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[simonthedwarf]

Assume You are arming your entire population of 150 dwarfs to storm HFS.

You have all the equipment done. Your end plan is to have your entire population ready to pour into HFS. Organized in 74 squads with two miners to breach it.

How many dwarves of a population of 150 would you be able to have actively sparring the entire year? The rest would be brewers and farmers. Whats the average consumption of 150 dwarves yearly in food and drink?

Finally:

What are the chances of 100+ dwarfes with full equipment made of iron and some candy thrown in here and there? With medium combat skills? Is it better to space them out or should you just send them all in a big blob of dwarves?

[kaijyuu]

I killed about half of them with 30 real soldiers and 50 civilians armed with crossbows.

100 medium trained dwarves with candy and steel should have a decent shot. You might do better sealing them up or using a looooong hallway with repeating spike traps.


Do note crossbows in back and armor on those in front is crucial. Your melee dwarves are going to get webbed almost certainly.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Depends on how you do it.  Worst case scenario, giant open room, pure melee.

I think you could have 140 out of 150 soldiers, if you pushed it.

I think 100 medium dwarves would do it, but you would lose most of them.  Legendaries aren't much better than mediums, because the main cause of death is fire and syndrome.

I just can't say if it's better to space them out or not.  When facing all the clowns at once, I guess I'd say to not space them out, especially if you're using iron+proficient dwarves.

Fire clowns and vomit et al clowns would go down fast.  Vomit clowns would take down the first wave with them, via syndromes.  Fire clowns would take down the first wave via death explosion.  The problem is, you need everybody to guarantee that take-down-- doesn't help to hold back.  You're left anything made out of bronze+ to deal with.  It's largely a matter of luck, which cards you draw.

[schismatise]

Ok so, i've "stormed the HFS" about 5 or so times now, over the course of my many forts - it's my end of choice when FPS death becomes too much, although in a recent fort i chose instead to abandon in order to save my historical migrants... anyway.

Generally in my attempts, i have had anywhere from 10 to 20 melee, and 20-60 ranged. In my earlier attempts, the crossbowers were decently trained but that was about it. In one of my solid attempts i had 12 all legendary hammerdwarves (that took a while, i don't use danger rooms), and 50 crossbowdwarves. The hammerdwarves were in mostly candy armor, steel war hammers, with some steel gauntlets / high boots.

Most of my attempts have involved just one giant room, melee spread out at the front, ranged spread out at the back.

Anyway, they all end the same. Legendary training or not, even in full candy, melee die in a heartbeat. Marksdwarves are good but they have no chance once the melee are down.

The main issue seems to be 1) the demons have AoE damage - area of effect. they spray a cloud of fire / poison / kittens or whatever and since there's just so damn many of them, anyone in range is going to be decimated. And then of course 2) they are incredibly tough in most cases (some fire / steam demons can die a little easier), and their attacks are rediculously overpowered. Again, even in candy armor, a simple kick to the head is all it takes. Or leg, or arm, pretty much any attack that lands will break bone.

So you need lots of powerful melee - but the more you have, the easier they die to the area effect damage, so you have to spread them out. But even then, they have a habbit of all running into the one spot, so you can't put all your money into the melee. Markdwarves however have a hard time landing killing blows.

Anyway i'm starting to ramble. So that is my experience - i think the best i have done is to kill maybe 25 of the 50ish demons that seem to spawn, before all my soldiers lie dead on the floor. Of course, i've never used the kind of numbers you're talking about, so you may have better luck.

My 1 piece of advice would be to spread out the battle as much as possible.. at least, without overdoing it to the point of exploit After all, if you can't meet the HFS in honorable combat... what's the point?!

[kaijyuu]

If you're worried about AoE, I'd make sure to line up your melee prior to engaging. Assuming a large room with one entrance in the middle floor, encircling it would be the best choice. The more you surround them, the better.


My problem when I tried it was the melee rushing down the stairs, outside range of my marksdwarves, where they immediately got webbed and died. An open hole would be better than stairs for the demons to go through.

[Matoro]

I was extremely dissapointed when I started to fight against HFS. I had 10 full steel-menacing-spikes set on repeat. Only about 10% (from ~70) clowns get past, and were shot down by marksdwarves. Lame. I had two cave-in -rooms and seven full squads in full steel. Three of squads contained mainly legendary warriors, all with named weapons and legendary skills.

[Urist Da Vinci]

He who has to lie down in melee combat will lose. Both dwarves and HFS will press forward into narrow spaces if allowed. You want to fight in rooms that allow you to bring many assets to bear while bottlenecking and flanking the enemy.

Distracting the enemy with a puppy/kitten cage bomb might assist your melee troops by taking away some of the heat.

[arzzult]

Having high dodging skill and a shield with high blocking skill might give some of your melee dwarves a chance.

[kaijyuu]

Oh yes: war something or others.

Having ~30 pets will help significantly. They die fast and don't do much damage, but they take the initial blows; vastly important so your melee dwarves actually get a few hits in before succumbing themselves. An axe or sword to demon face is quite effective.

[NW_Kohaku]

Honestly, I'd just make a magma-casting trap and have a couple of bait and sacrificial miner dwarves out there to lure the clowns into your own little funhouse.  You can also use cave-in traps if you're very thorough and remember how fast the little freaks can move. 

If you really, positively, absolutely have to fight it out, then I recommend going all marksdwarves all the way with plenty of fortifications and extremely byzantine mazes for the clowns to path through while getting skewered with bolts. 

Breed as many creatures as you possibly can, stuff them in cages, and release them all over your fortification labyrinth.  In older versions, I remember someone talking about how catsplosions could actually stymie the entire clown army advance with just sheer weight of numbers.  Creatures like cavys are just so small and hard to hit that they make excellent speed bumps for your marksdwarves to get some extra shots in on the clowns as they're stuck trying to squish all the little tribbles they're wading through.  (Be sure to spread your tribbles out, though, so that they don't all get hit in an AoE.)


As for food, you need 8 units of food per dwarf per year, and twice as much drink.  That's 1200 food and 2400 drink for 150 for a year, then. 


EDIT: Quintuple ninja'd... 

[simonthedwarf]

I've probably created around fifty mid sized forts and ten or less 150+. Hitting the popcap is not the achievement for me, and in my current embark in a 1000 year + embark there are no threats, no titans or FB's have attacked me and the elves are peaceful (might change considering I killed their last traders). It's time to create a fighting force to annihilate the only known "big goal" for DF.

Input so far is good. But the exact ratio of ranged to melee, with a emphasis on my ranged dwarfs having to be more numerous, is not very clear to me.

I dont want to use a trap corridor since that would probably make it too cheesy. But I do not mind creating a sort of battleground that would benefit my defenders. Having them charge into a room where I effectively surround them, and perhaps having ballistae or catapult is very enticing.

Does anyone know if proper material ballista bolts will take down clowns?

[kaijyuu]

Maybe. They suck against anything armored but demons don't have any protection.

May as well try for fun, I guess.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

I've probably created around fifty mid sized forts and ten or less 150+. Hitting the popcap is not the achievement for me, and in my current embark in a 1000 year + embark there are no threats, no titans or FB's have attacked me and the elves are peaceful (might change considering I killed their last traders). It's time to create a fighting force to annihilate the only known "big goal" for DF.

Input so far is good. But the exact ratio of ranged to melee, with a emphasis on my ranged dwarfs having to be more numerous, is not very clear to me.

I dont want to use a trap corridor since that would probably make it too cheesy. But I do not mind creating a sort of battleground that would benefit my defenders. Having them charge into a room where I effectively surround them, and perhaps having ballistae or catapult is very enticing.

Does anyone know if proper material ballista bolts will take down clowns?

Siege engines can take down clowns, but only very, very slowly-- so in other words, you need cheesy setups to use siege engines effectively.

If you don't mind creating the battleground, then it becomes a little bit of a version issue thing.  In v31.x, marksdwarves could destroy clowns, but that's because clowns didn't syndrome well without path.  Webber evidence suggests this may no longer be the case.

Your best option is to divide demons into bite-size chunks.  That's hard.

Some sort of radial labyrinth will tend to separate the demons (and your dwarves) from each other which is effective because a few demons will be responsible for the majority of your deaths-- via syndrome or death explosion, the AEs that have been talked about.

An initial, low-skill marksdwarf encirclement will also do well to separate the demons from each other.

Send the cannon fodder in first.  They'll kill most of the vulnerable demons, and absorb the fire demons death explosions.  After that, you'll need legendaries as a reserve force: to deal with the hardcore demons.

You'll need to adapt to the specific demons, if you can separate them at all.  A group of demons made out of armor grade (mineral, brass+) material won't fall to recruits with iron-- you'll need to send in legendaries, even if those demons' syndromes mean those legendaries won't survive.  Groups of webbers will destroy your melee legendaries, and need to be dealt with by skilled marksdwarves.  Isolated groups of fragile demons (fire, steam, ice, vomit) need to be dealt with by large groups of less valuable dwarves.  Anything with a syndrome that you need to use marksdwarves to deal with requires a decoy, melee squad, unless it's fragile, and that melee squad needs to be unleashed slightly before the ranged dwarves.

It's not impossible, but it is very hard, to use tactics, without using cheese, by some definition of cheese, to take down demons.  Lots of small squads, lots of stepping through combat.

Cheese, on the other hand, can take down demons really, really fast.  (See people talking about spikes or cave-ins above.  Not that I'm above cheese-- I consider intelligence to be our strength, that which dwarves have that demons don't.  We don't have to meet in melee, because we can engineer instead.)

[NW_Kohaku]

The problem with "cheesy tactics" is that "cheesy tactics" defines the most effective tactics you can use.

Sure, the "honorable" way of doing things is to meet head-to-head with axes... and lay off the candy, because that's just too "cheesy" since it has stats that are too good. 

Using many forms of traps are considered "cheesy" because they work so well, but war critters are weak in this version, so they aren't considered as "cheesy", even though both effectively let your dwarves hide without having to risk casualties that actually matter.

Even using crossbows is typically considered cheesy, especially in older versions when they were practically gattling guns.  However, it gets to the point where all you're doing in progressively tying both your arms and both legs behind your back in order to have a "fair fight". 

Siege engines just aren't worth it.  I have never seen a catapult hit anything. Unless you completely just trap the clowns in a room and let stones fall for months, you're not going to wipe out the clowns with catapults.

Again, I think you're going to be best off with steel bolts if you can at all manage it, and an entirely marksdwarf army with a labyrinth of fortifications (preferably 3d, and with isolated pill boxes to avoid some AoE attacks) so that you can pick them off while the doberman bombs keep the clowns distracted will still put your dwarves into plenty of risk, you'll still get plenty of casualties (especially if you don't build a large enough labyrinth) to be "fair", but realize that when you talk about wanting to "storm the HFS" but at the same time want to avoid "cheese", what you're really saying is "please tell me how to completely rig this fight so that I win by a slim margin so I can feel like it was exciting, not something that I've stacked to give me just barely more combat power than my opponents". 

You're in total control of this fight, so it's as lopsided one way or the other as you decide to make it.

[simonthedwarf]

Yeah, you are right, I want to succeed either flawlessly by having a ingenious solution or alternatively just "barely" make it.  If you can appreciate any kind of storytelling at all, you know that this way of overcoming or entirely sidestepping a obstacle is how any kind of progressive game scenario plays out, if it wasn't like this the only thing remaining would be to not initiate it. Losing and desperation is fun and all but just being annihiliated seems more awkvard than limiting yourself from employing very unrealistic strategies.

As for the defenses I'm thinking fortifications, flanks, animal diversions, these things are tricky to design into something bigger than the sum of its parts.

I like how this fight apparently forces you to consider spacing and formation, something extremely hard to control after combat starts for the individual dwarf. Your fighting AoE without your own AoE-weapons. I'm not against a corridor of traps, but to me it seems so dumb that they would just wade through it because DF creatures can't make a informed choice vs traps.