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[Jreengus]

Ok I have some ideas for military to make it more effective and to allow for some eleberate defense plans:

1.An option to rally all standing down troops this is however a priority command which overides all other jobs, thus leaving this on could potentially starve your dwarves to death. This would be for if you need all your soldiers and cant afford to wait for them to finnsh eating/sleeping etc.

2.An option to mobilise all dwarves, you could pre-set a point for them to gather or if you dont they will stay where they are, this is effectively for when you need a brave last stand because your soldiers are overwhelmed. I thought that maybe dwarves would grab anything lying around to use a weapon (smaller items could be thrown at the enemy) so you could end up with a goblin taking an oak barrel to the head for example.

3. The ability to set multiple rally points for individual troops then the ability to order all troops to their rally points. thus you may have say a marksdwarf patrolling in a fortified room and 2 axedwarfs stationed in the corrider adjacent but if you need them to retreat you would activate this command and they would run back with the axedwarves say taking up postion on the opposite side of a bridge with the marksdwarf behind them. you would also be-able to set a commonual rally point which dwarves with no other rally point head to, thus rather than telling each individual axe dwarf to go to the bridge you would set it as a communal one and they would both go there (usefull when you have larger numbers of dwarves). You could of course set multiple points for each dwarf which would correspond with those for other dwarves so if you set your your marksdwarf 2 and your axedwarf 2 activating rally point one would cause them both to head to rally point one whilst activating 2 would cause them to run to rally point 2, possibly an option to name these so you know what each one does, e.g: Pits rally point, and Seige rally point.
Edit: To be clear dwarves would prioritise heading to rally points over starting a new fight so upon activating it your dwarves would finnish off the enemy they are on then turn and run, thus traps would probably be needed to slow enemy persuit

This would all come in handy with my fourth suggestion:
Dwarfort assault.
This would be some service which allows you to upload you fort online as defender and wait for someone to join your game as an attacker, the attacker is given an army based on your forts wealth which they must then use to try to destroy your fort, of course if you lose it wont affect your fort when you play it normally offline

So, comments? Suggestions? Complaints at the many grammatical errors I probably made?

[ November 03, 2007: Message edited by: thatguyyaknow ]

[Dame de la Licorne]

I definitely agree with the first two suggestions, it would make defense plans easier to make.  But I'm not sure I understand what you mean in your third suggestion?  Do you mean set several different rally points for each dwarf/group and label them by priority?

[Jreengus]

the multiple rally points is so you can plan against different attacks situations or re-form in the middle fo an attack, so rally point 1 might position your dwarfs a little way in to your fortress (having been forced back from their stations outside) then rally point 2 might be further back. or you could have 2 rally points which you can switch between one where your marksdwarves are place forward so they can fire at enemies further away nut then you switch to the second one and they would fall back while your mellee dwarves move forward to engage the enemy in hand to hand. the idea is that with multiple poitns you could switch between formations and positions very easily

[Dame de la Licorne]

Ah, good.  Thus strategy comes in.  That would be a wonderful addition.  

[Jreengus]

yep more strategy is baisically the point of first 3 ideas

[Wahnsinniger]

More strategy is always good, but it'd currently be a useless addition. Until the unreliability of military dwarves is fixed (how can you fight a war when half of your military decides to go back home and sleep or eat).

On that note, there should be at least an additional option for squads: Either "Sleep at post" or "Sleep in beds", so that at least when you try to keep military units somewhere, they won't runaway to sleep.

[Jenever]

Aw, no need to make them sleep in the dirt. What about a 'guard post' designation, in which at least one military dwarf (or maybe more appropriately, fortress guards since they do jack all else) stands guard until relieved by one of his comrades. They won't sleep, eat, or drown themselves while on guard, only leaving after generating an alert to pursue foes. This could cause unhappiness unless they are relieved often, so making sure you have 3 or so guards per guard post depending on the distance from beds and stockpiles would be sensible.

[Armok]

Good ideas Jenever, technically it might be simpler to implement as a activity zone, but thats a detail. Also, I think it might be best to also specify the weapon, so you don't get hammerdwarfs by the fortifications and crossbows in the hallway just behind the dead corner.

[Jenever]

When I said that I actually pictured it as a room based around an item of furniture (a brazier for example, since logically guards would use light to spot thieves, but there might be something more appropriate), so the player can easily spot guard rooms and have a visible doodad they can select to change options. Apart from weapon classes as you mentioned it would be nice to assign specific dwarves, so you could do things like building them private quarters and dining nearby for efficiency.