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[greycat]

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=787#c26957

So, I got into an unwinnable fight with an invincible strand of hair.  As interesting as that bug is on its own, and as fervently as I hope it gets fixed, I still learned a few surprising things during that battle.  I'll try to summarize them here, before I forget them.

1) Animal hair has parts.  Not visible until it has been reanimated as an undead hair-thing, but they're apparently there.  You can chop (or in my case, punch) an animated hair-thing into smaller and smaller pieces.  This is a very bad thing because of the bug.

2) Not all civilians are cowards.  My (admittedly green and untrained) melee dwarves all ran screaming like bitches.  But about 5 civilians charged into the fray and did not let up.  One of those civilians was a child.  These civilians were relentless.  They never, ever stopped attacking it.  They had bad thoughts about being attacked by the undead, but they were utterly single-minded.  Which leads to the next lesson....

3) An enraged dwarf will continue fighting until he literally dies of dehydration.  At least, I assume it was rage driving these civilians to continue attacking this completely harmless hair-thing.  They ignored their own hunger, thirst, tiredness, and unhappiness.  At any time, they could have walked calmly back into the fortress and got a drink.  Once they were far enough down the stairwell, they would have lost line of sight, but they didn't do this.

4) This may not be a general rule, but at least in this particular example, all reactions were strictly "fight or flight".  Every dwarf either ran away screaming in terror, or charged in for a battle to the death.  Nobody -- not one single dwarf -- calmly assessed the situation, realized that 5 guys were already beating on this thing, and decided "Eh, they got it covered.  I'm'a go back to the workshop now."  Even more to the point, none of the dwarves who were fleeing were capable of rational decision-making.  This is nothing new, of course, but you'd think that just once in a while they would manage to flee into the fortress (more to the point, down the stairs), instead of away across the surface Z-level, and then up into the trees, and ultimately, crashing back down to the ground.

As a feature request, I wish Toady would make frightened dwarves try to go down instead of up.  If their current tree-climbing instinct were replaced with a burrow-diving instinct, it would make a whole lot more sense, and it would keep them alive longer.

[Iamblichos]

May want to specify "go down stairs", because just general downness will have them crawling down the disposal chute/cliff face/cave wall/candy spire and getting trapped, or falling to their dooms.

[FallenAngel]

I think a more logical reaction to that would be to run to your bedroom/the dormitory/the dining room/the food stockpile, unless the thing that frightened them is blocking the path.

[Uthric]

I think a more logical reaction to that would be to run to your bedroom/the dormitory/the dining room/the food stockpile, unless the thing that frightened them is blocking the path.

Would be better if the check was to run to the last known location of a military dwarf, THEN if that failed to one of the above places.

But meh. dwarfs.

[klefenz]

Not all civilians are cowards.  My (admittedly green and untrained) melee dwarves all ran screaming like bitches.  But about 5 civilians charged into the fray and did not let up.  One of those civilians was a child.  These civilians were relentless.  They never, ever stopped attacking it.  They had bad thoughts about being attacked by the undead, but they were utterly single-minded.

You recruited the wrong people.

[Deboche]

I've had a lot more success with the military when instead of choosing dwarves based on their uselessness in other jobs and being male, I just form 2 or 3 squads with everyone available(usually when the fortress is just begining and I haven't put up a wall and traps) and have them bumrush the enemy.

Some of them will be brave enough to fight, a few will die, most will stay back and panic but out of a squad of 5 enemies, only one or two won't panic.

[greycat]

You recruited the wrong people.

Yup.  If my fortress hadn't been completely stun-locked by this unbeatable enemy, I would have switched everyone around.  The civilians were leveling very fast in combat skills, and they had proven their courage.  But alas....