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Author Topic: [38] Caravan bypasses site for no apparent reason.  (Read 593 times)

wuffe

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[38] Caravan bypasses site for no apparent reason.
« on: April 01, 2008, 08:27:00 pm »

I'm a rather new player, but I ran into something I think is a bug.

I had built a trade depot and smoothed the way to the edge. The Depot screen said that the depot is accessible (and was blinking in blue 'D's) and there was a clear green route to the edge of the map.

When the caravan was supposed to arrive, I got only a message telling me it bypassed my inaccessible site. The depot was still marked as accessible after this event.

I don't have a saved game to post but on a bottleneck of the caravan route, there was a cave-in at one point, which I doubt might have been the cause.

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Exponent

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Re: [38] Caravan bypasses site for no apparent reason.
« Reply #1 on: April 01, 2008, 10:13:00 pm »

I have found that minimum accessibility is often not enough.  If the caravan wants to arrive at a completely different location on the edge of the map, and that whole area has no accessibility, then you will still get the results that you described.  It can thus be a pain in the butt to get the wagons the first time, unless you smooth stones, cut down trees, and build ramps to access multiple areas.  After the first group arrives, you can use the spawn location of their mules and such to determine where the wagons tried to arrive, and prepare for next year's arrival.  But if you want the wagons the first time around, you have to get lucky or work hard.  (And even if you work hard, you might still need a wee bit of luck.)
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FunnyMan

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Re: [38] Caravan bypasses site for no apparent reason.
« Reply #2 on: April 02, 2008, 03:31:00 am »

Actually, I'm pretty sure that Exponent is wrong.  For several forts now, I've been building a "merchant herding device", a trade depot and road to the nearest map edge, enclosed by a set of walls that prevent depot access to the rest of the map.  Works perfectly.
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Proteus

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Re: [38] Caravan bypasses site for no apparent reason.
« Reply #3 on: April 02, 2008, 03:41:00 am »

I can say from my experience that Exponent is right.

In my curent fortress I have a depot that was marked as accessible which, in the first season was bypased by the wagons of the dwarven and human tradng caravan because of its inacessability.

The wagons would always appear in a certain spot at the eastern map edge, several stories above the brook (at which the entrance to the trade deot was located).

The problem was solved when I built a set of tunnels and ramps that lead down to the brook level and gave this spot trade depot accessability.

[ April 02, 2008: Message edited by: Proteus ]

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FunnyMan

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Re: [38] Caravan bypasses site for no apparent reason.
« Reply #4 on: April 02, 2008, 04:14:00 am »

Hmm, I generally pick flat maps.  Perhaps you have to provide access to whichever Z-level they come on?
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Proteus

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Re: [38] Caravan bypasses site for no apparent reason.
« Reply #5 on: April 02, 2008, 04:28:00 am »

May be possible,I like to settle in mountaineous regions with lots of cliffs and therefore, most of the time, lots of different surface z-Levels that border the maps edge

[ April 02, 2008: Message edited by: Proteus ]

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Deathworks

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Re: [38] Caravan bypasses site for no apparent reason.
« Reply #6 on: April 02, 2008, 08:46:00 am »

Hi!

My last fortress did have a successful wagon restriction scheme which worked well to force wagons to use a certain spot for spawning (as I wasn't able to build walls or things close to the edge I actually had to wait for some lucky sapplings to grow to trees to block the path. The mules came from different locations and if I remember correctly, even from one level above at times (there was a slope nearby at the lower map edge while the road led to the left map edge; the trade depot was very close to the lower left corner of the map). Even before the saplings had grown, other trees had limited the choices for the wagons which initially travelled quite a while along the border and then had to limit their excourses as the trees blocked more and more from the depot. (BTW, the fortress I am speaking of is the one I created for the inheritance game (and thus I have abandoned it)).

I never had any traders ignoring me (except for the elven caravan failing to appear once because of a goblin siege - but that's a completely different issue :) :) :) :) ).

Currently, I am playing on a completely flat map, not even a single slope. I have constructed a road , but not to the map edge the caravan came from in the past. I still have to wait for some trees to grow to close the gap at the edge, but hopefully, I will be able to test this yet again.

Deathworks

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FunnyMan

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Re: [38] Caravan bypasses site for no apparent reason.
« Reply #7 on: April 02, 2008, 09:41:00 am »

quote:
Originally posted by Deathworks:
<STRONG>as I wasn't able to build walls or things close to the edge I actually had to wait for some lucky sapplings to grow to trees to block the path.</STRONG>

No need to wait for trees, channels work fine and you can dig channels on every tile except the very outside edge, which is too narrow to let wagons past.  If you wanted to trap the smaller units (which isn't really important), you might be able to do it by digging a channel along the edge in each direction until you hit the nearest tree.

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wuffe

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Re: [38] Caravan bypasses site for no apparent reason.
« Reply #8 on: April 02, 2008, 10:13:00 pm »

Thanks for help  :)

Got my carava this time. I pretty much smoothed all the edges and made interconnections. It wasn't actually too much work even with heavy forestation and lots of boulders.

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