Print

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

[smurfingtonthethird]

Three things lead to invulnerability.

Minecarts.
Superpowered dwarves.
Magma.

Combine all three for fun! Minecart cavalry is tons of fun.

[Fluoman]

Minecart cavalry?

[klefenz]

I use dorfs covered in steel.

[smurfingtonthethird]

Minecart cavalry?

Picture fully armored dwarves with lances and crossbows. Picture them in minecarts. Picture them charging down a hill at a goblin siege. Now you know the joys of minecart cavalry. ((Yes, they're on tracks. Allows for actual tactics and military positioning.))

[Snaake]

A huge military. Drawbridges and walled roads are used to herd attackers into my Arena, and to cut off their retreat. In my current fort, I have 3 Elite Squads and 8 Militia Squads - the difference is largely in equipment (steel/adamantine VS iron), as almost all of them are legendary skilled.

Nothing lasts particularly long against one hundred dwarven heroes, and a goblin siege can count itself lucky if it manages to inflict a bruise on someone - though that might also be because they were always outnumbered, maybe they'll bring more bodies in the future.

Even my crafters have military training and equipment, though they are not usually drafted - unless I want to attack something from range, as my "real" military uses "real" weapons - melee weapons.

Entrance to the fort is through an elite squad barracks, so any thieves that make it there meet a quick end. Caverns are sealed off by a simple drawbridge, so my Elite Cavern Guard can cross all the z-levels and gather before whatever threat arrived makes it into the fort.

I'm hoping I meet something challenging in the future, but so far everything went down pretty fast. The bronze colossus deserves honourable mention for staying alive a couple days while my melee horde was beating on him, but he didn't land a hit. I did not yet encounter anything with webs, that might be interesting given I'm basically all melee.

Oddly, I wasn't at all worried about giant cave spiders until I started reading the forums, since the only two times I encountered them before that my mediocre squads took them down easily with no injuries

GCS especially will probably just web a bunch of dwarves, then try to bite the head of a webbed dwarf. Metal helmets should make your dwarves mostly invulnerable, while any unwebbed dwarves - something which fragfish should have plenty of - circle around and kill it easily. A webbing titan/forgotten beast may be more dangerous, but what you should really fear are syndromes. Clowns should give you a decent fight too, but I'm not an expert on them, so couldn't say if your chances with 100 legendary iron-to-candy equipped dwarves are 10/90, 50/50, or 90/10.

[Elagn]

The way I make defenses generaly are moats that keep people a little back from a fortification topped wall. I use a draw bridge for a gate with two towers by it and often a magma cannon. In some worlds, based off the terain, i make intricate traps, such as one over a lake (flat volcano w/ water poored on top) where their were two 10 long retracting bridges separated by a place with preasure pads to activate them, so they are activated, then the bridges retract making people take a long swim, sadly in that world, though advertised to be near, I never got any fun goblin visitors (It was a rip off)

[Loud Whispers]

To add just a little on what's already been said, I quite prefer Roman Fort mentality over more dark age siege tactics. I think there's something just a bit more exciting when your Fortress is geared more towards attacking the enemy than waiting for the enemy to attack you.

[FrankMcFuzz]

Oddly, I wasn't at all worried about giant cave spiders until I started reading the forums, since the only two times I encountered them before that my mediocre squads took them down easily with no injuries

I was in the same boat as you.

And then I wanted their webs. Resulting in expedition teams getting eaten by the dozen, 20 dwarves at a time stuck in a single square AND GETTING EATEN ALIIIIIIIIIIVE

[fragfish]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A huge military. Drawbridges and walled roads are used to herd attackers into my Arena, and to cut off their retreat. In my current fort, I have 3 Elite Squads and 8 Militia Squads - the difference is largely in equipment (steel/adamantine VS iron), as almost all of them are legendary skilled.

Nothing lasts particularly long against one hundred dwarven heroes, and a goblin siege can count itself lucky if it manages to inflict a bruise on someone - though that might also be because they were always outnumbered, maybe they'll bring more bodies in the future.

Even my crafters have military training and equipment, though they are not usually drafted - unless I want to attack something from range, as my "real" military uses "real" weapons - melee weapons.

Entrance to the fort is through an elite squad barracks, so any thieves that make it there meet a quick end. Caverns are sealed off by a simple drawbridge, so my Elite Cavern Guard can cross all the z-levels and gather before whatever threat arrived makes it into the fort.

I'm hoping I meet something challenging in the future, but so far everything went down pretty fast. The bronze colossus deserves honourable mention for staying alive a couple days while my melee horde was beating on him, but he didn't land a hit. I did not yet encounter anything with webs, that might be interesting given I'm basically all melee.

Oddly, I wasn't at all worried about giant cave spiders until I started reading the forums, since the only two times I encountered them before that my mediocre squads took them down easily with no injuries

GCS especially will probably just web a bunch of dwarves, then try to bite the head of a webbed dwarf. Metal helmets should make your dwarves mostly invulnerable, while any unwebbed dwarves - something which fragfish should have plenty of - circle around and kill it easily. A webbing titan/forgotten beast may be more dangerous, but what you should really fear are syndromes. Clowns should give you a decent fight too, but I'm not an expert on them, so couldn't say if your chances with 100 legendary iron-to-candy equipped dwarves are 10/90, 50/50, or 90/10.

Yeah, true, GCS I'm not so worried about. I have never seen a Titan in any game I ever played, dunno why. Forgotten beasts aplenty, but none with webs yet. I had a fun syndrome, though, which caused dwarfs to bleed out in a short time if it hit exposed skin. It killed four Military Dwarfs while fighting the beast (airborne poison attack - luckily, the beast was a blob of water). It also killed a miner who took off his shoes and socks before crossing the bathtub, and it killed a whole bunch of pets. It is by far the most deadly thing that happened to my fort.

Clowns (I'm assuming that's HFS?) I have never experienced, but it might happen. We'll see then.

Picture fully armored dwarves with lances and crossbows. Picture them in minecarts. Picture them charging down a hill at a goblin siege. Now you know the joys of minecart cavalry. ((Yes, they're on tracks. Allows for actual tactics and military positioning.))

If I launch my dwarves into goblins on minecarts, won't the carts simply crash and spill the dwarves, who will then be dispatched by any leftover goblins?

[Fluoman]

Or you could just get the dwarves to a track stop, safely.

[catastrophy]

A corridor equipped with menacing upright metal spikes and a lever attached is my standard defence. I use some bridges to close and open the fortress, too.