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[magnum2016]

Hello everyone i have decided to start a new thread where players can talk about everything to do with warfare, whether it is Defenses, Preparations or just plain out combat.

Feel free to post for advice and please share your current war experiences.

[magnum2016]

Town Orbsdream, Year 9, Felsite


Orbsdream started out as a small Expedition Party along the borders of the Elven, Dwarven and Human Civilizations, it quickly became famous for being the first aboveground dwarven fortress and it was known for its works in bone carving, masonry and rare but beautiful High Quality Statues.

However the goblins took a liking to the fortress and starting on the 7th year of the fort sent a small siege to test the Towns strength the Siege was quickly repelled but 2 years later an entire Goblin Army arrived shortly after a Elven Caravan.

The Goblin force standing at 100 Goblins strong slowly surrounded the fortress, Orbsdream's small military of 50 dwarves rushed to the walls to prepare to rain arrows upon the goblins, the first wave of the goblins charged through the front gate (20 goblins) the weapon traps only killing 6 of them, they then ran through the last corridor to reach the village and were pelted with a stream of bolts from the brave dwarven warriors the goblins were forced to retreat leaving there army with 80 strong.

The next wave was composed of roughly 15 goblins and 8 trolls they charged through the weapon traps mortally injuring all of the trolls the 15 goblins charged through and were once again attacked by the trained marksdwarves on the walls.

By this time the goblins were realizing how uncoordinated there attacks have been and sent one last charge of easily 30+ Goblins the goblins the goblins managed to break through the traps and the archers barrage with still half there numbers and charged into the town only to be met by the Royal Guard which by the help of Marksdwarves managed to drive the goblins off from the fortress ending the siege.


Results:

Goblins:
2 Captured
50+ Dead
30+ Escaped

Dwarves:
0 Dead
0 Injured


Notes: Weapons traps held up but for future sieges more will be needed

[Loud Whispers]

All aboveground fortresses are Dwarven, they just don't know it yet.

[NRDL]

PTW

[Eidre]

I would like to put out a vote in favor of constructing squads with only a single kind of weapon. 

Previously, I had just had crossbow squads and mixed melee squads (figuring a random assortment of close combat weapons would be able to handle any kind of opponent) and it worked OK. 

My current (and soon to fall, for unrelated reasons) fort I made dedicated weapon squads (including a dagger squad and a scourge squad when I could scrounge enough up from invaders).

The effectiveness of the squads in combat was about the same (I would usually send my whole military after any threats that showed up), but the training speed was *dramatically* faster.  Where previously I had to wait for the King to show up with his retinue to get any Elites, now they were popping up after only a couple years (and with just normal barracks training and an occasional ambush; no "shaft of enlightenment", mass gladiator pit, wooden spear trap, or anything like that).

So on the whole, I would definitely recommend generating a bunch of separate squads, stick new arrivals in as matches their skill-set (making sure at least 2 per squad to encourage sparring), and let them train each other.

[Frostea]

I would like to put out a vote in favor of constructing squads with only a single kind of weapon. 

Previously, I had just had crossbow squads and mixed melee squads (figuring a random assortment of close combat weapons would be able to handle any kind of opponent) and it worked OK. 

My current (and soon to fall, for unrelated reasons) fort I made dedicated weapon squads (including a dagger squad and a scourge squad when I could scrounge enough up from invaders).

The effectiveness of the squads in combat was about the same (I would usually send my whole military after any threats that showed up), but the training speed was *dramatically* faster.  Where previously I had to wait for the King to show up with his retinue to get any Elites, now they were popping up after only a couple years (and with just normal barracks training and an occasional ambush; no "shaft of enlightenment", mass gladiator pit, wooden spear trap, or anything like that).

So on the whole, I would definitely recommend generating a bunch of separate squads, stick new arrivals in as matches their skill-set (making sure at least 2 per squad to encourage sparring), and let them train each other.

To add on to that, sparring in pairs is best done when scheduled like this:


Dwarves will be inclined to spar more if they are training in pairs. To make life easier, macro this scheduling and you can reuse it for all squads and fortresses.

[Fen]

If you piss off elves, don't just atom smash their mostly-useless wooden weapons! Instead, you can construct weapon traps filled with wooden weapons. They're unlikely to kill anything remotely dangerous, but they can proc a lot of potential dodges from invaders, which can be used to force said invaders to fling themselves into an adjacent pit from dodging out of the weapon trap. What's this mean for you? Well, if you like, you can set up a bunch of weapon traps in front of your fortress and have invaders injure themselves on said traps, while also having a nearby pit for invaders to potentially fling themselves into. Theoretically, you could have pit-and-trap assortments arranged in such a way that all the pits will dump into a large shooting gallery for you to train your marksdwarfs, no cages needed! can also double as an arena if you build a way to release things into it for your invaders to fight.

While not the most useful military advice out there, I've been working on this strategy for fort defense and it's been going pretty well (though I have been using a mix of actually dangerous weapon traps and the wooden weapon traps, mostly so that I don't have to rely on enemies dodging into pits.) It does, however, feel very dwarfy to me to kill or grievously wound invaders by making them dodge into empty space, impacting the cold, hard stone with great force several z levels down. Doubly so due to using a mostly useless resource for it, with added bonus of sometimes killing even more elves with this method.

[Loud Whispers]

Just use the wooden crap to make splashes in magma. It's therapeutic.

[Krawdad]

To add on to that, sparring in pairs is best done when scheduled like this:


Dwarves will be inclined to spar more if they are training in pairs. To make life easier, macro this scheduling and you can reuse it for all squads and fortresses.

Those orders are a good idea, I didn't know you could specify it like that. Does (c)opying and (p)asting the orders not work though? You should be able to set up the orders for one month for one squad then just copy and paste it to the rest of them.

Anyway, my fortress has been fairly quiet lately after taking care of two seperate dust billowing FBs. Lost about 40 dwarves to that. I was so excited to see that the most recent FB was not a duster that I sent a duo of wrestlers and a duo of sworddwarves to take care of it. I realized about ten seconds too late that it was a spider creature type. I tried to order the dwarves back, but they had already spotted the beast and were charging in. All it took was a strand of web and one savage kick to the head for each dwarf to be sent to meet Armok. Marksdwarves were called to their cavern-level posts and made short work of the beast.

[Fen]

On the subject of military squads, what percentage of your fortress should be military dwarves? At the moment I have three squads, two of which are full with the third only having four dwarves. Of course, that means that a little less than 30% of my fort is enlisted. How many military dwarves is too many to have a functioning fort, and how low is too few to prevent the whole fort from dying to something horrible?

[magnum2016]

I tend to have about 20% of my fortress be military while the other 80% is my workforce

[Loud Whispers]

Copying and pasting orders work even then. Something to keep in mind is that not all of your military will be on duty at any time, hence a fort with100% recruitment rates can stil have a third of the fort working as civilians.

[Frostea]

Copy pasting works, but I was referring to doing the same schedule for all squads across all fortress.

Anyway, I like to have as many dwarves as I can spare on the militia, which means I'll only have a small group of civilians once the fort is mature enough. That would mean the farming group, smithy group, and craftsdwarves are spared from conscription.

The 'regulars' would be fully geared whereas the conscripts would only have a breastplate, helm and weapon, at least until I can spare the metal.

[Splint]

In the corrosion mod I had an herbalist, recently arrived and who I was counting on to bring in berries and scrap to make use of, die ina very early attack by common thugs and bandits, armed mainly with various metal baseball bats and pipes lead by a woman with a small hammer. the hammerwoman beat the herbalist to death within sight of a carpenter who was raising a palisade who proceeded to report the death.

Her husband, now very unhappy due to being rained on, annoyed by flied, and having his wife (likely pregnant at that since they were the only married couple in the fort being the first migrants,) beaten to death, I decided he'd be a perfect soldier to send on a suicide run. And since one migrant brought a crossbow with ammo, I had this upset widower a salesman, and the man with the crossbow grab what was handy: The crossbow and its ammo, and two crowbars.

The thugs made for the gap in the palisade, about half lagging behind for whatever reason (likely lack of an herbalist to kill,) and the leader ran straight into the herbalist's husband. Who proceeded to mercilessly beat the hell out of her with his crowbar while his colleagues kept the five others attack at bay, mostly through the salesman dodging like a son of a bitch and occasionally disabling a limb or knocking someone over while the crossbowman fired a few shots into the fight, crippling some of the attackers. The widower finally killed the hammerwoman after literally shattering every bone in her body and even tearing a foot off with his crowbar, delivering a fatal strike to the head. This caused the lollygagging thugs to start running, coinciding with the salesman taking out a guy who'd been disabled by a bolt to the shin with a headstomp and Widower joining in in beating another into paste. After dodging a couple bolts, anyone still standing started to run, though one still tried to fight only to get his skull stomped into mush. Some runners also didn't escape either.

To cut it short, 16 vs 3.

My people
1 dead civilian
0 injured

Thugs
7 dead, cause of death being largely "crowbar to head."
9 fled

[magnum2016]

Gotta love the Corrosion Mod but gosh are the Undead overpowered XD