Caravan Guards

I've thought of this multiple times and always figured it would have come up as many times already. 

I'll simply add a fervent +1 to this idea.

I remember Derek posting that the design intent was to require the players to civilize the land thereby protecting the caravans. What was aggravating was having monsters running around, in your ZOC, without some kind of warning that they were there. The "exclamation point alert for monsters within your ZOC" resolved that issue.

As someone who's played my fair share of games since Sep '10 I find the alert resolved my caravan safety maintenance concerns. If I'm going to build a caravan route outside my ZOC, I'd better be prepared to clear the area and keep it clean. The best way to resolve it is to civilize a safe route for caravans which is why I like playing a bard/charisma build sovereign - he helps to get settlements to level 3 quickly so ZOC's push back monster spawns. The goal is to shrink your vulnerable kingdom/empire border to as small a length as possible.

I never send caravans to enemy cities (unless I want a quick way in to rampage). I let the AI do it. I'd rather build a solid road network in my kingdom (for quick movement and logistics) and always send one caravan to my capital (stackable gold bonus).

I don't disagree but I still have trouble when the ZOC between cities hasn't merged. Honestly, I only use caravans as road crews anway - once I have two cities linked I don't bother replacing a caravan if its killed. Having roads between distant cities does seem to help police those areas outside of ZOC so I guess its a bit of a catch 22. Really all I want is to be able to move my force quickly in case I need to send reinforcements between locations. The economic benefit of caravans doesnt seem to make a noticible difference. 

yes i want this to happen as well.  we need a way to protect them.

It does when you focus them on 1 city - those 10, 15, 20% bonuses centered on one city start to stack up. To give you an example, in my current 1.19d ridiculous game my main capital has gildar income of over 1,100 gildar per turn. I'm not even done making that bad boy rocked out (the tile restriction is gone so I'm making a crazy capital).

Honestly I don't find that physical caravans add a lot to the game. I would prefer that trade routes and the corresponding roads are automatically established between cities, growing as your empire grows (this would also likely fix the dump all caravans on one city exploit), and bandits (not animals) could blockade them.