Print

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

[Panando]

Now my favourite general method is this.

I like to have everyone in the fortress, except miners, be in the military, and I do this ASAP. There are a few melee squads, each a squad of 2, and everyone else is in squads of 10 and are crossbow dwarfs. The melee squads are always active and train permanently at strategically positioned armor stands. The marksdwarf squads are always inactive and have no assigned place to train. Now to avoid complaining about the draft, it's important to get at least one military level. The easiest way to do this, is to get the marksdwarf squads to shoot bunnies or elephants or whatever other wildlife rears it's ugly head. Live target practise enjoys 3x the experience per bolt. Also it's nice that marksdwarves can't hit anything until they are at least novice, so if you get a bunch of nubbies to shoot at a fox, the fox will actually live until they can actually start hitting it somewhat reliably, but all those misses still give experience, so it's very target-efficient to train up from dabbling to average-ish on wildlife. Once the dwarves have a military skill they no longer get upset about being drafted, and as long as they also have a civilian skill they won't be upset about being released from duty either (watch out for peasants). When an inactive squad is stationed, the dwarves spring into action, and once it's un-stationed, they return to civilians.

I should add that the melee dwarves are metal-clad, they function as meat shields and executioners (since crossbows are wonderful for disabling enemies, but terrible for killing them), no expenses are spared for the melee dwarves and since they are few in number even on maps without iron or flux they can be steel clad. Often two of my starting seven will be the first melee squad, which gives them time to become elite before sieges start.

The marksdwarf squads are armed with just this: crossbow, shield, cloak, hood. This is mainly to keep the weight down while they are doing their normal civvy duties. If the fortress is prosperous with much metal, I upgrade their armor to: Helm, Mail Shirt, Gauntlets, High Boots, Cloak, Helm. This provides total metal coverage while still keeping weight down.

The advantages of having everyone armed and armoured are many. Inactive military dwarves are frightened of nothing and do not hesitate to use their weapons against intruders. One of my funniest dorf moments ever was when Urist mcDumbass went moody, now he insisted on some of kind generic boring grey rock which I didn't have. Lets say it was chert. I had diorite and granite and any number of other generic boring grey rocks, but Urist wanted CHERT to make his CHERT STUDDED LOIN CLOTH!  Eventually, with a howl of berserk rage he rose to his feet, instantly a bolt struck him between the eyes and he dropped dead with a surprised look on his face. His reign of berserking terror lasted 1 tick and cost 1 bolt.

When a siege turns up, everyone fights (except the miners). If you're feeling wussy, you can make a special squad for your legendary armorsmith and brewer and other essential dwaves and keep them inside during sieges to protect them from snipers - but still keep them armed and armoured because dwarves love to sneak outside when you least expect it.

[Dunamisdeos]

I have a retractable 30-long bridge over a volcano as the only means of entry. Fun times.

[puke]

what do you do when something comes along that is to heavy for the bridge to operate?

[Loyalty]

I don't know why you would want it to be over a volcano. I love throwing gobbos around with drawbridges, look where they land and build a few more. Right now I'm also working on a system to just rinse them into a pit.
But megabeasts/titans/fb are always faced in fair battles.

[Dunamisdeos]

what do you do when something comes along that is to heavy for the bridge to operate?

Shoot it with marksdwarves. They fire from blinds and either feather something to death or cause it to dodge.

I don't know why you would want it to be over a volcano. I love throwing gobbos around with drawbridges, look where they land and build a few more. Right now I'm also working on a system to just rinse them into a pit.
But megabeasts/titans/fb are always faced in fair battles.

I have a pit for that. Its filled with zombies. Also, if you don't understand why a seething volcano goblin death mechanism is not something someone could find attractive, then we have nothing more to say to one another. 

[Melting Sky]

Walls, doors, and dwarfs clad in local materials. I've had great success with copper-only military (including weapons) in vanilla, since nothing really comes on the surface that copper and bone can't handle.

Of course, I prefer iron and steel, but rarely do I get candy, and what I do get is meant for statues and such, not armor and weapons when steel is almost as good.

Due to how light candy armour is, steel is nowhere near as good :O

Steel's density is what makes it superior vs light weight projectiles when compared with candy. So if you are getting shot by elves you are better off in steel than candy but as a whole candy is superior.

[Covenant Ringthane]

I follow the train of thought by which quite a lot of Japanese castles were built: Make it easy to get into, then surround and slaughter them.

I've never been one for efficiency. I have a sort of courtyard, where the walls are essentially this for three z-levels and at least 10 across:

W
D
F

W = Wall
D = Marksdorf
F = Fortification

It's facing inwards (the wall is the bit exposed to the elements), which you might think is a bit stupid, but I employ what I think of as a dual portcullis design. Essentially, the entrance to the courtyard and mountainhome itself is made of vertical bars, which slam down when all the seigers are inside. The people on the mountainhome side are slaughtered by men with pointy sticks/spear minecart shotguns at the end of the passageway. Anyway, the interesting property of bars is that you can shoot through them like there's nothing there. Remember the minecart shotguns? Alternatively (i.e. when I'm to lazy too reload them) I send marksdorfs to each portcullis (secret entrances are great) and essentially create a killing field.

By the way, I was looking for a way to have a small horde of !!zombies!! and a way to let them out of a magma-filled room without letting the magma escape, as well as ensuring that they remain on fire in my arena. I was thinking gas-chamber style (i.e. grate in the floor, magma pours from the ceiling) but that seems too easy. There's two reasons I want this. a) to make vampire marksdorf recruitment more difficult and b) so I can unleash burning zombies on invaders who will then be delivered to the nearest pet necromancer for reanimation and magma processing (i.e. ever-increasing numbers).

Oh, I guess I'll self-promote; if anyone wants my three-tier marksdorf potential-testing regime, I'll link it.