Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Scoops Novel]

Yes, i know they're expendable, yes, i know their migrants, and yes, i've been save scumming, but i want to save this lot from the goblin ambush which keeps occurring upon their arrival, preferably without fucking over my military in the process. I've got a dwarven atom smasher set up for when siegers come to my gates, but protecting those without is proving to be difficult. Also, how many people should i have in my military? I'm facing twelves average goblins with somewhat trained troops, who are partially armoured in copper and wooden shields, with one artifact silver shield, my pride and joy, treebeards. Should i melt down the armour of all those who are not particularly expert and use it to give better protection to those who can actually swing a weapon, bearing in mind that i only have copper in sufficient quality and if i smelt it brass to work with (how good is brass? is it worth it?) or should i roll them out in mass? A way of luring the goblins into the atom smasher would be best, but i'm not sure how to do so, especially with the nice fleshy migrants right there.

[Leonidas]

You could dig out multiple entrance tunnels, each sealed with a drawbridge. I like to cover the eight compass points, and stay sealed up when I'm not expecting a caravan. When the migrants arrive, open the entrance tunnel that's closest to them. That way they only have to walk a short distance before getting underground. Then close the drawbridge behind the last one. It's not foolproof, but it'll lower your exposure.

[Scoops Novel]

can you do that when zoomed out from your immediate embark point?

[Sutremaine]

Brass is rather more valuable than its component metals, but it isn't weapon or armour-grade. You could make brass goblets and trade those for weapons and armour off the caravan though...

Considering you only have copper (unless the goblins are bringing bronze or iron, in which case you should steal that), you should use small squads and layer lots of leather into your uniforms. Copper is better than nothing in small amounts, but it's soft and heavy and a full suit of copper armour will visibly slow a dwarf without significant Armour User skill. Small squads result in quicker training because demonstrations equalise skill more quickly, resulting in more sparring, and it's sparring that levels combat skills most efficiently. Armour is nice as a backup, but at really high skill levels dwarves just stop getting hit by any attack they can see coming.

As for how many dwarves in total should be in the military... that's up to you. I generally use three-dwarf squads, which are small enough to train quickly but have a very high chance of two or more dwarves being able to respond to an order (large enemies can knock a dwarf over with ease, and if they get to focus on that dwarf then one way or another the dwarf isn't getting up until the enemy finds something else to focus on). Assuming your squad size is the minimum you'd send to do a job, you should have at least as many squads as there open entry points into your fortress.

[Malecus]

If you really want to save them, you could just add [SPEED:0] in the creature_standard file for dwarves, have the migrants rush in to safety at trans-sonic speeds, save the game, remove the speed boost, and continue playing.  It's a bit of a cheat, but it'll get them in safe and allow you to concentrate on killing the gobbos "properly".

Once killed, collect your goblinite rewards and keep anything iron or better (unless you have flux stone and fuel at your disposal, then convert it all to iron).  I've heard that a properly dwarf-guarded fortress should have a 20% military rate, but this seems to vary heavily on personal taste and predilection for traps.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Another solution:

Draft the least useful adult migrants. Have them attack the goblins. Lead the other migrants to safety.

[GhostDwemer]

It took me a while to get used to, but this video game is different from others. You will not always win. What you want to happen, won't. What you really don't want to happen, will. In most other video games, the story is pure adolescent power fantasy: you are the unbeatable, unstoppable hero. Bad things don't generally happen to you, and when they do, you can always, always do something about it.

This is not that game. This is more like... life. Sometimes, even when you make all the right choices, terrible things happen to you and everyone you care about dies and you lose. The end. Once you embrace this concept, only then does losing become fun. And sometimes, when all seems lost, and you are sure you are about to lose, the impossible happens. The one remaining dwarf is not killed, he does not go insane, the traders come and manage to kill the enemies, and finally, more migrants appear. The fort goes on!

When you savescum so that every situation turns out perfectly, this never happens. You have just turned this incredibly complex, adult video game back into a children's comic book hero video game. You are perfect, your fort is perfect, everyone is happy, and you think you are having fun. But until you let the bad things happen, and see that one impossible time when all seems lost, but it isn't, well, you do not know the meaning of fun.

That's okay though, I was doing the exact same sort of thing for a year before I figured out what "losing is fun" really meant. You see, "winning" is the same for everyone. It's the same damn story, over and over again, and it isn't specific to you. It is an utterly generic story. You already know this story. You know those poor migrants are supposed to make it to the fort. You've read this story before, seen it on TV, at the movies. It is every heroic fantasy imagined since the dawn of time. But losing is specific. You lose, in this game, for unique reasons, unique combinations of things. The loss is your story, and no one elses. And that is what makes it fun.

[VerdantSF]

You could dig out multiple entrance tunnels, each sealed with a drawbridge. I like to cover the eight compass points, and stay sealed up when I'm not expecting a caravan. When the migrants arrive, open the entrance tunnel that's closest to them. That way they only have to walk a short distance before getting underground. Then close the drawbridge behind the last one. It's not foolproof, but it'll lower your exposure.

Leonidas's method works!  Too late for your current migrant wave, but you'll be prepared for the next if you have some good miners.

[Scoops Novel]

Ty Leonidas and VerdantSF, and of course GreatWyrmGold, and good point Ghostdwemer. I'm not without loss, but i do see your point, and after all that is one of the main reasons why I'm playing this game. My challenge is to fuck myself over so royally there is nothing i can do, and you're right, you cant win everything. I'm counting my last and final attempt as a victory, with only 6 of the 18 migrants slain and none of my military dead. I decided to mine out more tetrahedirte and make full cop[per armour for everyone, but of course thanks to running out of charcoal i didn't manage this in time and only made some slightly better armoured. The migrants arrived, and after i dropped my drawbrigde and calld an alert in (vain) hope it would draw them in quickly, not long after, the goblins arrived. The first slain was the cat child Asmel Amoshtin, and by the time my military got to them a cavy sow and guineahead child had been slain, along with 6 of my migrants, who seemed to have provided ample distraction. Not, of course, the bloody vampire migrant who's just arrived, my second, who was out hunting. I've read up on my soldiers sentiments due to their surprising effectiveness, especially among one adequate axeman in particular named Lokum Enkoskell, or takenmetals, who killed 2 goblins and did most of the work on a bowman, amongst other recruits who performed spectacularly, and apparently they were pissed about long patrol duty. I can only speculate, but previous attempts where he'd been depressed about it ended up with him dead, so perhaps his anger saved him. The only heavily injured casualty was Besmar, my legendary stonecrafter and marksdwarf, and once a snow storm had begun and my bloody dwarfs still hadn't brought him inside i feared for his life. However, i turned back on hauling and one of them saw him and brought him in. All in all, a good day, and i have plans for this vampire and his brethren... .

[greycat]

Also, how many people should i have in my military? I'm facing twelves average goblins with somewhat trained troops, who are partially armoured in copper and wooden shields, with one artifact silver shield, my pride and joy, treebeards. Should i melt down the armour of all those who are not particularly expert and use it to give better protection to those who can actually swing a weapon [...]

You don't mention what weapons are in play here -- yours and theirs.  Are you facing goblins with swords, or with whips, or with bows, or what?  You say "swing a weapon", so I guess you are not using crossbows.

Your best military blend against melee goblins (other than whips/scourges) is going to be heavily crossbow-focused, with just a few melee dwarves for protection/mop-up.  If you're going melee vs. melee without months or years of training, then you're going to lose.

Your best military blend against melee goblins with whips/scourges is to run inside, close the gate, and shoot them all with crossbows from behind fortifications so that their overpowered weapons can't slice through your dwarves and their armor as if they were made of moist lint.  (Whips are that broken, yes.)