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.
