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[Telgin]

So in my current fort, I'm getting ambushes every season, usually at least two squads and sometimes up to four.  This is causing an unacceptable number of casualties, and I want to do something about it, but I'm not really sure where to start.

The ambushes are normally detected by my hapless woodcutters, who promptly die before my soldiers can get anywhere close to the ambushers to deal with them.  To help deal with this, I started stationing military squads near the trees I designate to cut down.  This helps, but in order to keep their casualities to a minimum, I have to send about 20 soldiers, otherwise I'll lose half of them.  This despite the fact that they're all wearing full suits of steel armor (and not complete noobs), which is again quite frustrating.

Anyway, that means that I then don't have enough troops left to guard my entrance to the other squad or three of ambushers that are sure to show up and kill someone before the military can go deal with them.

Yes, I know this is DF and lots of carnage is sort of in the spirit of the game, but losing one or two civilians and one or two soldiers almost every season is taking me dangerously close to tantrum spiraling, not to mention the fact that I sort of would like to actually get some skilled soldiers instead of burying them.

So, does anyone have any particular tactics they use to mitigate the damage of ambushes?  I've heard of things like chaining up animals around the map to hopefully encounter the ambushers before something important does.  Any other ideas?  I suppose I could just stop cutting down trees altogether, but I really need the charcoal and all.

[Casp]

an unacceptable number of casualties,

See, there's your problem.

[Loud Whispers]

Send out Marksdwarves with those 20 Dwarves.

[Aviator CJ]

I'd suggest you start subterranean tree farming. Just dig out a massive chamber in one of the soil layers, and breach the caverns. It'll take a couple of in-game years to get production up, but then you won't need to worry about the surface so much, and can focus your military at the gates.

Alternatively, you could wall off a section of the surface. Restrict your woodchopping to the secured area and again, ambusher and woodcutter shall never meet.

[Hurize]

Or, you could just make a ton of cage traps. you can capture all your enemys and then use them for military training. the one you dont capture you can dwarf atom smash them

[toomanysecrets]

Relying on the surface sucks once your fort's been around for a few years and you're attracting attention.  Underground tree farming is one solution.  If you need surfrace trees, make the most worthless dwarves tree cutters, and enable only woodcutting and wood hauling, and then everyone else in the fort gets wood hauling turned off.  Then only useless chumps will be out there to grab the wood.  You could also turn on the wood hauling on your military so when they have "no scheduled orders" they'll start bringing it inside for you (but this will cause your woodcutters to idle a lot!)

Also, a large outer wall is nice. It's easy to build a massive wall in a season or two if you enable (or train!) a lot of masons.  A large wall with only two entrances makes it easier to catch ambushes with guard animals.

[Di]

Try setting up patrol routes for your military so they spot gobbos before they get near civs.
I've had hunters spot ambush and fire upon it without being attacked in return.
Though I agree that wall would be most reliable. You could also place shooters atop it to provide cover fire for near wall outside operations.

[Seraphim342]

There's also an idea I found here a few weeks ago that I'm using now, lookout towers.  You build a little 2 z-level high 3x3 tower with some expendable animal in it. 

Z=0

W_W
___
W_W

Z+1

WGW
G_G
WGW

The G's are windows, can make them out of 3 cut gems if you don't have a glass industry going yet.  Just pit the animal into the central square and floor over the roof.  Elite goblin bowmen can't shoot through windows like they can with forts, and since the windows can't be accessed from the surface, building destroyers can't touch them.  Ringed my fort with these, about 15 tiles from the map edge and 20-30 tiles apart, spots every ambush almost immediately. 

Note, make sure the animal doesn't have to eat and isn't female, unless it's an egg-layer.  Otherwise it'll starve or you'll end up with a ring of quantum cat stockpiles =p

[Urist Da Vinci]

What kind of injuries are causing the deaths that your current soldiers are suffering from?

[wuphonsreach]

The animal watch towers work well.  Although I prefer to combine them with lots of walled off areas, with animal watchers sitting atop the openings in the wall.  For inner perimeter defense, chained animals work well.

[Telgin]

an unacceptable number of casualties,

See, there's your problem.

Yes, I know.  Thing is I'm also trying to train up a competent military and workers, so losing them left and right is counter productive regardless.

Send out Marksdwarves with those 20 Dwarves.

I started doing that, and it does help.  That 20 was a squad of 10 with swords and shields, and 10 with crossbows.  I only have that one squad of 10, so I guess this is probably my fundamental problem.  Time to spam more crossbows?

Try setting up patrol routes for your military so they spot gobbos before they get near civs.
I've had hunters spot ambush and fire upon it without being attacked in return.
Though I agree that wall would be most reliable. You could also place shooters atop it to provide cover fire for near wall outside operations.

This is a feature I've never uesd before, but have been considering it.  Part of the problem is that I'm loathe to take soldiers away from training since they aren't making much progress before half of them get killed, but live training works better than barracks training anyway so this is probably a win in the end.  I should start another marksman squad or two and try something like this.

What kind of injuries are causing the deaths that your current soldiers are suffering from?

Before I managed to get them all armored, it was things like having half of their limbs removed by axes.  After I got steel armor on all of them for all of their body parts, it turned into the typical whip to the brain through a steel helmet.  So I went and fixed that (still causes shattered bones through clothes, but armor actually stops them mostly now), and now it's a problem with maces killing them through their helmets.  That's mostly unavoidable I assume, so I guess I'm going to have to rely on more marksmen and crippling the hammer and macemen I'm facing.

Relying on the surface sucks once your fort's been around for a few years and you're attracting attention.  Underground tree farming is one solution.  If you need surfrace trees, make the most worthless dwarves tree cutters, and enable only woodcutting and wood hauling, and then everyone else in the fort gets wood hauling turned off.  Then only useless chumps will be out there to grab the wood.  You could also turn on the wood hauling on your military so when they have "no scheduled orders" they'll start bringing it inside for you (but this will cause your woodcutters to idle a lot!)

Call me an elf, but I don't like the idea of cannon fodder woodcutters.    More practically though, with .34.x many migrants arrive already married and potentially with existing familial relationships from previous or later migrant waves.  The result that I've seen is quite a lot of unhappy soldiers because their sister or son or grandmother just got their skull jammed through their brain.  So even 'useless' migrants aren't so expendable.

Having wood hauling only turned on for soldiers is an idea... hadn't considered that.  It would probably end up with a lot of suicidal last stands though, which I've seen a few of because one soldier is faster than the rest of his squad for example...

That actually leads into a related problem of cleaning up after these ambushes... I'm barely able to smash all of their junk before the next ambush shows up.  So civvies are getting caught with a pair of pants in their hands running back to the trash compactor when yet another ambush arrives.

The suggestion about the wall is probably going to be the best thing in the end, and I did start a wall.  It's hard to enclose much in the way of trees this way though, so I haven't really finished much of it yet.  I considered an underground tree farm, but haven't tried it yet because I figured it would be too slow to be useful.  Might be worth another look.

That suggestion for the watch towers sounds like a great one actually, I think I'll try something like that and see how well it works.  How many do you need to deploy, and how far apart?  I've got tons of turkeys I can toss in the towers.


Man, if magma wasn't so deep in this world I'd just try a Boatmurdered style flood the world with liquid death to kill the ambushers and destroy their crap at the same time.  Although then the trees would be less accessible...

[toomanysecrets]

Oh man I consider it mandatory to mine out a lot of soil and breach the cavern as soon as it's convenient.

[brainfreez]

problem with ambushes ? magma .

[Replica]

Build a wall around the entire map with multiple gaps in the walls with cage traps lining the gaps.

The ambushers must now cross a bottleneck to get inside the perimeter and will reveal themselves prematurely, which gives plenty of time for your civilians to get inside and for your militia to bunker down in a defensive position.

[Callista]

Tried assigning wardogs to your woodcutters?