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[smeeprocket]

Okay, hopefully I'm not spoiling things for anyone, but I have some questions about demon fortresses and Hell.

I stumbled upon a demon fortress, had my butt handed to me, force quit because I didn't even know there -were- demon fortresses, and started max production of adamantine armour and training for all my capable dwarves. I surrounded the fortress in and out with weapon traps and cage traps.

Of course, the demons walked right over my traps and my dwarves, who were gathered closely together, did not succeed in killing even one of them. I don't have any lords as far as soldiers go, but many are adequate or better.

I also dug down into hell, and, shamefully, force quit again, as I wasn't entirely sure what would come of that when I couldn't even handle the demon fortress.

Siege wise I've defeated the goblins so many times they don't even have a leader, though they still try. I might be at war with the elves, since I have offered wood to them a few times accidentally, but I don't think so. (I want my hands on their exotic animals anyway.)

The thing is, I'm kind of bored with mass production, especially when one component gets ahead of another and I have to stop that part for awhile while my stocks get up to speed.

I had a fortress that was awesome because it had iron and flux stone, but I got beat down and had an impossible time recovering it. Really, the only way I want to make a new fortress is with flux stone and iron, but there's no way to be sure of that. The process of making steel just appeals to me.
 
I like my fortress, but my ultimate goal was kicking demon butt, and all that I have read on them basically states that you -might- kill one if you are lucky.

Any advice to help me along?

Thanks.

[Garath]

usually code words are used: clowns, candy, the circus.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

demons, adamantine and hell

especially to provide people with the experience of finding all this by accident, panick and laugh as the mayor is thrown in a magma pit and a cheesemaker punches a mist clown in half. I remember one thread of someone who had the same situation as you and went on to write a (slightly) dramatized version of the downfall

it's actually not always that hard. some of them will be made from mist, blood, water or other such ridiculous things and will fall easily (Urist McCheeseaker punches xxx in the leg, the severed part sails off in an arc. Urist McCheesemaker punches xxx in the lower body and the severed part flies off in an arc. xxx has been struck down. And yes, I had this happen with a FB once). Others are harder to kill. They avoid any trap and can not be atomsmashed, just like a FB, some can fly, they can cause syndrome, don't drown or burn in magma etc.. holing up and make places where marksdwarfs can shoot from is a good option. Collapses and falling enough levels still kill them. The problem is also that from now on random monsters will enter your map, although the won't be so agressive as the ones you're dealing with now

[Stefrist]

I think there is a proven method of killing demons with a checkerboard layout by Aussieguy?

[The Merchant Of Menace]

Setting up a hallway of spike traps triggered by a lever on repeat pull has proven to be successful in the past.

[Garath]

encasing in ice, or obsidian works too

[i2amroy]

Setting up a hallway of spike traps triggered by a lever on repeat pull has proven to be successful in the past.

This way tends to work rather reliably with only a small amount of setup required.

usually code words are used: clowns, candy, the circus.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

demons, adamantine and hell

Also I'm going to throw my vote in with Quietust here and say that most of the time these just end up causing more confusion then they solve. Personally the best way to refer to this in my opinion is to put [SPOILERS] in the title and then refer to them by their proper names in the thread. Heck, adamantine doesn't even need a spoiler because raw adamantine shows up in the economic stones list for goodness sake!

[The Merchant Of Menace]

Yeah, clearly marking it as spoilers means people who want to avoid spoilers will stay away, talking a load of BS about clowns and candy is just likely to confuse newbies and make them look into it further. My opinion anyway.

[smeeprocket]

Hmm, it sounds like I'll have to bone up on traps. The most I had looked into them was the weapon and cage traps.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Do demons glide over pressure plates? I really don't know how to use those, but if I can use the spiral trap with a cat as bait and drop the floor out from underneath them, I might do that. Also, don't things have to drop 10 z levels to die for certain? I'm not sure I have 10 z levels from the fortress down to hell.

My guys didn't kill even one, and some were made of easily destroyed materials. But there were an awful lot of demons. The Hell demons never even came up to my dwarves' level, they just amassed below.

A few other questions. Everytime I send a civilian alert to my dwarves that aren't in an active squad, ALL my herd animals go to the area as well, leading to a death line as the goblins in between them and the refuge burrow take them out en masse. Is this a bug?

How do I set a civilian alert and exclude a couple of siege engineers. I tried setting them in the siege burrow after setting the civilian alert, but they ignore it.

Thanks a lot, you guys respond fast.

[Telgin]

usually code words are used: clowns, candy, the circus.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

demons, adamantine and hell

Also I'm going to throw my vote in with Quietust here and say that most of the time these just end up causing more confusion then they solve. Personally the best way to refer to this in my opinion is to put [SPOILERS] in the title and then refer to them by their proper names in the thread. Heck, adamantine doesn't even need a spoiler because raw adamantine shows up in the economic stones list for goodness sake!

Couldn't agree more.  I'm guilty of using of using the code words myself, but I spoiled Hell and the demons for myself specifically because I saw people mentioning candy and clowns and wanted to know what on Earth they were talking about.

Anyway, I really must try breaching Hell again.  The last time I did it, they demons just floated up to the wrong spire and ignored me.    I've never tried a cave in trap before (even for FBs), so that should be a fun way to try and deal with the demons.

A few other questions. Everytime I send a civilian alert to my dwarves that aren't in an active squad, ALL my herd animals go to the area as well, leading to a death line as the goblins in between them and the refuge burrow take them out en masse. Is this a bug?

I've never noticed this.  Is it just pets following their owners?  Can you pasture pets?  I feel stupid for asking but I don't think I've ever tried.  Pasturing them might help.

How do I set a civilian alert and exclude a couple of siege engineers. I tried setting them in the siege burrow after setting the civilian alert, but they ignore it.

Never tried this before, but I suspect that if you use the civilian alert there's nothing you can do about this.  One option is to add the siege burrow's area to the civilian alert burrow's area.  That way your siege operators could still go there.  The problem is that other random dwarves might hang around your catapults or ballistae now.

[i2amroy]

Hmm, it sounds like I'll have to bone up on traps. The most I had looked into them was the weapon and cage traps.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Do demons glide over pressure plates? I really don't know how to use those, but if I can use the spiral trap with a cat as bait and drop the floor out from underneath them, I might do that. Also, don't things have to drop 10 z levels to die for certain? I'm not sure I have 10 z levels from the fortress down to hell.

My guys didn't kill even one, and some were made of easily destroyed materials. But there were an awful lot of demons. The Hell demons never even came up to my dwarves' level, they just amassed below.

Demons have the [TRAPIMMUNE] tag, which allows them to walk over pressure plates without setting them off, so any traps will have to be manually activated. Also note that 10 z-levels will kill most anything, yes, but less will hurt things as well. Also make sure that nothing is where they are falling or they might be able to land on them and survive, and also that there is an extremely small chance of getting "blob" demons that are unkillable by everything except obsidian/ice freezing.

A few other questions. Everytime I send a civilian alert to my dwarves that aren't in an active squad, ALL my herd animals go to the area as well, leading to a death line as the goblins in between them and the refuge burrow take them out en masse. Is this a bug?

I don't know. Probably the best way to deal with this is probably to set a door that is non pet-passable on your field entrances.

How do I set a civilian alert and exclude a couple of siege engineers. I tried setting them in the siege burrow after setting the civilian alert, but they ignore it.

Not possible, sadly. The best way to get around it is to simply put the siege engines inside the safety area or to simply close the inner doors instead of activating a civilian alarm.

Thanks a lot, you guys respond fast.

That's what we're here for!

Also if you plan on confronting the demons with your military it's probably a good idea to have small corridors that help to split the demons up. If your up against a single group of like 50 demons in a wall they are gonna tear through pretty much anything. If you manage to split them up then you have a chance. Also it helps to spread your forces out as much as possible without them being massacred that way when you kill that single flame demon his death explosion doesn't take out the remainder of all of your dwarves by himself.

[smeeprocket]

I guess I could use a lever instead of a pressure plate. Gremlins will actually become a nuisance then.

Hmm, that's frustrating, if I don't send my civvies to a refuge, they try to claim stuff and re-pasture animals, but I can't have the siege engineer enlisted, or he won't do his job. I really want to use my ballista.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I didn't notice any blobs or fire spouting demons, snow was the big one. At least I know it is possible now with some thought. I'll keep training my guys until they get super tough, then plan it out a bit better.

BTW, I have looked around and haven't seen, what bug fixes are currently being worked on? I would kill to have a dungeon master and an economy. That sounds so exciting.

[i2amroy]

The hammerer is coming back in the next version, possibly along with some of the other missing nobles. I am fairly positive that the economy is not coming back in the next version since it is slowly being replaced by a new system that actually depends on supply and demand (the basis of which we can see coming int he next version). Also hunger/thirst is coming back in adventure mode so you actually need to use those. Other then that there are probably several other small bugs that are being fixed as well and just haven't been mentioned in the dev logs. Of course after the new version comes out we are going to have several bug fix releases, so it's possible that Toady hasn't done too much work on the bugs except for the rather important ones since he knows that he will be doing some bug fixing anyways.

[jaxler]

Any advice to help me along?

Thanks.

if you really want to win then use a danger room. also regardless of how tough something is colapsing a mountain floor over there head WILL kill them. also a dwarven atom smasher should work, seeing how crushing things into a singularity usualy kills even the nastiest monsters. you could use a really really really long ballista battery. but if you want to do things the right boring way you could just wait 5 in-game years for you to get 10 whip lords.

[i2amroy]

Also a dwarven atom smasher should work, seeing how crushing things into a singularity usualy kills even the nastiest monsters.

On everything except for FB's, titans, and demons this would work, but if you try to drop a bridge on one of them all it does is break the bridge.

[jaxler]

well i didn't know that. thanks for the info