So my first big siege came. 3 goblin squads. I've never taken on this many goblins before and i only had 6-8 (axe and hammer) dwarves. While these dwarves were skilled, i didn't want to take a chance (one goblin squad was lashers). So i seal up my fortress and let the silly goblins bash them selves against my weapon traps. I forgot about a tunnel I had made to my bridge area so i could pick up bodies and such under it. Anyways, with goblins and trolls dying from traps alot of stuff was up for grabs. Not to mention the 10 dwarves stuck outside. So about 40 of my 190 dwarves died because of that one tunnel. (however no goblins acctually got in the fortress.) As a last ditch measure I unleashed my military and they kill almost 20 goblins. However, now im slipping into a tantrum spiral with 40 dwarves under "fine" level. Goodbye OrangeVomits.
Damn
I hate it when you forget about stupid crap like that. How did the 40 dwarves die? Were they running out to collect stuff? If you're going to try and save the fort, here's a few things that might help.
Use Dwarf Therapist to change everyone's labors; set everyone to masonry, cleaning up/refuse, recovering wounded/dead and medical duties. (If you need food/drink ect, naturally keep a few people chugging away at that.) Basically, cut any work that is not immediately necessary, and not immediately helpful. Having lots of idle people means that your random Great Consolers who immigrated in can do some good, since dwarves only socialize when they're idling (I believe).
Also, keep on churning out coffins and burying the dead ASAP, before the corpses rot (and their acquaintances get negative thoughts because of it.)
Consider making a 'mental health room': Make a decent sized engraved room (or re-purpose one), and stuff it with everything under the sun: doors, hatches, statues, stands, weapon traps, querns, whatever you can, then use a statue to make the room into a statue garden. The idea is that dwarves have preferences for certain materials and certain types of items; the more types of both you can cover, the happier you can make your dwarves.
Finally, make a 'Mysterious Disappearing Room': construct and connect a raising bridge in a sealable room to a lever, then use burrows to put your most tantrum-vulnerable dwarves in it. Then lock the doors and atom smash them. If no-one else sees this happen, they'll never come up as dead (until they start haunting your fort, but that takes a while), thus not freaking out your friends AND removing a link in your tantrum spiral. Good luck!
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On a separate note: does anyone else here use dual-shield wielding dwarves in their military? I ask, because mine are A. Performing incredibly well, and B. have this really odd tendency to forcibly remove EVERY tooth from their enemies with shield strikes, resulting in little ivory-white showers across the battlefield that take forever to clean up. The most recent was a war polar bear ridden by a ferric elf (from the Fort Defense mod); those must have gone 10 tiles before landing. It's gotten to the point where I call all my shield dwarves 'Dwarven Dentists'. Has anyone else noticed this?
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6195514 times)