Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[blue sam3]

If there is only one caravan-passable route to your trade depot, caravans will always spawn at the end of that route. Cover the first ten tiles or so of the route with traps just incase an ambush spawns there too, and you're set.

[rephikul]

If there is only one caravan-passable route to your trade depot, caravans will always spawn at the end of that route. Cover the first ten tiles or so of the route with traps just incase an ambush spawns there too, and you're set.

Merchants (and all other civilians) have the ridiculous idea of running straight away from the ambushers instead of toward safety over the traps tho. It's like this, top view


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^




g        t
---------------
^ Trap (already placed as close as possible to map edge)
g goblin spawn
t trader spawn
- map edge

Guess which way they run.

[Halnoth]

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

The brown text is not a demand. Demands and mandates are seperate and are even displayed seperately in the noble window. Brown means that the demand is new and that you have up to a year to complete it, yellow means you have up to 6 months, and red means you have up to 3 months to complete it. All mandates start off brown and progress through yellow then red until you have either satisfied the mandate or someone gets thrown in jail/beat to death.

[celem]

Thanks for all the input guys,  I finally managed to fix up the mandate.

In addition....I built a wall around my fortress (depot inside, above ground)  I then extended that wall as close to the map edge as I could and channeled the rest, both channels end up with a tree between them and the edge.  The only other way in other than this backroute i created is a 1-wide ramp through my dry channeled moat.

From what people are saying the merchants still use a 3-wide rule to path when spawning even if they no longer bring wagons and do not actually require the 3-wide to move, I decided this might encourage ambushes and seiges via the moat ramp and traders via the protected section of edge.

Playing the Fortress Defense II mod and just had 2 sets of traders arrive.  The elves spawned on my protected map edge, Tigermen (mod specific) came in from a random edge spot and used the moat ramp, that second one might bue due to the way that race was implemented...i'll see how the other races behave

[blue sam3]

Merchants (and all other civilians) have the ridiculous idea of running straight away from the ambushers instead of toward safety over the traps tho. It's like this, top view

Which is why you only give them one option, e.g.,:

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
m^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
m^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
m^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

W = wall
m = merchant
^ = trap

With the middle of the two walls being the only 3 tile wide route between your trade depot and the map edge, and only two tile wide gaps at the end on either side.

[Ephemeriis]

Protect the merchants?  Why would I do that?

I usually put my trade depot near the entrance of my fort, outside my main defenses.  If something nasty shows up while the caravan is around they're on their own.

The caravan guards are usually halfway-decent and can soften up attackers nicely.  If nothing else they serve as bait and move the enemy into a predictable path.

If the caravan gets killed, I get free stuff.

Hell...  I've been known to build decoy trade depots around the map and wall caravans in just to use them as siege fodder.  Nothing quite like seeing a troll smash down the locked door of a decoy depot only to get slaughtered by an army of angry/insane merchants.

[Zaik]

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)

The only real way i've ever been able to protect them is sending a fairly large number of military units at them as soon as they get on the map. Used to not be so terrible of a problem, but once i got fortress defense 2 mod i had to remove sieges in autumn because before i might have seen the dwarven caravan twice per game tops, including that first visit. I suppose the other option would be to make dwarves active in all four seasons.

Actually, i think i may do that...

Anyway, about your other questions:

Ambushers will path inside your fort if there is any opening available to them, whether it's a big open backdoor with no defenses or a horrifying trap filled hallway littered with the corpses of other ambushers. If you seal your fort off from the outside entirely until a caravan comes, they will wait out there for it.

Mandates are color coded to tell you how long you have left to meet them. Brown = long time, yellow(i think?) meens medium time, red means finish it fast or someone's getting a beating/going to jail. White mandates are export prohibitions. For "Bismuth", all you have to do is smelt a bismuthinite ore into bismuth bars, or smelt bismuth bars into bismuth bronze, or make any other item with bismuth, though i'm not really sure a lot is available for that particular metal. Pretty much just make any item possible directly related to bismuth. I don't think making a bismuth bronze furniture/armor/etc. item will do it though.

[Sphalerite]

For "Bismuth", all you have to do is smelt a bismuthinite ore into bismuth bars, or smelt bismuth bars into bismuth bronze, or make any other item with bismuth, though i'm not really sure a lot is available for that particular metal. Pretty much just make any item possible directly related to bismuth. I don't think making a bismuth bronze furniture/armor/etc. item will do it though.

Actually, smelting bismuthinite into bismuth bars is the only way to meet a bismuth items mandate.  The mandate is only met if the resulting created object is made of bismuth - it doesn't count if one of the ingredients is bismuth but the result isn't.  You can't make any items out of bismuth, and making bismuth bronze doesn't count because you aren't making a bismuth item.  Building wall or floor bars out of bismuth won't meet it, although it will fulfill a 'bismuth item in bedroom' demand.  And obviously, making furniture or something out of bismuth bronze doesn't count because bismuth bronze isn't bismuth.

I had a fortress in 40d that ran for decades with a Tax Collector who had a fetish for bismuth, I had to keep requesting bismuthinite from the mountainhomes to keep her satisfied.  Eventually after one too many talented dwarves sentenced to hammering I got fed up and had her flung off a lovely bridge made from bismuth bars into the main water cistern.

[rephikul]

Merchants (and all other civilians) have the ridiculous idea of running straight away from the ambushers instead of toward safety over the traps tho. It's like this, top view

Which is why you only give them one option, e.g.,:

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
m^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
m^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
m^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

W = wall
m = merchant
^ = trap

With the middle of the two walls being the only 3 tile wide route between your trade depot and the map edge, and only two tile wide gaps at the end on either side.

If you can somehow build wall that close to edge, sure.

[Patchy]

I do what Sphalerite does and build a tunnel as close to the edge as possible and make sure its the ONLY 3 wide path to my depot. The big thing is check your depot access, use the "D" hotkey to have it flash the depot access. Anywhere you see green on the edge of the map the caravan can and will spawn there. If you rig your walls/channels up in such a way that there is only 1 narrow green path between the depot and edge, they'll always spawn there.

If you live in a tundra or glacier, you can bucket brigade some natural ice walls up to the edge of the map and create a completely enclosed tunnel for the merchants. The liasons/migrants are still idiots and spawn whereever, but the merchants will spawn in safety. You can also do this using obsidian casting to a degree if you aren't in a tundra/glacier.

[foop]

I'm not convinced that the three tile wide path rule still applies.

At one stage in my last fortress I had a moat that ran parallel to the southern edge of the map, with a one tile gap between it and the edge.  There was a gap in the moat and a three tile wide gypsum block road leading through the gap and up to the depot.  Despite this, a caravan spawned between the map edge and the moat.  There were trees either side of their spawn point, which left them stuck until my woodcutter managed to fell his way around to them.

Fortunately, the inevitable ambush that spawned at the same time as the caravan was stuck between the moat, the edge and some trees elsewhere on the map.

[Sphalerite]

I'm not convinced that the three tile wide path rule still applies.

It definitely still applies, but there are some catches to look out for.

First, sometimes a civilization will only have access to certain map edges.  This can happen if your map has an impassible barrier (river, or chasms in the old 40d days) that bisects the map.  Caravans from that civilization will only be able to spawn on those sides of the map, so even if you have a three tile wide path from your trade depot to another edge they won't appear where you want them to.

Second, wagons needed a 3X3 flat level patch of ground to appear on.  They don't seem to want to appear if you have ramps within 3 tiles of the edge of the map.  Not sure about bridges, or floors over open space, but I do know it was possible for a space to look fine but for wagons to refuse to appear on it.  Don't know the exact limitations as I didn't experiment too much once I got them to appear, and they don't appear at all in the current version.

These catches still seem to control where caravans appear, even though wagons don't appear in the current version.  Note that pressing D will not warn you of this - it only show you if you have a 3 tile wide path, but won't show you if wagons can actually appear at that point on the map edge.

[tolkafox]

I've had depots completely inaccessible to 3 tile wide caravans, yet still the traders come and path to it. Not sure if it helps any, just pointing that out.

I don't protect my traders, they protect me I've yet to have a successful military of more than one squad actually attack or defend against sieges (the odd vermin/thief sure) I just build walls leading to cage traps, advanced stonefall traps, and my favorite double U stands for death.

[Sphalerite]

I've had depots completely inaccessible to 3 tile wide caravans, yet still the traders come and path to it. Not sure if it helps any, just pointing that out.

Sure.  If there is no 3 tile wide path from your depot to a spot on the edge where a wagon can spawn, the traders will spawn at any random map edge and then try to path to your trade depot anyway.

[rephikul]

I tinkered with this a bit and found out that bridges can be constructed next to edge and work just like wall. Traders rejoice.