Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tsuchigumo550]

Well, I finally met my first siege, and was royally ripped apart by it. My military had mostly leather armor and silver war hammers, though few had gauntlets or greaves.

I don't think they ever really trained, and I had to quickly throw like 7 people in. My fortress defense worked, a wall and a drawbridge, but I hadn't bothered to use burrows until the siege and half of my dwarves were royally screwed. Dwarves don't really rush to get inside a burrow for anything, do they?

The ballista totally missed. It only had one iron-tip arrow anyway.

I hadn't breached the caverns, but got within a single tile of mining away. Most of the time my fort falls due to a few troglodytes coming up to party and me not having any good defenses for them at all.

I think the military was finished off before anyone else. They didn't have a lot of resources because during the winter I managed to piss off the trade liaison (who was making 300 profit, the asshole) and lose the food and drink I wanted. No goats, either. The llamas weren't giving me any new females, and I was a bit worried about that. Shouldn't have been, really.

I also had boatloads of children. Snatchers were pretty much welcome. Despite their high success rate (only killed one) the fort remained content.

So, I need to add military to list of "DO QUICK", but I don't really know how. I'm contemplating writing a couple of new siegers, but I'd like to be able to kill the vanilla stuff beforehand. Warhammers may have been a poor choice as they aren't really quick to kill, but it dosen't help when no one trains.

I also need more advanced trap techniques that aren't downright exploit-y. I've got a couple of ideas:
1: Aboveground wall sector:

The entrance is surrounded by a wall, containing farmer's shop and animal pastures. The "door" is a drawbridge, there is a floor above the wall in places for other things. Not sure what yet.
The entrance will have a hallway of sorts, that dips down to have a lot of empty space. To get into the fort, you're going to go down 3 z-levels and back up again: I'll connect this to floodgates and a lever, pumping a bunch of water into a reservoir.  Floodgates block stairs in and out when activated, hopefully drowning the goblins. Another floodgate opens when the trap is disengaged, and I'll try to get that water to flow off the map or something (never managed to make water go away before, and I don't want to mess with aquifers yet.)

I still want to get a good military up and going. What's the best way to do this? I don't really want to go full marksdwarves behind fortifications, either.

Though, that's what I should have done. In fact, that was the original plan, but I scrapped it when building the upper part of the fort.

What are your tips for breaching the caverns and collecting their goodies without having to worry about trogs and other things? How about anti-siege? How do I use the military beyond designating dwarves to hold weapons and go hit things?

[TeleDwarf]

your main error was not having trained military.
your second main problem was not having armored military.

1. To be relatively safe - at embark - assign two of your dwarves to train 24x7 right away.
2. Once you get migrands add whoever you can spare to this squad. Once squad is 10 dwarves - make your two original soldiers into captains and split the squad in two. continue this practice ad infinity (or at least until you feel comfortable)
3. make metal armor a priority. start making full plate as soon as you can. even before clothes. do not bother with steel, use whatever is available in great quantities. Once you have legendary smith - start upgrading to steel.
4. warhammers are good. better to mix them with other weapon types two for two reasons: different weapons are better at different situations; different dwarves have different weapon talents.
5. once you have some decently trained dwarves - have them alternate training with patrolling of remote areas. This way you will have someone to delay attackers while you regroup your forces. most of civilians will survive.
6. try to limit the number of dwarves who venture out there. use burrows, jobs management or whatever you like to achieve that.
7. a good feat is to equip everyone in your fort with metal armor. that way even civilians will not be slaughtered that easily.

[vjek]

Some advice..

Unless your embark is extraordinary, you have spring->winter to get yourself ready.  Use those first few months wisely.

Typically, this involves:
Moving your entire fort underground, exclusively.  This means there is no reason, of any kind, for any dwarf to go above ground, ever.  Included in this are two burrows.  One which includes the entire map, and the other which includes only the safe parts of your fort. 
If you tie these burrows to alert states, you can force all your dwarves to immediately move to the safe part of the fort, no matter what they're doing, at any time.  Burrows are awesome in this regard.

A single locked door will hold off an entire siege (or any animals) if there are no building destroyers.  Even if there are building destroyers, a single wall built of a block can hold off an entire siege, if you have a chokepoint in the right place, and is built quickly!  In the worst case, you can build the wall immediately behind the door, while the door is being destroyed.

Traps, even those made of wood or glass, are remarkably effective at deterring most sieges.  Glass is infinite if you have magma, wood is ~infinite if you have a tree farm, and/or clear-cut your entire embark.  copper/iron/steel/candy trap components are good->ridiculously effective.

With respect to the caverns, if the only thing you're getting from the caverns is wood, breach them and seal them, then excavate your own tree farm in the soil layers beneath the embark layers.  If the only thing you're getting from the caverns is water, you can build a secure water supply before invaders arrive, or use a partial aquifer for the simplest safest water supply.

Having your military train at your entrance (and yes, you should only have one entrance) is likely your safest bet.  Having metal armor (of any kind, even copper) on every body part is really important when dealing with goblins, trolls, and animals.  Iron is good, Steel is best.  Not every embark is steel friendly, but you can always request it from your caravans, as a last resort.

Cave in traps will kill -anything-.  They're cheap and easy to make, and are among the simplest defenses against forgotten beasts, titans, dragons, demons, etc.  Done correctly, they're also quite easy to reset/rebuild.

Upright metal spikes in your entrance path, tied to a secure lever in the safety of your fort is one of the greatest "last ditch" defenses in the game.  Engage the civilian alert to drive the dwarves into the burrow, lock the door exterior door/drawbridge, and set the lever to: Pull lever - repeat.  Everything standing behind the door (between the outside and the locked door/drawbridge) will now be perforated repeatedly until dead.
If that's not clear, I can provide some diagrams or a sample fort.

[Ogdibus]

Except for Crossbows, train in squads of two, with each squad having a single weapon type. 

Put the barracks near the entrance, so that it is the first room encountered by invaders. 

In front of the barracks, put a corridor that turns at a right angle.  This forces enemy shooters to get very close to the barracks before they can fight. 

Put traps and pits in that corridor if you want to soften or delay the invaders. 

Allow your crossbow dwarfs to shoot into the corridor from fortifications, but do not make them visible from outside the corridor.  Do not make the fortifications accessible to the invaders.

[Zanthra]

Attackers, both siege and ambushes, will generally go for the closest thing they can kill.  Chaining some dogs around the map, potentially in little constructed spirals with traps in them can give warning, time, and potentially thin out building destroyers or highly dangerous crossbow goblins.

Build weapon traps very early.  I have read, and my experience agrees, that wooden spiked ball trap components make excellent weapons for weapon traps.  They often stun who they hit, and very rarely jam.  They are easy to make right from embark, since at minimum it is a stone and a wood.

[milo christiansen]

My best advice for military: Use DFHack "tweak military-training", it makes your military spar more so training full groups of 10 is less of a hassle.

Second: Armor is king. Even legendary troops will get their a**es kicked if they don't have at least some armor, iron or steel is best, copper and bronze is emergency use only.

Third: use the best weapons you can. After a year or two of sparing they start to name their weapons, you DO NOT want them to do that to a crappy copper sword or the like.

Fourth: Beware of wrestlers. Wrestlers tend to have LOTS of sparring accidents. Training ~40 wrestlers I get about 2-3 deaths a year from being thrown into the floor and/or bystanders (and that is AFTER I ordered everyone to wear armor).

[PDF urist master]

there is a glitch in the game that gets you instant legendary in a heartbeat.

drop a dwarf 2z lvls onto some wooden training spears and make sure he has a weapon, shield and some armor. when he hits the floor, he will become a god of war. (if i recall, this only works if the dwarf has some weapon skill)

[Zivilin]

Second: Armor is king. Even legendary troops will get their a**es kicked if they don't have at least some armor, iron or steel is best, copper and bronze is emergency use only.

In fact, both in reality and the Slaves of Armok universe bronze is slightly superior to iron. This can be easily confirmed in the raws, where bronze has a number of key parameters which are higher than iron. At a more empirical level, a bronze-clad dwarf is an even match for an iron-clad one. Both bronze and iron edged weapons deflect of weapons of either material (while cleaving right through copper), leading to drawn-out engagements (usually until one dwarf manages to crack the other ones skull with a punch or kick).

[Tsuchigumo550]

I don't remember having any tin- there was galena fucking everywhere though, so silver and lead- gods, the lead- were abundant.

I'm considering expanding forges to allow spending extra resources to be able to create more types of weapons out of all the metals, but that's a while off. I'm considering a semi-turtle, where the entrance is protected by walls and a drawbridge, and potentially a moat, and on the second floor is enough space for some marksdwarves to barracks. The marksdwarves will be given no other tasks and I'll try to keep a drink/food stockpile nearby. I might build a third floor for some kind of trap, such as a ring of floor tiles ready to be dropped.

---

I intend to keep another, seperate area, used for farmland and most animals. It's entrance is similar to that of the fortress, but enclosed with a floodgate airlock. There are connections to the main fort, but they must be "authorized" by the main fort, and are only open when the drawbridge is down. Livestock, farm plots, and at most a couple marksdwarves reside here. Aboveground farms might be difficult to protect, but I'll try and station a few war-dogs nearby.

As far as traps go, cage traps and weapon traps will probably be the way to go. I could probably have a minecart railgun if I could figure it out, as I generally build a waterwheel with the intention of setting a surface to underground minecart relay for lumber. I haven't gotten there yet but...

As far as releasing the military outside of marksdwarves, my plan is fairly simple. A completely separate airlock connected to the barracks should be the key, as I can then entrap the main hallway past the barracks in case of military failure. If i can plan it just right, I'll set the barracks up to a drowning trap as a final solution.

[Urist Da Vinci]

Don't use a ballista or catapult for serious defense - there are bugs present. For example, ballista arrows are blunt (not sharp).

Now minecarts, those are useful for more than hauling.

[MDFification]

BTW, someone mentioned in this thread that doors can hold of sieges. This is not true, and if you rely on it you'll die. Gobbos, Kobolds and most everything that will come to besiege you can open locked doors.

As for the caverns, my advice is dig two shafts down - one of which leads to your forts interior, and is sealed most of the time, and the other to your main entrance. That way if anything escapes the caverns it will have to attack your main entrance, and if a siege comes you can open the secondary entrance, pull your dwarves out of the caverns, and reseal it. I should also mention that it's possible to wall off the cavern layer - things will still migrate on to the map, but they won't get to you.

[wierd]

A door won't hold them out reliably, no.

But a bridge will.

[vjek]

In my demonstration fort, that I just built the past two days, I had to unlock the doors to even get the Trolls interested.  They just milled about on the surface until I unlocked at least one door, then they would attack.  Prior to that, nothing.  No path in, no attack.

Been that way for every fort I've ever built.  Often it's quite tricky to 'entice' the invaders to enter, if there are no livestock, dwarves or similar targets outside the fort proper.

[fractalman]

Goblins aren't trap avoid-so if you stick a couple lines of cage traps in front of your doors, you'll usually catch their door-openers.
kobolds are trap avoid, but they don't usually pack as much of a military punch. 

Both can be locked out if they are forced to stare upwards towards a locked hatch, even if they have a ramp or stairway to bonk their heads against it.

[Tsuchigumo550]

Cage traps have allowed me to capture the first goblin Snatcher... either kobolds are dead in this realm or very stealthy.
What should I do with them? Sure, stabbing it (her?) will be kinda OK for training, but I also have a legendary grave ready that will need decoration...

Or, if there's something particularly dwarfy that anyone can suggest, try me.