Embarked during (I thought) the first month of the year. Did some grunt work, took ages to get through an aquifer that was deeper than I’d thought, and then noticed it was already the start of August. Weird, I thought, but at least I’ll get the caravan soon. Rushed some crafts, built a depot, made sure it’s accessible.
The traders and liaison never showed. Not just the “here’s the notification, but we’ll never actually enter the map” issue I had towards the end of my last fort (which resulted in traders never coming again, since I didn’t trade anything that year…), but straight up never came around. No migrants that year, either, which made getting things going an absolute nuisance.
And I wasn’t on a weird island or anything - I’d settled little more than a day’s travel away from the cluster of forts my civ resides in. There’s a few human hamlets in between, but nothing that seems like an obstacle.
I really thought the Mountainhome had abandoned its latest fort to die, but I finally got my first migrant wave in the summer of my second year. Crossed fingers that the caravan just had their map upside-down last year, but time will tell if they get it figured out.
Have any of you had embark issues like this before?
Update: Got the “no migrants” message for my second wave, but I DID get the Mountainhome caravan! Whatever had them scrambled before must have worked itself out.
Further migrant waves post-trading worked just fine (except for one notable refugee from my old fort, who insists she’s still in a long-dead squad…her job’s stuck at “Soldiering (no access)” or something like that, poor girl).
Nice, I think it depends on a lot of factors, like location, distance from communities, and probably some other RNG that happens during world building. Each game is so different.