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[stillrabbit730]

Hello all, I would like your collective opinion.
During an tundra fort embark, no trees, deep soil.

During the rush to get everything underground, The iron anvil got left outside, big problem.

I had the sense to build walls around the fort opening, and have a door installed on both the fort entrance and trade depo entrance (made of stone)

I also had to sense to embark with a proficient axedwarf with a bronze battleaxe and copper shield. naturally this would be my line of defense until a proper military could be trained up. This could have been my blunder as I believe the game sends sieges only after you create a military.

Then it happened, I got a zombie siege only a few months after embark. it was only 8 zombies and one necromancer. My axedwarf distracted the necomancer but not before getting injured and had to be hospitalized.

So I recruited the miners in a last ditch effort to slay the zombies and they promtly got slayed. I was able to have another dwarf take up the mantle of miner and the fortress does have enough underground supplies to sustains itself, and has locked and forbidden doors, we also have an underground cavern and I have struck a lava pool. I have access to to water and lava (and meat through the cavern)

I have 10 dwarves.
1 axe dwarf.
10 zombies all with armor and weapons
no access to anvil or to make weapons

How do I win?

[GPeter]

Try using an animal, or anything you capture from the caverns, as bait to lure the zombies away from your gate and then quickly build a wall around the entrance, that should give you time to reclaim the anvil and forge yourself armor and weapons.




















Or just use a cave-in trap...

[Immortal-D]

There is absolutely no shame in going full turtle-mode, especially with a challenging embark like yours. As long as you have a single Pickaxe, you can survive. I recommend you wait it out; focus on farming and infrastructure, construct a bunker in the cavern layer to better secure your logs and food. The zombies will leave eventually.

[stillrabbit730]

Immortal-D:
That is my current strategy and it is working nicely, Since i breached the cavern cave moss has grown throughout the fortress, making me able to pasture my Unbelievably Lucky embark animal on both a male and female yak, that have produced offspring. So milk and cheese is avalible as well as wool for clothes etc. So i have supplies, I just want to reclaim the surface world. I was hoping a caravan would pass by and the gaurds would deal with the zombies, or the zombies would win and i get free loot.

GPeter:
That is genius, I will seriously consider this strategy.

[GPeter]

GPeter:
That is genius, I will seriously consider this strategy.

I would reccommend using one of the offspring if you can't capture anything in the cavern. Dig a tunnel all the way to a spot "close" to the zombies, dig a stairway up, and Pen/Pasture the animal there, then seal off the tunnel, eventually the zombies will chase off the poor little Yak. Bonus points if you draw the zombies into the tunnel and trap them there for later archery training!, I would reccomend bones or wooden bolts tough, as these will not do any damage to the armor they're wearing, and thus, allowing your marksdwarves to train infinitely.

[PatrikLundell]

Necros have no regard for treaties whatsoever, and so occasionally show up at the beginning of summer regardless of your training levels. They're easy to deal with though: Build a door ASAP and dig out a facility with underground farming and workshops. Install the door, and if the undead show up, just get everyone you can inside, lock the door, and wait it out.
Now, if you don't have an aquifer in the way, you can dig down to the caverns to release spores so grazers you managed to get indoor can survive. Caverns mean wood, although they also mean dangerous critters. Get some wood and block the cavern entrance with an airlock (two raising bridges with space in between). Once you've got some wood you can make cage traps to protect the cavern entrance, as well as cage traps to install in a tunnel you dig. Given the small number of undead, I'd start with the tunnel, install the traps, breach the surface, and wait for the undead to file in. Be prepared to cancellation spam about lack of cages, though...

You can also dig a tunnel, install a raising drawbridge in it, breach the surface, and wait for the undead to path into the "fortress", trying to close the entry as soon as the first one is through. Your newbies don't have that much of a chance against undead that are stronger, don't tire, and don't have vital organs, though, unless you can gang up on them one at a time.

You don't need an anvil to make weapons, though: "rock" swords are made from obsidian plus a wooden handle, and you can get obsidian from an obsidian farm.

Waiting for a caravan won't work, because they, unlike visitors, have the sense to keep away while you're under siege. Rabble such as monster layers might show up to have their body parts spread all over the surface, though (In my current game the undead showed up in the spring after embark and slaughtered about a dozen questers/monster slayers, with the last straggler bagging 3 or 4 before it finally was done in by a military visitor).

Also note that sieges last one season or one year, after which they rush for the edge (except, probably, campers).

[Staalo]

Zombies can't destroy buildings or pick locks, so just a long winding corridor with doors on both ends is enough to lure in and trap the entire horde.

Failing that, you can resort to desperate methods like designating an outdoor tavern on top of the horde. Visitors will then very slowly whittle the invasion force down to more manageable size.

[stillrabbit730]

All great suggestions, I think I have a plan, Will post again With update.

[Sanctume]

I like using "hatch from above" that can't be destroyed from below passage. 

Code: [Select]

##### #=walls
#h_h# h = down stairs with hatch,  _=floor
_u#u_ u = up stairs
#####

[stillrabbit730]

So at the end of the day I had a rope and baby yak all set up in an underground passage to lure the zombies in to a door trap. Then, I looked and the zombies had left...

Moral of the story children: Turtle your way to victory, zombies aint shit.

[Fleeting Frames]

You can kill that many first summer zombies with embark military, as long as you have weapons that can put them down. I think you could have probably handled them with 2 steel axedwarfs sparring from day 2 and a dog for pincushion, as long as you killed the necro first. Zombies are unskilled, so they generally kill my dwarves through ponds or when my dwarves have just training weapons, though they sometimes land lucky strikes with mace or the like (embarked with six military but no steel; most of them learned that wood and drowning don't work against the inferi).

Can't get those when locked in, though, so I'd have suggested designating coins stockpile on anvil and digging a ramp underneath (though trapping zombies is also good idea).

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I also had to sense to embark with a proficient axedwarf with a bronze battleaxe and copper shield. naturally this would be my line of defense until a proper military could be trained up. This could have been my blunder as I believe the game sends sieges only after you create a military.

Nope. The game doesn't have a sense of fairness. It is a brutally realistic simulation. It will not hold back if you stay intentionally vulnerable.

[《monty》]

I also had to sense to embark with a proficient axedwarf with a bronze battleaxe and copper shield. naturally this would be my line of defense until a proper military could be trained up. This could have been my blunder as I believe the game sends sieges only after you create a military.

Nope. The game doesn't have a sense of fairness. It is a brutally realistic simulation. It will not hold back if you stay intentionally vulnerable.

As it happens my most recent game got hit with a necromancer siege within the first year, and my military consisted of a single copper axe in a skillless dwarf's hand. A twisting hallway of stone-fall traps was enough to pulverize the ~24 zombies and their foolhardy master.

The simulation can be as forgiving as it is brutal though - I've had a lone necromancer (apprentice without his own horde I guess) wander in and get smacked around by a fisherman before as well.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I also had to sense to embark with a proficient axedwarf with a bronze battleaxe and copper shield. naturally this would be my line of defense until a proper military could be trained up. This could have been my blunder as I believe the game sends sieges only after you create a military.

Nope. The game doesn't have a sense of fairness. It is a brutally realistic simulation. It will not hold back if you stay intentionally vulnerable.

As it happens my most recent game got hit with a necromancer siege within the first year, and my military consisted of a single copper axe in a skillless dwarf's hand. A twisting hallway of stone-fall traps was enough to pulverize the ~24 zombies and their foolhardy master.

The simulation can be as forgiving as it is brutal though - I've had a lone necromancer (apprentice without his own horde I guess) wander in and get smacked around by a fisherman before as well.

I may have been unclear. The game's not unusually difficult - I agree that invaders can be pushovers at times. It's just that it doesn't scale the difficulty much. The only limiter for normal sieges is population size, and necromancers ignore even that.

The lone necromancer isn't as harmless as they seem. If you had an outside corpse pile, they could have reanimated that and assaulted your fortress with a newly-minted horde.

[thefinn]

tbh I miss the old zombies - they were something to be feared!

Hands crawling around trying to strangle you - 10/10