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[Bearskie]

You know... the one where you send your entire military to combat a siege, and they just stand there like training dummies while waves of goblins pummel them into submission, not lifting their weapons in self-defence even once?

I mean it's quite a major bug is it not? It essentially invalidates the entire military system. Atm I'm curious to know what actually causes this problem, and how you guys recommend to deal with it. Or is it just me who's unlucky to encounter this problem?

Because if a small goblin siege can cause these types of bugs, I can't see myself beating what's 'down below' in a fair fight.

[Witty]

Seems to be a long standing issue with .40
I haven't encountered this problem personally, but I honestly haven't had a lot of invaders since the new update.   

[Tarkakagogue]

I had this bug last night with a fort that's in it's fifteenth year. First, it was a goblin siege. The melee squads actually did engage, but as the fight progressed more of the dwarves took on a pacifistic attitude. I managed to end the siege by dropping the order and having the gobbos follow my dwarves through the trap defenses.

Then I had a cyclops show up and zero dwarves would fight it. Resulting in a cyclops tearing my fort down. I savescummed.

This is already on the mantis bug site.

[Miuramir]

You know... the one where you send your entire military to combat a siege, and they just stand there like training dummies while waves of goblins pummel them into submission, not lifting their weapons in self-defence even once?

I mean it's quite a major bug is it not? It essentially invalidates the entire military system. Atm I'm curious to know what actually causes this problem, and how you guys recommend to deal with it. Or is it just me who's unlucky to encounter this problem?

It's a difficult bug because it apparently doesn't hit every fort or every time.  If you are up for some Science! there is some faint suspicion that it might be more likely to be triggered with large groups of dwarves being sent to attack; if you have a save from shortly before a siege, experiment with reloading the save, and sending out different numbers of squads, dwarves per squad, and total number of dwarves.  If you can manage to nail down a repeatable situation where what orders you give to whom triggers the bug or does not, that will be a significant help in tracking down the bug. 

For example (and *please* note that these are completely made up numbers and should not be re-quoted), if hypothetically you found that sending one partial squad fought correctly, but sending three full squads caused them to stand around, that would be very helpful.  (And even more helpful at that point would be to post the save, and then do some more experimenting to see what the tipping point was.) 

[Deboche]

I thought it was related to burrows. Try canceling burrow orders.

And it's a good thing someone posted it in the bug tracker. When there was the no sieges bug, it took a long time for Toady to become aware of it because no one had properly reported it.

[Bearskie]

Interesting.  It would make sense if it was down to multiple squad orders, as i run at least 10 squads of 4 in my fort. Will try it out, fort is still in the middle of the siege so i'll savescum abit and attempt to figure it out.

[Bearskie]

Alright, so after several messabouts with various save files, I've decided to call this the Dwarven Bystander Effect.

Based of my testing, I believe it's caused by too many dwarves in an area with enemies, which somehow wonks up the system that determines hostile targets and whatnot.  Thus militia does not attack those presumed unhostile goblins; even when I turned my military dwarves back into civilians, they don't flee the goblins like normal citizens do (instead they amble casually away from the siege).

Of course I have no idea how this all actually works, but here are my results at attempting to defend Cloisteredtangles from the vile force of darkness. Over and over again.

Note: This begins at the point when the entire military is already standing in the middle of the siege and not attacking. Unfortunately I dont have a save where the goblins just arrived.


1) Stationed all military in the middle of the siege.
- Problem persists.
Most goblins level up to elite status, and my legendary dwarves block and parry every blow - until they fall unconcious and get a spear driven through their skull, that is.  The dwarves finally strike back when only 3 squads remain; altogether they total only 5 at this point.

2) Station military far away, AKA mission GTFOutofthere
- Persists, minor improvement.
Most soldiers do not move to their new positions as they seem to automatically be drawn into melee situations, despite not doing anything when they reach the invaders.  Eventually, enough soldiers die or move away that the remaining ones start fighting back.

3) Make most of military civilians by freeing their barracks and setting them to inactive, with one squad left in the middle of the siege.
- Persists, minor improvement.
Same as above, even as civilians they seem to be drawn towards the melee. Considering that most civilians stayed in the midst of the siege, results same as 2.

4) Make ALL militia civilians, deactivate all civilian alerts.
- PROFIT!
Oddly enough, when the alert is disabled, the civilian militia finally starts to amble away from the siege.  The random spread of the civilian militia manages to draw the invaders over a wide area. When they managed to spread out to a large enough area, two squads are activated, stationing them back to the now-dwarf-free siege site.
- Activated squads are now properly hostile to goblins (at least in relatively dwarf-free areas). They happily massacre goblins on their way to the station, and they continue the massacre at the siege site.


It seems that the best way to manage this bug is to just send small squads to battle.  Unfortunately this means that your dwarves will be visibly outnumbered, so perhaps drawing the goblins out over an area would be a better choice beforehand.

So now you know

[Bearskie]

Cough- believed double post