Print

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

[PatrikLundell]

I was attacked at the first autumn by a necro siege that was announced by a message I've never seen before consisting of human experiment creatures. After actually succeeding in bringing all the dorfs underground and locking the doors I received the message that the trade depot had been toppled, the the invaders were apparently building destroyers. Emergency wall building, as the doors would soon be brought down, and the were.
The invaders then left after just a couple of weeks after toppling and killing things, as well as bringing a giant bark scorpion back to life (must have been a hidden necro there).
It's now a year later, i.e. second autumn, and the buggers come in a 56 strong force. I've got some meager cage trap defenses that caught a hidden necro, but then I see that the monsters just run straight over the traps! Good luck I didn't actually managed to finish the emergency trap entrance last year...
The end result, though, is that there is nothing I can do against this early threat except turtling (and digging invaders is approaching fast...). My 17 untrained, unarmed, and unarmored dorfs would stand no chance at all (two seasons without migrants [not counting winter], for some reason possibly related to me just having been saddled with a monarch, despite trying to embark as a healthy civ), and two of them are already nervous wrecks, in one case because of being rained on by human blood.

I think (some of) the necros might have become a bit too strong in Fortress Mode (as well as in world gen)... It's approaching getting struck by HFS in year 1 if you happen to embark near a tower filled with these monsters rather than "this will be risky, as some necros can show up early".

[Shonai_Dweller]

Close the gate.
You're warned that there's a tower nearby when you embark. Build accordingly. Don't take them on until you're sure you can. Lure a bunch of them onto your traps and take their stuff every year. It's the dwarven way, you know.

[PatrikLundell]

You didn't read what I wrote, did you?

I did build accordingly. I did close the gate and they just smashed it. They didn't follow the (old) rules, and I had no heads up that the rules had been changed... I'm reasonably confident about my ability to lure enemies into my traps and take their stuff, provided they're not trap avoid building destroyers. I also know what undead ogres wandering in into the evil biome can do, and what has to be done to keep them out.

I did lure a bunch of them onto my traps, and they just waked over them, which is one of the issues (and not much in the way of stuff to take either as a result. I did manage to smash 7 with drawbridge lever flipping, but the one whose corpse was flung aside didn't carry anything, and thus presumably was an "animal" experiment). The other one is that you'd be really hard pressed to manage to build a drawbridge before the first summer unless you focus narrowly on achieving that, at the expense of other development, and a third one is that you don't know anything except there being a tower nearby at embark unless you examine the tower(s) with Legends info. The only "good" thing about these invaders is that they can actually be killed by drawbridges (or at least some of them can. I don't think I've gotten any flesh amalgamation ones so far).

I did actually get a necro and one experiment that apparently wasn't trap immune.

I know of ways of dealing with this kind of threat, but it's a fair number of years into the fortress' future before those resources are available in sufficient numbers.

[Shonai_Dweller]

If you embark with a Tower in range, you build expecting zombies in the first couple of seasons, so build a drawbridge and a lever. That's one tree and 3 rocks, available right away unless you have an aquifer too. Choosing to embark near an oncoming zombie apocalypse is entirely the player's choice.

Trap avoid is annoying. New experiments are scary.

[Fleeting Frames]

Hm, I think your question is "how do I deal with it without bridges/sealing off/with digging invaders on", right?

Military-only defences...Old necro poking attacks could be met by o7 that went in with that plan. Not so well with these new ones.

However, people have reported very significant skill gain by raiding. Speculating: So maybe embarking with military and raiding nearby sites to quickly get combat skills up to Legendary and setting up checkerboard patterns to break line of sight on revenants would let one defend against first summer necro siege with perhaps some losses (from paralysis-skill revenancy, but there's might be timing issues with providing gear for everyone quickly enough as well - would need more than 1 job/day in addition to all other starting stuff).

Another option would be to try to get tougher soldiers - stealing a necro book and getting your own blood would help counter most anti-biological syndromes....There's also unlocking angels then retiring them at the fort, but given month and half spent on switching not really doable for mass force - maybe heading straight to HFS and using flying adventurer/expedition leader to get one to join your fort would work...Four mode switches would then grant one before first summer on a shallow embark, but elephant seal men revenants might be easier and more consistent option.


Of course your regular dead civs can't raid, so outta luck there. Hm, for those maybe enough copper minecart cyclotrons/bumpers could handle it (channeling on last soil layer for faster digging) until Toady makes invaders stop going in bloody hallways and dig around.

[PatrikLundell]

No firstly it was a heads up that this was a thing. My question, if any, was how to deal with these new bugger that shows up with completely unexpected abilities in the current version without being completely reduced to sit it out (in every siege, as you'd get no gear from those who leave again).

I'm not playing dead civs, as those are FUBARed as far as I'm concerned. I've managed to make some headway, though, so after two seasons, as it turns into the third year, I've managed to set up a mine cart repeater hooked up to a pair of menacing spike traps in front of the (replacement) doors on one entrance. Those have taken out a number of the invaders, but there's still a lot to go, and this plan shows another problem: some of the invaders are "only" trap evaders and not building destroyers, so they won't stand still nicely over the spikes to be made to leak their fluids out, which means I'll probably have to lock them in with some bridge lever timing and have to hope they move back and forth so the gradually get killed by the spikes.
I must have been extremely lucky, though, as I usually have great problems producing enough bags to get any for sand collection, as they all tend to be taken for seed storage.

Strangely, all that time indoors seems to have help cure two dorfs that were heading into lethal stress (with a fair bit of help from my side with special efforts). One of them did really badly when being rained on by human blood...

[Moeteru]

Have you tried using minecarts directly? Build a loop of impulse ramps, push a metal minecart onto it, and then invite the invaders to walk along the tracks.
You could also try a drowning trap, but I'm not sure if they need air to breathe. I know for a fact that magma works, but that would require building a pump stack or the like.

[PatrikLundell]

Have you tried using minecarts directly? Build a loop of impulse ramps, push a metal minecart onto it, and then invite the invaders to walk along the tracks.
You could also try a drowning trap, but I'm not sure if they need air to breathe. I know for a fact that magma works, but that would require building a pump stack or the like.

The problem with these strategies is that they are mid to late fortress ones, not starting ones. For some reason I've got 17 dorfs (going down to 15 soon, due to stress) because I just don't get any migrants (every migrant wave opportunity says I don't attract any migrants, except the last season, which didn't say anything at all). I also don't have any metal on the map, so I couldn't build any metal items before harvesting some goblinite (but a stone filled wooden cart probably works).
Drowning probably works on some of the experiments, although I wouldn't rule out some being amphibian. The undead definitely don't need to breathe.
My menacing spikes seem to do the job well enough, though, but I'm very short on cage traps (for the gobbos).

And in 3-4 years human petitioners will provide a work force and provide throwaway invaders for enemy sites (at least in 0.44.12 I managed to get approximately 1 soldier back per conquest, losing 1 as the administrator and the other 8 to local life or something).

[Moeteru]

A basic impulse-ramp powered minecart grinder should actually be very easy to build. In fact, if you prioritise it, it should be possible within the first season after embarking.
You need a miner and stone detailer to dig out and carve the tracks, a door and 3 mechanisms for switching it on and off, and of course a minecart. If you embark with 1 galena and 1 bituminous coal you can set up a minimal metal industry and forge yourself a lead minecart quickly without relying on the presence of ores.

I agree it's not something a newbie could be expected to set up quickly, but it's definitely possible for an experienced player. It also relies on exploiting flaws in minecart physics. Doing it using powered rollers would be a mid-to-late game project.
I'm not sure if it would reliably kill large experiments either. I might test that in my next fort.

[George_Chickens]

What did the message say? It sounds pretty cool.

[PatrikLundell]

What did the message say? It sounds pretty cool.

Don't quite remember, but it was related to night creatures. I'll try to remember to update the post the next time I get it.

Edit: "Forms twisted from their nature. Legion of the night. What hope remains?"