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[neil_v]

This is a random jumble of things that are either thoughts, or insurmountable problems now, for my wife and I.

1) Everyone knows the military is broken so I will just take a few kicks at a dead horse to see if anyone else is having these particular problems...

 During goblin sieges, Marksmen shoot, but they do so while climbing over the fortifications, down the walls, across the dry moat. They then run
and stand directly on top of their targeted gobbo. All other military Dwarves do this as well, but it is most irksome with ranged units...
This happens all the time...
So, my wife and I just made new fortresses (as you do) and had a ragtag band of marksmen to deal with kias and flying squirrels, with the intention of just ignoring sieges....
Too bad for us, as siegers can now just climb walls and come inside your fortress...
So we started some new fortresses (again), This time we went to town on training dwarves on their preferred military profession. We don't normally do this, in the four or so years of playing we have never once been able to get a military to do anything other than ward off a few mega beasts. As far as we can tell, it's impossible to train up Dwarves to be good enough to fight goblins, without exploits. By the time the goblins arrive in the second winter, the best we've done is talented armor users and less than high master in any weapon. Goblins climb the walls and decimate all steel clad military units   
like they are naked.

2) War Animals apparently lose their senses, the don't see thieves and goblins and just stand there. They don't react when being killed by thieves or goblins. War animals are useless now, except for that masterwork pot of prepared dog intestines.

3)Hunters love to engage deer in hand to hand combat, And they love to stand on top of their quarry and shoot bolts into their hooves and legs, all wile getting kicked and bitten.

4)Trees are now the bane of our processors, and we cut them down as fast as they grow... Heavily forested areas are unplayable.
 
5)Since the 0.40 release we have never once made it far enough in a fortress to breach a cavern (I hear the trees there are a problem)... if its not unkillable goblins, its frame rate death.

I'm playing on an old laptop with Amd Turion TL-58 1.90ghz so I don't expect a fortress of 200 dwarves on a 16x16 embark.... But, I am in my second autumn of a 2x2 embark with a population cap of 20 dwarves, flat terrain, sparsely wooded, and I am already down to 60fps and falling...

My wife is faring much better on the i5 asus, but trees are still the devil. We've looked at piles of entries on improving performance, and have figured out some of our own, but it's getting silly on how much you need to be aware of performance wise just to play 3 seasons of this game.

We love the new trees, but god dammit man, these trees require a processor each to properly account for every fruit, nut and leaf. I swear that each leaf makes it into legends, and each nut and fruit is forever etched in the memories of our dear dwarves.

We love that goblins can climb walls, and that they are terrifying opponents, but this is out of control. Please fix the military if you are going to require us to use it. We have played this game for so long hoping the military would be fixed, and we see that it did get fixed. But, it seems the wrong military was fixed, the goblins didn't need fixing as much as the dwarves... Traps are no longer very effective.

We have yet to build a mine cart... or a nest box... or a beehive... or geld... or milk. We want to do all these things, but it's all over too quick.

Dwarves get cave adaptation almost immediately, the ENTIRE FORTRESS is usually covered in vomit after a big outdoor hauling job..

Animals spend 100% of their time running around and ignoring their pastures, we kill every single animal now and drown the pets because they are more trouble alive than dead.

We love the new emotions... but i'm sure its causing the pasture issues and the war dog impotence.

We love that Dwarves use bolts more reliably, and can pick up hand fulls of them now.

We love auto mining, priorities for designations, and force build at the workshop

We love the gardening, and fruit picking, and cherry blossoms, but not at such a cost.

We hate that this as this game gets exponentially better and more playable, while on a quantum level, it gets exponentially worse and more unplayable.

A new fortress every morning now, and I feel like an smack addict complaining to the dealer that they are cutting the dope too much... I know you don't care, and I hate you for it. You know I will be there next release, updating my saves and manually inputting offsets into dwarf therapist, giving you my money... And dying a little inside when the frame rate drops another notch, and the dwarves slowly get blunter while everything else gets sharper... You do realize that I play this game through the Dwarves, right? I need them to be able to interact with the virtual environment competently. This isn't an art project for me, this is a game, and hobby that I enjoy, or more accurately now; A game I am going to great lengths to TRY and enjoy... I'm all butthurt and stuff....Feel my impotent rage in all its flaccidness and anticlimax....

[Cheedows]

There have been several bug reports of military dwarves doing absolutely jackshit, the problem is that the bug is hard to replicate as it doesn't happen in every fortress. Also, on the contrary of what you've said about gobbos attacking you every year, some may consider you "lucky" since a good majority of people have been getting little if any sieges after in some cases, 10+ years in a fortress' life.  I'm sure you've heard of plenty of training regiments, but I can say that sparring has been immensely improved in to 40.0x update. Through proper scheduling you can churn out legendaries reliably in 1-2 years as crazy as it may sound from the 34.11 days, I know. Could you check the combat logs of your steel clad military fighting gobbos? If they are not hitting back it is the aforementioned bug of them just standing there like dwarfinite for the hungry goblin whips to unearth.

[Kuikka]

Marksdwarves leaving their shelter and climbing to their death - check
Soldiers refusing to fight and only dodging - check
War animals being totally useless - check (I havent seen a single war trained animal attack the enemy, only dying)

[neil_v]

Also, on the contrary of what you've said about gobbos attacking you every year, some may consider you "lucky" since a good majority of people have been getting little if any sieges after in some cases, 10+ years in a fortress' life.

Oh my, yes. I had forgotten about this. The last couple of fortresses the Dwarves had been at war with the goblins so we got sieges every few months. Otherwise, I would never see a goblin invasion, and very ,very rarely a kobold or thief would come.

I did notice training has improved, as in they actually do it consistently now... I will try scheduling training to be more often, they don't seem to get as knotted up about 'the draft' as they used to.
In 0.34 they would get furious if you had them train twice a year AND be expected to fight.

I will check the reports in the up coming fortresses and see whats up. If the reports get exported to somewhere, I don't know where. Looks like I need to update to 40.23 as the error log is full of the army camp forever bug, and a ton of 'flesh ball path fail'.
path fail: flesh ball,94,43,12 -> 79,33,12: Id #7327:Path Goal Flee Terrain:Station None at 94,43,12

Thanks for the reply, we will keep plugging away...

Marksdwarves leaving their shelter and climbing to their death - check
Soldiers refusing to fight and only dodging - check
War animals being totally useless - check (I havent seen a single war trained attack enemy, only dying)

Well, that sucks. We really relied on war animals and our war animal breeding program here. That, and traps... and marksdwarves behind fortifications... Thanks for verifying that for us!

edit...

Im going to try and build a roof over the fortifications and see if that helps.

[Kuikka]

Im going to try and build a roof over the fortifications and see if that helps.

Only way for marksdwarves to work is to put them into sealed rooms with fortifications. Roof = compulsory. If there's a hatch, lock it. Note that those bastards also bypass your position-orders by standing outside the archery tower where you have "placed" them, within 4 tiles from the marked position. So, if there's for example a wall next to the tower and dwarves have access to it, they stand there instead of safety. And then they die. So make sure they dont have access to area near your position on the same z-level.

[neil_v]

Im going to try and build a roof over the fortifications and see if that helps.

Only way for marksdwarves to work is to put them into sealed rooms with fortifications. Roof = compulsory. If there's a hatch, lock it. Note that those bastards also bypass your position-orders by standing outside the archery tower where you have "placed" them, within 4 tiles from the marked position. So, if there's for example a wall next to the tower and dwarves have access to it, they stand there instead of safety. And then they die. So make sure they dont have access to area near your position on the same z-level.

Hahahah... Nice, thanks!
 For simplicitys sake, we have a 6x10 (approx) training room/watch tower surrounded by fortifications above, and overlooking the trade depot. The depot is outside the fortress (which saves us from some problems, while creating others) and is in an alley. The marksdwarves did a good job of breaking sieges with this method, but now they like to get their hands dirty. Locking doors and hatches will be our next step, as well as hoping they station before moving in for the kill...

[omega_dwarf]

Man, this is making me thankful that I've never encountered a goblin attack this version (I've got 7-z walls and 7-z dry moats immediately outside, but it sounds like they wouldn't help much.) My dwarves find it easy enough to kill themselves quarrying. (Yes, I'm careful to channel one layer at a time; these stupid guys mine out the tile beneath themselves, then cling to the wall because they don't like falling, and try to climb horizontally for 20 tiles to get back to the meeting zone and grab a drink. Needless to say, they aren't good enough climbers for that. *splat*)

[Baffler]

I wonder if making more goblins would increase their aggressiveness. I'll try upping their litter size and having them mature more quickly, see if that does anything for me. I hadn't heard about the war animals thing though, and I'm super disappointed. I've gone to great lengths to capture and train exotic creatures for war, and if they don't actually do anything in combat...

[Aslandus]

I haven't had war animal problems when I let them wander around, but the war dogs I put on sentry duty by pasturing them around the map don't seem to want anything to do with the beasties outside their pasture... It might be related...

Also, I've heard that bug can be worked around by sending smaller squads, for some reason having tons of soldiers makes them stop attacking things...

I assume the framerate drop is due to the "splatters" of leaves that trees drop every season, which can be removed with a DFhack command, and you should consider making an outdoor meeting area if cave adaptation is getting to be a real problem, but here's the wiki page to give more tips:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/v0.34:Maximizing_framerate

I'd hate for you to quit just when the game's been updated, good luck.

Edit: Just realized I gave you the link to 34's page, this is the more current one:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Maximizing_framerate

[tussock]

1a: What orders do you use? Kill orders are borked if you have dorfs on Station.
1b: There's limits on climbing, smooth walls are your friend.
1c: Station orders are locked to a z-level, but it's bugging out when dorfs try to assault someone on a different z, so try to keep everyone on the same z-level as the siege for now.
1d: You might try "defend burrows" orders for archers, using a burrow that's tight against the fortifications, rather than using Station. under Military Schedule. I think it keeps the bugs away.

2: Assign your war dogs to important military dorfs rather than pasturing them.

3: z-level issues may be affecting your hunters too. Try embarking somewhere very flat, search for low drainage.

4: Pave the place, or just start somewhere without trees. Personally I like them, so much easy booze, though you want a lot of herbalists

5: Heh, 60fps, that'd be nice. You may get a good boost to FPS by dropping [G_FPS_MAX] in data/init/init.txt to 30, 20, or even 10 if it still looks OK to you.

Cave adaption has a lot of stages, vomit is just an early one and mostly harmless. Any "outside dark" meeting area stops it getting worse, and any "outside light" meeting area makes it recover, so you could engineer some. Also the barracks should be at least "outside dark". You can let most dorfs get cave adaption, other than your hunters, loggers, fishers, herbalists, and military, you just have to burrow them indoors so they won't go out, get stressed, and green up the place.

Animals don't all ignore pastures. Almost always you see them with the ? up at the edge and then they turn around. When they get a fright (by seeing wildlife), or they're hungry, or crowded, they'll wander. You can just build them a fence though, or ramp-free ditch. Note that about 12 sheep can feed and clothe 100 dorfs, so you don't need many. A 20 dorf limit should only need 4.


The fun bit about getting a bit further in (at least put a retracting bridge over your stairs, eh) is you get to start big projects. I'm currently devising a method of selectively flooding the entryway, fort, and caverns, though I didn't really leave enough space under the aquifer for deep cisterns to do it justice, and it needs more taps. It's quite a compact fort though, so I could probably just surround it with water, once I get the veins and such dug out. Maybe tap the river to flood above the aquifer. Remember to label your levers!

[Aslandus]

Cave adaption has a lot of stages, vomit is just an early one and mostly harmless. Any "inside light" meeting area stops it getting worse, and any "outside light" meeting area makes it recover, so you could engineer some. Also the barracks should be at least "inside light". You can let most dorfs get cave adaption, other than your hunters, loggers, fishers, herbalists, and military, you just have to burrow them indoors so they won't go out, get stressed, and green up the place.

fixed that for you

[Urist Da Vinci]

An overhang on the outside also prevents climbing, since climbers can't hold the ceiling (i.e. no Cliffhanger re-enactments).

Be sure to keep trees away from the wall edge to prevent jumpers from getting on top of the wall!

[Naryar]

I have also observed that tame large predators are weak.

A melee goblin shouldn't be able to kill a giant cave spider on it's own. A squad yes, but not a single one.

Also that very same goblin maimed two jabberers. You know, the terror birds as big as elephants ?

[neil_v]

I'd hate for you to quit just when the game's been updated, good luck.

No worries of this happening. Worst case scenario, we'd just go back to 0.34.
We never have large squads, as our pop cap's don't really allow for it, But I will keep that in mind.
I can verify that it is probably a graphical issue (using phoebus) as when you are on the surface layer its 20-50 fps slower
then the ground layers. I don't think that if it was purely information being processed it would change per z level, but I don't know for sure.
Maybe I need to play a non-graphic assisted version (THE version).

1a: What orders do you use? Kill orders are borked if you have dorfs on Station. (and ect)

Almost always; station. Didn't know there was a problem with the station command.
Smooth walls, eh? sweet.
I'll keep the z-level differences in mind.
I always start in a sparsely wooded area now, and my wife embarks on woodland and cuts EVERY tree down, which is tedious and a huge amount of hauling jobs (quantum stockpiling), in my opinion. But she has unlimited wood, which means unlimited charcoal, which means i'm jealous....

When it comes to pasturing, the problem we were encountering was out of control (40.22). I had the pasture in a walled off area (like a fence), and I had a hallway in that pasture with 2 doors, both pet prohibited. The animals would clump at the nearest door and wait for a dwarf to pass through so they could make their daring escape into the hallway.... they'd then run round like crazy in the hallway spamming dwarfs to come and get them. As soon as the dwarf would enter the hallway, the animals would run off into the fortress. It was funny, but ultimately; annoying. We don't have the saves with this problem, which id wish id kept... we just updated to 40.23.
On that note, in 40.23 war dogs are attacking things again! We haven't pastured them, but war dogs would not attack at all under any circumstance, for us, in 40.22.

An overhang on the outside also prevents climbing, since climbers can't hold the ceiling (i.e. no Cliffhanger re-enactments).

Good call, using the fortifications as an overhang would be a good idea....

I have also observed that tame large predators are weak.

That's really crappy... I wonder what the explanation is for that.


----
Thanks everyone for your replies! This has been incredibly helpful to us...

[Cheedows]

Also, to reduce lag. Since all worlds are now simulated in real time the lag might be helped with small embarks (Toady added in 1x1 embarks, huzzah) and short histories.