I've run into a very similar issue, I create a saloon and large trading counter and stocked it with goods. I'm seeing large groups of caravan traders and other npcs clustering near the outskirts of my city but never actually entering it and trading.
On a possibly related note, I've been noticing strange behavior with my city location. When I first created my city I performed the following steps in order:
1. Went into build mode and laid down a small shack by pressing space. The building skeleton then appeared on the ground.
2. I subsequently realized that I wanted the building to be in a different spot so immediately right-clicked and dismantled it before any squad members began building on it.
3. After dismantling the building, I realized the window for assigning your city name had popped up (under?) when I first laid the shack down which I had subsequently dismantled.
4. I went ahead and put in a temporary city name just to see what would happen. At this point, my city was designated on the map and the name was visible in blue text. Unfortunately, my building was no longer there.
5. I then built a new small shack a bit further away from my original location.
6. Post-update yesterday, my city's name/location marker is no longer displayed on the world map.
7. After I relocated my buildings further away, I noticed that now I never get the popup which displays my town name and research progress unless I scroll far away from where my buildings are now planted and go back within range of the original shack I tried to drop.
What's strange about this to me is my city location was bound before I actually completed a building. So I'm wondering about a couple of things here:
- Is it possible to relocate a city's location once it has been planted?
- When a city location is determined and placed on the map, is there a specific radius which is then considered by the game to be, "in town" which your buildings must reside within?
- If there is in fact a region which is considered "in town", could this be affecting behavior of the traders and npcs clumping near player cities?
At a minimum, it seems as if perhaps the player city locations should never be bound until the first building is actually completed. Otherwise, it seems to be breaking this feature.
If anyone has seen any similar behavior or has insight into what I may be doing wrong I'd appreciate it. I understand trading isn't fully implemented yet, but this bug seemed like it might be related so figured I'd post in this thread first.
Thanks!