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[Skullsploder]

So I have a fort wih no underground presence. It is only partially constructed so when the neighbourhood necromancer came a calling my only option was to hole up in the small keep I'd stocked with food for just such an emergency. One year later and, sick of waiting, I unveiled a small trap corridor to aid my super elite four dwarf military in taking down the thirty-odd zombies.

Here's where the odd behaviour starts. When I first open the gates, my one soldier runs towards the enemy the moment they're within normal vision range - 20 tiles - despite there being 3 separate solid wooden walls between them.

Luckily the nearby undead (7 total) were rekilled and I got Urist McOmniscient the Angry back inside safely. A few more openings go as planned, no hiccups, and eventually the west side of the river is clean, but half the original undead are stuck on the other side. My keep is on the east side, and the gate opens on the west side with no eastern access (I kept the east gate sealed). When I opened the trap corridor this time, in the hopes that the remaining undead would meander round through the southern map edge where the water level is low because of drainage, Berserk McXrayeyes runs out onto the bridge, jumps off north without being attacked by anything or gaining line of sight on any hostile (I checked him for suicidal stress, but he was fine), and walks along the bottom with dabbling swimming skills to the eastern bank, where he gets out, walks around the keep, hugging the north wall, and charges at the nearest zombie.

He was the only one who displayed this sort of behaviour. He moved fast and direct as if he'd seen an enemy the whole time. Is anyone else experiencing dwarves with this sort of invader-like aggression?

tl; dr Note he was not on station orders, just training on the inner end of the trap corridor, and he pathed through 7/7 water with no swinming skill to get to enemies he couldn't see until he last moment.

[Thisfox]

The only thing I find unusual is that only one of your dorfs decided to magically find and attack the enemy. Usually I have three or four do this. Consecutively (because who would want safety in numbers? Right?) maybe he has more reason than the other dorfs to attack the enemy. A sibling killed by them, or perhaps they're getting the way of him being able to eat his favourite food, or perhaps he really doesn't like the colour of their toenails....

[Skullsploder]

I know it's perfectly normal for military dwarves to zerk out and charge enemies, but what's unusual here is, like you said, that he found them even though they weren't in line of sight and he had no kill orders, and pathed through deep water with no swimming skill to get to them.

[AbanShakehandles]

Does his personality profile give any clues?

[NeatHedgehog]

I know it's perfectly normal for military dwarves to zerk out and charge enemies, but what's unusual here is, like you said, that he found them even though they weren't in line of sight and he had no kill orders, and pathed through deep water with no swimming skill to get to them.

I had a wrestler / hammerdwarf do that the other day. An undead elf came in and was thrashing various dwarves when Urist McHulkRage ran up and helped rekill it. The rest of his squad went back to sparring. He charged out of the gates, across the entire embark map, scaling mountains, and throttling all the undead he could find along the way. Completely ignored any orders I tried to give him to the contrary. Although once I realized he was mopping the floor with all the zombies, I just let him do his own thing.

[Button]

Remember that smell is implemented now, and undead are one of the things that dwarves are able to smell. Does detecting enemies through walls only happen with undead, or are you having it happen with non-smellies too?

[Skullsploder]

Well the guy died horribly at the hands of over a dozen undead, and I haven't got any non-undead sieges to test on. I did figure out what caused the swimming though: aggro dwarves will climb to get to the enemy (my former commander did, and he died), and McOverConfident must've tried to traverse the riverside wall of the keep to get to the east bank, but failed his roll to cling onto the wall. That smell thing though is interesting. I'll load up an older save tomorrow and see if be had a "keen sense of smell" or something like that.

[AbanShakehandles]

Smells?!

Oh my Armok, my fortress must ^%*&ing reek!