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[Pinstar]

So I have my fort setup decently (for a newbie) and my first trade caravan just left.

I know that thieving kobalts are a potential problem and have read a few things about combating them, but I think I need a bit more.

My main entrance is guarded by two dogs (well, a dog and its puppy) via a pasture.

I got the message that a thief had been detected.

I quickly drafted my two hunters into a marksdwarf squad and told them to go kill the kobald...but they never got around to showing up after one of them cancelled an action to gather equipment due to a kobald in the area.

My dogs didn't even try to attack it (Granted, they weren't war dogs, just normal dogs)

Are there any newbie-friendly tips to helping guard against thieves? Should I make a dwarf squad and permanently station them at the front door? Is melee or ranged better for dealing with thieves? Do I need to train my dog to be a war dog before he'll attack an intruder?

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Fluoman]

You don't need to kill them. Warding them off is okay. As long as they don't actually steal anything, they won't come in force for a siege.
Having hunters outside is efficient because they may kill the thief while he flees.

[sirdave79]

Your hunters wont have made it because it can take a a surprisingly long time for a dwarf to equip himself for military service. Because of a bug/less than ideal implementation, a hunter will drop his xbow and grab a 2nd, different xbow, as well as a backpack and flask, which i think he will fill with food and water before finally heading to the location you specify. And thats without armour.

The dogs will help, normal dogs will attack hostiles unless they are chained. I would expect only 2 or 3 dogs to receive injuries or potential death from a single thief. When Ive used the pasture dogs over entrance tactics I usually go with about 8 dogs, and I expect some to not last very long at all. Also I find that often dogs cannot catch a fleeing thief and will end up chasing a long way from the pasture on a fruitless run.

I have read that hunting dogs have an increased range/ability to detect hidden creatures, but I cannot offer you any experience on that matter as I found it hard to tell the difference. War animals do more damage.

Easiest newb tip to keeping thieves and unwanted visitors out, keep the doors closed.

Build yoruself an "airlock" with 2 bridges leading from outside to inside and build a trade depot in there. That way the inner bridge can be sealed keeping you safe, the outer bridge can be left open to that incoming caravans have a destination and will not avoid your site with their wagons.

Once the cravan has arrived you can close the outer gate and open the inner gate, minimising (to practically zero) the chance of hostiles getting into your fort.  This can be time consuming (you cant move goods to the trade depot with the inner door closed) and pathing to your airlock can take time depending on your perimeter walls, and caravanas especially multiple caravans with mutiple trade depots can be finicky but you can work out a reliable pattern and this is the best way ive found to do things so far.

screenie of the airlocked trade depot

http://imgur.com/sKC9Bru

I have 4 of those around my perimeter. Each 1 has a weapon stand that I can use to get my melee squad to train close to the site of an active trade so they can help out if necessary. Also above the airlocks is a floored area so I can have marksdwarves above the gates firing down. The entire outside wall is also enclosed with fortifications offering extra protection to any marks dwarves on the ramparts (and preventing them from "dodging" off the walls and into my moat.

One might say ranged is better for thieves as they tend to run away when discovered and as I mentioned dogs struggle to catch them, so ranged might give you a few "hits" on the thief that you might not otherwise have gotten. Also I would say marksdwarves are easier to equip and train, as well as being effective without large amounts of metal armour.

Definitely give your marks dwarves shields as well as xbows, even if no other armour is available.

After that its up to you. I often have my crack melee squad (consisiting of 4 males from my starting 7 that all had teacher and 1 useful military skill) siting in/around my open gates when I went to cut some wood outside or dispose of the last bunch of unfortunate visitors to my fort. I know from the 4 of them breaking several sieges they are almost untouchable. (I did savescum the death of one of them by a troll, I couldnt even find the combat log relating to his death.

In my last fort I had several (~4) squads of 5 marks dwarves and no melee dwarves. When a caravan arrived I was using marksdwarves to offer as much cover for a caravan as I could from the walls with 1 squad stationed above the open gate.

Hope thats helpful

[greycat]

Also I find that often dogs cannot catch a fleeing thief and will end up chasing a long way from the pasture on a fruitless run.

It most likely depends on the thief's attributes.  Usually if I tell my military to kill a thief, they will plod long trying to catch it, but they're too slow.  However, if I have a really talented military dwarf, with high agility, that one dwarf can usually catch up to the thief and dispatch it in one or two hits.

[AutomataKittay]

Just scaring off thieves are usually just fine, you just need enough pets or dwarves to make it difficult to take a direct route to their target. Fancy loose objects for Kobolds and children for Goblins.

I personally uses crossbow dwarves sitting around armor stand in the entrance to fill thieves with bolts, so far haven't had one make it out. Goblin ones can be caught with traps but kobolds are trapavoid.

Also make sure you disable hunters' hunting job, it'll conflict with their military uniform.

[Garath]

Word of Toady is still that war training doesn't make dogs stronger or cause more damage, nor does hunting training make them more agile or anything. It may be changed in the future, but currently it only makes them engage hostiles. Otherwise, unless cornered/crowded they'll try to flee. What most likely 'happens' in the case of a previous post is that 8 dogs mean that some/most have a hard time getting away. If they can't flee, they'll fight, but they generally won't chase unless they had hunting or war training. Hunting training has the additional effect of letting them enter ambush mode/stealth mode together with a hunter

note that actually catching a kobold thief is very unrewarding. They usually have a loincloth and a long dagger, on average. The dagger is actually pretty deadly. Goblin thieves are a bit more rewarding to catch, but also trigger traps, so they never make it far enough to be detected by my sentries

[sirdave79]

Thats interesting to hear that war and hunting dont do anything. I thought I read on the wiki that war did more damage and hunting had a higher chance of observing hidden units. My experience with both types (limited) suggests little to no difference.

If the only difference is that war AND hunting will engage hostiles there seems no point to having two training options ? Maybe just a placeholder for the future.

Also Ive never seen my standard dogs run from a thief.

[AutomataKittay]

Thats interesting to hear that war and hunting dont do anything. I thought I read on the wiki that war did more damage and hunting had a higher chance of observing hidden units. My experience with both types (limited) suggests little to no difference.

If the only difference is that war AND hunting will engage hostiles there seems no point to having two training options ? Maybe just a placeholder for the future.

Also Ive never seen my standard dogs run from a thief.

Those are from much older version, 40d and earlier. War makes them more aggressive, though. Hunting training let them sneak with hunters, too.

The observing sneaking unit, I have no idea if it ever worked that way, not really useful in practice anyway since you can just clump more animals or dwarves in the way to make absolutely sure, and sometimes they manage to sneak past everyone somehow.

[JAFANZ]

[snip]
Easiest newb tip to keeping thieves and unwanted visitors out, keep the doors closed.

Build yoruself an "airlock" with 2 bridges leading from outside to inside and build a trade depot in there. That way the inner bridge can be sealed keeping you safe, the outer bridge can be left open to that incoming caravans have a destination and will not avoid your site with their wagons.

Once the cravan has arrived you can close the outer gate and open the inner gate, minimising (to practically zero) the chance of hostiles getting into your fort.  This can be time consuming (you cant move goods to the trade depot with the inner door closed) and pathing to your airlock can take time depending on your perimeter walls, and caravanas especially multiple caravans with mutiple trade depots can be finicky but you can work out a reliable pattern and this is the best way ive found to do things so far.

screenie of the airlocked trade depot

http://imgur.com/sKC9Bru

I have 4 of those around my perimeter. Each 1 has a weapon stand that I can use to get my melee squad to train close to the site of an active trade so they can help out if necessary. Also above the airlocks is a floored area so I can have marksdwarves above the gates firing down. The entire outside wall is also enclosed with fortifications offering extra protection to any marks dwarves on the ramparts (and preventing them from "dodging" off the walls and into my moat.
[snip]

How does that work for you? I thought having multiple Depots was bugged? or that only when they're all open to the outside world at once?

Also, whilst 2 bridges is effective, using ramps you can actually build single-bridge/lever airlocks, which reduces the potential for confusion or errors.

[sirdave79]

Ive had various versions of my airlocked trade depots not working. They go wrong most when 1 caravans appearence overlaps another, ie the dwarves arrive after Ive traded a lot to the humans. I use a combination of forbiding depots themselves and keeping the airlocks closed on both sides till I can isolate the 2nd caravan in a 2nd depot. Ive got this down regularly now as opposed to when I started I was getting all sort of glitches. Seemingly if only 1 depot is available to the incoming caravan I dont have problems. If I open an airlock with a caravan in it after trading and another caravan appears literally almost anything can happen, with the wagons and traders of the inc caravan going to different depots, wagons gettingn stuck butting each other head on and even some wagons from a caravan freezing outside my fort while the others carry on. I nearly ditched the multiple depots and airlocks but I did finally get the hang of it.

I maintain 4 depots in an attempt to provide a short distance to the incoming caravan but as with the last fort, i care less and less about a caravan getting ambushed too far away to intervene as time goes by.

I wish buildings roads to the map edge brough caravans onto your map "on road" as it were.

Im not quite sure how ramps would mean I only need 1 bridge but my current setup is working fairly reliably.

ive seen a few screenies of underground depots with very long runs of fortifications marks dwarves can sit behing but what I dont get is how to get the depots off map underground or quite what the most efficent way of getting the caravans underground in the first place.

[JAFANZ]

Caravans can go up & down ramps that're 3-urists wide, so that takes care of getting them underground.

Technically my comment about Ramps & Bridges was a bit of a shortcut, as I use a 3-ramp up to the trade depot area as my airlock (to block Building Destroyers when closed), when the bridge is up, caravans, migrants, & whatever can get in to fortress, but not go past the depot area, when I drop the bridge, it closes over the ramps for the caravans, locking everything out (& in) but allows access between the depot & the rest of the fortress (obviously this is a failure point if the bridge isn't dropped before a Buildind Destroyer enters, but I can't remember what my "lazy" answer to that was).

[Fluoman]

Wagon-specific airlock.

[Gaybarowner]

Very easy way to ward off thieves if have a lot of dogs chained to leashes around your fort once the thief gets notice he runs away
or make meeting rooms in a common area to you goods!

[sirdave79]

funnily enough ive discovered thieves (approx 4) deep inside my fort, which is new for me. They made it past a bugged human caravan stuck in my airlock, 4 dogs patured across the inner gate and my crack squad training at the gate as well.

Ive locked the gates now, the little buggers are probably still floating around inside!

[Cobbler89]

Don't stonefall traps work even on hidden, trapavoid enemies? Or am I mixing up something?