Print

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

[UnexpectedSalad]

Whooooops. I got ambushed by 7 goblins, most of them where wrestlers with leather armor, my hammerdwarf had bronze and a steel warhammer and some decent combat skills so I wanted to test how powerful he was.

I pressed the kill button, picked the option to make a rectangle around the goblins. He zipped on out, two got caught in some cages.

He crushed the goblins. But then he just started killing everything, chasing around my animals and then killing my dwarfs.

I think I'm clearly missing something very obvious I did... so, what did I do lol?

He wasn't insane, when I looked at what he was doing by pressing u it either said "Cannot follow order" or  "-Insert training thing blah blah-"

What does it mean when a military dwarf has the "Cannot follow order" thing near their name?

Blah, feel like I'm ruining my fortresses before I even get started lol.

[Monkeyfacedprickleback]

Press z to check his description.
THe only time I can think off when something like that happens is when you get a loyalty cascade.
Make sure he isn't an enemy of your civilisation.

[Telgin]

Cannot follow orders could be one of about a dozen things, half of which I don't really understand.  Toady supposedly has made this more clear in the next version (soon to come).

As for why he started killing friendlies, that does sound like a loyalty cascade (caused when you get kill a friendly dwarf, which marks him as an enemy of the civilization).

How did that happen?  I have no idea, you can't kill order friendlies, and I at least don't think that kill ordering an area will cause him to attack friendlies.  Perhaps a friendly animal attacked him and he retaliated?  Maybe that could cause it, but I have no idea.

[Sphalerite]

When you selected an area for the creatures for him to kill, there must have been something in that area that was not one of your dwarves, but was a member of your civilization.  A trader or diplomat or something perhaps.  He attacked it along with the goblins, and as a result became an enemy of your civilization.  Now he's attacking other dwarves and creatures belonging to your fortress.  When they fight him in self-defense, they also become enemies of your civilization.  This will continue until every dwarf is fighting every other dwarf, followed by the loss of your fortress as everyone dies or goes insane.  Enjoy your loyalty cascade.  This is why I never use area selection when giving kill orders.

[UnexpectedSalad]

When you selected an area for the creatures for him to kill, there must have been something in that area that was not one of your dwarves, but was a member of your civilization.  A trader or diplomat or something perhaps.  He attacked it along with the goblins, and as a result became an enemy of your civilization.  Now he's attacking other dwarves and creatures belonging to your fortress.  When they fight him in self-defense, they also become enemies of your civilization.  This will continue until every dwarf is fighting every other dwarf, followed by the loss of your fortress as everyone dies or goes insane.  Enjoy your loyalty cascade.  This is why I never use area selection when giving kill orders.

Well, that narrows down the possible reasons. There was a dwarven caravan somewhere on the map, obviously I nicked one of them.

I won't be using that again.

[Quietust]

When you selected an area for the creatures for him to kill, there must have been something in that area that was not one of your dwarves, but was a member of your civilization.  A trader or diplomat or something perhaps.  He attacked it along with the goblins, and as a result became an enemy of your civilization.  Now he's attacking other dwarves and creatures belonging to your fortress.  When they fight him in self-defense, they also become enemies of your civilization.  This will continue until every dwarf is fighting every other dwarf, followed by the loss of your fortress as everyone dies or goes insane.

There's actually a bit more going on than that, which makes it a bit more interesting:

1. Your dwarves are members of both your home Civilization and your local Group.
2. Caravan members and liaisons are only members of the home Civilization (they belong to a different Group).
3. If your dwarf attacks a member of the caravan, he becomes an enemy of the Civilization (for attacking a fellow member of the Civilization) but remains a member of the local Group.
4. If said dwarf then encounters other members of your fortress, they will perceive him as hostile (because he's an enemy of the Civilization) and attack him (or run away, for civilians), making them enemies of the local Group (for attacking a fellow member of the local Group) but remain a member of the Civilization.
5. Steps 3 and 4 repeat ad nauseum until you have 3 factions: enemies of the Civilization (but members of the Group), enemies of the Group (but members of the Civilization), and proper members of the Civilization+Group. Members of the first faction are all friendly to each other, as are members of the second faction, but if they run into each other they will be hostile. This behavior actually dates all the way back to the 2D versions, where Toady called it the "civil war bug".

If the 3rd faction can be isolated until all members of the 1st and 2nd factions are dead, then the fortress can be revived - this was actually accomplished in the community fortress "Failcannon".

Sometimes, a 4th faction of enemies of the Civilization and Group will emerge, but the exact mechanics of this are unknown - this also happened in Failcannon.