Print

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

[Xen0n]

I always put a few cages traps in front of my killing force, be that dwarven or mechanical.  You never know when a few live subjects will come in handy...

Spoiler: Relevant (click to show/hide)

Source

But yes, I'm considering adding in some 'new friends' to liven things up, so far it seems Fortress Defense mod is the most developed?   

Another possibility for avoiding boredom is to focus on the resource management aspect during the 'calm before the storm' of the first year or two.  For example, I employ a number of tweaks to the raws (farming yields far less, weapons+armor take more metal, etc.) and self-imposed restriction (no bridges, only selling crafts to the caravans, no cage traps, start in an embark with not so much metal available).  This causes me to be very careful in what I do in that 1~2 years, as I need to find a way to prepare enough equipment and set up training for my militia.  You can't just have everything on default autopilot the, you need to adjust and make it optimal.  I suppose just a variation of the "race against time" for the killzone Psieye mentioned earlier.

[peri609667]

I always put a few cages traps in front of my killing force, be that dwarven or mechanical.  You never know when a few live subjects will come in handy...

Absolutely, disarmed goblins make great punching bags (or slashing/stabbing/bashing bags as the case might be). An important thing to remember if you build cage traps at the front is to make sure you can lock your workers away from them when needed. Once something gets caught your haulers will want to bring it back inside, regardless of any death machines between them and their goal, and if there's a siege going on things are going to get messy...

[Girlinhat]

On the other hand, if the leader gets caged and the squad loiters, then the haulers can encourage the other ambush members to come on closer.

[Xen0n]

I haven't had too many problems with reloading cage traps, then again usually all my civvies are down below in the civilian alert burrow until topside is safe again.  Still get the odd soldier passing out on top of a serrated disc trap.  Then things get messy.

[Girlinhat]

My perfectly agile soldiers with short swords pretty much are serrated disks...

[King DZA]

So much interesting advice...

Though i'm feeling slightly inadequate realizing that everyone else on the forum seems to have perfected the art of turning their fortresses into elaborate, siege obliterating, doom machines, while i still struggle with the complex mechanics of building a well.

Many thanks nonetheless.

[Xen0n]

So much interesting advice...

Though i'm feeling slightly inadequate realizing that everyone else on the forum seems to have perfected the art of turning their fortresses into elaborate, siege obliterating, doom machines, while i still struggle with the complex mechanics of building a well.

Many thanks nonetheless.

Don't worry, the span from

"How do I shot well?"
to
"How can I make the clowns harder?"

may be shorter than you think.  Just keep on experimenting.

[Tevish Szat]

I (used to? more forts required) usually generate wealth quickly enough that I'm having defense worries before I'm really nice and dug in, but then I've been playing on decently low-scarcity worlds.  Ambushes, at least, come before I can get my Big Damn Wall around the refuse pile/outer yard to control approach angles, or a highly trained military to fight back.  the result: nerve-wracking walled in period where chain sieges arrive before I'm ready to open up and deal with them.  I've been getting better at the "opening" though, learning to dig for magma in year one to reduce reliance on trees in year 3 or so, for instance, meaning I've actually seen the stretch you refer to in a fortress started lately.

With that, and any other boring stretch between insane micromanage-requiring megaprojects and combat, I pretty much post on forums/browse internet and write.