Print

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

[SaberMonk]

So I started playing DF a few weeks ago and have mostly been starting forts, starving to death, and then starting a new fort. I've finally learned how to get food and booze production up and running so I can live long enough to do other stuff, and have started to get the hang of the game.

I just had my first encounter with a goblin siege and my fort is being slaughtered as I type. I had a civilian emergency burrow setup on my kitchen/dining hall level (so they can get drunk while my military fights) and I activated the civilian restrictions as soon as the siege message appeared, but my dwarves, every last one of them, immediately charged out of the fortress to the surface to move all the scared animals back into their pasture zones. I of course turned off animal hauling for everyone immediately, but for reasons unknown to me they continued to ignore the burrow restriction and run around madly outside, getting cut down by the goblins.

This fort is obviously lost, but what might I have missed to make them run around like that?

[SRD]

Technically starving to death is FUN.

[Talvieno]

Hmmm... Sounds like you had a burrows instead of an alert. What you do is you go to the military screen ("m"), go to the alerts, add an alert, select the new alert to activate it, and then select the burrows. Everyone will rush into the burrows, no questions asked.

Also, congrats on the Fun! Now you've got a great story to tell. lol

[SaberMonk]

That's the strange part Talvieno, I did define a burrow and then I went into the military screen and activated the alert. I had tested it once before when a were-creature attacked and they all obeyed it perfectly, DESPITE the pasture animals being scattered to the four winds. But when the siege arrived, they wouldn't listen. I don't think I changed it in the meantime, not on purpose anyway.

[Garath]

make it a bit more emcompassing, so they can quickly find new jobs to turn to in a safe location. Also, get underground pastures, or build barns (walled off, roofed over, accessible though underground tunnel).

[SaberMonk]

I thought about building a barn, as I'd just completed an archery tower, but I ran out of time before the siege. Other than breaching the caverns so cave moss will grow, is there another way to feed the animals underground?

[killerx243]

Wall off the pasture, then you just need to worry about flying creatures. I tend to let giant pits of death kill the sieges. Something about seeing a goblin explode makes my heart all warm and fuzzy... I get the same feeling with elven caravans too...

EDIT: Ninja Dwarves 

Also we can roof over the pasture, doesn't the grass need sunlight to grow?

[Talvieno]

That's the strange part Talvieno, I did define a burrow and then I went into the military screen and activated the alert. I had tested it once before when a were-creature attacked and they all obeyed it perfectly, DESPITE the pasture animals being scattered to the four winds. But when the siege arrived, they wouldn't listen. I don't think I changed it in the meantime, not on purpose anyway.

Hrm... I've never seen an instance where they wouldn't rush to their alert burrows when it was activated. I doubt it's a bug, because if it was, someone would've noticed it before, surely. You might check again. It's very easy to accidentally delete a burrows. I can't remember off the top of my head which key does it, but it doesn't ask you to confirm - it simply deletes it instantly. That would cause your alert to stop working and give you the behavior you saw.

EDIT:

I thought about building a barn, as I'd just completed an archery tower, but I ran out of time before the siege. Other than breaching the caverns so cave moss will grow, is there another way to feed the animals underground?

Not yet. If I understand correctly, though, Toady is going to be implementing hay very, very soon (possibly the next release). After that, you might simply have your dwarves harvest hay, bring it belowground, and have the animals feed to their hearts' content.

REEDIT:

Also we can roof over the pasture, doesn't the grass need sunlight to grow?

I don't think so. If a tile is marked as sunlit, it remains permanently sunlit, if I remember right. You can actually keep your dwarves from getting nauseous in sunlight by exposing the whole of your dining hall to the sunlight just once. Even if you floor it back over, it's always sunny inside.

[SaberMonk]

I know I didn't delete the burrow because I thought of that and checked to see if it was still there, and it was. I was having some trouble with getting my military to activate for training though, and was fiddling around with the alerts screen. It's possible I messed up the civilian alert at that time and didn't know it, since that was after the were-elk attack.

Thanks for the help. And hay would be awesome.

Oh, and one more newbie question. I succumbed to the siege (nothing but children and one smith left, who was happily smelting ore the whole time) and abandoned the fort. I reclaimed it so I could keep learning without having to dig the whole complex again, but there were still goblins down in the fort. How do I deal with those? I read where somebody else said they had that happen and the gobos weren't hostile until a siege came, but that still doesn't help me know how to get rid of them.

[Talvieno]

I've never had that happen... I don't tend to reclaim... lol    My suggestion would be to wall them off. If they go hostile as soon as other goblins arrive, you don't want them around. They can't break down or walk through doors, if you lock them. OR... it might be possible to build  cage traps all over the room. As soon as they go hostile, they step into the traps, no harm done.

[SaberMonk]

I was thinking of cage traps, definitely would have to do that over walls because they were hanging around in some important places, like the workshop level and the kitchen. Stupid goblins.