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[Girlinhat]

I get no ambushes for about two years or so, which is strange for me since I've had one every season since the spring of year 2.  My caravan from the mountainhomes arrived.  Expecting complications, and being standard now, while the game was still paused from the announcement I ordered my military to move to the caravan's spawn point, then go to set trade goods up.

It's ~7 seconds (at 30 fps that's around 210 steps) before the first ambush wave appears about 5 tiles away from the caravan, and the goblins instantly kill one trader and mule, before the caravan guards can react.  One guard goes down, and the rest of the caravan turns around and leaves.  Another trader is killed by a squad of lashers, and my soldiers get there just in time to watch the final caravan guard leave.

This means no platinum or diamond import this year...

[JacenHanLovesLegos]

Wait a second. The ambushes didn't kill themselves?

[slothen]

your story is 100% normal.

[ohgoditburns]

The ambush may have already been on screen, wandering around. You also may have been getting ambushes every season for the last 2 years, but if your dwarves aren't outside, they'd have no reason to unlcoak.

[Hungry Elephant]

This cunning scum... They rob caravans, like the standard fantasy bandits!

[QuantumMenace]

In my experience, ambushes spawn at about the time of the season that caravans arrive. It makes it all the more frustrating if you're using the "gated community" method of walling off most of the perimeter of the map with raised drawbridges.

[Girlinhat]

I've had guys deforesting the whole map (elves be damned!) and a wide open (if trapped) way to my base.

It's not that I don't mind the caravan attacks, I just wish they'd wait another hundred steps so that my military could DO something!

[Sutremaine]

It's ~7 seconds (at 30 fps that's around 210 steps) before the first ambush wave appears about 5 tiles away from the caravan, and the goblins instantly kill one trader and mule, before the caravan guards can react.

When did you put your soldiers outside this time, and where were the ambushers relative to the traders when they decloaked?

[Hyndis]

If you are using the sealed fortress or airlock method drop off a bunch of cats or dogs outside the fortress walls. They will wander around randomly and decloak ambushes.

Alternatively leave the front door wide open, but have your barracks be at the entrance to the fortress. Ensure that 20-30 steel armed and armored dwarves are on duty training at all times. Ambushes will sort themselves out on their own.

[Girlinhat]

When did you put your soldiers outside this time, and where were the ambushers relative to the traders when they decloaked?

As I said in the original post, the ambush decloaked about 10 squares away when an archer opened fire.  This, accompanied by the positioning of the other goblin squads so soon in the same direct area, makes me believe that the ambush is spawning directly on top of, or within spitting distance of, the caravan.

My soldiers were currently doing combat drills.  As soon as the game paused to announce the caravan, I ordered them to move to the caravan's spawn point.

[warlordzephyr]

I'v had ambushers following caravans a few times, i just thought it was normal. It's probably why they call them ambushers, cos you can't seriously ambush a fortress.

[brucemo]

If you are using the sealed fortress or airlock method drop off a bunch of cats or dogs outside the fortress walls. They will wander around randomly and decloak ambushes.

Alternatively leave the front door wide open, but have your barracks be at the entrance to the fortress. Ensure that 20-30 steel armed and armored dwarves are on duty training at all times. Ambushes will sort themselves out on their own.

I am pretty sure that it is possible to see ambushes through walls, so if you wind the trap hall around the barracks, they tend to get seen right at the start of the trap hall, and you get "An ambush! Curse them!", followed by the ambushers running down the trap hall.  I've had ambushers walk down the trap hall and down a ramp before being discovered like this.

Apologies for posting unrelated to the OP.  I think I noticed ambushes being worse prior to 31.18, so maybe this won't happen much now.  I'm deathly afraid of them and tend to let them wander around outside, but I haven't had a migrant wave or a caravan get hit for a long time.  The human diplomat did bite it yesterday though.  That's the only reason I know that it still happens.

[Sutremaine]

As I said in the original post, the ambush decloaked about 10 squares away when an archer opened fire.

Yeah, but you didn't say what direction they were coming from. If they attacked from behind the traders, that's bad luck. If they attacked from in front of the traders, they were previously on your map long enough to move inwards.

My soldiers were currently doing combat drills.

Have them already outside and in position when the caravan comes, they'll reach it quicker. You can either station them manually or set up a patrol route or burrow around the edges. The former will keep them moving, the latter will cause them to automatically attack any hostiles within the burrow. Scheduling is better because they'll go out themselves at the beginning of the month.

[Hyndis]

An easy way for passive defense is to just route the entrance through the barracks. Make it so that everyone going into the fortress needs to go through the barracks and keep several squads on duty. As long as the dwarf is showing up as some kind of soldier (axedwarf, speardwarf, etc) they will automatically aggro on and attack all hostiles they can see. Build the main drawbridge, then barracks, then another drawbridge (just for redundancy), and then your main meeting hall all in that order. You can put the trading depot in the barracks or in the meeting hall, but either way all visitors going into your fortress must first pass through the security checkpoint of your barracks.

[Girlinhat]

I'm still trying to figure out when the caravan arrives exactly so I can set patrols.  Also, they ambushed the caravan from the side, and appeared to have spawned beside it.  I've had other times where the ambush spawned around the caravan, with the poor mule in the middle surrounded by 5 goblin lances.  You can't really rationalize that situation.

And I've had no trouble with fortress defense.  5x10 serrated steel disks and 30-odd cage traps pwns all ambushes that come, and I'm currently under the pop limit for sieges.