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[Hitori]

So I've been having lots of Fun in an undead biome lately and a few curiosities have cropped up, the main of which is enemy pathing.

For the entrance to my fort I use an over-kill setup of atom smashers, but the thing is that only enemies near my entrance will path to it (20-25 tiles or so). This means enemies further away ignore my fortress entirely and thus just wander near the edge and kill my immigrants and caravans. I've tried running dwarves outside near them (but not close enough to get chased, that's a great way to thin out the workforce) and the enemies don't seem to care about my entrance any more or less, and I've tried digging entrances to my fort closer to these fringe enemies but they still aren't interested in coming inside. So basically my question is:

What do enemies try to path to? My leader? The center of my fort? My primary entrance? There's clearly a range limit but I'm trying to figure out what the center of that range is.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Remuthra]

I believe enemies path to the closest dwarf they detect and try to find a way to them. This means you need to get many foes to actually find your entrance and figure out that dwarves are inside, and that if you have multiple paths through the fort, it can get wonky. I learned the last part from an experimental defense involving a "shortcut" path made passable by drawbridges in order to maximize defense while minimizing isolation, and invaders seemed to just want to hang out by the shorter, sectioned off path. The best thing to do is probably to set up a breeder and seed the path through the defense with animals dropped in to lure the invaders further, or pastured outside to bring them to the fort entrance.

[Hitori]

Hmm. This is going to be tricky, as I'm doing a one dwarf challenge with zero animals. I learned the Fun way not to bring animals into an undead biome. They tend to die in unpredictable ways and then rise again to slay my populace.

I remember trying to slaughter a tame Yak for food once, and after a few moments the skin, bones, hair, ect... all came back to life and killed my butcher. I had to seal off the room to keep them at bay.

Thanks for your input.

[Loci]

Immigrants path to a meeting area; it's possible that invaders will also, at least for long-distance pathing. Goblins generally path in immediately; other threats may loiter around topside for considerable amounts of time. In my experience, I don't recall seeing a goblin force fail to launch an attack, even when they had to path all the way across the map to do so.

[m-logik]

I've seen elves, humans, and zombies loiter on the surface for several seasons at a time, even when they have a clear path into my fort. Goblins, megas, semimegas, and clowns all appear to path toward the closest thing they can (try to) kill. I've used strategically timed unlocking of hatch covers to divert siege squads toward my watch dogs and buy time for the militia to muster. That isn't unambiguous evidence, though. It could very well be that they're pathing to the nearest meeting area and stopping along the way to kill anything that enters their LOS. More science is needed.

[Panando]

I find enemy squads mostly path off the map as quickly as they can, pursued by a screaming horde of bloodthirsty drunk dwarves running very fast with sharp (and blunt) objects. But this could be something to do with my play style

[Merendel]

Hmm. This is going to be tricky, as I'm doing a one dwarf challenge with zero animals. I learned the Fun way not to bring animals into an undead biome. They tend to die in unpredictable ways and then rise again to slay my populace.

I remember trying to slaughter a tame Yak for food once, and after a few moments the skin, bones, hair, ect... all came back to life and killed my butcher. I had to seal off the room to keep them at bay.

Thanks for your input.

you can deal with a limited meat industry on a reanimating map you just have to be smart about it.  Keep the animals small, large animals tend to make large undead and larger ones are frequently more dangerous.  Yaks are quite big, if I have a yak from embark I atomsmash it ASAP or at least dump it down a hole that it cant get back out of.  your best bet would be poultry, can be breed as fast or as slow as you want from only a few animals and you can cook up the eggs instead of haveing to butcher them.  pasture them down a 1 wide halway with a nestbox and a cage trap between the pasture and the rest of the fort and you'll be prety safe even if they die.  I ring my butchers/tanners shops with cage traps.  I also have a garbage shaft nearby to quickly dump the hair/skin before it can revive if I dont intend to tan it. birds are nice because prety much only their skin can revive, tan/dump it quick and your safe.  If your unlucky and it animates instantly you've got a good chance your worker will flee and the undead will get stuck in a cage.  You can still get a 1 shot kill on the worker but smaller criters are less likely to do this.

As to your origonal question it kinda depends on the enemy in question.  Some things that get killed and reanimated are content to stand where they are indefinatly untill a valid target walks into visual range.  Others will beline for dwarves nomater what if there is a path too them.  I've heard in the past (but cant confirm) that some enemies actualy head to meeting halls when trying to path without a specific target in view.  Since your doing single dwarf you may not have bothered with any meeting halls, if so try seting one somewhere and see if enemies will path into your smasher.

[indyofcomo]

I have a question similar to the subject heading...

Will non-flying entities ever path through an opening in the floor? If I took a lycanthrope dwarf and stored him in a door/stair-less room, would he be able to dump workshop products down a garbage whole in the floor and not jump down it when he transforms and berserks later?

[ShadowHammer]

I've seen elves, humans, and zombies loiter on the surface for several seasons at a time, even when they have a clear path into my fort. Goblins, megas, semimegas, and clowns all appear to path toward the closest thing they can (try to) kill. I've used strategically timed unlocking of hatch covers to divert siege squads toward my watch dogs and buy time for the militia to muster. That isn't unambiguous evidence, though. It could very well be that they're pathing to the nearest meeting area and stopping along the way to kill anything that enters their LOS. More science is needed.

Mostly true, but I've had the HFS just stand around in my meeting area instead of trying to hunt down my remaining half dozen dwarves. Now that I think of it, though, they may have been distracted by some artifact furniture, but I'm not sure if I had any artifacts in the dining room.

Anyone else know about this?

I have a question similar to the subject heading...

Will non-flying entities ever path through an opening in the floor? If I took a lycanthrope dwarf and stored him in a door/stair-less room, would he be able to dump workshop products down a garbage whole in the floor and not jump down it when he transforms and berserks later?

Non-flying enemies will not currently path over an opening in the floor, although in the next version they will. The lycanthrope will not jump down the hole unless he is fighting and happens to dodge onto the hole tile.

[indyofcomo]

Will non-flying entities ever path through an opening in the floor? If I took a lycanthrope dwarf and stored him in a door/stair-less room, would he be able to dump workshop products down a garbage whole in the floor and not jump down it when he transforms and berserks later?

Non-flying enemies will not currently path over an opening in the floor, although in the next version they will. The lycanthrope will not jump down the hole unless he is fighting and happens to dodge onto the hole tile.
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2014? Okay, well, I didn't get to do that anyways. I fell to a were-spiral.