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[celem]

Ok so im about 3 years into my current fort.  Things been going well but I was getting low on booze, decided it wouldnt be such a problem since I could clean out the next dwarven caravan to top-up.....

Well they spawned, moved about 8 tiles and triggered 2 ambushes, still 50 tiles or more from my walls so I had no way of saving them from all being horribly butchered at the hands of a bunch of goblins and elves.

Any advice on keeping these fools alive?  Their entry point seems random so i cant really make a walled road or anything, and with my map having extreme cliffs everywhere most of the time I cant even see whats going on.

My military is not up to patrolling the map, anyone who strays far from the walls is dead since there seem to be ambushes lurking all over the place and the military does not survive sallying out past the trapline to defend people (tested that too)

How do you keep merchants alive?  come the time when im getting proper seiges then...they can fend for themselves, but i'd like to get them in past the odd ambush.

Couple of related/not-so-related questions:
Ambushing bad guys who are still in hiding, will path towards my fort right?  I dont want them loitering about in the hills camping for merchants, there is a clear path from outside to inside of my fort at all times (clear as in un-obstructed).

On a different note....my Mayor has the word Mandate in brown text and displays the words Make Bismuth 1/1.....seems odd since he had a mandate to ban export of bismuth, i noticed that last mandate end but didnt see any note about him starting a new one...does he want me to make something outta bismuth?  could be tricky since i have none and have something of a merchant problem (see above)

[ventuz]

build wall around depot and drawbridge retract direction with walls, link bridge to lever.

[eugene]

I have not found a perfect solution for that problem but generally I built from the depot a tunnel to as close to the edge of the map as I can get and protect the tunnel entrance with traps and marksdwarf towers.

It is possible to completely wall in the caravan entrance area with obsidian, caravans should only spawn where they can path to your depot. The caravans did in my experiments only spawn on the original surface, not the created obsidian layer.

[EddyP]

Fact of the matter is, you can't really protect caravans. They spawn at random places (as do ambushes) so if you get unlucky a caravan and ambush will spawn right next to each other. I had an outpost liason spawn and immediately (literally) pop an ambush. He died in 5 seconds from a few arrows.

Probably the best you can do is trade well with the caravans you do get, because next time they'll bring more pack animals and more guards. The guards help hold the gobbos off until you get there.

[eugene]

I do not think that caravans spawn completely random. I tried this last in 40d but then the caravans only spawned where there was a path to the depot.

That can be exploited to minimize the area of the map that needs to be clear of ambushes. If the area is small enough to be controlled by one or two marksdwarf towers the caravans are very save.

[Sphalerite]

You can force caravans to spawn at a specific point on the map edge by exploiting the wagon pathing rules.  If there is a three tile wide path from your trade depot to the edge of the map, trade caravans will only enter the map on a point on the map edge which can reach the trade depot via a three tile wide path.  This applies even if the caravan doesn't have any wagons (which none of them do in the current version).  You can use this to control where the caravans enter.  What I do on most of my fortresses these days is place the trade depot underground and then dig a three tile wide passage from the trade depot to near the map edge.  I then make a three tile wide path upwards to the surface about six tiles from the map edge.  With some more channeled holes and paved floors I can then ensure that a direct path from the passage exit straight to the map edge is always clear, and no side path is possible.  If I really feel like abusing map-edge effects I then build walls and raising drawbridges to wall off this exit from the rest of the map, so that ambushes that spawn elsewhere on the map can't get into the trade entrance.

This doesn't help you with immigrants, liaisons, and diplomats, which will spawn on any random spot on the map edge no matter what you do.  You will also sometimes see a situation where trade caravans refuse to spawn on some parts of the map edge.  This typically happens when there's a river or other impassible barrier across your site, and a civ only had access to one side of the map.  In that case there's nothing you can do but make a trade entrance on the other side of the map.

[ildamos]

That's like a quasi-cheat but very useful to know.

[Halnoth]

The only answer is a highly trained military. There really isn't any other surefire way.

[ildamos]

They can't be everywhere though.

[Skorpion]

I defend the trade depot.

Quite frankly, I don't give a flying fuck what the caravans trip. It just means one of my dwarves isn't ambushed and killed. Plus, if their pack animals die (no wagons in 31.16. ), I get their stuff free.

[BurnedToast]

I don't bother. Trade is, sadly, rather useless right now except for getting rid of excess junk and I've finally overcome my obsessive desire to not waste anything of value and I just atom smash all my rocks/bones/sieger clothes/etc now.

Of course the humans are always mad and sieging me because the diplomat keeps dying, but that's OK i've got more bronze and horse meat biscuits then I could ever use now, and it's funny when they uncover and kill goblin ambushes for me.

My only concern is clutter slowing everything down, but so far it does not seem so bad.

As for Sphalerite's method, I've been unable to get it to work this version. The traders seem to spawn in any old random place they want, even if there's only one wagon pathable way to get to the depot. I once had them spawn in a spot totally inaccessible to the depot, even though the depot had wagon access. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but older versions that had wagons I had it working perfect.

[Eskielidder]

On the mayor mandate note, I think the brown text means he wants you to make something. I've had a few of those come and go, always showed 1/1 or 3/3 even before I made anything, I put it down to already having something of that type from an invading goblin or something. Makes me glad I dont melt everything and let it pile up in my stockpiles

[lazylonelion]

Some idea here:

Will it help, if I build a trade depot in every corner and every edge of the map? Build it underground and enclose it with drawbridges for defense? It's only 8 depots needed then -- not so much.

I understand that piles will be quite a distance from there, but I don't expect to trade much these times -- it's kind of useless, as it's said here. To transfer few dozens of mechanisms or wood in one season isn't such a problem, I suppose.

But traders will appear near the edge, sunk underground and have drawbridges up, will they?
Will they choose nearest depot at that?

Update: And they definitely will, if I draw all bridges except one, closest to them.
That's a plan:
* have ONE open and guarded path to the depot;
* when caravan arrives close all ways except the closest one;
* when caravan is underground -- close ALL ways again (except guarded one).

It will take some digging -- to have tunnels to every corner of the map.

[rephikul]

A 9 tiles thick ring of traps around the edge of the map

[Chandrak]

I dont protect my merchants That way thier guards help out during sieges and ambushes, and I get free stuff when they fail.