Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tinker Thinker]

So I start an embark missing a few things, like dogs and cats. No big deal, I'll just survive without.

I'm not even finished building my farm when I realize that 1) my pack animals are Yaks 2) they need to eat, all of a sudden.

So I set them out to pasture, and before they're even in the pasture a skeletal mountain goat starts harassing. I set the woodcutter to military to go take them down (since he was out there pasturing the aforementioned Yaks). . . and he goes and puts his axe away before coming back out to take on the goat barehanded, who has since given up and wandered off, so I cancel him as a military commander. He then goes off to fetch equipment, only to be interrupted constantly by skeletal hoary marmots. I have no idea what he was trying to get, but he was bound and determined to bounce off of those marmots until he got it ( it can't have been the axe since he had a clear run back into the fort). He also won't drop the military commander designation.

he's also getting thirsty, and I've already lost such enthusiasm for the venture that rather than help him out or watch him die, I just abandon the fort and call it a day.

I can't stand dealing with the military most of the time.

Is there some technique to streamlining the whole process?

[ledgekindred]

First what's happening is that military weapons and profession tools conflict with each other.  i.e. if you draft a miner or a wood chopper, they will drop the pick/axe and try to go find whatever weapon you have assigned them.  Then when they go off duty they will do the opposite - drop their military weapon and try to find their axe/pick again.  It's generally a bad idea to draft dwarves who use a pick or otherwise when they aren't soldiering because they'll do exactly that - shuffle back and forth between their weapon and their tool.

If you don't like playing with military, get a smithing operation up and running and start churning out traps.  For the first few years, until I actually have a military worth a darn, I'll build walls that channel any invaders/irritating wildlife through a hallway full of cage traps, replaced/interspersed with weapon traps once I get a metal industry up and running.

That should give your fort time enough to get a decent military working.  And in the meanwhile you might catch something interesting.  If you get any invaders, disarm them and drop them from three our four levels up into your barracks and let your military use them as target practice.

[Graebeard]

Cage traps are definitely a good way of sidestepping the labor of putting a good militia together, but it's only a temporary fix.

The military is the most arcane and obtuse part of this ridiculously opaque and difficult game.  But, like the game itself, there are great rewards for figuring out the military system.

I've had fewer problems if I wait to start a military until migrants begin to arrive.  It's a lot easier to manage things when you don't have to worry about dwarfs switching between civvy and military duties.  Also, you can cherry pick any dwarfs with already developed military skills and beneficial traits.  The lye-makers are handy, too, since they're so disposable.

You may want to mess around with danger rooms.  I think it's a bit of an exploit, but the normal training process takes so long to develop skill that it may be helpful to use while you're getting a feel for things.

Good luck.

[Sutremaine]

Woodcutters are not best dwarves for a temporary military, as the Woodcutting skill doesn't translate into combat ability.

Mining dwarves can be drafted and sent to kill things efficiently, but you need a uniform with nothing but a pick first. Then you put the dwarf in a squad with the pick uniform, and wait for them to put down and stockpile their civilian pick and then collect a military pick. Have extra picks handy, otherwise you might get dwarves standing around wondering where all the weapons are (I've only heard about this problem, but it seems like individual picks are getting flagged for civilian or military use and staying that way or something. I don't know) Then you can send them off to kill stuff. They'll swap picks once you deactivate them, and during this time they're hauling the pick and not wielding it. Station them somewhere safe before deactivating them.

Unfortunately, there's no longer any way of simply drafting woodcutters and miners and sending them at the enemy. You're better off arming the unarmed civilians, as they don't have any conflicting uniforms. Good quality weapons will help, as they get a bonus to accuracy. Spears might be the best bet, as they're good against organics with iron or steel being good against armour too. Anything inorganic is probably going to squash a glorified civilian no matter what they're armed with.