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[Niyazov]

After generating a fort with 4 soldiers raiding nonstop for a year, I have a huge list of raiding-related questions I couldn't find answers for on the Wiki or forums. I'm not expecting anyone to answer all of these or even more than one but these are all big mysteries to me.

Questions about sites and groups

• Will raiding affect siege or ambush frequency or size from the raided civilization?
• Is there any negative repercussions for raiding nomadic groups not belonging to a civilization (i.e. bandits living in caves, camps or tombs) from fortress mode? E.g. can I safely raid human bandits and still get a Human caravan?
• Will nomadic groups send sieges against me if I antagonize them?
• If I abandon a dwarf site whose cavern includes a subterranean animal people entity, does the subterranean animal people entity become the site occupant? Will raiding the site retrieve animal people artifacts like blowguns and and result in war status between me and the subterranean animal people tribe? Will they send subterranean animal people ambushes or sieges?
• Is there any way to raid sewers or wilderness locations?
• If I live near multiple civs of the same race, can I raid sites of one and still get caravans from the friendly group? I.e. can I raid one group of elves but continue to trade with another group?
• If I raid an occupied site that contains an active intelligent undead or syndrome causing interaction, do I need to worry about these interactions happening to my raiders? In particular I am concerned about werebeast bites, mummy curses, reanimation (corpse or limb), venomous bites, and evil weather effects.
• If I raze a site containing a temple to a diety that one of my raiders worships, is that modeled as a site desecration and will the raider be cursed by the diety?
• Do I get some kind of notification if a holding gets attacked by an army or rampaging creature? Does this even happen?
• If I conquer a site, is it my holding permanently or can I lose it?
• Am I limited to requesting dwarves from holdings, or can any intelligent historical figure be requested? Or any historical figure at all? What about dwarf ghosts or intelligent undead / night creatures?
• If I conquer a location are all sites at that location conquered? E.g. if I conquer a town do I also conquer the temple and sewers beneath the town? Can I request that historical figure outcasts living beneath a conquered site join my fortress?
• If I conquer a site with titled historical figure dwarves can I request that they join my fortress? E.g. if a dwarf somehow became an elf princess or human priest, and I conquer the site they reside at, can I request them and will they retain their title?
• Is there any limit to how many holdings or tributaries I can have? Do I need to have a certain level of nobility at my site to conquer a site with a higher level of nobility present? E.g. If I am a barony and attack another dwarven civ's site that is controlled by a Duke, will anything prevent me from conquering the site?
• What factors affect whether I conquer a site? It seems like some sites I attempted to conquer many times without success or "finding anything" while another site was conquered with no combat.
• What factors affect whether a site will surrender if I demand surrender? If I demand surrender and fail will my soldiers just go home or will they attack? If so, do my soldier benefit from tactics use if I demand surrender and it instead proceeds to combat?
  

Questions about raiders

• Is eating/drinking/sleeping modeled on raids? It seems like my raiders take food and drink with them but do not consume it, but I could be wrong. Having 4 of my starting 7 raiding nonstop seemed to reduce my fortress's alcohol consumption considerably compared to non-raiding forts.
• Are thoughts generated during a raid? None of my raiders seemed to have thoughts related to the combat they engaged in during the raid, or thoughts related to eating, drinking or sleeping while not on the map.
• Does only the squad leader's tactician and ambusher skill affect raid outcomes, or will other squad members' skills in these categories have an impact?
• Do non-war-trained pets go on raids? How about hunting animals? Will they participate in combat, and is the effectiveness different from war-trained animals? (Some large grazers are very effective in combat despite not having war tags - e.g. if I find a dwarf that likes water buffaloes can I have him adopt 20 water buffaloes and then send them all on a raid?) Aquatic pets if they can path to the map edge (I've never heard of a dwarf adopting a tame fish but I don't see why it wouldn't be mechanically possible)? How about vermin pets, which are worn like clothing but do have bodies and attacks defined in raws?
• Does the presence of war animals or pets (with no ambusher skill) affect success of stealth raids? What about hunting animals, which I believe get ambusher skills, or animals that have natural ambusher ability? It seemed like raids involving war dogs were much more likely to turn into combat than raids that do not, but it could be coincidence. War dogs also seemed much more effective on raids than in "real" combat.
• Will intelligent or thievery-capable animals retrieve plunder during raids? Particularly thinking of gremlins and mandrills.
• If a squad goes on a raid and one member does not / cannot leave the map (e.g. the raider is resting or imprisoned). will the raid ever complete? How about assigned war animals? What if a squad member dies while leaving the map?
• Can raiders die from non-combat reasons (old age, starvation, dehydration) while on a raid?
• Will entering/leaving via the caverns instead of aboveground affect travel time? I.e. is the squad actually modeled as traveling belowground, exiting via a world site that penetrates the caverns, and then traveling overland to their destination, potentially shortening/increasing travel distance?
• Is there a way to guarantee that my raiders always enter and leave via the caverns, or to specify the location that they path to on return? I would like to minimize the amount of time raiders spend traveling to and from the map edge.
• If I conquer a site using a squad that contains mercenaries, can I request their return? If so, will they return with mercenary or citizen status?
• If I conquer a nearby site can I use my messenger to request that all my soldiers come back if there are other site occupants?
• Does my messenger's movement speed in fortress mode affect their travel speed?
• Can my messenger die while offsite?

Questions about plunder and tribute

• Can I get bags, bins or barrels of stuff as plunder or tribute, or will I always get single items? In 25+ raids I never retrieved a filled container or certain other object types (wood, stone, blocks, food including seeds, ammunition, siege equipment components, mechanisms, drinks)
• Can I still recover plunder/livestock if my raiders are detected and engage in combat?
• Does the number of different plunder types I specify affect probability of retrieving plunder at all? E.g. if I only specify livestock, are my odds of retrieving livestock better than if I have all 5 plunder types specified?
• Does the number of raiders affect the number of livestock recovered?
• Are cave creatures treated as livestock for the purposes of raiding occupied caves (other than GCS and helmet snakes at kobold camps, which are definitely livestock)? I repeatedly raided an occupied cave which I knew contained giant rats, giant moles and other cave critters, but my raiders never fought or recovered any. If a civ uses vermin creatures as livestock (e.g. purring maggots), are these retrievable?
• Sometimes raid reports indicate that treasure was taken but there is no spoils report and I don't see any treasure returned, what's going on there?
• How does tribute work? Is it manually delivered or does my messenger have to go collect it?
• Does holding size affect tribute I receive? Can I actually meet any of my site's needs with tribute or will it just be a small number of random low quality items (similar to what I retrieve from raids)?
• Is there any limit to how long I receive tribute or how many sites I am receiving tribute from?
• Does anything about a site affect the material quality or abundance of plunder?
• Does repeatedly raiding a site affect the abundance of plunder, or can I keep raiding the same hamlet forever and expect to get roughly the same amount over time?
• What's the deal with rescued prisoners that become citizens? Can I draft them into the military or appoint them to positions? Will they marry or bring their families? Are prisoners that can't speak (e.g. kobolds) bugged or do kobolds just not get taken prisoner?
• If my raiders engage in combat with a historical figure that is holding an artifact and kill the holder, what happens to the artifact? Is it "at the site", taken as plunder, become held by another figure at the site, or disappear?
• If my raider is holding an artifact and dies in combat, what happens to the artifact? How about nonartifact objects that they have "grown attached to"? What happens if an object (artifact or not) is attached to or held by a limb that is severed during a raid - is it carried back, left at the site, or lost?
• If I send my raiders after an artifact whose location is unknown, and it turns out to be at a friendly site, will they attack that site and start a war?

[PatrikLundell]

1. Probably, if they don't belong to a civ: many do. I'm not sure you can attack non civ sites unless you're looking for an artifact rumored to be there.
2. Only civs are organized enough to send sieges.
3. Subterranean animal people are always hostile (in theory, they often do nothing while still marked as hostile). They're probably incapable of occupying a fortress, and definitely shouldn't be capable of sending raids.
4. Only looking for artifacts, and I don't know if that's possible.
5. I think so, but haven't paid attention.
6. No. The only reason they bring food/drink is because the squad is defined to carry it (which is the default setting).
7. Unlikely. Raid battles work differently from fortress ones, and is much more abstract.
11. It's unlikely any direct thieving skills are modeled.
12. If you decrease the population of the enemy they will have fewer bodies to send in sieges send from decimated sites, and it may decrease the site pop enough that they aren't eligible army staging points (which may increase the chance of the main site sending a larger siege). Apart from inciting a war with previously non hostile parties it probably doesn't factor in the target selection logic.
15. It seems each raider only carries off one thing, so it might be the same with animals.
16. Cave critters aren't livestock but wild (with the Kobolds taming some to make them livestock). I doubt vermin can be stolen, but that's a guess.
17. I believe I've seen it, but don't quite remember. It might be artifacts.
18. Civs are separate, so yes, at least currently.
20. No. My experience is that I typically can get one back, and in lucky cases two. One has to remain to take the role of the site leader (which DF reports happens), so in theory all but one, but that doesn't match what I've seen in practice.
22. I assume someone else can conquer it. It should be possible for an uprising to overthrow the new government, but I believe that functionality is currently disabled.
23. I assume you can request any intelligent citizens/residents (I don't use mercs). I believe I've recovered naturalized human bards sent as soldiers. It doesn't make sense to request animals. If ghosts can be requested it should be a bug, as should night creatures, as they're not members of your civ. I assume you can get vampires back, though.
25. Probably not in most cases, since the titles are tied to official functions (like the soldier you lose as local administrator on conquest).
27/28. You can definitely steal everything they have available for theft, in which case you have to wait for them to produce new junk (a season or so).
30. Squads don't leave until all members have been collected, but wait off map while Urist McSluggard eats/sleeps/prays/reads... Death ought to result in the removal of that member from the squad, and thus allow it to proceed.
31. Not hunger/thirst. If you were to send them away such that they're gone over the new year I'd expect them to drop dead on arrival if they're dying of old age, just like visitors do.
32. No. It would be messy if some left via (different) caverns and some above ground...
33. As far as I understand they can't enter via caverns (never seen it or heard of it). You can get them to leave via caverns if you make sure it's the shortest path, and you can make them enter the map at a specific point(s) by blocking off the edges everywhere else (typically using bridges).
34. It's unlikely any of that is modeled currently.
35. Probably not.