Print

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

[darkflagrance]

Ah, this brings back memories of one of my older forts, where I had just lost most of my elite marksquad and one of my best veterans to an elite orc sniper. Just then, a horde of treants, werewolves, and orcs showed up on the very top of the mountain to my west, and to the north and south of my fortress, located in the middle of the desert. I dispatched armies to hold off the units to the north and south, but I missed the army on the mountain because of the difference in z-levels. While observing the battles, I saw the enemy horde charging down the hill. Since all my squads were out, I had no choice but to send out the two champions I had left guarding the entrance. One of them, a female swordsmaster, reached the front of the enemy lines first and went into a martial trance. Limbs and blood started flying into the air. One z-level above the battle, I saw the head of an enemy elite hammerorc rise up for a second before returning to earth. The battlefield for tiles around was strewn with carnage and armor that had been knocked there by the force of my champion's swings. Near the end of the battle, she was so exhausted that she was about to perish under the weight of the survivors, but then my other champion, the oldest and most experienced of my warriors and one of the starting seven, arrived and saved her.

I've also found that locking the gates and then reopening them breaks enemy pathfinding, allowing you to send your troops out to pick off individual squads while a back-up watches the main gate just in case. I used this strategy to break a massive siege of giants, their mounts, and their associated auxiliary animals, with half my army of twenty surviving.

I think these kinds of situations and battles where all you can do is send out your best knights and hope for the best against overwhelming enemy hordes is why I play Dwarf Fortress. Either way, you're guaranteed Fun...

[EveryZig]

Right now?  53 and 1.2mil, but the warwolf/blendec sieges started around 50 and ~500k.

Also, I would LOVE for a "stay your ass in THIS square, dammit!" order.  The best you can do though, is to make hatches around the area you want to defend, and pressure plates set to dwarf-weight, activated by citizens.  This means that whenever a dwarf tries to chase someone out of the area, the pressure plat trips the hatch, removing his path and locking him in the square.  This is, however, very lame at best...

I also want a "move to this square, and I mean THIS square, not a nearby one". If your fortifications are too close to a place where your enemies sometimes go through, they sometimes try to go to the wrond side of the fortifications because it's 'close enough'.

My current fort (with only tigermen/stranglers/goblins) is at 958000 wealth and 90 pop. Plenty of civs were listed as 'neighboring' when I embarked.

[Hyndis]

You can fix that by elevating your fortifications and then have the walkway behind them only on one side, and only 1 tile wide. Have a patrol route going around the fortification and your dwarves will patrol the entire perimeter. Its easy and highly effective to make a bunker like this. Allow melee dwarves to train on duty in the barracks in the middle of the bunker and they will automatically attack anything that survives the crossbows and enters the bunkers. Your crossbows will even fire into the melee to assist the melee dwarves.

[veok]

Speaking of ammo, they seem to have real trouble using it...  I had an ammo stockpile, but they preferred to stand around blankly instead.  Since I place them atop my wall, with the door closed, they cannot run out and bash enemies, and instead just stand around.  I seem to have discovered that it's related to their orders.  The "fetch ammo" job seems to be just that, a job.  While on duty, they refuse to do any jobs like hauling or eating or fetching ammo.  So only off-duty archers will refill their quivers.  Having a schedule that allows 5 on the wall and 5 idle, seems to, well, put 1 on the wall firing, 4 standing around, and 5 others sleeping/eating/loitering, but this is better than before where no one would get ammo...

Befixed next patch!