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[Lexyvil]

I haven't played long enough to witness any major attacks since all I've been doing so far was fooling around with many adventurers and mini forts to test out all the new features.

The one major thing that happened (which wasn't really major at all to the large scope of things) was a sudden attack of dead beings by two necromancers in an ambush.

[Psieye]

First summer bandit rush - 8 crossbow goblins. That was an embark on top of a worldgen-made road.

[Karakzon]

The easiest defense vs dirt diggers is a moat that hits the stone layers and goes down deep enough to be climbable.
Plus they would need to know were to dig, otherwise you would get sieges akin to dungeon keeper, were you don't really know its coming until they come through the walls.

The game is much easier vs sieges and undead, but still rock hard on a reanimating biome (which are essentially impossible since they reanimate way too fast to have a chance of sorting the corpses out).

Current fort is in its 4th year, sat on a road and river crossing. Only one werebeast (geko) that foolishly tried to attack a fully steel clad dwarf who happened to be the strongest in the fort. (Had a habit of throwing her sparing partners, which before armor, usually resulted in arm pulping and 6 months in a traction bench). One necromancer siege, one goblin siege. Only lost a dwarf due to him falling into a pond and refusing to climb out.

[Eidre]

I'm in the third year of my second .40 fort and I'm cautiously optimistic.  Some observations:

* FPS appears to be hit significantly; I'm dropping below 100 (my max set point) by the first immigration wave, previously I hadn't seen that until my population was over 100.

* Weapon traps seem to be a lot less effective; I used to be able to defend a fort by a very thin layer of traps (often just one or two traps thick) with iron serrated disks and spiked balls.  When I waited for the first siege to walk through, the lead soldier walked right through two traps without triggering them and kept going.

* I started at WAR with the local goblins, and saw no ambushes before the first siege in year 2.  It was about 10 enemy soldiers, with about half of those being kidnapped dwarves and elves (not from my fortress).  I made the mistake of rushing my army out after them when they started to retreat and got seriously bloodied (my soldiers were a bit under-armored at the time since I had deferred making armor until I started my steel industry).

* External world events add some level of interest.  The world news from the outpost liaison was pretty depressing; the local goblin civilization had overrun three nearby dwarf fortresses in the previous year.  Right after the conversation, three of my dwarves inherited the title of Baron one right after the other, presumably because of the deaths of the nobility in those cities.  That came as a bit of a surprise, so I'm scrambling to get them appropriate quarters.

* My dwarves are emotional wrecks.  I'm seeing lots of work cancellations due to Horrified! and Emotional Shock, and my Justice queue is full of civil disorder allegations (although no one is showing up as witnesses, which is strange because the perpetrator usually punches the victim a few times but leaves them alive).

* The dwarves comments about their emotional state in the combat message queue adds some color.  On the down side, it appears that sparring now just shows up as normal combat (I haven't seen a blue "S", and most of the red "C"s have been military dwarves "lightly tapping" each other).

Overall it does seem a bit easier, especially with the vast amounts of wood available and the wide array of new plants, fruits, vegetables, and so forth (easier to have a broad array of food and alcohol to prevent boredom).

[Melting Sky]

IMO a better solution than digging invaders would be enemies that could disarm traps - orc/goblin mechanics, as it were.  After all, in most fantasy settings they are the "techy" steampunk races.  It would be cool if once the knew there were traps, they could try to disarm them, which would of course take time, and you could try to cover with marksdwarves and so on.. and it wouldn't be nearly as game-breaking as digging invaders.

I think that enemy AI for intelligent races could definitely benefit from having at least a few different counter tactics in their bag of tricks to keep them from acting like lobotomized zombies. It makes sense that some brainless zombie or giant bug would charge right into the same hallway of death that it just saw 40 of it's buddies get torn to shreds in moments earlier but its ridiculous for a creature of at least dog intelligence to make the same mistake.

Trap disarming would definitely be a good addition but I also think that longer term siege methods such as digging, undermining walls and wall destroying battering rams have their place as well. I don't think just any old group of punk bandit goblins should be able to come along in year one and start using advanced tactics like battering rams and undermining against an early fort but rather that these are the sorts of options that would be available to late game sieging armies led by high ranking military leaders. As the game is right now, goblin sieges that show up after about year 2 or 3 simply have no chance what so ever of posing a real threat to fortress that has bothered to build some defenses. Once a fort is decently established, the only threat the goblins actually pose is to your FPS as they choke your CPU to death with troll fur loin cloths.

Since sieges are now tied to the living world and aren't just conjured out of thin air, it means that they are going to have to be rarer and or smaller occurrences than in the past which means that something needs to be done to make them tougher, particularly in the late game. In my last 2012 fort the game was throwing well over a hundred and fifty goblins and trolls at me per year. Aside for killing some cats and dogs and maybe a stray fisherdwarf they stopped being any sort of real threat even with such large and frequent attacks. In this new version there is no way the game can throw that many goblins and trolls at a player in any sort of sustained manner.

[greycat]

* Weapon traps seem to be a lot less effective; I used to be able to defend a fort by a very thin layer of traps (often just one or two traps thick) with iron serrated disks and spiked balls.  When I waited for the first siege to walk through, the lead soldier walked right through two traps without triggering them and kept going.

I haven't experienced it myself yet, but others have reported that this is due to the no-longer-instantaneous combat attacks.  By the time the weapon trap's attack would connect with the monster, it has moved off the trap.  It has also been reported that if the monster stands on the trap for some reason (path blocked?), the trap's attacks will connect just fine.  I don't know how to arrange for that to happen.

[vjek]

Yeah, I don't bother with normal traps at all now.  I just turtle until a squad is legendary, and that's it.  I have a cave-in trap for FB's/Titans/etc, and metal clad hammerdwarves/speardwarves for everything else.

Honestly, a bit of a downer, but maybe traps will be "fixed" in an update.

[iceball3]

* Weapon traps seem to be a lot less effective; I used to be able to defend a fort by a very thin layer of traps (often just one or two traps thick) with iron serrated disks and spiked balls.  When I waited for the first siege to walk through, the lead soldier walked right through two traps without triggering them and kept going.

I haven't experienced it myself yet, but others have reported that this is due to the no-longer-instantaneous combat attacks.  By the time the weapon trap's attack would connect with the monster, it has moved off the trap.  It has also been reported that if the monster stands on the trap for some reason (path blocked?), the trap's attacks will connect just fine.  I don't know how to arrange for that to happen.

Make sure the trap corridor doesn't have any longer than one tile in any direction, so that they can't get running momentum in a certain direction? Stationing crossbowdwarves nearby or pouring water over their heads might help, but it would still be difficult..

[Sda209]

I've had a number of forts now, and aside from unexpected bug-issues (tree-related murder, climb/fall, etc.) .40 seems a lot less eventful than .34 was.  All of my forts have had:

- less FBs emerge
- almost no goblin attacks
- fewer megabeasts/mini-megabeasts (cyclops, minotaurs, etc.)/wereanimal attacks

Compared to .34.11.

I am generally running medium to large worlds with very short history.  What's everyone else's experience?

As far as gameplay goes in the new update, I have yet to experience any of this. Mostly because I have yet to even get beyond summer due to computer limitations! (Although, I'm mostly busy with other things, as well.)

In 0.34.11, most of my recent fortresses suffered necromancer invasions or goblin invasions; I only had one goblin ambush in my entire career of playing DF, for the matter. Apart from occasional were-creature, it's been rather peaceful for me in that build. Around this update, I would say that it mostly depends on where you're located. Sieging armies are probably more interested in the older, and more successful, sites than some backwater outpost nobody but their own faction cares about.

[Urist McVoyager]

* Weapon traps seem to be a lot less effective; I used to be able to defend a fort by a very thin layer of traps (often just one or two traps thick) with iron serrated disks and spiked balls.  When I waited for the first siege to walk through, the lead soldier walked right through two traps without triggering them and kept going.

I haven't experienced it myself yet, but others have reported that this is due to the no-longer-instantaneous combat attacks.  By the time the weapon trap's attack would connect with the monster, it has moved off the trap.  It has also been reported that if the monster stands on the trap for some reason (path blocked?), the trap's attacks will connect just fine.  I don't know how to arrange for that to happen.

Pressure Plate in front of the trap hallway, hooked to a bridge or gate behind the traps, blocking the way forward. Creative use of other pressure plates should lock the enemies right inside the trap section.

[Zac]

I've had a number of forts now, and aside from unexpected bug-issues (tree-related murder, climb/fall, etc.) .40 seems a lot less eventful than .34 was.  All of my forts have had:

- less FBs emerge
- almost no goblin attacks
- fewer megabeasts/mini-megabeasts (cyclops, minotaurs, etc.)/wereanimal attacks

Compared to .34.11.

I am generally running medium to large worlds with very short history.  What's everyone else's experience?

Maybe the problem come from the age of your world ? I usually play with 300 to 600 years of history and I have no problem to be besieged every years or so.

[Agent_Irons]

If your world is very young, there won't be very many goblins around. There won't be very many anyone, really. The 'seeds' have been planted but nobody is spreading out yet. Give them a century or two and see how they are doing.

[Aisher]

If your world is very young, there won't be very many goblins around. There won't be very many anyone, really. The 'seeds' have been planted but nobody is spreading out yet. Give them a century or two and see how they are doing.

no sieges for 15 years, except one at start.  just retired my fortress and start a new one, liason came in august and say that my fortress is conquered. It is a bug i think I bet if i load old save, no sieges occur in that year


upd:
no siege as expected. i think that history advances only 2week calendar during creation of a new game, like say creating new armies etc. but during fortressplay history events limited bcs they are CPU-consuming.

[samanato]

I do notice a lack of real invasions past the first early one, and virtually no ambushes or thieves.  It definitely looks like a bug, and a game-breaking one at that.  I'm surprised, it still isn't reported at mantis yet. (I would do it, but because I've gone mad, I'm perpetually working on modding and porting more than actually playtesting this version in vanilla)

edit: also, this thread might be of interest