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[Melting Sky]

For some reason my current fortress is under constant goblin siege. At this point I am getting a minimum of one large siege per season, often more, which was amusing for the first few years but its making it rather difficult to get any of my planned outdoor construction projects done since I generally barely even get cleaned up from the previous siege before the next begins. From what I have read, the sieges are in part triggered by wealth along with some other variables I cannot change such as proximity to the goblins.

Does this mean I could delay the next siege merely by shutting down my workshops and mining out as little as possible while attempting to get a project finished? I don't want to shut down everything and get half way through a project only to get caught with my pants down.

[neblime]

no, it's the amount of wealth you already have sitting around, not how much you're producing.  If you don't mind being a bit exploit-y you can always wall/moat off the embark except for 1 spot where you can just post your legendary military dwarves.

[Melting Sky]

I guess there isn't any point in laying off on the production then. I think I would probably lose as many or more masons walling off the map than I would just going ahead building the project I had in mind so I'll probably just build a bolt hole under the construction site and use a draw bridge to seal it whenever a siege begins.

[puke]

You never have to clean up after magma.  Or bridge-atomizers.  Or cave-ins.

Actually, I guess you have to mine out cave-ins, and then do some digging to re-arm them.  But the others hold.

My favorite is the long drop.  all the bodies and items end up in one place, you can decide to clean them up or not.  if you do clean them up, you can do so with dedicated haulers in a borough.

[neblime]

well if you have a specific construction site in mind you can setup a route all the way around it and have your soldiers patrol it, that way hopefully the goblins will focus on them and not the civilians when they show up, getting everyone to run inside may prove unreliable given the awareness of your typical dwarf.

[Melting Sky]

You never have to clean up after magma.  Or bridge-atomizers.  Or cave-ins.

Actually, I guess you have to mine out cave-ins, and then do some digging to re-arm them.  But the others hold.

My favorite is the long drop.  all the bodies and items end up in one place, you can decide to clean them up or not.  if you do clean them up, you can do so with dedicated haulers in a borough.

Thanks for the suggestion. Although I rationalized earlier that it would likely get more of my workers killed than my current project, the real reason I don't want to do the circum-embark moat is that after the initial handful of workers were sacrificed while digging out the trench it would be game breakingly effective. It's just a bit too exploity for my tastes. It's for this same reason I don't use danger rooms or atom smashers on my enemies unless they are already dead. If I ever decide to undertake building a true wonder of dwarven architecture or monumental !science! project, the world moat is likely the solution I would go for since at that point fighting enemies would be nothing more than a nuisance rather than a desired challenge.

I wish enemy AI and siege tactics were a little higher up on Toady's list of priorities. As it is now, I always have to balance efficacy vs feeling guilty over exploiting the flaws in their pathing and behavior algorithms. I look forward to the day when intelligent foes can jump, climb, dig and avoid obvious traps and threats.

It really is silly when you get some goblin blindly charging strait into a hall of death where he moments earlier saw a dozen of his buddies explode in a hail whirring blades or when you take down some civilization destroying eldrich abomination with nothing more than a rickety cage trap made of sticks. I imagine that complex and varied enemy AI would be a monumental and time consuming project for Toady so maybe just adding something simple like incorporeal or teleporting enemies to the game would be a good short term way to shake things up. Can you imagine how much fun a forgotten beat that can phase through stone would be? I wonder how hard that would be to mod into the game.

well if you have a specific construction site in mind you can setup a route all the way around it and have your soldiers patrol it, that way hopefully the goblins will focus on them and not the civilians when they show up, getting everyone to run inside may prove unreliable given the awareness of your typical dwarf.

That's a good idea. I've been using swarms of war dogs stationed near the edges of the map as an early warning system to buy enough time for my dwarves to run for the hills but soldiers would be much more effective particularly with an archer tower overlooking the site.

[neblime]

I imagine that complex and varied enemy AI would be a monumental and time consuming project for Toady

can anything toady does be described otherwise?
From my interpretation of the consolidated development page some day people will be smarter in all areas including warfare, but sieges are target for a specific overhaul in the current dev list (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html)

[MDFification]

I recommend not harvesting the goblinite and focusing on building a simple palisade/digging a trench and removing the ramps in it around your construction site. It can be done a lot more quickly than you'd expect.
Another good idea would be to create an archery tower near your construction site and making sure you always have a few marksdwarves training in it. That way if an ambush manages to get into the site you won't instantly loose everyone because the military took too long to respond.

[Philii]

For Me.
My prop cap 70
I have 77 dwarfs.
47 in legendary soldiers and they are all-time training.(no cheat skills)..30 noble+worker+child dwarfs.
Everything I done in outdoor is by guard with at least 10 soldiers.(all-time guard until finish.)
I send only 10 soldiers against 30 goblins and few tolls.
All-time win.

[Necrisha]

You could always turn invaders off for a year or two to make significant progress. that's through the init file and some consider it cheating.

[CaptainArchmage]

The best way to create a break in sieges is to switch off invasions. If you want to make this less exploit-y you can create a manual siege or ambush counter, and then switch off invasions for a few game months to a year. You need to re-start dwarf fortress after changing the init setting.

[KingBacon]

Man, elves only invade in the spring. I started a new game on an island with only dorfs and elves. Just gonna say, war when you want it.

[MDFification]

Actually, is it possible for you to post the embark, or copy your save, abandon and upload it to DFFD? This sounds like a pretty hilarious map to play if you're getting sieged that often.

[Melting Sky]

Actually, is it possible for you to post the embark, or copy your save, abandon and upload it to DFFD? This sounds like a pretty hilarious map to play if you're getting sieged that often.

I've never uploaded anything to DFFD. How would I go about doing so? I think I even have a back up copy of this world from before the embark.

The best way to play it would probably be with a fresh embark since I've killed off all the legendary figures in that Goblin society but they had some unusual assets in those early sieges. I remember one of their generals was a human and they showed up riding cave dragons repeatedly along with jabbers, cave crocodiles and some other less impressive critters like giant rats and toads. There have been a few decent werebeasts and a dragon as well but there is no undead, just very persistent goblins. Just recently they seem to have chilled a bit. I've managed to get a caravan in and out without any attack at all but I think that's only because I installed a new dragon based defense system I want to test out so naturally now that I actually want them to attack there are just kobold thieves.