Print

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

[Dunamisdeos]

I've got some marksdwarves whose job it is to patrol the walls behind some fortifications. Only thing thats ever going to get up to them is enemy ranged attacks. What do I armor them in?

[Fredd]

Good shield and dodge is the best missile defense ever devised. Create a danger room for the archers they will patrol every few months under their schedule. 1 month of danger room patrol duty occasionally will turn them into dodging, shield using  fiends. Plus will increase their hammer skills(marksdwarves) or sword(bow dwarves) from parrying blows. Just in case, outfit them also in the best armor possible, if they fail a block,or dodge. That really ruins a elite enemy archers day.
 I recently discovered also never send archer squads on hunting trips. Normally bolts are destroyed when fired. If not( hit a terrain ramp) the archer that fired it considers it still his/hers. And will not practice again unless it is removed officially from the assigned bolts.
 If you see this "(bolt)" on the e(equipment), f(bolts,arrows) menu under Military menu, training will come to a halt, for whoever fired it. It can be fixed, but usually involves dumping of all bolts in quivers, removing assigned bolts, reclaiming all bolts in stock menu, waiting a few seconds, forbidding again, reclaiming bolt in the bins, then reassigning bolts to the squad. So the bolts shot outside you the fort on kill missions are ignored, when reassigned.  Creating a bolt recycle range also leads to problems, as training on archery ranges will grind to a halt unless all the bolts are reclaimed. They are just not worth it.



 

[Absentia]

^^Good advice, but to answer the original question: Adamantine armor/shields are far superior to anything else. Steel is a distant second but is still quite effective. After that it's iron, bronze, copper, leather, and cloth.

[Dunamisdeos]

Hmm alright. Steel's what I got, I'll save the addy for the melee fellows. Thanks for the help =)

[vorpal+5]

Should I don chainmail in addition to breastplate? Seems like breastplate don't cover arms?

[Nil Eyeglazed]

No, breastplates don't cover arms, and mail shirts are vastly superior-- you should make mail shirts first, even if you're going to use both.  The only thing special about breastplates are that they are rigid, which may or may not provide extra protection against blunt attacks.

[GoldenShadow]

I noticed that my Legendary axe,sword, hammerlord, etc are pretty much invincible to standard enemies.(not a ForgottenBeast) 15+5 in their weapon, fighter and shield skills. Not so much for dodge or armor. Fighter is a much better than dodge. They won't move around so much and stun themselfs. They will block flying bolts with their shield, or their super good agility causes the bolts to just miss. They are like Neo from the Matrix. Two of them change into a siege of 30+ goblin archers, slaughter all of them and not get touched once. Their armor isn't even deflecting anything. Its all about fighter and shield skills to keep them safe.

So. I train my markdwarf as a hammer lord before I change their weapon to a crossbow.

This is how to make a 100% deadly warrior before the first winter arrives, and how to expand your army very effectively.
Before Embark. press v on each of your starting 7. Pick two of them with the best kinesthetic sense(or great feel for the position of ones own body) If you have the choice, pick the one with the best willpower and focus too. don't assign him any labors, but set his fighter skill to +5 and a melee weapon skill to +5
As soon as you embark , make a new squad for your warriors. Assign them a training sword/axe/spear and a wooden shield that matches the skill you chose. Set them to Active/Train, and never turn it off.  Make a small 7x7 room. Put an armor stand in the center. Make it a barracks, and press t to have your squad train there. As soon as possible, build them their own bedrooms (to offset negative thoughts from training) and assign them craft waterskins and backpacks so they train without interuption.  Thats all. they will spend the entire year sparring non-stop. Don't forget to assign proper armor and real weapons. These can be bought from the first caravan if you can't make them yourself.

Training fighter skill from zero in a new recruit is much slower. Fighter skill grows exponentially. It may take a year to go from skill 0 to 4. But in the next year, it will go from 4 to 15+5
To speed this up, Once your first 2 warriors are fully trained in the 3 primary skills. Put them each in seperate squads, make 2 barracks and assign each one their own recruit. If you get a warrior with great soul attributes that make for good teaching, you can have replacement soldiers trained in a few seasons. Just follow the Master/Apprentice squad formula.
When an apprentice is fully trained. Move them to another squad for actual guard duty. Don't ever take them off duty. Let them use the barracks to train by your front door, and move the training squad back  inside your base to protect the recruits from premature death. I have 1 or 2 dedicated trainers that never see Action after their apprentices can fight.

TLDR: Train dwarfs in pairs for to spar non-stop. This builds up their fighting skills and physical attributes extremely fast.

[slothen]

personally i wouldn't spend embark points on the fighter skill since it levels up very quickly in any sparring or combat situation.

stuff

Thanks for the insight into that.  Would this mean for defending against sieges, your best bet is to have archers shooting from behind fortifications on ground level?

[barcibus]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I noticed that my Legendary axe,sword, hammerlord, etc are pretty much invincible to standard enemies.(not a ForgottenBeast) 15+5 in their weapon, fighter and shield skills. Not so much for dodge or armor. Fighter is a much better than dodge. They won't move around so much and stun themselfs. They will block flying bolts with their shield, or their super good agility causes the bolts to just miss. They are like Neo from the Matrix. Two of them change into a siege of 30+ goblin archers, slaughter all of them and not get touched once. Their armor isn't even deflecting anything. Its all about fighter and shield skills to keep them safe.

So. I train my markdwarf as a hammer lord before I change their weapon to a crossbow.

This is how to make a 100% deadly warrior before the first winter arrives, and how to expand your army very effectively.
Before Embark. press v on each of your starting 7. Pick two of them with the best kinesthetic sense(or great feel for the position of ones own body) If you have the choice, pick the one with the best willpower and focus too. don't assign him any labors, but set his fighter skill to +5 and a melee weapon skill to +5
As soon as you embark , make a new squad for your warriors. Assign them a training sword/axe/spear and a wooden shield that matches the skill you chose. Set them to Active/Train, and never turn it off.  Make a small 7x7 room. Put an armor stand in the center. Make it a barracks, and press t to have your squad train there. As soon as possible, build them their own bedrooms (to offset negative thoughts from training) and assign them craft waterskins and backpacks so they train without interuption.  Thats all. they will spend the entire year sparring non-stop. Don't forget to assign proper armor and real weapons. These can be bought from the first caravan if you can't make them yourself.

Training fighter skill from zero in a new recruit is much slower. Fighter skill grows exponentially. It may take a year to go from skill 0 to 4. But in the next year, it will go from 4 to 15+5
To speed this up, Once your first 2 warriors are fully trained in the 3 primary skills. Put them each in seperate squads, make 2 barracks and assign each one their own recruit. If you get a warrior with great soul attributes that make for good teaching, you can have replacement soldiers trained in a few seasons. Just follow the Master/Apprentice squad formula.
When an apprentice is fully trained. Move them to another squad for actual guard duty. Don't ever take them off duty. Let them use the barracks to train by your front door, and move the training squad back  inside your base to protect the recruits from premature death. I have 1 or 2 dedicated trainers that never see Action after their apprentices can fight.

TLDR: Train dwarfs in pairs for to spar non-stop. This builds up their fighting skills and physical attributes extremely fast.

Goldenshadow, how do you prevent that fighter pair from getting attached to training weapons and wooden shields?  I tried this once and got the most awesome axedwarves I've ever seen, then I tried it again and they skilled up so slowly.  The biggest difference I noticed was I used training weapons with the first (awesome) pair, and went straight to copper axes for the second pair.

[GoldenShadow]

A soldier getting attached to a weapon doesn't seem to mean anything. After a while a special name is given to the weapon and its kills are tracked, but if you assign a new weapon on a different materials than the one he named, he won't keep using the inferior named one.


If your dwarf names a training axe, and later you assign a steel axe, he will use the steel axe.

[greycat]

For general defense, what I do first is dig down from a flat surface on an elevated spot, and then make a rectangular wall around the hole.  I put one drawbridge in part of the wall.  This gives me a sealable inner wall.

Second, I build staircases up just inside the corners of the wall.  One Z-level above ground, I build down staircases in the corners, and then a floor just inside the walls, so the dwarves can walk around the outside of the upper level.  Finally, I build fortifications right on top of the wall (remember to do the corners first).  Now I can station marksdwarves on any spot on the floor of the upper Z-level, and they'll be able to shoot out through the fortifications.

That's a complete defense system against anything that can't fly, but later I'll generally add a second, outer wall, and/or possibly expand the inner wall to enclose a larger area.  Depends on my needs and the terrain.