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[Bearskie]

Mmm... might want to share my own experience regarding the 40.xx era.  I'm one of those lucky ones who has managed to get consistent sieges throughout.  Once every year, goblins numbering in the 80s siege the isolated jungle fortress of Cloisteredtangle.  The region is split into the western and eastern fronts (imagine a large 'U') by an impenetarable wall of mountains and jungles.  Cloisteredtangle sits in the very middle.

Interestingly, the invasions only begun around the 3rd year of the fort.  Looking through legends, it soon becomes clear why is this the case:  during that year, a neighbouring goblin civilization declared absolute war on the my civilization.  Since then, yearly sieges, for 4 years now (each with its own intimidating name).  Large sieges too, but frankly the legendary hammerlords of Cloisteredtangle are absolutely OP, and it barely takes a small squad to defeat the entire army.

Yet year 8 was eerily quiet.  The yearly goblin invasion has come late.  Legends indicate that the sieging goblins have been losing out in wars back home, but until the year is over, one cant say for sure whether the war has ended.  If so, the dwarves are going to have to find other sources for their amusement.  Into the deep dark they will go.

[Robsoie]

Interesting to see your siege coming only in 3rd year, similarly to what i observed in my experiment.
But i wonder what lead them for your case to be yearly and large, as since i play df2014 i have only had :
- no siege at all is coming despite proximity of goblins
- some very rare and always very small sieges

The only strong and numerous sieges that come in my forts are undead one if i embark near a tower, but gobs in my games are incredibly rare.

while in 34.11 i had regular goblin sieges, ambushes and sometime very large one.

What kind of world size are you using and how many years have you let your world being generated ?

Anyways, the 7th year just started and ... a goblin siege !
So after the silly 10 gobs only weak siege from the 3rd year, now that my fort is much bigger, much more wealthy and my military much stronger, what kind of legion the gobs are sending to me :



10 gobs again ...

I'll wait for next year to see if they come again, but so far it's still as disapointing as it has been in all my df2014 games.
Though 2 "sieges" (if one can call this a siege) in the same fort ? that's a premiere in my df2014 fortress games.

[Robsoie]

My bad, i was wrong there was a second wave that just appeared 5/6 seconds after  so in the end it's not 10 but 36 gobs that came !

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Much much better, i never saw such a big siege in df2014 (though it's still far from my big 34.11 and previous sieges) , great.

So it looks like goblins real "siege" takes a lot more years to come than in previous version when you're close to an overpopulated goblin site.

In that experiment , despite the goblin overpopulation, its proximity , the WAR status, and my fort being wealthy, it took them 7 years to send me an actual army (the 3rd year siege isn't worth of being called such a thing, it's more like a 34.11 and previous ambush, minus the sneaking ambushes did).

Just for fun, the aftermath of the big battle between those 36 evil gobs and my brave 30 dwarves military

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I had only 2 dead (2 low skilled wrestlers i had drafted recently, bad luck guys, one of them was the leader of the newbies squad, someone will be probably happy to have a promotion soon) that you can see if you look closely , they had a slight red background.
While the goblin army was utterly annihilated, no survivor managed to escape to tell the tale.
I guess having multiple legendary sword, spear and marksdwarves (7 years of training for some dwarves that had already good military skills from the start) all covered in armor (7 years is plenty of time to forge stuff) is very helping too.

I'll let the fort run one more year to see if they come again after their first real siege

[Robsoie]

An update, we're now in summer of the 7th year of that fortress, as previously mentionned in the beginning of that year there was a goblin siege that came with 36 gobs.

And now ... there's another one ! a 2nd goblin siege on the same year in df2014 , can't believe it !

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

what is happening ? so many fortresses in which gobs never came through many years and there i have
27 trolls , 57 gobs and 1 "troll hammerman" trying to destroy everything.

My wealth is at near 600k, but i had already run fortresses in df2014 in which i reached high wealth without any gobs coming, while it's known that gobs number usually follow your wealth, it's still puzzling at why they came this time, and why they only really came after 7 long boring years (well the mini siege of year 3 with the 10 gobs does not really count) and why they do not come in most of my long lived wealthy forts ?



For the fun, my military squads bravely faced the overwhelming numbers and ...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

They were victorious !


But several goblins managed to run away this time.
My main (the best warriors) melee squad sustained no loss (they have the best armor too)
My marksdwarf squad lost 2 members because i did a stupid move for them.
My "relativenewguys" (they're in the squad since a year and a half) hammer squad lost only 3 members (i expected them to be annihilated), i guess armor helps really

One of my legendary swordmaster of the main squad killed 20 gobs/trolls on this battle by himself !


Udib Gidthuruzol Ungobbalad (Udib Graspoils the Aqua Coils) really deserved his title of legendary swordmaster.

So i guess that conclude the experiment : " why in df2014 are goblins not coming in most forts and why are they sometime coming ? "
The conclusion is .... "i have no more idea now than i had before"

At least it's confirming the gobs number in an invasion are still linked to how high the wealth is.

[Bearskie]

Well there you go Personally I feel that the WAR status is the most important, in that goblins have to explicitly declare war on you before they start sending regular sieges; until then, it's only the rare invasion here and there.  Check your legends! Should be interesting.

Since you asked,

World size: Medium
Year: 132 (Generated at 125)
No mods, no tweaks, no DFhack.

Also, here's a screencap of the war that started it all.  Only the highlighted ones are attacks on the fortress itself; the rest are other NPC forts.



It should be noted that the Ruthlessness of Cruelty is tied for the second largest civilization in this world; they are also the largest goblin civ.  Meanwhile the Guild of Pages is a coalition of fragmented dwarven forces (far smaller due to dwarves not doing very well in this world).  So perhaps civilization size and positioning may play a role in whether invaders can muster up enough force for attacks on civs.

[nimbus25]

Finally, after 4 years, the INSTANT it turns winter, goblin siege. An amazing 10 goblins show up, 5 of which fall into cage traps. To give them credit, a farmer died because for some reason he was incapable of running inside EITHER entrance into my fort, so he got trapped outside for target practice.

[Camulus]

So necromancers entered my site twice now, and immediately left it again.
I embarked near a tower, so they came in year 1 and 2, but absolutely fakol came from it.
No violence, every time they just turn tail and run.


Why?
Why me?
Why am I missing out on the terror and the bloodshed?

 

[Camulus]

So the "siege" from at least one tower was logged, even though three attacks occurred. The message that pops up says "Invaders, drive them off!" and not ""The dead walk. Hide while you still can!", so perhaps there may be something to study there.

I guess I have to search for a related bug, forcing undead armies to leave the site immediately after entering.

[Robsoie]

On a previous df2014 fort in which i embarked right next to a tower when i wanted to see if undead were as unwilling or very long to decide to siege as goblins, i observed a few things :

- undead are much more willing and quicker to decide to siege you (similar to 34.11) than goblins, that's great.
- most of the undead sieges had the necromancer exiting the map rather quickly, but his undead were staying forever (never had this problem in 34.11 in which necromancers go stealth around their troops)
- undead in df2014 are so silly overpowered (never understood why Toady did that, they were very balanced in 34.11) that you can't really get your army to fight them, you will have to use traps and walls to get rid of them, not much fun.
- i had one siege that had a mix of undead and living soldiers ( huh ? ) , and worse is that despite undead should attack anything living on sight, they were co-existing happily with the living soldiers, very bad bug probably linked to some faction and morale bug (reminding me of those "hostile" cavern animal people that never attack your nearby dwarves/military in df2014, or all the crap from adventure mode in which none really attack).

[Camulus]

On a previous df2014 fort in which i embarked right next to a tower when i wanted to see if undead were as unwilling or very long to decide to siege as goblins, i observed a few things :

- undead are much more willing and quicker to decide to siege you (similar to 34.11) than goblins, that's great.
- most of the undead sieges had the necromancer exiting the map rather quickly, but his undead were staying forever

Hmmm yes I had this, but the undead left right along with the necromancer.
Haven't had time yet, but will play around with this problem.

[nimbus25]

First of Limestone, casual day trying to get all my armor figured out so my dwarves can actually start training again, when...

Oh boy. 31 goblins and 9 trolls. Pretty impressive.

[Robsoie]

It's funny that after so many forts with no goblin ever coming, i make a fort to test one last time (as df2014 was boring me too much regarding this problem and i was simply going to keep using 34.11 instead) and suddenly as shown in this thread, they come and they even come in large number 3 times.

Though they take a long time to really come, 7 years (though the 3rd year ridiculous small siege isn't really counting in my eyes) in my test despite they have their base right next to my fort very overpopulated and at war with us since all that time.

Now if only i could figure out why they came this time without coming in any of my previous df2014 fort. The only difference is that i had larger litter for the gobs, allowing them to overpopulate faster than usual their base without having to worldgen a thousand year old world.
But some people apparently had big sieges in df2014 without having to edit the gobs litter size, so i'm still puzzling at why gobs siege happen sometime (and take a long time to actually come in force) and why they don't happen most of the time.

[Naryar]

I got an early goblin attack, year 2, i think. Ten goblins. Since then nothing, it's been a bit less than a year IIRC.

I assume it is due to my civ having 2 towns only and early on one of my starting seven claimed the position of king.

Which replaced a goblin king, which is always better.

[Putnam]

Toady: ...The main thing dwarf mode gets this time around is this world continuation stuff with succession happening and your civilization not just dying out while you're playing, or whatever happens now with your guys walking on the screen and dying of old age, or I think I may have put in the thing where they just don't show up at all anymore, but you'll actually have that. You'll also be getting armies that are real. So, all the things that we're talking about with evil lieutenants and villains and all this stuff in adventure mode also applies to dwarf mode in terms of who's actually going to be showing up; you'll get people showing up with a story and a reason now, instead of just, like, the yearly goblin attack or whatever. Although, you still won't be able to respond, which is the big thing with the hill dwarves and army stuff we'll get to later.
Rainseeker:   Now, will there sometimes be fortresses that never experience a goblin attack, for instance?
Toady:   That is going to be something that's a lot more common now, so if you want to be a fortress that's a fortress, then you'd have to embark on the frontier, more of a border where you'd be harassed. It'll tell you about what you're getting into so you don't have to guess, but if you want to go the other direction and place yourself right in the middle of where the dwarves currently are then you're just not going to have those kinds of problems unless you invite them on yourself by digging downward, or whatever. So it'll be possible to have more control over your starting political situation, and you'll still have people to trade with that you can mess with, so if you really want to invite fighting with the elves or something like that and you want to keep squashing their caravans under drawbridges or whatever you want to do, then that'll still invite trouble, although it could be that the trouble you invite doesn't affect you specifically. If you start a war with the elves you might not be the closest settlement to the eleven border in which case you'd start a fight with one of your poor other dwarven civilizations, or whatever; you'd get the elves to attack one of your other sites.

[nimbus25]

Barely 3 months later, another siege. 4 trolls and 24 goblins. Smaller siege than before, but still coming. And less than a year's wait too!
EDIT: 3 months after that, more sieges. Seem to be a regular thing now.