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[SyrusLD]

The background:
My 17-year old fortress has 3 seperate Goblin entities around it, sieges have arrived (and been slaughtered) very frequently for at least 12 years now. The year is 684, so the world is not very young anymore, but also not very old. I modified the world gen files to have more balanced population numbers, which means goblins now need to eat and have a littersize of 1 to 4. I sadly don't have the starting population (year 666, I ran another fortress from 666 to 667) anymore, but in 673 the numbers were 3442 dwarves, 42599 humans, 15147 elves, 33799 goblins and 3227 kobolds. Now, in the year 684 the population is at 3635 dwarves, 42873 humans, 14826 elves, 38822 goblins and 3796 kobolds. So, the (goblin) population has grown, even though they tried flooding my fortress in their blood time after time.

Now to my question:
The last siege that I had consisted to 50% of recruits, 40% trolls (after several troll-less sieges) and 10% soldiers with normal combat skills.
What happened? Did they run out of normal soldiers because I killed them all? I read somewhere that goblin sieges now don't spawn out of thin air anymore, but are taken from the actual population, which I find quite interesting.
I was hoping for sieges to get more powerful over time, not turn into waves of untrained peasants. Then again, who knows, maybe they are really, actually trying to drown me in their blood - or maybe it was just a way to make me feel safe before they bring out the big guys (mounts, hello? Anyone? No? Meh.). Not to mention, half of them ran away after the others got trapped and were barraged by bolts from my archery tower.
I felt like the sieges had become less threatening overall lately, with fleeing enemies becoming somewhat more common.
So...can you actually decimate a civilizations military enough to cause their sieges to turn into this?



Also, how come I got an elf siege at one time, even though I am not at war with them (yet*) - was it just a random raiding party?
(* If they weren't the only option for getting certain animals they'd already receive a very warm welcome to my fortress the next time they arrive.)


Really need to see what the next siege brings! Overall the scariest thing I had so far was a web-spewing hill titan which luckily got killed by the dwarven caravan that was just leaving my fortress - also the point at which I decided that I needed marksdwarves and a defense tower overlooking my trapped siege entrance. I was almost shockingly suprised as a bronze colossus turned out to not be trap-avoid - made that enemy way easier than expected. Still not sure what to do with him yet though. Also learned a thing or two about how not to tame a cave dragon lately...and that my minecart-based transport system was not designed with easily disrupted dwarves in mind ... several broken limbs and one dead dwarven child later I know that NEXT TIME I will be building this differently. But hey, it trains my doctors at least!

[vjmdhzgr]

I don't really know about the rest of that stuff, but the elves might have been bandits, or potentially elves kidnapped by goblins. What equipment did they have, have you still been getting caravans from them, what season was it in, and what message displayed when they arrived? If they had wood then they definitely weren't goblins, but I don't know if bandits would use wooden weapons. I'm pretty sure if the standard elven message of "course all friends of nature!" Or whatever popped up, then it was probably an elven civilization, and maybe your civilization went to war, but then very quickly ended it. If it wasn't on spring then it also wasn't an official elven attack. I'm not sure exactly how to differentiate between goblin elves and bandit elves unless elven bandits still only use wooden weapons, in which case that with any indication that it wasn't an elven civilization would mean bandits.

[SyrusLD]

It said the same as if goblins arrived: "A vile force of darkness..." - as far as I remember. The equipment was similar to that of goblins, more bows, but the rest was pretty much the same, their cloths were even made from the same materials. Elven caravans and diplomats still arrive normally, so I highly doubt they were from either of my two elven entities/civs. Can't remember what time of year it was sadly.
I'd have assumed that if they had been part of a goblin civ, they'd also have had goblins (or trolls) with them. The same happened in another fortress I had before that (not the same world) as well.

Overall it really seems like it was a part of a goblin civ. But why was it only elves? Maybe bandits use the same equip as goblins...

Besides...for loving nature so much, they sure were focussed on killing my war dogs. Every goblin siege I had before that just ignored them because they were out of sight over the main entrance that I always close off immediatly upon a siege (while keeping the death-trap side entrance open)...

[Airgeoff]

Definitely sounds like a goblin civ.  What probably happened is that the goblins conquered a bunch of elven sites and the siege was sent from one of those, hence being all elven.  Is rare but I've seen it happen and is a common thread that pops up.

[vjmdhzgr]

From the given information I can't distinguish between bandits and goblin elves. The only additional piece of information I can think of that might help is if elves have ever showed up with goblins before, and if the answer is no then I still don't know if it can be determined.

[Max™]

Copy your save, mode set arena and control your favorite dorf, go see how the situation looks. If you like what you did, return/retire at your fort and unretire it normally and keep going or go back to your original save if you don't like what you did.

[TheHossofMoss]

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Elves you're fighting are from a Goblin Civilization. Their tree homes or whatever must have been taken over by Goblin Invaders, who just assimilated them into their own civilization. I've even had dwarfs attack me from a Goblin Civ. It was kind of sad. I should of tried capturing her, and tried to undo the brain-washing that occurred when her civ was taken over. Would of been hilarious!

Also, does anybody know if Toady is going to fix the problem with sieges in the next update? I'm getting concerned, as sieges were really the only thing that has kept me going. "Always be ready, always be on the lookout!" was my motto.

[ldog]

If you're on a large world with lots of civilizations you could be at war with 1 or more elven civs and peaceful with 1 or more others.
I play on pocket worlds mostly these days but I remember being in that situation before.

[Robsoie]

Also, does anybody know if Toady is going to fix the problem with sieges in the next update? I'm getting concerned, as sieges were really the only thing that has kept me going. "Always be ready, always be on the lookout!" was my motto.

So far the only siege-related stuff i recently read from Toady was this :

In current version while megabeast/undead can still come, when playing Fortress mode goblin sieges (extremely) rarely happen and sometime not at all in dozen of years of fortress running. Will this be improved in the upcoming version ? or will all those multi-species mixing in fort will make goblin siege even less likely ?

There was one pathing error that has been fixed for the next version that should improve the frequencies in some cases (some mountain embarks).  We'll have to see where it goes from there.  The species mixing doesn't change anything.

I hope he will get a closer look to the siege situation, because in the middle of my forts 1st year, they are usually self-running by then, and by the end of the 1st year my fort defenses/walls are already placed and from there, all that's left to do is wait for a siege, with moody dwarves interrupting those wait from time to time while you're digging deeper to fetch some ore to forge better armor/weapon.

With the df2014 siege situation, that wait can be really long, in some forts i had none in years, and to add to the injury those new gobs sieges are small and usually filled with weak gobs (i don't think i saw many gob weaponmasters, while i saw them often in past versions) while at the time your 1st siege happen your military is very likely to be near-legendary , armored at least with copper and can then defeat those gobs siege without any real problems.
While further sieges will stay weak in quality (while having more numbers) but your dwarves will be by then legendary and equipped with much better quality armor and weapon, letting gobs no chances at all.

When i think about it, when i played in adventure mode i nearly never see any goblin warrior in goblin site, nearly every goblin is instead some war/thief/snatch-unrelated job.

I wonder if this lack of military gobs in adventure mode could explain why gobs so rarely send armies and when such armies come, they're laughable, as if there's a problem with the normal jobs/military jobs assignement ratio for the goblin populations, those puny "armies" could in fact be all they actually have while several thousands of the other gobs are glassmaker/herbalists/other useless job by gobs standards.

[ImagoDeo]

I was almost shockingly suprised as a bronze colossus turned out to not be trap-avoid - made that enemy way easier than expected. Still not sure what to do with him yet though.

Archery training. I had a bronze colossus in one fort that acted as an archery target for nigh on thirty years. He had dents everywhere but was otherwise totally ok with all the hits.

[SyrusLD]

So far every new siege has been quite normal, no wave of recruits. Then again, with 3 seperate entities you never know which is actually attacking at the moment. So maybe one ran out of soldiers - I'll never know.

About the elves - so far I had not a single non-goblin/troll among the usual goblin sieges. The elves themselves didn't have any non-elves with them either. I'd also guess it was either a site captured by goblins but only inhabited by elves who send them or it really was a bandit raid - but do they also have the "vile force ..." message when they arrive? Haven't had any non-standard goblin raid lately. Just goblins with trolls.

I was almost shockingly suprised as a bronze colossus turned out to not be trap-avoid - made that enemy way easier than expected. Still not sure what to do with him yet though.

Archery training. I had a bronze colossus in one fort that acted as an archery target for nigh on thirty years. He had dents everywhere but was otherwise totally ok with all the hits.

Yeah, I was thinking that, too. Could come in useful now that I made a second archer squad, the first is pretty much already completly legendary after all those sieges - all but two newer marksdwarves, who are close to legendary. Currently I just put his cage in the dining room. Sadly it is only a finely-crafted +wooden cage+.
Man, I wish I could make lead bolts... no idea where to put all that god damn lead I have been mining to get silver...


And about sieges taking too long to arrive ... playing in a medium sized world with three seperate goblin entities (in reach) and the minimum siege requirement of 50 dwarves (migrant cap at 42, overall cap at 135; pretty much reached 50 through births within rather short time, reached 135 dwarves by now) I had the first siege arrive shortly after the dwarf #50 had been born. Then again, I was obviously playing for more than a year by then. (Also got three dwarf, human and elf civs, though only two of the latter in reach.)
But if you want crazy - try embarking near a tower. Had two necromancers with a few dozen undead show up within three months there. What FUN that was.