40d Talk:Trading/Talk Caravan

Insane merchants?

I have a trade depot at -3 (fully accessible). I've just had a dwarven caravan arrive, and I did some good trading. Then the merchants said goodbye... and just stood there. Then they went insane.

How do I prevent this happening again? Because this lot are starting to putrify...Runspotrun 17:23, 6 November 2007 (EST)

Damned if I know. I now make a habit of locking up the outpost liaison because he's gone insane, often berserk, in every game I've played. Ever. PandaKnight 02:45, 17 November 2007 (EST)

Caravan roads

Does the presence or absense of a road affect where the human caravan appears? I cleared a nice path for it that it ignored when it appeared on the other side of the map... if I had built a road too, would that have forced it to appear on the road? Or will I eventually need roads in all directions? --Bobson 16:04, 7 November 2007 (EST)

In v33a, no caravans need roads. However, I think the human caravan needs a smoothed, 3-wide path to a map edge - but I'm not certain about this.

It's probably worth mentioning that roads might speed up a caravan - reducing the chance that they leave before they've unpacked.Runspotrun 15:31, 8 November 2007 (EST)

(Sorry, to answer your question, I don't think you can influence where the caravan appears. I know that both the Elven and Dwarven caravans have ignored my roads when choosing their starting position.)Runspotrun 15:33, 8 November 2007 (EST)

On a relatively flat and moderately forested map I recently played, each civ seemed to have a preferred side of the map to enter, but were relatively random about where on the edge they appeared. I built a straight, smoothed road to each edge that went largely unused. The human wagons are happy to go up and down slopes and cross quite rough (but unobstructed) ground to reach me. A smooth road would almost certainly speed their arrival and departure. As an aside, the goblin civ in my current map has been quite happy to start sieges from several different sides, so take the directionality with a grain of salt. Doctorlucky 02:33, 16 November 2007 (EST)

Bugged Human Caravans

I've had a crash bug associated with the arrival of the human caravan. Interestingly, when I raised my drawbridges, limiting access to my depot to a torturous 1-wide path, the caravan arrived OK with the message along the lines of "the wagons have bypassed this stop." I only got the mule-back traders, but no crash. This repeated the next year. I'm guessing this relates to Toady's comments about a seed pricing bug. It's possible that it's a pathing issue with the wagons, of course. Doctorlucky 02:33, 16 November 2007 (EST)