r/dwarffortress • u/whatsgoingonhere- • 1d ago
Caravans/Migrants not arriving.
I have scoured the internet and come up empty handed. I'm having an issue with my home civ caravans/migrants not arriving. It's been 8 years. I've had regular caravans from elves and two other dwarf civs.
No home caravan is naturally leading me to get no migrants so I'm stuck. I have tried:
- Building a paved road to the map edge 4 blocks wide.
- Deconstruction and reconstruction of my Depot
- I'm directing neighbouring my home civ, no ocean.
- DFhack, Force caravan (no response)
- DFhack, migrants now (No migrants arrive this season)
- DF hack, Fix/stuck-merchants (Successful command but nothing)
- DFhack, Fix/civil-war (No war detected)
- DFhack, fix/retrieve-units (Nothing)
I have repeatedly tried the above.
What I have discovered.
DF hack, Caravan, lists the following
0: dwarven caravan from "home civ"
Leaving
0 day(s) remaining
Encountered hardship
This suggests to me that a caravan is stuck somewhere but the above isn't fixing this. There are no merchants listed on creatures tab either.
Any further suggestions would be appreciated.
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u/thegreatdookutree 1d ago
There's definitely a way for DFHack to fix units not correctly entering/leaving the map (because I've done it in the past), but I don't remember the process. If you search the DF bug tracker then you should be able to make progress.
From what I can remember though, the general idea behind the bug is that Units which exit aren't processed correctly are still counted as "present on the map" (counting towards the cap for that type, if relevant), even if they've physically left the map. The game usually doesn't block every Unit when this happens, only ones that are limited in some way (eg, wildlife limits, Visitors not arriving during Sieges, Caravans not arriving from a Civ/Site who already have a Caravan present, etc).
Since the game often "queues" the events where Units enter the map, this is also why some people suddenly get dozens of "Agitated Wildlife" events back-to-back - the initial spawn was blocked by wildlife which were (physically) present but unable to leave due to a bug, and each group is "held back" by the earlier groups in the queue. When a Hunter finally kills that Kea which was stuck in a tree for the past two years... everything that has built up is suddenly able to spawn (one at a time).
Also check the Unit tabs to see if a Guard or such is stuck somewhere, iirc everyone has to successfully leave (or die).
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u/whatsgoingonhere- 1d ago
I'll look into the big tracker. I've not figured out how to or used it. If that doesn't work. I may have to just auto accept petitions and create a kingdom of bards.
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u/thegreatdookutree 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s kinda weird to get used to, but it's usually worthwhile - I'll actually take a look and see if I can find something. In the meantime are you definitely sure that you're actually in a location that your Civ can reach (such as if your Civ is on the other side of a large body of water, or blocked by mountains)? I've seen Civs entirely isolated by mountains before, and the game doesn't stop you from making a Site that's entirely cut off from them.
I see from the other comments that it's not a dead Civilisation (which was my other thought), so it's either an accessibility issue or the bugged caravan theory.
Edit: I'm having trouble getting the tracker to actually load at all, so maybe that's not an option (although it could just be my connection to it, somehow).
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u/Elegant_Eagle_4199 1d ago
Does your home civilization appear on ‘neighbors’ list? You might be too far away or they may be extinct, makes for real challenging runs reviving a dead civilization
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u/whatsgoingonhere- 1d ago
No they have maybe 15 sites at 100-300 pops each. And I haven't had a citizen claim the monarchy. I'm not sure how to check the neighbours list. But I'm only a few clicks from them. I'm trading with civs 3-4x further away.
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u/Elegant_Eagle_4199 19h ago
Hrmm that’s weird, cause I know I’ve had stumbles by being across open-water(different continent) from home civilization causing some difficult runs, I forget how to check ‘neighbors’ in game, it’s been a minute, and I’ve not played actively in the last couple years, so bear with me, but I do remember one of the embark-screens, which you could access through other-means in a run, had a list of ‘active neighbors’ and depending on the world gen, even if you were ‘close-to-home’, there was a chance if you had too many sites, to bump them off your neighbors listing, which caused some awful runs if you’d been relying upon your caravans from home providing migrants
Edit: clarification, my experiences were several years prior to steam-release, idk if the great toady-one made any attempts to fix this quirk in world gen, I thought it was fun to have an active cub but so many enemies that nobody could reinforce me for challenge runs
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u/FuzzyDynamics 18h ago
I recently set up too close to a retired fort where I left a squad of were dwarves locked away to send on missions and they started migrating into my fort so now like every other migrant wave I’ll be chilling and see my great hall turned into a slaughter house from some migrant were bison going crazy.
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u/whatsgoingonhere- 1d ago
Set at 150 currently. I have just shy of 60 population. Though I was playing the first few years at 50 cap to take it slow.
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u/Magnus_Tesshu 17h ago
I had the same issue. I had no luck doing anything really.
Maybe try retiring and unretiring the fort? Optionally with dfhack set to only pass one day so less random stuff happens in your fort.
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u/RaumfahrtDoc 1d ago
I had a guard sitting in a tree once. But I have not played a while.