Print

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

[gbrngfol]

Okay double post but I've successfully made steel rabbits. Strangely it doesn't seem to make them any tougher.

Add [NATURAL_SKILL:BITE:-] and change the dash to at least six (Proficient Biter) or more. Natural Skill: Dodging will also make them harder to hit.

No need I've now figured out the problem. I forgot the :INORGANIC: tag before the steel one.

[Urist McDruid]

5-10z level drop. 50+ war dogs in said pit. Drop any gobos or kobolds who try to convert you to their religion.

[AfroScotsDwarf]

I've never really found war dogs usefull, only as a food/craft source, except for early game when theres hardly dorfs and you need a meat shield. Ive had some good days with dogs, sure. Had one with 5 goblin kills . On an earlier version, its was possible to set exotics from the lazy newb pack, so you were able to order GCS and crocs from the dwarf caravans. That combination + narrow entrance= un breakable defence, especially if you get the numbers up. Its a shame you can breed the spiders normally.

[PainRack]

I always assign wardogs to mechanics, miners, hunters, woodworkers and any other dorf whose job scope might take them far away from the fort........ For obvious reasons.... This was prompted by a scenario where my dorf successfully escaped a goblin ambush when two dogs prompted it and got massacred delaying an attack.


Cats work just as well, but you can't control their movement as well.

[enizer]

my method of getting "useful" animals:

dig a staircase down piercing all three caverns(include a few stops where you dig sideways a few spaces for trap space)
then cover all enterances to this staircase with cage traps, on all levels
eventually something will try to travel between cave levels, via your "shortcut", and get caught

you will end up with some stupid stuff like mole rats and giant frogs, but with some luck a spider will come along, rarely even a rutherer might show up

also watch the elf traders, and give the elves great deals on everything, this will increase the size of their caravans, and cause them to bring more animals
watch the elf trader then for animals like dingo's and badgers, especially giant versions
agressive animals will attack things on their own, even if they cant be trained

i had a giant dingo take out a forgotten beast before the military got to it for example

[locustgate]

Dogs have 3 uses,
1. Food/Leather
2. Sniffers
3. Pets

I never bother with training war dogs I always go for war bears or lions, although the bears are better but I prefer the giant cats.


EDIT: Enizer, 4 cheap trainer training.

[sprawl15]

Having an exploding population of war dogs is also useful for training up your animal trainer.  I've gotten one from 5 on embark to legendary almost entirely through training war dogs and replacements.  Before I could spare the labor to build walls around the map, I made 2x15 pastures full of war dogs ringing my entrance.  They couldn't kill much, but they'd scare it off, which was fine by me.

[Necrisha]

Every so often one of my war packs would take down a thief or snatcher before they got away. I like nice pastures of them at map edges for ambush warnings. It works best if at least one per pasture is trained as a hunting dog. They also work well to distract were beasts. Early fort they become pretty useful especially if you have a giant wolverine problem/opportunity since they occasionally drive valuable animals/training fodder into cage traps and provide early detection with aggro support for any dorfs caught unawares. after you get a better war animal breeding pair you can cull the breeders and butcher them off as a food/leather source. Also it's hilarious to watch them go after an unconscious alligator, and sometimes the named ones will terrify members of a gobbo siege for no good reason.

[Jimmy]

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Animal_trainer#Trainable_war.2Fhunting_animals

This list gives the types of creatures that can be trained as war animals without modding. Sorting them by size is recommended to get the best idea of which is most effective. Dogs are fairly low on the list, which isn't surprising given their small relative size. Bears are around the center, making them mid-range in terms of effectiveness. The main attraction for bears is the common availability from elven traders, the lack of grazer tags and the quick 1 year maturation. Plus, bear cavalry.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Further down we have the felines, notably the tiger. They are unfortunately rarer than the grizzly bear unless your elves happen to live in a tropical forest, but are roughly 10% larger than grizzlies, meaning they have a slight advantage. Their acquisition is the most difficult part, but if you are lucky enough to score a breeding pair they are the pinnacle of feline fortress protection. The tiger cavalry is a rare but imposing force.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The giant tiger is of course a bigger, better version of the aforementioned tiger, so of the small chance you land yourself with a pair of these, your worries are over. This would of course be extremely rare, as their biomes are difficult to guarantee traders will bring goods from.

Finally, the Jabberer is the ultimate war animal. Bigger than anything outside of megabeast proportions and a hundered times larger than a grizzly, this egg-laying cavern dweller is available on every map. With a little preparation in your second and third caverns, you should be ready to try your hand at capturing this beast and making it part of your fortress defense plans. Why defend your fortress with some tree-hugging merchant pet when you can unleash a true cavern-dwelling underground horror upon your enemies? Are you an elf or a dwarf?

[Rutilant]

The eggs hatch in about a year's time, and they lay clutches about as often (I think).  So if you took none of the eggs in 3 years, you'd have 22-62 adults, and 40-120 more hatchlings, and then all the eggs that are about to be laid.

So yeah, it's fairly cheaty.

Is it cheaty if the game allows it?

In a sandbox game cheaty is just something that makes stuff too easy.

This is a terrible argument anyway even if it wasn't a sandbox - many games have a debug console that allows me to edit things in the game or cheat codes I could enter if I wanted to.

Goldeneye 007 on the Nintendo 64 had an unlockable option to give your enemies huge heads.  Still cheating.

[Rutilant]

I'm now settling for a ludicrous excess of traps and deadly pits, but they lack teeth

Fill the traps with spiked balls and they'll fill with teeth quite quickly.

hah!


edit: oh noes i doubled

[Asra]

Also someone in the thread mentioned "Little DF goblins", but Goblins in the RAW are as big as elves or humans.

[Astrid]

Also someone in the thread mentioned "Little DF goblins", but Goblins in the RAW are as big as elves or humans.

It's the Kobolds who are the littles, not the goblins.

I think this gets confused quite often.

After all they are two different races.