dealing with annoyed civs. Either the observer skill or a 'search caravan function' for someone like the fortress guard or whoever is responsible, could be used to detect bogus caravans, the more obvious 'search caravan function' pissing off traders who loyalty is questioned etc...

[NW_Kohaku]

If we start encouraging players to kill caravans, every single elven caravan will be killed on sight just on principle.  Human caravans, maybe, they get some decent stuff, if not the raw steel bars people generally want to see.

Generally, so long as the dwarven caravans come, people wouldn't miss the other two.

[Starver]

But why would this happen only when you "rip the elves/humans off one too many times"?  If it is entirely the goblin's plan, it would make no difference how you treated the elves or the humans, because the goblins wouldn't care.  In fact, it would make more sense to use a caravan ambush against a fort that was known for not attacking the incoming caravans, as that would mean it would be less likely that there would be a military already at the trade depot, ready to slaughter everyone there.

A question I had, but the answer I came up with was that the Elves, forced to assist in some deception, choose you as the deceived-upon because of a certain worrisome turn (or ongoing tendency) in their attempts to trade with you.


Though that might imply a separate arc of "the elves are forced into it" happening ex-fort, and then choosing you as the target.  In which case maintaining a very good relationship might result in an Elf liaison turning up at your door, begging for your assistance and (if you're agreeable to the double-subterfuge) turning up with their globlin-stuffed wagons at a pre-arranged time when you've got your Depot area actively covered by your pre-warned military, ready to go Van Damme or Seagal upon the hidden goblin arses and give you leverage to actually barter for the really exotic creatures, or at least something approaching the Dwarven liaison's interaction.

[NW_Kohaku]

A question I had, but the answer I came up with was that the Elves, forced to assist in some deception, choose you as the deceived-upon because of a certain worrisome turn (or ongoing tendency) in their attempts to trade with you.


Though that might imply a separate arc of "the elves are forced into it" happening ex-fort, and then choosing you as the target.  In which case maintaining a very good relationship might result in an Elf liaison turning up at your door, begging for your assistance and (if you're agreeable to the double-subterfuge) turning up with their globlin-stuffed wagons at a pre-arranged time when you've got your Depot area actively covered by your pre-warned military, ready to go Van Damme or Seagal upon the hidden goblin arses and give you leverage to actually barter for the really exotic creatures, or at least something approaching the Dwarven liaison's interaction.

Elven Liason: "If you end this horrific extortion with no loss of elven life, we promise to never again try to trick you into cleaning our dirty laundry by pulling our loinclothes apart into "cloth" in bins, and instead bring savage beasts to trade."
Dwarf Leader: "Dirty laun--?  I KNEW IT!"