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[Setes]

Hi all

So, i've been playing since may or so, on/off, and in my quest to make the perfect fort i've found some issues over the past few days that i'd like to get resolved one way or another

1. Cages and Prisoners. During sieges i tend to capture a lot of goblins, trolls and various other nasty creatures. I intended for them to be used to train my military. but i'm having two problems with it.
     -When i collect the cages and store them in a stockpile (with the captured goblin inside it) the goblin appears to be alive, and judging by "k'ing" them, they are, as i cant dump them, and i've still got a description of the goblin. But when i try to build the cage, the goblin suddenly appears to be dead (at least thats what the graphic shows), and nothing happens when i link the cage up to a lever and pull it, the corpse and cage just dissapears, leaving only mechanisms left.

     -On the above note: a way to remove corpses from cages, i've tried building the cage, and then dumping everything in it, but my dwarves just take the gear from the corpse, while leaving it there. This has lead to a lot of untrained military and lost iron cages.

     -Are wooden cages just as good as those made from iron or steel?


2. Dogs of war. Whats up with this, i can easily train them, but i cant seem to find anywhere to assign them to a squad, or a way of commandeering them around during sieges.


3. Marskdwarves. Oh my god, so frustrating, this has cost me quite a lot of good, competent dwarves In my earlier forts i built a wall, with a walkway and fortifications on it, then set up a guard patrol for my marskdwarves there so they'd see intruders and hopefully shoot a few arrows at them, this has worked out pretty well so far (with the exception of them not shooting half the time), but there's a few issues i'd very much like to have explained.

     -If i command them to kill something nothing happens, unless they can path to the target (saw the other thread), but when they are able to path to them, what happens is, they decide to go full melee on them, swinging their fists and whatnot at the enemy trolls, needless to say, this ends in tragedy and funtimes.

     -When first set on their guard patrol, the marskdwarves seem to recognize the enemies, then go back to the armory and pick up something, then go back to the patrol to either run past, or shoot at targets. What can i do to make them pick up their shit immediately, and begin shooting stuff, instead of running around (silly dwarves, what do they expect would happen if they are sent onto the battlements during a siege -.-"). I think this is related to the point above this


4. Training a melee military effectively without using a dangerroom.

     -I've tried fortresses before where i made a dangerroom for my military as soon as i was able to, though this took out a lot of the fun during sieges as 10 of my dwarves would be able to utterly decimate and dominate an entire siege army. So instead i decided to make a military of 3 squads, consisting of 10 axedwarves, 10 swordsdwarves, all wearing iron armor with shields, and 10 marsksdwarves (the ones described in point 3), wearing the standard archery outfit. I've meant to have the melee dwarves train in barracks, and the marskdwarves by hunting, but i've run into a few issues, the melee dwarves train way too rarely, hardly ever, which results in INSANELY slow statgain for them, i think i have to train them for 3 years non-stop for them to have any use at all. What can i do to optimize the regular training, without having access to any hostiles in cages, or danger rooms?

     -Assigning squadmembers, this has got to be the biggest pain in the ass, whenever i make a new squad with 10 dwarves in it, i go to dwarf therapist and find 10 exemplary males of the dwarven race, and draft them for the squad. The issue is, the way i'm doing this takes ages. I have to go through the entire catalogue of every dwarf in my base to find the single dwarf i want in my squad, then repeat this 10 times for every dwarf i want in my squad. Is there no way of making a text search for a dwarf i want in that squad?

     -Dwarves loving their weapon/armor. How happy do they get when i take their favourite plaything from them?, usually i start out with a copper/iron military, but as i get into the game, i eventually want them to start wearing steel armor. However, i havnt gotten so far into the game yet that i've tried this. But i want to know if they can throw a tantrum if they dont get to keep their stuff

Though, i might be looking at this from the wrong angle, that i'm not supposed to be fighting sieges head on, but rather treat them as a siege, and have my marskmen repel them from the walls, while i keep my melee military in reserve for stuff like forgotten beasts, giants, and ambushes? Nonetheless, i need a better way to train them

Thanks for reading this huge post, and thanks in advance for the glorious replies.

/Setes

Edit: Oh, and fucking cats. How can i get rid of cats that have adopted some owners?, i dont seem to be able to cage them, and they keep breeding like there was nothing else to do.

[jcochran]

The cat issue is easy enough to fix. Just make a pasture in a location subject to "unfortunate accidents" and have the cat assigned to that pasture.
When the "unfortunate accident" happens, the problem with that cat is solved.

[FuzzyZergling]

1. Cages and Prisoners. During sieges i tend to capture a lot of goblins, trolls and various other nasty creatures. I intended for them to be used to train my military. but i'm having two problems with it.
     -When i collect the cages and store them in a stockpile (with the captured goblin inside it) the goblin appears to be alive, and judging by "k'ing" them, they are, as i cant dump them, and i've still got a description of the goblin. But when i try to build the cage, the goblin suddenly appears to be dead (at least thats what the graphic shows), and nothing happens when i link the cage up to a lever and pull it, the corpse and cage just dissapears, leaving only mechanisms left.

     -On the above note: a way to remove corpses from cages, i've tried building the cage, and then dumping everything in it, but my dwarves just take the gear from the corpse, while leaving it there. This has lead to a lot of untrained military and lost iron cages.

     -Are wooden cages just as good as those made from iron or steel?

Connecting a cage to a lever and pulling it should dump out any corpses inside, I'm not sure what your problem could be.
Wooden cages are just as good as metal ones.

[Blue_Dwarf]

Edit: Oh, and fucking cats. How can i get rid of cats that have adopted some owners?, i dont seem to be able to cage them, and they keep breeding like there was nothing else to do.

Don't let Cats (Stray) sit in your meeting area. Always asign them to pastures on food stockpiles, to hunt rats.

If you let animals into your meeting area, they adopt dwarves very fast.

To get rid of them, you can make the dwarf happy, then kill his pet. If he's happy enough, he will just get a bad thought that will disappear.

[itg]

Hi all

So, i've been playing since may or so, on/off, and in my quest to make the perfect fort i've found some issues over the past few days that i'd like to get resolved one way or another

1. Cages and Prisoners. During sieges i tend to capture a lot of goblins, trolls and various other nasty creatures. I intended for them to be used to train my military. but i'm having two problems with it.
     -When i collect the cages and store them in a stockpile (with the captured goblin inside it) the goblin appears to be alive, and judging by "k'ing" them, they are, as i cant dump them, and i've still got a description of the goblin. But when i try to build the cage, the goblin suddenly appears to be dead (at least thats what the graphic shows), and nothing happens when i link the cage up to a lever and pull it, the corpse and cage just dissapears, leaving only mechanisms left.

     -On the above note: a way to remove corpses from cages, i've tried building the cage, and then dumping everything in it, but my dwarves just take the gear from the corpse, while leaving it there. This has lead to a lot of untrained military and lost iron cages.

     -Are wooden cages just as good as those made from iron or steel?

The easiest way to do live training vs. goblins is to set up a mass pitting system. The wiki has a good explanation of how to do it.

All materials are equal for cages, except when burning/melting temperature is relevant.

4. Training a melee military effectively without using a dangerroom.

     -I've tried fortresses before where i made a dangerroom for my military as soon as i was able to, though this took out a lot of the fun during sieges as 10 of my dwarves would be able to utterly decimate and dominate an entire siege army. So instead i decided to make a military of 3 squads, consisting of 10 axedwarves, 10 swordsdwarves, all wearing iron armor with shields, and 10 marsksdwarves (the ones described in point 3), wearing the standard archery outfit. I've meant to have the melee dwarves train in barracks, and the marskdwarves by hunting, but i've run into a few issues, the melee dwarves train way too rarely, hardly ever, which results in INSANELY slow statgain for them, i think i have to train them for 3 years non-stop for them to have any use at all. What can i do to optimize the regular training, without having access to any hostiles in cages, or danger rooms?

In large squads, the dwarves spend all their time waiting around for useless group demonstrations, which is why their stat gain is so poor. If you make squads of 2-3, your dwarves will spend much more time sparring, so they'll improve much faster.

     -Assigning squadmembers, this has got to be the biggest pain in the ass, whenever i make a new squad with 10 dwarves in it, i go to dwarf therapist and find 10 exemplary males of the dwarven race, and draft them for the squad. The issue is, the way i'm doing this takes ages. I have to go through the entire catalogue of every dwarf in my base to find the single dwarf i want in my squad, then repeat this 10 times for every dwarf i want in my squad. Is there no way of making a text search for a dwarf i want in that squad?

I don't know of a way to do a text search, but choosing the ideal soldiers really doesn't make that big a difference in the end. Even the worst dwarf will become indestructible when he reaches legendary in a few combat skills (namely dodge and shield user), and even the best dwarf can be taken out by a random bolt or lash to the brain before he gets to that point.

     -Dwarves loving their weapon/armor. How happy do they get when i take their favourite plaything from them?, usually i start out with a copper/iron military, but as i get into the game, i eventually want them to start wearing steel armor. However, i havnt gotten so far into the game yet that i've tried this. But i want to know if they can throw a tantrum if they dont get to keep their stuff

Though, i might be looking at this from the wrong angle, that i'm not supposed to be fighting sieges head on, but rather treat them as a siege, and have my marskmen repel them from the walls, while i keep my melee military in reserve for stuff like forgotten beasts, giants, and ambushes? Nonetheless, i need a better way to train them

If your dwarf's favorite weapon doesn't match his uniform, he'll drop it and find something that does. Just delete the weapon from the dwarf's uniform and either assign him a specific one or assign a category like "steel spears." I haven't noticed any unhappy thoughts from doing this.

There are lots of viable ways to tackle sieges. Charging in with melee dwarves is one of them, and so is taking potshots from the walls.

[Garath]

Maybe something goes wrong when building the cage. Press x in that menu to get an expanded list of all the cages. Also note that you can just build a cage and then transport the prisoners there just like assigning animals to a cage. They won't (usually) try to escape, though sometimes this happens when visiting merchant guards attack.

Don't try to tame the animals you caught from a siege, they'll remain hostile and end up untrainable, untamable, uncatchable by normal means and will cause loyalty cascades if you attack them.

Currently all cages are equal, though there are some details that differ. These mostly have to do with how fire and magma resistant they are. As for containing creatures, creatures inside the cage can't break out. A fire breathing dragon capable of melting steel can't escape a wooden cage. What is even funnier is that every cage can hold infinite creatures. Creatures inside a cage can still bleed to death, starve to death and give birth, but they can't interact with anything anymore, so they won't fight among eachother and won't get new pregnancies.

you can assign dogs to specific soldiers (or anyone) in the (v)iew, go to specific dwarf... and then I forgot. It is sometimes used to pile wardogs on a dwarf that looks like going berserk to limit the damage the dwarf can do.

Kill orders always mean to go to melee, station orders can let marksdwarfs shoot at anything they see.

As for the cats, enjoy! Put them in a cage and let them mature, butcher them and enjoy your delicious cat roasts and shoot your enemies with cat bone bolts. Just don't let them walk around freely

Use splinterz version of Dwarg Therapist, iirc, it has a way to assign squads

[Setes]

Thank you all for the excellent replies, so many useful tips that are going to come in handy, thank you very very much

About stationing marskdwarves, do you just station them near the battlefield?, or how does that work.

As for dwarves in squads, i like a good bit of sexism, the military is stricktly for men, as i dont want the women running around having babies mid-fight

Also, decent training means that i can armorstack properly again, so yay for that, here comes the sextuple-hood and cloak wearing axedwarves of the apocalypse!!

[Merendel]

As for dwarves in squads, i like a good bit of sexism, the military is stricktly for men, as i dont want the women running around having babies mid-fight

Oh come on there's nothing more entertaining than a female dwarf(or wardog) poping out a sprog the instant after they get a killing blow.  Talk about bein hardcore.

[Setes]

Good point, i might try a bit equality in my armies, even though thats a bit blasphemous in my world :/

[Garath]

and using the baby as a shield, let's not forget that

[Tarqiup Inua]

REcently I have begun giving dwarves custom professions and nicknames to dwarves I have use for.

Lorbam McMurderburger the Butcher is therefore renamed into Slaughterer McMurderBurger the Slaughterer.

This makes orientation in the list of dwarves easy - I can see right away which ones don't have a job yet. Now as for assigning to military, I simply go through those that remain and if they are found worthy addition to military, I change their nickname and profession to "Recruit" or something similar, that way I can easily see them when I am assigning more dwarves to new squad.

[Setes]

So the nicknames you assign in Dwarf Therapist show up ingame? :O

[Tarqiup Inua]

You see... most of my dwarves have nicknames so when I press u in-game to see list of dwarves, there is single space in front of the names of dwarves with job (in my fortress having a job = having a nickname, I assign these together).

Now I can go through the list and check dwarves who don't have assigned nickname/job and look for adequate attributes. If I see adequate attributes, I add profession and nickname (both are set to Recruit, when I am drafting).

For military dwarves, I then open military menu (m), create squad and put in everyone starting with nickname Recruit.

For dwarves that got a job, I open Therapist, use "sort by nickname" and look up those that are supposed to get a new job.

Understandable?

I don't know if Therapist nicknames show in-game, but in-game nicknames definitely show up in Therapist.

[greycat]

About stationing marskdwarves, do you just station them near the battlefield?, or how does that work.

I station them on the walkway behind the fortifications.  (I build above-ground castles just like you described for your "earlier forts".)

[Oddible]

-Assigning squadmembers, this has got to be the biggest pain in the ass, whenever i make a new squad with 10 dwarves in it, i go to dwarf therapist and find 10 exemplary males of the dwarven race, and draft them for the squad. The issue is, the way i'm doing this takes ages. I have to go through the entire catalogue of every dwarf in my base to find the single dwarf i want in my squad, then repeat this 10 times for every dwarf i want in my squad. Is there no way of making a text search for a dwarf i want in that squad?

I have a Search in my (u)nits list.  I think it must have been from one of the utilities installed with this pack:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119575.0