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[Liberty]

Well, it happened for the second time, sort of... I had Fun into the wee hours of the night yesterday. With my total Fortress worth growing to nearly half a million I knew what was to come. Of course I try to be proactive and so I setup Burrows well beforehand that covered my first underground level to the very bottommost level. I was at about 150 Dwarves and I had a bustling little economy rolling. But then a vile force of darkness arrived! Batteries not included! The force consisted of goblins and some big brutish trolls.

No need to fear burrow alert are here!

Or so I thought…Now, I might have fudged this up but I thought I followed the wiki to a tee when setting the civilian alert on. My main question is, is there any circumstances where dwarves would ever leave their designated burrow or not go to their burrow but instead run around outside or leave the underground to go outside and join all the other dwarves in a fun game of run around in circles while getting bashed with trolls game?

Now, to compound the effect I had set my mighty squads, the Mechanical Horses and the Bright Anvils, on alert as well. They however seemed to stay nice and cozy inside the burrow (like they’re supposed to I suppose). Now, what alert status, if any should my squads be set to? I believe I gave them the ‘defend burrows’ order. Now, I read that you might have to go to standing orders and disable collecting corpses even though you have a burrow up and alert on. Is that true?

Eventually, after face rolling the keyboard on the military screen for a bit I started getting alerts that so and so couldn’t do such and such due to access. I believe at that point the civilian burrow alert was working properly. Everyone was staying inside. Is that message a sign the alert is working?

At any rate by that point I was down to about 50 or so dwarves half of which were going stark raving mad or throwing tantrums.  Things were looking very ugly at this point but somehow through my traps and remaining shambles of an army I was able to repel the evil forces. I had to designate several corpse/refuse stockpiles which quickly filled with bodies and miasmas were going all throughout the fortress. The Bright Anvils were no more and so I set a couple shops for repeat tomb making as I’d figure they’d be in business for quite awhile. Speaking of which is there an easy way to just queue up tomb engraving for all the dead at the Craftsdwarfshop?

The Icing on the cake however came when I got ambushed only a couple months after the siege! At this point the tantruming was still bad but I managed to pull together a couple dwarfs who grabbed some silver war hammers and bashed the brains out of a couple goblins causing the others to run in fear. Once several of the unhappiest dwarfs died of thirst and a couple migrant waves came in I was actually, somehow, someway, back on track! I have no idea how I pulled through. But it was fun.

[smakemupagus]

The burrow only affects whether they'll take new jobs.  It doesn't override their more primal instincts, such as running in terror.  They won't go outside for no reason, but if they're already outside and panicked they might make suboptimal choices.

Not sure how to answer your question about military alerts, because what "should" they do is kinda subjective.  I think most players probably leave the military on one of the two default alert levels "inactive" or "active/training" and then just issue them squadron orders a la carte like Station here, or Attack this.  Those kind of orders temporarily override the default schedule corresponding to their alert state.  This works fine for 90%+ of things, like archers go Station on battlements, warriors Station at the gate, warriors Kill the unicorn.

But if you want to do more scheduled defense things like Patrol or Defend burrows, you might want to create special military alerts, with their own sets of scheduled orders.

[MasterShizzle]

Burrows don't actually restrict movement, just tasks. If, for example, you have a burrow consisting of two un-connected rectangles, then dwarves assigned to that burrow can still walk freely in the non-burrow'd tiles between the two rectangles. They just can't accept tasks that have items/targets outside their burrow. The practical side of this is that for large burrows a dwarf usually stays within the burrow itself, but that's not always the case.

My guess is that you set your citizens on alert, restricting them to your "panic" burrow. The dwarves who were still outside didn't immediately move inside, and instead waited until they got a task that was within the burrow. They tried to walk inside, saw the trolls, and the task was interrupted. They proceeded to run around like idiots, constantly accepting tasks and canceling them, getting nowhere in the meantime. Same thing happens to me with seiges. The gatherers/woodcutters always seem to hang around outside more than they should when I set them on alert.

You might think about having all your surface dwarves (hunters, woodcutters, etc.) assigned to military squads, with no required uniforms and no scheduled orders, then set them to inactive duty. Then when disaster strikes you can activate them and order them to move into the fort directly, with the added bonus that they won't go skittering away at the sight of a single raven or some such.

EDIT: Ninja'd. Balls.

[smakemupagus]

You might think about having all your surface dwarves (hunters, woodcutters, etc.) assigned to military squads, with no required uniforms and no scheduled orders, then set them to inactive duty. Then when disaster strikes you can activate them and order them to move into the fort directly, with the added bonus that they won't go skittering away at the sight of a single raven or some such.

You can also grab the panic'd guys and add them to a squad in real time during the attack, so that they'll accept orders, whether to move to the fort or at least die fighting back.

[Liberty]

Ah! I see said the blind man to his deaf son.

Not sure why but I was under the impression that burrows meant 1)Do not leave this designated area and 2) If you are not there get there. Now!

But thanks to your clarification I see what went wrong and some ways to remedy it.

Perhaps Toady should implement the burrows to work in the fashion I thought. Even with the solutions provided it seems a bit finicky to get the guys and gal outside back inside.

Thanks for the help!

[Garath]

actually, that is true for military 'civilian' alerts. Those tll the civvies to drop whatever they are doing and head for the burrow. Ordinary burrows and assigning people to it work as described by mastershizzle.

There are some problems though. If someone has a task to bring refuse to the refuse stockpile, has already picked up the refuse, alert starts and the refuse stockpile is outside the burrow, he or she will stand there spamming job cancelations as (s)he doesn't know what to do with the stuff (s)he's holding. Other problems include militia going to old station orders, cats and children running out for whatever reason and general stupidity.

As mentioned, dwarfs are stupid when panicked. If your map is about normal size (4x4) or smaller, the enemy will be within sight of quite a lot of dwarfs pretty fast and they don't react smart and run through the gate to safety, they run away in the opposite direction, wherever that may lead. When you start to suspect sieges will start it's important to move as much of your operations inside as you can. Underground treefarms and pastures, no fishing anymore or hunting but relying on farming, tame creatures and occasionally the caverns.

Ofcourse, that is safety advice, it's not really FUN

[fricy]

Regarding the military alerts: It's good for setting up (smaller) burrows near the area that you want to defend, or patrol routes. That way you can station your dwarves near choke points, or send your archers to defend fortifications from the same screen as you set up your civ. alert. You don't need to station them manually, just set the alert and they'll go there.
As mentioned, dwarves will take time to make it back to safety if they are outside when you sound the alert, and they will panic when they see enemies. So yeah, there will be casualities... Your best defence is minimizing the number of dwarves that access the surface: underground tree farms, no fishing dwarves/hunters, walled in pastures/aboveground farms can help you with that.

Also: forbid picking up dropped equipment: Your civilians will respect the alert, but your military dwarves won't. If one of them rushed ahead wearing high quality equipment, then died outside, there's a high chance that one of his squadmates will try to claim that masterwork sword from under that goblin lasher. And the next one, and the next one...

[vanatteveldt]

Yeah I can second that the civilian alert from the military screen does do what you want: tell all dwarfs to stop whatever they were doing and go to the burrow. Military will leave the burrow when ordered to do so or when they see a hostile.

The only reasons I can think of for your dwarfs to go out there and look at the troll parade are (1) the alert connected to the burrow wasn't activated as the civilian alert, or (2) they couldn't path to the burrow, because you had already locked the door / raised the drawbridge.

[slothen]

mastershizzle is pretty much right on what burrows do.  Even with civilian alert burrows, they will leave those burrows if accepting a job elsewhere in the burrow causes them to path outside of the burrow.  I'm not exactly sure what circumstances cause cancellation spam vs which cause dwarfs to not take the job in the first place.  Drafting civilians that are running from hostiles sounds like it will just make them suicide, as military dwarves won't obey a move order if there's something to kill within reach.