Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: A few military and hauling questions.  (Read 372 times)

Archereon

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
A few military and hauling questions.
« on: December 09, 2011, 09:01:32 am »

Hello everyone, I just weathered my first goblin ambush (which looked more like a siege, there was two pages of melee goblins), mainly through trapping the goblins between a bridge and magma (I has a volcano =) ), then letting my marksdwarves take care of them. Prior to doing that, I sent in swordsdwarves, who were dabbling and got promptly slaughtered...How can I train my swordsdwarves without getting them slaughtered? I trained my marksdwarves by letting them shoot at pitted goblin thieves, but I'm not sure that's an option here, since even an unarmored and unarmed goblin could pose a threat to untrained swordsdwarves, even if they're wearing full adamantine armor and wielding high quality adamantine shortswords (long story, well not really, a dwarf fell into the volcano, and was kind enough to report there was adamantine at the bottom, which I dug to, and started mining, then my weaponsmith got a strange mood and became legendary).

Right?

Or could I just toss them at captured and stripped goblins with training swords and the armor? Would that work?

Of course, to do that, I'll have to get the goblin cages (and a titan cage) over to my animal stockpile (since the titan doesn't have dust or any ranged attack, he'll be my marksdwarves training target), which is by a nice pit, but unfortunately, my dwarves absolutely refuse to haul anything.



Logged
I want to tell you they were bad men, cephalo.  I want to tell you that with a better overseer the Fortress never would've gotten so bad someone would get offed in a pointless fisticuffs.
But the sad truth charlie?
It was inevitable.

Blue_Dwarf

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: A few military and hauling questions.
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2011, 09:07:39 am »

You can train them by killing wild animals. Use wooden weapons to maximize the experience.

As for hauling, make sure the stockpile has no hidden stones in it, they prevent dwarves from hauling things.
Logged
Crafting Statistics 42.06Farming Statistics

Blue Dwarf has been happy lately. He did some !!science!! recently. He admired a fine forum post lately. He was enraged by a forum troll recently. He was upset by the delayed release of the new version of Dwarf Fortress lately. He took joy in planning a noble's death recently.

Archereon

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: A few military and hauling questions.
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2011, 09:10:56 am »

The stockpile definitely has no stones in it. Good idea with the animals.
Logged
I want to tell you they were bad men, cephalo.  I want to tell you that with a better overseer the Fortress never would've gotten so bad someone would get offed in a pointless fisticuffs.
But the sad truth charlie?
It was inevitable.

Garath

  • Bay Watcher
  • Helping to deforest the world
    • View Profile
Re: A few military and hauling questions.
« Reply #3 on: December 09, 2011, 09:37:36 am »

you can use a couple of cage to capture animals and enemies and make an arena
Logged
Quote from: Urist Imiknorris
Jam a door with its corpse and let all the goblins in. Hey, nobody said it had to be a weapon against your enemies.
Quote from: Frogwarrior
And then everyone melted.

Archereon

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: A few military and hauling questions.
« Reply #4 on: December 09, 2011, 09:48:09 am »

Yeah, for some reason my dwarves won't touch the cages, which is kind of bad, considering I have a titan in one (yeah, I have no idea how that happened)
Logged
I want to tell you they were bad men, cephalo.  I want to tell you that with a better overseer the Fortress never would've gotten so bad someone would get offed in a pointless fisticuffs.
But the sad truth charlie?
It was inevitable.

Garath

  • Bay Watcher
  • Helping to deforest the world
    • View Profile
Re: A few military and hauling questions.
« Reply #5 on: December 09, 2011, 10:56:13 am »

an actual titan or a giant or other megabeast? there is a difference
Logged
Quote from: Urist Imiknorris
Jam a door with its corpse and let all the goblins in. Hey, nobody said it had to be a weapon against your enemies.
Quote from: Frogwarrior
And then everyone melted.

Stormfeather

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: A few military and hauling questions.
« Reply #6 on: December 09, 2011, 11:02:03 am »

Make sure the cages aren't marked as forbidden, if you were already playing around with them, stripping the prisoners.

Alternately the usual culprits for stockpiles seem to be, let's see, stockpile already filled (which you've covered), either the source or end stockpiles inaccessible for some reason, or the end stockpile is marked to accept the wrong stuff. Oh, or hauling of (whatever) accidentally got turned off in the orders screen.
Logged

Mushroo

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: A few military and hauling questions.
« Reply #7 on: December 09, 2011, 11:14:11 am »

Put your swordsdwarfs in squads of 2 or 3 with one experienced swordsdwarf in each squad, preferably with the Teacher skill. Set them to train year round and give them a nice barracks and food/drink to keep them happy. They should train to Legendary in around 2 years.
Logged