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Author Topic: Early sieges  (Read 548 times)

Derakon

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Early sieges
« on: April 04, 2008, 10:40:00 pm »

I had a nice, long post written up, but the gist of it is that in the first winter, I got a siege of 16 swordsgoblins*, which I completely and utterly routed, without using traps, lava falls, bridges and moats, or any of that namby-pamby combat-avoidant silliness. Five goblins got killed at the entrance, and another seven bit it as they fled. One got hit so hard by an axe that he flew a good fifteen squares through the air, smack into another goblin. Tode Etospsmunstu, your name may be nigh-unpronounceable, but you're awesome nonetheless.

This was all done by an effective force of two dwarves kitted out in iron armor (except for the body armor, which I hadn't started making yet), armed with axes that they barely knew how to use (hold it by the other end, Urist...). I say effective because I had another four dwarves with crossbows on a balcony above the fort entrance, watching the fight; I think they fired all of two bolts between them.

* If you remove the BABYSNATCHER flag from the goblin race definition, any new world you make will get every babysnatcher replaced by a siege.

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Cavalcadeofcats

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Re: Early sieges
« Reply #1 on: April 04, 2008, 10:47:00 pm »

Excellent! Knew about the BABYSNATCHER trick, never tried it.

In my latest fort (which I haven't played for a while - FPS had dropped to 6-8), all but one siege was stopped at the outer wall by my plethora of traps. The one which didn't... well, body parts were strewn across the workshops for weeks. So I've gotta admire your success, here.

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Derakon

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Re: Early sieges
« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2008, 10:58:00 pm »

Yeah, my first fort that I tried the babysnatcher mod with, I used traps for defense. The first siege was driven off by a series of stonefall traps, the second used the weapons gotten from the first to make one uber weapon trap, and it just escalated from there. My rules for the current fort are:

* No mechanized defenses. This means no traps, no drawbridges, and no forbidden doors.
* The entrance to the fort must remain open at all times.

We'll see how well I fare when the goblins come back with a bigger force!

Incidentally, this region's quite nice. It's at the confluence of four biomes; there's magma, sand, tons of trees, lots of ore, and a nice climate. About all that's missing that I care about is an infinite supply of water, and for all I know there's an underground river in the mountain. The seed's 1984542004 (medium map) and the location's one left and one up from the starting location, if you want to check it out.

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Derakon

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Re: Early sieges
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2008, 01:32:00 pm »

Okay, yeah, that didn't end up working so well. Sure, the first siege was repelled easily enough. But then they returned in early spring, with three squads, of hammergoblins, axegoblins, and bowgoblins. I might have been able to repel three melee squads - might. But those bowgoblins are just vicious.

Granted, there were some flaws in my base design. "Entrance is always open" does not require "entrance is wide open"; I should have had some walls and blind corners from which to rain my own bolts down on the enemy. So I'm going to give it another shot, with a different fort. But this one has fallen to the enemy.

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Proteus

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Re: Early sieges
« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2008, 01:47:00 pm »

Drawbridges connected to levers definietly help for entrances that have to be wide open (i.e. entrances to your trade depot)  ;)
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Lyrax

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Re: Early sieges
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2008, 01:52:00 pm »

Reclaim it!  That always gives you sufficient military might!
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Derakon

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Re: Early sieges
« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2008, 02:57:00 pm »

quote:
Originally posted by Proteus:
<STRONG>Drawbridges connected to levers definietly help for entrances that have to be wide open (i.e. entrances to your trade depot)   ;)</STRONG>
Yeah, part of the point of this challenge was to have no way to make my dwarves impossible to reach. I'm allowed to kill as many as I like before they reach melee range, so long as I'm killing them with marksdwarves.

I've found a new spot, not quite so nice as the last one, but it has a brook, magma, and sandstone. No sign of flux, sadly, but iron's pretty dang good anyway, and there should be some in the sandstone.

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