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[Hypcso]

Hello, I recently put my dwarves to a two year long task of building a massive 5 wide ice road leading to the edge of the map, in hopes of getting the human wagons to actually make it to my depot for a change instead of getting 5 tiles away, then going home. My map is the widest possible, so probably some blame on me however... I figured that building a road would mean they would USE it. This does not appear to be the case, After building the road the humans came in from their usual farthest possible corner from my depot and did their average " Weave randomly back and forth while making 3 squares every week progress twards the depot " deal. Is this a bug? ( I hope it is )

[Seryntas]

I doubt this is the reason why, but realistically, who the hell would try to drive a wagon on a road made of ice?

[Hypcso]

Well, It's a damn sight better riding for 15 seconds on an ice road, than spending 3 months traversing a frozen wasteland covered in snow, Only to reach the trade depot, promptly decide it's time to leave and turn around and go all the way back.  

[Shadowlord]

I've got a trade depot with a 3-tile-wide, 10-tile-long microcline block road going from it to the edge of the map, and the hunam wagons enter the map at completely the other side of the map (the road connects to the south edge, they came in on the north edge).

[ November 02, 2007: Message edited by: Shadowlord ]

[Arven]

From what I've seen they will use roads, but only if the road will make this journey shorter...

On my glacier map I have 2 ice roads, 1 for dwarves and elves and one for the humans. Kind of make sense that different trading partners would come from different directions.

[Hypcso]

There's almost no point in even having humans trading with me honestly, I'm going to have to make my depot inaccessable to wagons to even get to trade with them because the wagons are so slow. It's pretty dumb.

[SquidDNA]

As a temporary fix, have you tried clearing the wasteland of junk to make pathfinding easier for the wagon?

[Tormy]

Well, whats the point in making roads now? Right now....nothing, since even caravans wont use them. Perhaps later on roads will be useful once again. Like connecting towns etc.

[Sowelu]

Would it be effective (or possible) to have multiple trade depots?  One near each civ's entrance?

[Hypcso]

There's nothing at all in the wasteland, hence wasteland. It's a huge open field of snowy ice. They still zig zag and double back constantly as if they were dodging invisible things. As for the multiple trade depots, I thought about it but honestly when I chose this map I chose the largest. Putting a depot out by where they enter from would take 2-3 seasons to haul all the goods to and from it, and since it's a freezing map half of my dwarves would freeze to death on the trip.

[Fedor]

quote:Originally posted by Hypcso:
<STRONG>There's nothing at all in the wasteland, hence wasteland. It's a huge open field of snowy ice. They still zig zag and double back constantly as if they were dodging invisible things. As for the multiple trade depots, I thought about it but honestly when I chose this map I chose the largest. Putting a depot out by where they enter from would take 2-3 seasons to haul all the goods to and from it, and since it's a freezing map half of my dwarves would freeze to death on the trip.</STRONG>

The zig-zagging probably indicates obstacles even if you can't see them (it could be a bug, but let's be sure, eh?).  Try smoothing the area.

Failing that, consider mining out wide underground passages to your depot, making a wall all around it on the surface, and hoping that they actually recognize the new path.  I do know that traders will use ramps.  I haven't gotten to the point of finishing a "go underground to the depot" system yet (because the wagons appear at random places).

[Quintin Stone]

I just suffered from this.  After 3 years of being skipped by human caravans, I finally got roads and ramps and smoothed boulders set up to allow caravans to reach my depot.  And while they appear to travel faster on roads, they don't favor them over other terrain.  It's pretty clear that the caravan pathfinding algorithms do not take roads into account.  Which makes me sad because you see, after finally getting a human caravan after 3 years, the merchants disembarked moments from their last wagon reaching my depot.  Needless to say, I was pissed.

[hapes]

This seems to be a design flaw, or logic bug as opposed to a code defect.  The traders are there to trade, not to get close and walk away.  They should stay a certain period AFTER they reach the depot.  

'We're here to trade...anyone want to trade?   No?  OK, bye'

as opposed to 'we have 2 months to reach the depot or we're leaving!'

Of course, if there's no depot, no trading.

[Alfador]

quote:Originally posted by Shadowlord:
<STRONG>I've got a trade depot with a 3-tile-wide, 10-tile-long microcline block road going from it to the edge of the map, and the hunam wagons enter the map at completely the other side of the map (the road connects to the south edge, they came in on the north edge).

[ November 02, 2007: Message edited by: Shadowlord ]</STRONG>

Hunam? Did you mod in Spathi as a playable civ?  

[axus]

I agree with hapes, and maybe they shouldn't even bother coming if the journey is too long for them.

What I did was build my road on the path that they normally take.  You can't control their starting location but you can accommodate them.

The thing I'm waiting to see is if they'll use my new ramp.  They would start on top of a plateau over the valley where I started my fortress.  They'd take the only way they could, north, east, then south/down into the valley.  I made a 3-story ramp from the top of the plateau, east/down to right by my depot.  I've seen my dwarves still take the long way around going up that way, so I'm not too hopeful.