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[Blue_Dwarf]

Here's a tricky position I'm in right now.

My 58 dwarves are safely sitting in their bunker (and shamelessly abusing the coin exploit). I have two axedwarves training and ready for action, one of whom is fully armored in steel while the other is naked with an axe and a shield. There are maybe two other (copper) axes in the whole bunker.

Outside is an undead biome, with around 80 undead goblins, elves, skunks and other nasty things roaming around. Most of them are the leftover from the previous siege that I completely ignored (because screw atom-smashing 70 undead goblins while they keep reanimating).

21 migrants are sitting on the edge of the map waiting to be rescued, next to one of the undead groups.


Problem: how do I get them inside with minimal casualties? Because I don't want to be spending the next few hours engraving slabs. Granted, I've spent more than that already trying to solve this problem, but still...

[Thelogman]

If there are any miners (with a pick) in the group, have one dig a downstair and a little place for all the dwarves, burrow all the migrants in that little place, and then turn someone into a mason and build a wall on the upstair. But that's not likely.

You could try the same thing but by having one of your miners dig an underground tunnel to them, but I don't know how far away they are or how fast your miners are.

How are they bunkered up? If you're okay with potential casualties from a dead sprint of the migrants to the base, the quickest way to produce a pseudo-undead proof entrance would be to build a bridge that raises and lowers.

If you need to buy time, or want to do the dead sprint but think you need to buy time, pick a handful of sacrifices in the migrant (or fortress group), draft them into a squad and station them in a way that pulls the undead hordes away. While they're distracted fighting, or even moved away a little bit, you can buy enough time to let the migrants dead sprint in. Be sure to burrow the migrants regardless, since it will stop them from dilly-dallying and will give them a specific place to run to.

[Blue_Dwarf]

Migrants can't be added to a burrow, and they can't work apparently.

Basically at this point I'm just thinking of letting them die, because every other option has worse results.

[Maxmurder]

Make sure you have a meeting area inside IIRC migrants will head straight for a meeting area upon arrival. Once they get there they become full citizens.

[joeclark77]

Migrants can't be added to a burrow, and they can't work apparently.

Basically at this point I'm just thinking of letting them die, because every other option has worse results.

Migrants go first to a meeting zone, before taking any other orders.  So, create a meeting zone right where they're entering the map.  (You might also want to turn off all other meeting zones in your fortress temporarily, to make sure they pick the right one.)  Once they get there, you should be able to order them.

[Blue_Dwarf]

Looks like I'll have to leave them outside, they spawned too close to the undead, plus there's a bunch of ravens half a screen south of them...

I'm not sure if the meeting zone trick worked, because they were entering the map one by one and got swarmed. I think a mason became a citizen once.

Another trick I discovered is that you can apparently assign migrants into squads through Dwarf Therapist. Again this didn't work out in my case, because they were picked off by the undead.


I'll have to look into constructing a bunch of forts and walls all over the embark.

[gestahl]

You need intake centers. Give the gobs a path thru an atom smasher to a bait animal and take back the surface. Then build airlock bunkers where the migrants can get sealed safely inside (under cover of marksdwarf fire and/or a large amount of cage traps).
If you do end up caging large amounts of zombies, a drop shaft with a magma-safe repeating spike trap will fix that. (for zombie dwarves you have to build the cages and pull the lever, you can't dump dwarves...even if they are trying to eat your brains)

As for the current ones, you've got a slab industry going right?

[buckets]

Undead bioimes don't half give me the willies, how do people even survive those places?

But I suggest that you have multiple entrances all over the map, that way when some migrants spawn you can close all the others and pop the nearest.

shamelessly abusing the coin exploit

Tell me your secrets.

[Blue_Dwarf]

As for the current ones, you've got a slab industry going right?

Right And the next ones, because I couldn't manufacture enough crossbows and armor before they arrived. One guy survived strangely. He somehow ended up sitting in an area where zombies couldn't see him. He was also hit by a mood while sitting there, can you believe that?

Undead bioimes don't half give me the willies, how do people even survive those places?

But I suggest that you have multiple entrances all over the map, that way when some migrants spawn you can close all the others and pop the nearest.

shamelessly abusing the coin exploit

Tell me your secrets.

It's actually a nice green land with no evil rain or clouds, it's just the pesky undead and the tower nearby that cause issues. The elves are completely dead as well, so practically a paradise.

As for the coins, you just make them and get extra bars when you melt them

[gestahl]

He was also hit by a mood while sitting there, can you believe that?

This is a pair of pants. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality. On the item is an image of Urist and miasma. Urist is surrounded by the miasma. The artwork relates to the shitting of pants by Urist during the zombie siege of 301.

[Itnetlolor]

If you can, while you're doing all these suggestions, make a detour into your base, and plant some high quality serrated discs and spiked ball traps and see if the undead can blend. A cluster of 10-pack ☼blenders☼ (Corkscrews(3x slice) and discs (1x slice)) and ☼tenderizers☼ (Spiked balls(3x bludgeon) and warhammers (1x bludgeon)) ought to at least slow them down sufficiently, or turn them into a an undead slurry. The spiked ball traps hit 3 times each strike, as do corkscrews, but glass discs also chop at 1 slice per device, whereas corkscrews and spiked balls hit 3-times with less chance to hit. Make them from glass for a denser/sharper cutter/tenderizer, instead of wood (even though oak is the heaviest/densest of the surface foliage for use of this purpose) at a cheaper price than metal (silver being top-most quality for such in sharpness and density; although candy-discs and corkscrews do the finest mincing job at ☼top-quality☼; though the balls, not so much, regardless of quality).

I mean, even a deca (10-set) of wooden ☼spiked balls☼ made a fresh emu (prime condition, no wounds, etc.), and some unfortunate kobolds, disappear in a split second on contact. Imagine what it can do to the undead, especially when made of metal (especially silver) or glass (cheapest to produce value-cost-wise for value-produced; especially if magma-forged (especially where green glass is concerned)). back those balls up with some slicers, and you don't really need much to protect yourself, aside from another backup set in case the first set jams up.

[hiroshi42]

If you can, while you're doing all these suggestions, make a detour into your base, and plant some high quality serrated discs and spiked ball traps and see if the undead can blend. a cluster of 10-pack ☼blenders☼ and ☼tenderizers☼ ought to at least slow them down sufficiently, or turn them into a an undead slurry. The spiked ball traps hit 3 times each strike, as do corkscrews, but glass discs also chop at 1 slice per device, whereas corkscrews hit 3-times with less chance to hit. Make them from glass for a denser/sharper cutter/tenderizer, instead of wood (even though oak is the heaviest/densest of the surface foliage for use of this purpose).

And then you have a million zombie milling around unless you have some method (fire/magma) to permanently remove the corpses and body parts.  the spiked balls might not be a doomsday maker, but I rarely use them. 

Cage traps are nice because you get a completely contained zombie to destroy at your leasure.  you can pit them to make a training room or smash the cages to safely remove the zombie menace, you don't have to worry about parts reanimating while you are hauling them.  The only real downside is that you need a lot of cages and you may have to bait the zombies into the traps.  Also, forgetting to forbit the traps until it is safe to collect and reload can be fun.

Small forts connected by underground tunnels can be very useful in a reanimating biome especially if staffed by marksdwarves.  depending on how fancy you want to get you can even have dedicated living spaces under them with burrowed dedicated sentries.  This does require some management to keep them fully supplied but it can be worth it if your goal is to exert some sort of influence on the surface.

Other reanimating biome tips that you may or may not have found:
Make your trade depot close to a map edge and then close it in with walls, bridges, or a moat.  By separating it from the rest of the map you force caravans to spawn in a specific area which can be easily defended.  It also reduces travel time for caravans so you have more time to trade.

One can never have too many slabs.  Likewise one can never have too many people to engrave those slabs.

And if you are willing to use the coin exploit try looking at melting other items.  Some weapons or trap components can return far more than coins do.  About the only thing coin melting is good for is making more candy.

[Itnetlolor]

Well, you can also make a lineup of bridgeapults over a magma olympic pool (at least 3/7-4/7 deep; watch them attempt to swim through it), drainable optional (if you want to collect or clean; or want to make it an obsidian farm as well), with a switchbox in a safe location labeled/positioned accordingly to the bridge in operation (like a minimap of the defense layout). Lock up the first and last bridge to contain the zombies you want to melt (or the mass of undead limbs from the blenders and tenderizers of my previous suggestion; rendering them much lighter, also bridgeapulting them higher, possibly; or at least incinerating them far quicker like fleshy ore powder), and then let loose the other bridges. Make them retract into walls, since they require a floor to be built on to retract towards/on so the zombies have nowhere to grab onto after they're flung around the hot box, as well as locking them out still when even one of them are still up.

Oh yeah, and multiple trade depots do work; as long as you can lock one out when the time calls for it, you can make decoy trade depots (tested the proof of concept, works as intended; can work wonders in tight spots when you still want to trade, but your main base is still a tad busy. Excellent for sub-bases and re-routing invader traffic.). Traders will still come with wagons, even though your primary one is inaccessable. Switch accessibilities, and you can still make use of the trade wagons when it's safe for them (while they're all clustered as a single unit).

[Larix]

When working with multiple trade depots, remember to _forbid_ all those you don't want visited. My tests showed that traders leading pack animals will always aim for the 'oldest' (first built) depot that's unforbidden, regardless whether it's actually accessible or not. If the depot in question is inaccessible, they'll simply freeze in place - even when the wagons are en route to a properly accessible, but 'younger' depot. And you can't trade if there's a trader on the map who hasn't unpacked yet.

Things can also get quite freaky when you forbid a depot the traders already are at, in hopes of redirecting them to another one (e.g. to get gridlocked caravans un-stuck). They can leave part of their wares at the forbidden depot and the item pickup after trading can get blocked.

Basically, have only one depot allowed on the entire map when traders are around. Unless you want to screw with them.

[Blue_Dwarf]

And then you have a million zombie milling around unless you have some method (fire/magma) to permanently remove the corpses and body parts.

Hehe, currently sitting on a little over 200. In this screenshot there are about a 100 of them:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think I'll be going for a trapless defense, because this many traps require too much micromanaging.

My primary weapon will be marksdwarves sitting on tops of various forts (like the above, which is my main entrance), whack-a-moling the zombies with bolts. It turns out that a squad of hero marksdwarves is enough for about 100 undead.

Downed zombies will be carried into multiple stockpiles in several sealable rooms, before atom-smashing. Or maybe dumping into magma, I have a volcano.

I'm currently digging underground passages for the forts and a new depot