Print

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

[Vilkku92]

Strange. For me, the first sight of goblins was a siege in 3rd winter. Made of ten or so dwarves. Of whom eight seem to have been unarmed recruits. I don't know if I was close to them or anything, but it was as soon as the goblins have ever showed up in my games.

Oh, and they seem to have started taking my civilizations sites at an alarming speed just recently. Wonder if exporting masterwork rock short swords could stem the tide, since I have a surplus of obsidian and wood along with a skilled stonecrafters, and my military doesn't seem to care much about the iron weapons I've made them.

[Eidako]

Wonder if exporting masterwork rock short swords could stem the tide

I think that might actually be counterproductive. I was buying out the entire caravan every year with masterwork green glass spiked balls, which may have caused the wealth of the nearby sites to skyrocket, leading to the year 127 mass takeover by the goblins. From what I understand goblins instantly win when invading a NPC site, so how well armed a fort is is irrelevant.

[Uronym]

Wonder if exporting masterwork rock short swords could stem the tide

I think that might actually be counterproductive. I was buying out the entire caravan every year with masterwork green glass spiked balls, which may have caused the wealth of the nearby sites to skyrocket, leading to the year 127 mass takeover by the goblins. From what I understand goblins instantly win when invading a NPC site, so how well armed a fort is is irrelevant.

By this logic, amusingly, the best plan to save your civilization is probably to rob every caravan, reducing its wealth (marginally), and making it a less interesting target... I bet the Mountainhome will not like your idea. Not sure if goblins actually attack sites other than your own due to wealth, though.

Strange. For me, the first sight of goblins was a siege in 3rd winter.

Yeah, in previous versions, you had to be ready for the first ambushes by the second spring and for large-scale sieges in the second winter. I liked that a lot more than this "easy mode"; if the goblins take so long, there is no challenge whatsoever. You can easily have your convoluted traps and supersoldiers ready by then, even if you only prepare at an extremely relaxed pace. Even if you somehow wasted three years and weren't ready yet, you probably have a population well over 100 at that point, making zerg tactics viable. I'm sure some people agree, like this guy:

I hope someone makes a hotfix for this in DF hack or something; at the moment it just seems ridiculous to have more then 5 years to prepare for sieges, it just seems to make the game too relaxed imo without looming threat of goblin invasions. Also, a lack of goblins for test subjects and goblinite is a bummer too...

Aside from goblins just bringing a constant and abundant supply of fun, the goblinite and test subjects were completely invaluable. While only some maps have iron in the earth (copper and silver are the only guaranteed weapons-grade metals), every map could have iron walk straight to their doorstep with a large siege. Prisoners, of course are another excellent resource, useful in the fields of computing, "medicine", and "psychology"! Defense design is one of the more interesting parts of the game that brings all of the other disparate parts together.

It does seem like a pretty serious issue. I mean, despite all the cool stuff in the new version, 0.34 almost looks better, since, well, the most important part of the game isn't seriously broken.

[BastiBasti]

It does seem like a pretty serious issue. I mean, despite all the cool stuff in the new version, 0.34 almost looks better, since, well, the most important part of the game isn't seriously broken.

I wouldn't go as far to say this version is worse, but goblins always felt like one of the main features of DF; to the point where you often avoid embarking on islands as you end up with a boring game. On that note, is it possible to force a sieges using DF hack or something? Just seems a bit ridiculous to have to wait 13 years before anyone shows up... If not it makes sense to do some testing in how to bait the new goblin armies into invading. I imagine there must be a way, such as setting more sites in world gen or something. I'm no expert though, but it would be nice if someone came up with a solution to this :/

[miauw62]

I imagine a high amount of civs would help, since being next to twice the goblins should cause twice the fun.

[Eidako]

you had to be ready for the first ambushes by the second spring and for large-scale sieges in the second winter. I liked that a lot more than this "easy mode"

Necromancers do a decent job of filling this void (at least when they're next door). In an alternate history of Greenwall, I had fully armed and armored zombies show up in the first Autumn. I knew I was completely screwed, so I savescummed from the original embark. This time around the undead were kind enough to wait until the second Winter to siege the fort. When they did, it was five necromancers accompanied by an absurd number (many pages) of undead. The only reason I was able to cope was because I had prioritized building a long retracting bridge suspended over a volcano from day one.

[Uronym]

Necromancers do a decent job of filling this void (at least when they're next door). In an alternate history of Greenwall, I had fully armed and armored zombies show up in the first Autumn. I knew I was completely screwed, so I savescummed from the original embark. This time around the undead were kind enough to wait until the second Winter to siege the fort. When they did, it was five necromancers accompanied by an absurd number (many pages) of undead. The only reason I was able to cope was because I had prioritized building a long retracting bridge suspended over a volcano from day one.

Necromancers do come at an appropriate time for some early, before-goblins action... except that zombies are practically unbeatable in 0.40.xx (supposedly it got a little better with a recent bugfix release?). You can lay bolts into them, you can bash them with hammers all day, but it simply takes too long to bash in their heads; they will inevitably get a lucky hit after a long enough stalemate. It doesn't help that the dwarves rarely even target the head, meaning they have to pulp the entire zombie before it will collapse. And the necromancers, as we know too well, bring a huge number of zombies. The only viable tactics are hundreds of cage traps, magma, or atom smashing. Or, of course, waiting, though the zombies seem to really eat up processor cycles, and there is no guarantee they will leave in the near future.

Kobolds would be much better as early enemies; however, there is no reason to assume that they would attack earlier than goblins with the current mechanics. It seems that necromancers operate in a completely different way from other civilizations; more Zerg than Protoss, that is. While goblins are very much Zerg on the international scene, they seem to be reluctant to attack player sites, or at least take ages to do so.

If you can beat the necromancers that attack you in the first year, you'll really find the goblins underwhelming when they attack a decade later.

[MDFification]

Necromancers do a decent job of filling this void (at least when they're next door). In an alternate history of Greenwall, I had fully armed and armored zombies show up in the first Autumn. I knew I was completely screwed, so I savescummed from the original embark. This time around the undead were kind enough to wait until the second Winter to siege the fort. When they did, it was five necromancers accompanied by an absurd number (many pages) of undead. The only reason I was able to cope was because I had prioritized building a long retracting bridge suspended over a volcano from day one.

Necromancers do come at an appropriate time for some early, before-goblins action... except that zombies are practically unbeatable in 0.40.xx (supposedly it got a little better with a recent bugfix release?). You can lay bolts into them, you can bash them with hammers all day, but it simply takes too long to bash in their heads; they will inevitably get a lucky hit after a long enough stalemate. It doesn't help that the dwarves rarely even target the head, meaning they have to pulp the entire zombie before it will collapse. And the necromancers, as we know too well, bring a huge number of zombies. The only viable tactics are hundreds of cage traps, magma, or atom smashing. Or, of course, waiting, though the zombies seem to really eat up processor cycles, and there is no guarantee they will leave in the near future.

Kobolds would be much better as early enemies; however, there is no reason to assume that they would attack earlier than goblins with the current mechanics. It seems that necromancers operate in a completely different way from other civilizations; more Zerg than Protoss, that is. While goblins are very much Zerg on the international scene, they seem to be reluctant to attack player sites, or at least take ages to do so.

If you can beat the necromancers that attack you in the first year, you'll really find the goblins underwhelming when they attack a decade later.

Headshots should be irrelevant to killing zombies as they're on a hitpoint system.

[Loud Whispers]

Indeed. You can even cut a head off a zombie and have its headless body still come lurching after you.

[Uronym]

Headshots should be irrelevant to killing zombies as they're on a hitpoint system.

Didn't Toady drop that when he added pulping? I had the impression that was why zombies became suddenly unbeatable in 0.40.xx.

[Urist_McArathos]

I believe he dropped that before adding pulping.  Originally undead were just zombies or skeletons, then came the rewrite with necromancy where just about anything could be animated (skins and hairs even), but without pulping OR hit points they were functionally immortal (which was why husks were initially so damn terrifying).

Pulping was added AFTER that, I believe, to finally solve the problem...which has been replaced by zombies clambering World War Z-style over your walls, fully armed and armored and ready to slaughter.

In other words, things are getting better and better.

[Loud Whispers]

Undead in the necromancy update still used hitpoints. Husks were different, being infected live beings as opposed to reanimated corpses. They were difficult to kill on account of them retaining their skills/armour/weapons, being covered in what infected them and also no longer being able to be killed in just about every other normal way bar total bisection.

[Uronym]

So, do they use hitpoints now? I would suppose not, but I have no idea. Undead don't seem to die by just being hit enough times anymore.