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[Haunted Quiche]

I've seen a lot of people treat drawbridges/walling up the entrace/trap corridors as the standard way to defend a fortress...

I was just curious how many people there are like me who tend to rely on military and fortress design.

Like, basically, the only way I seal myself in is using standard doors, don't use alternative Invader Entrances and my defences never use any traps. Basically, I tend to rely on carefully placed fortifications and corners to control line-of-site.

And yes, I die a lot. And even if I don;t my casualties can be ridiculous. :p It's what I find fun in the game.

So, who else prefers playing this way? And what strategies do you use?

[Wolffkran]

I own a bridge but I only really use it when two opposing forces pop up at the same time, like a colossus and a zombie army.

[martinuzz]

You can combine both, using bridges, and trap corridors to separate / bottleneck, and thin out forces before they engage your military.

[Haunted Quiche]

You can combine both, using bridges, and trap corridors to separate / bottleneck, and thin out forces before they engage your military.

Oh, I know you can combine both. I thought that was the standard method of fortress defence - bridges and trap corridors backed by military to fight the remainder.

But I was just wondering who else prefers the challenge of relying on actual combat to take on attackers, and what interesting tactics they might have. (Or, more specifically, what interesting tactics have utterly failed... like my attempt to give my marksdwarves more opportunities to shoot by lining my main entrance with fortifications. I maybe should've remembered goblins have crossbows too. :p )

[mobucks]

If I'm not near a tower, military squads are my only defense. Sieges are no problem with a squad or two. It's that damn [FLYER] tagged forgotten beast that flies over my walls and into my dining hall that always causes FUN!

But yeah man I'm like you. Rarely do I bridge up. I make a decent sized motte and bailey but instead of a gatehouse it's just a 3-wide opening in the walls for depot access. I find adding a wall behind that opening is good enough for getting baddies inside the walls before my squads engage them. Like so:

               Entrance
XXXXX/XXXX. . .XXXX/XXXXXX
X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X
X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X
X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X
X. . .XX/XXXXXXXXXX/XX. . .X
X. . . . . . .Barracks

( "/" = unspecified length of wall)

What I always end up slacking on is building a damn roof over all this to keep fliers out. I'll usually forego roofing the entire motte and just build a small roofed keep over the stair access of the fort.

Best piece of advice I have is: Get those marksdwarves set up asap.

[EvilBob22]

I'm basically a military only defense kind of guy.  I will usually build a drawbridge and use it to split up the first siege that I get -- open the bridge, let a few in, close it again, rinse, repeat.  But after that, it is normally open door at all times.  My current fort has the drawbridge removed and the hole paved over with floor tiles.

[Friti]

Aye - Military tends to be my primary focus.  Pillboxes for my Marksdwarves atop the walls (With no short route for them to path back along and charge suicidally when they run out of ammo) and melee dwarves/nobles training in the courtyard or dining hall 8/2 at a time respectfully.  Traps I tend to not use much of, and dwarbridges only into the most critical of spaces... such as the entrance to the dining hall where all my civies will cower during an invasion.   And the entrance to the internal Refuse pile. 

Why the refuse pile?  Made the mistake of not securing my internal bone/leather/refuse stockpile for my craftsdwarves when I was embarked near 3 necromancer towers once.  They got inside and it was nothing but pain when they got to there.  Now when I see a necromancer, I seal off that portion of the stockpile, regardless of whether or not I think he can get inside.

[mopstar]

I do,I charge my military out at the goblins and toss a dice to see if I win but once the sieges get too large I generally use marks dorfs to cripple as many as possible and fight them inside my walls where hopefully their archers wont be as effective.

Normally keep 40-50% of my population in the active military while keeping about a squad or two just sitting around in armour in case of bad times.


I just found using traps to boring,you always win that way but when relying on your soldiers the need for a good medbay,strong metalworking and better layouts just becomes far more apparent.I generally give my military dwarves who stand out good living spaces with their own graves too instead of just mass coffins for those who die in general run of the mill things.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also who doesnt like seeing blue text?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

And as the guy earlier said,Marksdorfs

[Urist McShire]

When my fortress is small I rely on a trap corridor and raised bridges, but once my fort gets large enough my main defence becomes my military. In one fort I did in which I had my max population at 400 (because I was insane), fully half of them were in the army. I was untouchable.

[Haunted Quiche]

If I'm not near a tower, military squads are my only defense. Sieges are no problem with a squad or two. It's that damn [FLYER] tagged forgotten beast that flies over my walls and into my dining hall that always causes FUN!

But yeah man I'm like you. Rarely do I bridge up. I make a decent sized motte and bailey but instead of a gatehouse it's just a 3-wide opening in the walls for depot access. I find adding a wall behind that opening is good enough for getting baddies inside the walls before my squads engage them. Like so:

               Entrance
XXXXX/XXXX. . .XXXX/XXXXXX
X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X
X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X
X. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . X
X. . .XX/XXXXXXXXXX/XX. . .X
X. . . . . . .Barracks

( "/" = unspecified length of wall)

What I always end up slacking on is building a damn roof over all this to keep fliers out. I'll usually forego roofing the entire motte and just build a small roofed keep over the stair access of the fort.

Best piece of advice I have is: Get those marksdwarves set up asap.

That sounds remarkably similar to the design I used for years. A walled area with a single 3-wide entrance, and then a roofed keep in the middle, inside which was my DoomPit of a stairwell. (a large, square hole with either 4 up/down stair stacks in the corners. Sometimes another 4 in the middle of each side to boost the paths to 8 if my fort was getting crowded.)

Something I also used to find quite useful was to have my 3-wide entrance approach for a short way (around... 6-8 blocks) over a large pit, maybe 3 z-levels deep. Generally it didn't make much difference, but the attackers would occasionally try to dodge arrows and fall off, and it also funneled them quite nicely. Plus, it felt cool. (Especially when the bottom was paved with spears stolen from enemies.) I don't know if that would work anymore though - do people still dodge arrows like that? (Because this design was from back when the z-axis was fairly new).

[Aslandus]

I've come to rely on marksdwarves, I build walls and fortifications around my fortress and have them take potshots at the invaders until they flee... that said, I've never had a fort survive to see the fourth invasion, so this might not work long term...

[RocheLimit]

I recently converted from a standard trapped-path-over-pit defense to a pure military one, and I have to say I am glad I did.  Ambush and Siege defenses have gone from ho-hum clean-up-in-pit-#3 doldrums, to epic fights I love stepping through and watching unfold.  Or make gifs of them.  I once saw (stepped through) a macelord bat a goblin tooth 5 z levels in the air, watched it hit the ceiling, then land on a ledge above the barracks; I left it there for the remainder of the fort as a trophy.

Traps don't amaze you.  Short Insane Drunk People clad in Steel amaze you.

Following: 2 Macelords vs ~30 Naga bowmen (Fortress Defense Mod)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

No Injuries. 

I'm sure I'll have fun with webbing titans/fb though.  And I still have never visited the circus. 

Still plenty to do!

[Baffler]

Holy boltspam, Roche!

-------

My strategy of late has been to build barricades in the gateway instead of a drawbridge when the nasties come a' knocking: that'll be a jeweler's shop or a bowyer, depending on direction. They completely block movement on the right and left side, respectively, but can be knocked out by building destroyers. Some marksdwarves manning the barricade(s) with melee dwarves in support make for an excellent defense. If you need to fall back, or if there are building destroyers incoming, just take your marksdwarves off duty. They'll retreat and you can set up another barricade to keep them safe while they cover the melee dwarves.

I came up with this strategy when I was attacked very early on, before my outer wall was finished. It was originally intended as an emergency fix, but I love it now. It also allows you to create makeshift defensive positions anywhere, with much greater effectiveness if it's size is a multiple of three. Combine this with my tendency to give almost every civilian a crossbow and some ammunition, stockpile bolts all over the place, and make corridors 3 tiles wide, and my fortress is very difficult to take at the cost of unrest being much more dangerous.

[Haunted Quiche]

Following: 2 Macelords vs ~30 Naga bowmen (Fortress Defense Mod)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

No Injuries. 

I'm sure I'll have fun with webbing titans/fb though.  And I still have never visited the circus. 

Still plenty to do!

That gif is... just, wow. What were your Malelords wearing? Or are Naga bowmen really just that bad at aiming?

[Repseki]

Following: 2 Macelords vs ~30 Naga bowmen (Fortress Defense Mod)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

No Injuries. 

I'm sure I'll have fun with webbing titans/fb though.  And I still have never visited the circus. 

Still plenty to do!

That gif is... just, wow. What were your Malelords wearing? Or are Naga bowmen really just that bad at aiming?

Macelords tend to be rather good at dodge, blocking, or swatting anything shot at them out of the air, aiming probably wasn't their problem.