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[NobleNecromancer]

So it has been a few days since I started trying to learn how Dwarf Fortress works. I learned many things since then: How to make enough food/drinks and drinks for everyone. How to make a cistern without flooding my fort, How elves are snobs(and to think I was considering making a tree fort once I migrate to .40)...

In my current fort things were going well. 2 full years in game as passed. I have plenty of food/drinks, everybody was busy(tho I need to find something for them to do besides moving rocks from one side of the fort to the other and back again.), was getting the pig tail and metal industries up so I can clothe and equip everyone... and then this happen:


"A vile force of darkness has arrived!" (What! But you guys didn't send me an advance notice of your coming! ...Not an single ambush... It was nice, hopefully they wont send me one afterwards...)


I have a few cages that I was hoping would get the ambush that never came so I would have a few prisoners to beat for all the times they killed my dorfs... but not really enough to handle the siege.

I know I can seal up and wait(hopefully before the elves' caravan decides it wants to leave.), but I was wondering if I am maybe being a lot slower than most people in creating a military...


Oh and does anyone know how wealth affects sieges? The wiki doesn't say much about it other than you need a pop of at least 80 dorfs. I only have a created wealth of about 21200
imported about 60000 and export about 8000.

[greycat]

0.40 has bandit sieges.  These are smaller groups (usually 10 goblins, or 1 necromancer with a zombie or two), and at least in the case of goblins, are not officially part of the enemy civilization.  (They won't show up on the "c" screen.)

Many fortresses get a bandit siege in early autumn of the first year, preventing the first dwarven caravan.  It's a really good idea to have a secured entrance before then, just in case.

Bandits appear not to care what your population is.  They certainly don't wait until there are 80 beards.

[pisskop]

I have not played this newest version yet, but the answer is: it depends.

On harder maps I will have a more organized military sooner.  On Terrifying biomes where immortal husks are created I will start with a few crossbows and a hammerdwarf and everyone else gets mining skill and a pick (except my dedicated mason).

On easier maps I will have a dedicated militia captain, who has skill in armour use and leadership.  He usually gets assigned to chop wood for about a year.  That will help with some stats, but mostly I need the wood and dont need the strength.  I may also bring a hunter who will switch once I start the military.

Unless I have 3 dwarves who are assigned military duty and need for them to train immediately, I usually wait untill late winter or early spring to form my first two-three squads.  There is a huge migrant wave in the 2nd spring, and any bodies that dont have better things to do go into the squads.  Better dwarves go into the heavy armor squads while lesser dwarves will get put into leathersquads, who will then get assigned part-time civilian work if they prove useful.  Yup, I try to reward excellence with either a promotion to the real military or actual civilian work.
Civilian work itself is tiered, but the tiers help me organize the base.


The answer to your question is after you get a feel for how dangerous certain embark types can be, you can usually plan your military.  But you should always have at least three available fighters, even if they are just miners (miner skill affects the pick weapon, so you legendary miner will be capable of killing in a pinch).  All you need is a cabinet, weapon/armor rack, bed or chest.

[sal880612m]

The set of raws I have that is least likely to be modded says that goblins may begin appearing when you have 50 dwarfs, and produced ☼25000 wealth or exported ☼2500 wealth. Also sieges seem to only require a population of 80 dwarfs. Not positive what exactly begin appearing means in their case. Likely snatchers, maybe ambushes.

[MeMyselfAndI]

I tend to punt on military. It's the least interesting part of the game for me. I prefer to kill intruders through absurdly overcomplicated traps.

[Melting Sky]

It depends on your style of play and where you embark as to when and even if you ever need a military.

There are people who either turn off invaders or embark on a tranquil island where they can't be attacked that may never need a millitary, particularly if they decide to avoid piercing the caverns.

With a more normal embark with the usual goblin neighbors you will likely want to put together a squad of crossbow dwarves shortly after you get your first big migration wave. It's wise to draft your best hunter with decent leadership skills to lead it. You can train the squad by having them hunt the local wildlife. Make more bolts from the bones of the critters you kill and leather armor from the hides. Crossbow dwarves are highly effective and cheap to outfit. They will also let you rid the map of pesky flying creatures. Give them a nice perch behind some fortifications for dealing with bigger threats.

As you get more immigrants and a metal industry up and running you should look into finding good strong candidates for your first melee squad. Using cage traps to capture enemy units and wildlife at natural or engineered choke points is a good way to create live training dummies for your newbie melee dwarves. You can disarm the enemies before your dwarves fight them. A green melee squad is good to send in to clean up after the enemies already have some bolts in them. Once well trained and armored from head to toe, melee dwarves are extremely powerful but when they are untrained and badly equipped they are very fragile. Use them carefully and only when you really need to.

If you embark next to a necromancer tower or on an evil biome then you need to embark with at least one dedicated military dwarf that has some decent combat skills and you will want to build a trapped and defensible entrance to your fort that can be sealed in an emergency as soon as possible. It's a top priority and you should have basic defenses up by the mid summer of the first year. That first warrior should be a decent teacher/leader so they can jump start the training of others.

[Panando]

I have a fairly standard strategy. Nearly always, 2 of my starting seven will be military. Typically one is proficient axedwarf and the other proficient hammerdwarf. Axes are good against nearly everything, and hammers aren't good against only a few soft targets, but do very well against armoured targets - but all weapons work well against things like goblins.
In .34 I prefer proficient weapon user + proficient dodger, now I'm leaning towards proficient weapon user + proficient armour user, this is because dodger trains faster in this version, and parrying is much less effective because weapon user trains much slower, without the awesomeness of high level weapon user you really need to put more priority on armour - also, attacks can come earlier, again indicating that armour sooner is a good idea. Also dwarves seemed to be slowed down more by weight in this version.

These two should be set to training almost right away, there is no time to lose. Just bang out an armour stand and a couple of wooden shields - you can even embark with a copper axe and hammer for them, but it may be preferable to forge steel ones, or embark with 2 bronze bars and make bronze weapons. As soon as the weapons are ready, put the two in a squad, activate the squad, and set the squad to train at the barracks (until they are training, I suggest making them cut and burn wood, or perform other menial duties).

Melee Dwarves aren't quite as awesome as previous versions (again, the lack of weapon use and weapon user), "the two" will still be pretty epic though, but do make sure to get them a decent suit of armour, embarking with ore for either bronze or steel is a good idea (you don't need much - 12-13 bars per dwarf, or about 3 ore stones per military dwarf), otherwise buy stuff from the caravans if you can't dig ore. Material matters a lot but quality doesn't really matter, it doesn't matter if the weapons and armour are made by dabblers (it might even be a good idea, because steel items can inflate fortress value quite a lot).

"The two" are an awesome defence all by themselves and will make the game a tonne easier because you basically don't have to worry about some baddy running amok in your fortress - the running amok time is strictly limited to the time it takes the two to run there and perform the execution. You don't need to bother with traps (maybe just have a few to catch snatchers) since they'll demolish ambushes and sieges all by themselves. It's MUCH cheaper to fully outfit two dwarves, than a trap corridor capable of dealing with as many enemies.

Typically I then snag about 1/3rd to 1/2 the incoming immigrants (the ones with good attributes) and put them into melee squads. I like to have two or three squads of 5-10 dwarves. I'm inclining to going with monoweapon (a squad of axe dwarves, a squad of hammer dwarves) because weapon demonstrations go further that way. But if an immigrant is say a talented speardwarf, I'll just manually issue him a spear.

All melee in my fortress are active and training ALL the time. MAYBE if they get pissy about long patrol duty I'll let them have a month off, but it's better though to just avoid bad thoughts. Give them individual beds to avoid bad thoughts. Don't have them train near the butcher, or food or refuse stockpiles, because that puts them at risk of vermin or miasma. Have them train in a lit area so they wont get cave adaptation. If a military dwarf gets pissy you can try assigning him an extra nice bedroom. Remember that if you make them focus on training, eventually they'll become 'X Lords' (sadly, usually elite wrestlers in this version, but it works) which eliminates the unhappy thought about long patrol duty. Hence the goal should be to have them train non-stop until they become lords, and happy contented military dwarves.

Typically I don't bother armouring dwarves until their stats are buffed up, a weak dwarf will be slowed down a great deal by a heavy suit of armor, while a very strong very agile dwarf will shrug it off. Now I don't know for sure that being slow slows training, but I suspect it does. In any case, until a dwarf is pretty skilled he's only going to get badly injured or dead if he fights, so it's better to coddle them until they've trained up. Once they are lords, give them armor and let them fight.

The other wing of the military is marksdwarves. I put all my civilians in marksdwarf squads (uniform of crossbow and shield) and leave them permanently inactive, with no place to train (if you want them to activate, just issue a kill or station order). This results in them carrying around crossbow, ammo and shield. In previous versions you could very quickly train them by shooting wildlife (just issue a kill order, using the rectangle to encompass the entire pack of animals). Unfortunately in this version, the flier pathfinding bug afflicts your own dwarves, meaning they wont even try to path to fliers and shoot them (in previous versions, they would just shoot them even though they couldn't path to them and even if the target was technically out of range). Because a lot of animals/animal men are fliers, and because fliers get stuck and wont leave the map for a long, long time, this makes it rather more arduous to train by hunting wildlife. I have not worked out a solution to this, other than going heavier on melee. But even totally untrained marksdwarves are worth having, the skill trains VERY quickly in live combat. Also wooden bolts are VERY cheap in this version, so perhaps it's worthwhile mass producing wood bolts and using conventional target practise. Killing cavern wildlife would be another option if the cavern has low ceilings.

[martinuzz]

Don't worry about sieges. Keep a few sacrificial goats outside for them. They mostly run away in terror as soon as they realize they made a kill.  OHNOBLOOD! The horror!

On topic; I tend to start my military after installing the magma flood traps around the entrance.

[Bki]

I like to embark with a dedicated soldier. Usually I embark with ore and coal so I don't have to pay for picks and axes (though axes are not as important as you can use training axes to cut wood), so I will forge him his set of armour at the same time. Then, depending on the skills of the migrants I will assign them to the military as they arrive.

When I'm still establishing I tend to prefer a small, well trained and well equipped military. As the fortress get bigger and I get more and more worthless migrants, I will form larger squad, if possible led by a experienced soldier with a high teacher skill to train them faster.

[greycat]

Also dwarves seemed to be slowed down more by weight in this version.

My impression so far is that individual dwarves have much higher variance in physical stats, or that their physical stats have a much more pronounced effect on their performance.  A dwarf who is "very weak" will be noticeably slower when merely hauling an oak log, or installing a *quartzite table* in the dining room, while a dwarf who is of average strength can do these things at normal speed.  In 0.34 this wasn't noticeable with such low-weight items.

Now I don't know for sure that being slow slows training, but I suspect it does.

In 0.34 it did.  In 0.40 I don't know either.

I put all my civilians in marksdwarf squads (uniform of crossbow and shield) and leave them permanently inactive

My civilian uniform also includes a helm.  Of course they won't equip that until their cap rots off (or until I go all micro-manager on them), so I eagerly await the demise of every fucking cap in the universe.  (If goblins bring a cap, it gets dumped, and eventually atom-smashed.)

I'm torn on what weapon to give civilians.  There are arguments for both melee and crossbow.  A civilian crossbowdwarf in 0.34 is less likely to flee from an enemy; they have a substantial chance of standing there taking poorly-aimed shots, instead of running.  Civilian melee dwarves will flee unless directly attacked, at which point they may perform a counterstrike, which may get lucky.  Of course, this may all have changed in 0.40 since fear, horror and discipline have been completely revamped.

Also worth mentioning is that in 0.34, a civilian-in-a-squad which had an assigned barracks would sometimes go to the barracks and do Individual weapon drills, slowly raising their weapon skill in between their regular jobs.  It was a great place for dwarves to spend some of the time they would otherwise waste idling.  But in 0.40, a civilian-in-a-squad with an assigned barracks seems to do weapon drills constantly.  They don't get their regular work done.

[Onigato]

My military strategy is probably not the best, but I tend (in non-dead raising biomes) to embark with a single hunter, set them immediately to hunting, and just let them archer up. I then tend to recycle anydwarf that has the "Hunting" Group of skills into my hunters exlusively. Eventually, either at my first big ambush or Armok forbid, seige, I then convert the males into Warriors with uniforms. If I've gotten any kind of luck, they've already gotten lots of training as archerdwarves, and I have loads of leather around to make basic armor, but more often than not, seal the gate and make pot-shots from the entry castle and pray.

Once the threat is gone, the dwarves stay in the squad and get set to no jobs, praying that they will go use the provided Archery butts, and not be bugged again. Assuming everything works, any male with hunting skill ends up in my first squad, and usually by the end of the 3rd year I have a full squad of crossbowdwarves. Melee military, I haven't really ever needed, the drop-hall of winding with the staggered fortified access over the flooded pit of doom with drains usually keeps anything out long enough to put a thousand bolts through it before it gets to my side door. Though, I do actually tend to build a danger room and stick a third of my troops into it on schedule. Gotta raise armor and dodge somehow!

[NobleNecromancer]

Giving an update to what happened since then.

The elves went mad and are now wandering around babbling about trees, nature and... I am not sure actually because I lost interest in what they were saying once they starting throwing their stuff all over the place.

Besides that I am now learning how to get military squads outfitting and working. I have 10 full sets of iron armor with steel weapons and am working on getting enough steel for armor... while making another set of iron armor for another squad or two.


Oh and the gobs left during the middle of summer after killing a Minotaur that showed up.

[xaritscin]

i mostly wait, leave the depot outside and create a bunker around the entrance, if the caravan can repel the invaders, good, if not, well its their problem, i try to keep all my dorfs alive, but if the enemy is almost near to the entrance, better to let some of them die for the survival of the whole fort.

as for the military, i usually go for the marksdwarves first, they seem to do a good job at the start, but the idea is to move to melee dorfs too.  i usually go for the idlers, if they're not gonna do something then better to have them training in the military

[NobleNecromancer]

Another update, and I am left confused...

A year went by and at the end of the next year I became under siege once again(by goblins riding Jabberers). This time I figured I would time raising the bridge(I had quite a few "layered" so if the first few attempts failed I would just raise a final one long before the gobs would reach me.) so a few would get in and get caught by my cage traps.

I timed it/got lucky and managed to separate 4 gobs from the others. The only problem? The Jabberer riding gobs are walking through my cage traps like they aren't even there.

Was I supposed to attach the cages to something? I thought I just needed to build a few cages and order the dorfs to place them where I wanted them... using q I see I can assign animals to them... and make a room with them(what?), so what did I do wrong?

[Extreme Boyheat]

You just placed the cages, you should have placed cage traps, under T for trap.