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Author Topic: How do you deal with enemy archers?  (Read 5885 times)

MarcAFK

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Re: How do you deal with enemy archers?
« Reply #30 on: March 21, 2012, 12:14:42 am »

Wait for the caravan guards to finish them off Damn sieges X(
How many levels of air do you have? You could build a stupidly high staircase then a platform of constructed floor above the goblins high enough up that there won't be any cancel spam, then drop it on their heads, 40 zlevels should be enough?
But on a more serious note you'll probably have to send somebody after them, loads of wardogs would be very helpful too.
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They're nearly as bad as badgers. Build a couple of anti-buzzard SAM sites marksdwarf towers and your fortress will look like Baghdad in 2003 from all the aerial bolt spam. You waste a lot of ammo and everything is covered in unslightly exploded buzzard bits and broken bolts.

pushy

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Re: How do you deal with enemy archers?
« Reply #31 on: March 21, 2012, 09:17:41 am »

I'm in a tight pickle because 17 goblin crossbow arrived as a siege, except their leader on a giant toad jumped into a pond which froze and killed him... thus I have 16 goblin crossbowmen sitting on the edge of my map.  They're just camping on the edge... laughing at me.  I don't have enough dwarves or soldiers to form a dual shield frontline wall.  I have some kittens and bunnies to sacrifice, but there's no way to move the kittens closer without placing the lives of my dwarves at risk.  My current plan is building ballistas to shoot them yet this can take some time since they're evenly divided two per map column. 

Any Ideas??
If you're not equipped to go out and kill them then there's not much you can do until they decide to leave the map of their own accord, which can be a while. Digging a pit below them and creating a cave-in is one option, but you might not actually be able to dig the pit fast enough to take advantage of it so it's not necessarily worth your time. Goblin leaders on amphibious mounts are incredibly stupid and will head straight into any murky pools where the mount will be OK but the goblin leader will start drowning; you may want to consider flooring over those pools at some stage just to give the goblins a helping hand ;)


As for how I deal with enemy archers, they'll be handled the same as any enemy in my fort (once my defences are properly in place, which'll take a little while). With their pathing AI they'll try to take the shortest entrance into my fort, which is a little path running just underneath the eastern wall...but it's a dodge trap, that knocks them down just one z-level into a longer path they opted not to take. In the case of any that get lucky and successfully navigate the dodge trap (or have trapavoid) they still have to go through a little corridor into my fort (as yet I'm undecided about whether that'll have dogs or a lever-operated spike trap field in it, or possibly even some vampire guards). For those who fail to navigate the dodge trap, they fall in the middle of a long path that starts out at the middle of the western wall, goes right around my fort's perimeter (basically it's a path that goes around some stockpiles I've got on that z-level :P) and has an entrance into the fort on the western side just a few tiles north of the path's start but walled off so it requires them to follow the path right around the fort. The goblins are on the east side, right in the middle of that path; they've got two choices - they can continue into the fort, which involves going around the north of the fort and over a dodge trap (about 30 z-levels deep this time) on the west side...or they can run for their lives, which involves going around the south of the fort and...well, over another dodge trap on the west side. If something is caught by the dodge trap in the short entrance, it's as good as dead, no matter what it decides to do.

Many of my trap designs feature a similar ethos - goblins come in one way, but if they chicken out and want to flee then the way back is blocked and they are forced into escaping via some other route which is often going to be lethal, or possibly lined with cage traps so I can put goblins in an arena to suffer some more :D The set-up here should hopefully allow for most of the goblins to fall into the longer route before some of the more eager ones start dying and causing the stragglers' morale to plummet, thus ensuring that more goblins die and I get more goodies to sell or melt down, rather than having early squads die while later squads all successfully leave the map because they've not gone far enough into my little house of !!fun!!. That's the theory, anyway, but whether it'll work in practice remains to be seen. I've got high hopes for it, though :D
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Werdna

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Re: How do you deal with enemy archers?
« Reply #32 on: March 21, 2012, 12:15:03 pm »

I'm in a tight pickle because 17 goblin crossbow arrived as a siege, except their leader on a giant toad jumped into a pond which froze and killed him... thus I have 16 goblin crossbowmen sitting on the edge of my map.  They're just camping on the edge... laughing at me.  I don't have enough dwarves or soldiers to form a dual shield frontline wall.  I have some kittens and bunnies to sacrifice, but there's no way to move the kittens closer without placing the lives of my dwarves at risk.  My current plan is building ballistas to shoot them yet this can take some time since they're evenly divided two per map column. 

Any Ideas??

Burrow your dwarves, if you haven't already, or do whatever it takes to keep them in the fort.  Pen the animals you want to keep.  Un-pen the animals you don't mind losing, preferably large ones that can absorb a lot of bolts.  Place a meeting zone on the goblins.  Disable the meeting zones you currently have.  Unbolt the doors, and animals should seek the goblin meeting zone.  Once you see enough animals heading to the zone, follow them with a melee squad and any marksdwarves you have.  The goblin archers should fixate on the animal targets since they see them first, and your melee will be on top of them before they can switch targets in time.  The larger the animals, the longer they'll fixate.
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ProvingGrounds was merely a setback.
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