Print

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

[Sphalerite]

Why not just use restricted traffic zones on where you don't want them standing.   This works good for me.   No need to worry about them having to step forward because you've listed the high traffic zone against the fortifications and the restricted traffic zones at other locations.

Although I haven't tested this, I would be astonished if it works that way.  So far the only thing traffic zones are known to affect is pathfinding costs.  When I have a chance I'll test this further.

[FuzzyZergling]

Either a player starts playing DF and encounters the military screen and is soon reduced to a gibbering, mind-shattered state with a need to flee and wash their brain cells in simple, orderly games of Angry Birds; or they saw it, managed to hold onto their sanity, and coolly looked to the library or others to research, understand, and master this horror they witnessed.

Or they saw it, managed to hold onto their sanity, and then figured it out on their own.

[NTJedi]

Honestly, the military seems hopelessly screwed up. I wouldn't mind it being so ridiculously complicated if it actually worked. Well, I wouldn't mind so much, anyway. But I wish Toady would stop adding stuff to the game and fix some of this stuff we really need.

I agree the military is painful and should be improved, but you can't blame Toady... the community voted for improving hauling and adding mine carts. And so it's what he's doing.  Toady is above average quality when compared to other developers.

Once Toady provides goblins with actual sieging weapons which destroys the walls, traps and gates... then the community will start caring more about the military working better.  Until this day many gamers hide behind their fortress gates to shoot enemies attacking AND/OR use cages AND/OR use danger rooms to obtain legendary soldiers thus removing any real threat from sieges... thus there's no concern for improving the military. 

The good news is Toady plans to provide improved sieging for the goblins eventually... so we just need to be patient OR play other games until it arrives.

[tolkafox]

I disagree, I find the military enjoyable and entertaining to watch. I also don't hide behind walls or use danger rooms, although walls and weapon traps do keep the thieves out.

Your opinion is based off of a user error, not a game one.

#27 for sparring and military search:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=103903.msg3071828#msg3071828

Although I disagree with the last statement. Since no space of the barracks were given I assume this to be the problem, sparring occurs less often in larger areas. I use a 2x3 room and after they've reached legendary make them all captains and assign novices under them. They spar regularly and the novices gain exp faster with a legendary partner compared to just two novices.

[Alidus]

Not sure what would cause your marksdwarves to not shoot at viable targets outside of the fortifications. I've had plenty of success stationing archers on top of parapets that are 5x5 internal. Once gobbos show up, the marksdwarves all crowd to the outer edge, up against the fortifications, and begin to shoot.

Same for me. I like to make 8x8 pillboxes with stockpiles for food, drink, and ammo and stick a whole squad of 10 in there. They will absolutely SPEW bolts at anything that comes near it. Never seen them do otherwise...

Honestly, the military seems hopelessly screwed up. I wouldn't mind it being so ridiculously complicated if it actually worked. Well, I wouldn't mind so much, anyway. But I wish Toady would stop adding stuff to the game and fix some of this stuff we really need.

I agree the military is painful and should be improved, but you can't blame Toady... the community voted for improving hauling and adding mine carts. And so it's what he's doing.  Toady is above average quality when compared to other developers.

Once Toady provides goblins with actual sieging weapons which destroys the walls, traps and gates... then the community will start caring more about the military working better.  Until this day many gamers hide behind their fortress gates to shoot enemies attacking AND/OR use cages AND/OR use danger rooms to obtain legendary soldiers thus removing any real threat from sieges... thus there's no concern for improving the military. 

The good news is Toady plans to provide improved sieging for the goblins eventually... so we just need to be patient OR play other games until it arrives.

I'm sure someone will find a way to make a fort with nothing easily breakable. Or fight stuff off with military strength.

A fort is meant to keep stuff out. If stuff can get in, there's no point in having a fort.

Things will probably shift to immediate military rather than fort design. If it stops working then you may as well stop building it. Traps and walls mostly stop the peons from being an annoyance, and a military that can stop stuff from breaching will stop the stuff that traps are for too, making them pretty useless. May as well just make a village instead, it will be quicker without building stuff that will just get destroyed which means you can devote that much time to getting military up faster.

Just notice how nobody builds castles anymore in real life, and the secure structures we do have are few and far between. Now we depend on keeping enemies from ever getting there in the first place.

[Nameless Archon]

I'm sure someone will find a way to make a fort with nothing easily breakable.

One can hope. Far more castles were taken by siege than were ever taken by force (tunnelling, bombards, storming/scaling, etc) I'd wager. That this doesn't work on a race that can build farms underground doesn't worry me much - dwarven redoubts should be very hard to crack if properly designed.

[WCG]

OK, I'm suffering from my first siege - in this particular game (I've played before, but not in the last couple of years), and I don't see how my marksdwarves could be any dumber. This sure doesn't seem to be an improvement from the last time I played the game!

I've got walls on the ground level - not all the way around, yet - with a moat on the outside. There's a bridge at the entrance. On the floor above, reachable ONLY from below, from inside my fortress, is a wall of fortifications around the outside. Again, not all the way yet. (All this takes a lot of time.)

So there's a siege of goblin bowmen. I tell my marksdwarves to patrol along that wall of fortifications, one story up. What happens? Well, half of them decide to go all the way around and walk back and forth in the bridge opening, one floor down from where they're supposed to patrol! Yeah, they make perfect targets there.

One particularly bright dwarf gets the level right, but manages to squeeze past the fortifications on the upper wall and stand out in the open, where he also gets peppered with arrows. (OK, I guess I should have stopped the patrol some distance from the end, but that does seem willfully suicidal.)

A few dwarves do get the level right and get close enough to fire through the fortifications. They haven't actually hit anything, but it's still an improvement. (As far as I can tell, neither burrows nor traffic orders make the slightest difference to military dwarves. At least, I've tried both, without success.)

Oh, and I opened the bridge while some of the goblins were standing on it. That did nothing but stun them briefly - very briefly. Didn't that used to cause damage? It's a drawbridge, not a retractable bridge.

Oh, well. Maybe if my marksdwarves ever get better they won't have to stand right next to the fortification. (I'm not going to hold my breath.) But why, oh why won't they at least patrol on the right level?

Well, my hope now is that all the goblins fall in the river and drown, which is what happens to every dwarf that gets anywhere close to it. Actually, they all get swept over the waterfall, so some die from the impact, before they can drown. That's not going to bother the giant olm the goblins brought with them, since it's amphibian, but if the 15 bowmen fall in the river, that would help a bunch. 

[FuzzyZergling]

Not sure what your the problem is with your patrols, but to fix the waterfall problem try building a floor over it.
(Don't connect it to the far bank right away, do that tile later.)

[NTJedi]

A fort is meant to keep stuff out. If stuff can get in, there's no point in having a fort.

You have it wrong... take it from the view of the goblins:
  "There's no point in having a siege if you can't get inside."

Seriously try to even imagine playing as the goblins against an opponent who has sealed himself inside a fort where the only thing you can do is walk around outside getting stuck in cage traps.

[WCG]

...to fix the waterfall problem try building a floor over it.

Would that actually work to keep dwarves who've fallen into the river from going over the waterfall? How? The river would still be flowing underneath the floor, right?

I set the banks of the river to a restricted traffic zone, which helped, but didn't keep seven dwarves, one after another, from going into the river at the same spot. So I finally walled off the river entirely at that spot. (I never did figure out what they were doing there, because the previous dead bodies and their equipment were all at the bottom of the waterfall, not in the river there.)

This is off-topic in this thread, but does anyone know the mechanism for this? What decides whether or not dwarves make a misstep into the river? I know they can dodge into danger during a fight, but this wasn't anything like that.

[loose nut]

Look, here's what you do: you use burrows. Mark a one-tile-wide burrow right next to your fortification, name it "gate defense" or something similar. Then, make a new alert, call it something useful, "siege alert" maybe. Go into schedules, select your crossbow squad, then select that new alert. Change all the orders to "defend burrows" and select the "gate defense" burrow you just made. Be sure you make the minimum # of dwarves match the dwarves you have in the squad, it's just like a training order that way. All done? Good, now when you get your next siege, simply switch the alert for your crossbow squad from "inactive" or "active/training" to your new alert, and they will go and park themselves right behind the fortifications, because defending burrows is the only way you can get precise placement for where your dwarves are going to stand. Station and patrol orders just don't do the job.

[slothen]

Just notice how nobody builds castles anymore in real life, and the secure structures we do have are few and far between. Now we depend on keeping enemies from ever getting there in the first place.

Nonsense.  Secured buildings are [UBIQUITOUS].  Cameras, alarms, guards, and locks have been around forever, and now metal detectors, ID cards for electronic locks, and secure server rooms are quite common.

[GhostDwemer]

Completely different circumstances and meaning of the word "secured," Slothen. We're talking military here, not metal detectors at the airport. Alidus is correct, nobody builds forts or castles anymore. Maneuver, defense in depth, and situational awareness are FAR more important in warfare than static, heavily defended strong points. This has been a developing trend in the military since the renaissance. With the rise of guns and artillery, castles became useless. Vauban's "Trace Itallienne" star forts replaced grand castles with forts that were little more than complicated walled holes in the ground for hiding artillery. Tall walls were out, thick earth filled ramparts were in. But ever since the end of WWI, the development of the tank has made even that style of fort obsolete.

None of the things you mention will stop an enemy with artillery, tanks, and bombs.

[FuzzyZergling]

...to fix the waterfall problem try building a floor over it.

Would that actually work to keep dwarves who've fallen into the river from going over the waterfall? How? The river would still be flowing underneath the floor, right?

I set the banks of the river to a restricted traffic zone, which helped, but didn't keep seven dwarves, one after another, from going into the river at the same spot. So I finally walled off the river entirely at that spot. (I never did figure out what they were doing there, because the previous dead bodies and their equipment were all at the bottom of the waterfall, not in the river there.)

This is off-topic in this thread, but does anyone know the mechanism for this? What decides whether or not dwarves make a misstep into the river? I know they can dodge into danger during a fight, but this wasn't anything like that.

The reason your dwarves are jumping off the waterfall is because the part where the water falls is less than 4/7 full.
This means that dwarves can and will try to walk across the flowing river to try to get to the other side, and are getting swept away.

Building a bridge/floor/whatever in that spot means that the dangerous path is blocked and a new, safe path opened. You can also build a bridge at another point and designate the dangerous tiles as forbidden traffic, but this is less effective.

Diagram:
#= Wall
^= Up Ramp
~= Water
_= Empty Space

###############
^^^^^^^^^^_____
~~~~~~~~~~_____
~~~~~~~~~~_____
~~~~~~~~~~_____
^^^^^^^^^^_____
###############

The blue area is water greater than 4/7, where dwarves won't path. The green is where the water goes over the edge, resulting in water under 4/7. The dwarves try to walk over the "safe" path and are swept over the edge into the water below the fall.

[Garath]

A fort is meant to keep stuff out. If stuff can get in, there's no point in having a fort.

You have it wrong... take it from the view of the goblins:
  "There's no point in having a siege if you can't get inside."

Seriously try to even imagine playing as the goblins against an opponent who has sealed himself inside a fort where the only thing you can do is walk around outside getting stuck in cage traps.

we might get siege engines and such against the fort at some point, no worries, at some point just raising a bridge won't be enough against big sieges. But hey, they come with 6 speargobs and expect to breach walls?