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[Sabreur]

I'm trying to put together an army of expendable war animals to shield my army of (slightly) less expendable bearded alcoholics.  Based on what's available and what the elven caravans keep bringing me, I've got three options:

1.  War Dogs.  Easily trained, readily available, grow up quickly.  Also small, fragile, and boring.  Seriously, they keep getting stabbed to death by kobold ninjas.  There's a reason my fort has roughly 100 bars of dog tallow soap...
2.  War Lions.  Bigger, meaner, can be trained as war animals, one of the largest non-giant war animals.  One of them has a special place in my heart for holding off a forgotten beast just long enough for the military to arrive.
3.  Giant Dingos.  Freaking huge, but can't be trained as war animals.  Also, the elves keep bringing me females only, so I'm having trouble setting up a breeding pair.  However, I did get promising results when I accidentally left two of them outside during a siege.  Despite being massively outnumbered, they gutted three trolls before being swamped and dragged down.

Has anyone done science on giant animals vs. regular-sized war animals?  I'm trying to decide if its worth it to wait for the elves to bring me a male giant dingo or if I should just rename the whole thing to Project Simbapocalypse.

[Twangykid]

Either add [TRAINABLE] to giant dingoes or lions.

[wierd]

Giant war lions already have the appropriate tokens.

They might need a CV raw tweak to stop removing the trainable and pet tokens anyway though.

[Sabreur]

Either add [TRAINABLE] to giant dingoes or lions.

I prefer to play vanilla, and the lions are already tamable.

[Leafsnail]

Is there a reason not to use all three?  I like the imagery of a fort overrun with extremely dangerous animals.

War Dogs aren't great, but they're so cheap and a pack of them can be great for stalling enemies.

[Loud Whispers]

MOAR WAR BOARS

[Bytyan]

Dingos sound like they would be a good thing to chain up. It's difficult to make animals that can't be assigned to solders go where you want (or can they be trained for hunting?)

[Sabreur]

Dingos sound like they would be a good thing to chain up. It's difficult to make animals that can't be assigned to solders go where you want (or can they be trained for hunting?)

Good point!  I guess I could cage them directly above a candy spire or in the path of a siege...

[LeonL]

How about bears? I got a breeding pair of grizzlies from trap captures right after the training release came out and they're so much better than dogs. They'd just flat maul the thieves and snatchers that came around. I'm not sure how they compare to the lions or dingos, though. Polar bears rock, too, but they're probably going to be hard to get.

[wierd]

Nono.... here's the scoop.


Were you here for the "turkey based goblin detector" thread?  If you weren't, here's a quick recap.

Above the opening/hallway leading into the fort, you put floor grates down on the level upstairs. This is a sealed corridor in the turkey detection design, so turkeys never leave.

In our improved "hungry animals" version, we intersperse detection nodes with either a retracting drawbridge, or a series of hatches.  We put adorable monsters in. Stealth creatures try to sneak in. Doggies detect the creatures, pausing the game.

You then issue the "pull lever" order while paused.

This slams floodgates in front of the doorways in and out of the hallway shut. (Snatchers and kobolds avoid traps, and won't set off pressure plates.)  It also opens the hatches/retracts the bridge.  This drops the hungry canrivores into the sealed off corridor.  A few frames later, you have happy animals, and dead intruders. Toggle the switch again, then re-pasture the animals to reset the system.

[slothen]

mix of lions and dingoes.  only use dogs as a filler until you can get the breeding populations up on the other species.  Lions are pretty awesome, as fully grown they're about 5-10 times as big as a dog or a dwarf.

[i2amroy]

They might need a CV raw tweak to stop removing the trainable and pet tokens anyway though.

Giant Lions are actually one of the few giant animals from olden days that are still defined completely in the raws. As such they need no modding or anything at all to make them trainable for war.

[franti]

Giant Dingos are fucking hardcore, as anybody who as ever slept outside in a grasslands in Adventure Mode will tell you.

[Tsuchigumo550]

You did say vanilla only, but there was that one time at that one party that I was showing what I could do in DF...

War llamas. War llamas with acid spit.

I'd personally go with the lions, simply because it sounds the most badass.

[Sabreur]

They might need a CV raw tweak to stop removing the trainable and pet tokens anyway though.

Giant Lions are actually one of the few giant animals from olden days that are still defined completely in the raws. As such they need no modding or anything at all to make them trainable for war.

Tragically, I only have regular lions.  If I had Giant Lions, I'd use those instead.

So to rephrase my question:

Which is more hardcore - a regular-sized war animal or a giant animal without war training?