Debating the usefulness of an iron-equipped vs. steel-equipped partially trained citizen's militia. I've got ~140 dwarves to work with, counting about 2 dozen children or less. Steel industry is painfully slow, partly due to horrific stockpile management that I just don't want to fix. The fortress expanded in an absolutely unplanned manner; makes this sort of thing messy. Next fort I build is probably going to use upper dirt levels for manufacturing around a central staircase that does not involve defenses including a long annoying hallway. That was really a poor choice. A bridge over the hatch location would just be better. And I'm gonna set up woodworking/farming/crafting shops at the top dirt levels ... and forges much, much farther down. Below probably just two levels of dedicated dining rooms and expanded living quarters beyond that - because let's be honest, dwarves rarely sleep, losing me too little time to care about better efficiency. But because magma forges need to be low as possible, and I still need space above them for expansion (i.e. mass pit zones, barracks level setup including weapons and armor storage, training rooms, archery targets, personnel bedrooms, etc.) for later-game objects. The ultimate goal, of course, is to A. anger every civilization, B. capture lots of excessively dangerous creatures, and C. conquer anything and everything belowground ... or die trying. After whittling down every other civilization minus my own, of course.
For right now, I need to build this fortress up with a steel military. It's no longer a militia. Weaponslords are everywhere, and the rest are skilled enough to make goblins cry, minus the three raw recruits thrown into squads as migrants. They're gonna be so very helpful later. Much later. As I go, I add recruits; if I add 4 more, I'm going to have to make a new squad, though I think I might just reorganize sooner to get single-weapon squads ... right now they're mixed, which is what I want them to be for now, but it does make sparring rarer and training/equipping more difficult. Mixed squads bring EVERYTHING to the party; single-type squads have to be ordered separately to bring all weapons. Of course, Marksdwarves are and always will be separate; however, they're never going to number more than 1 squad, given that A. they suck and B. they have this nasty tendency to disobey orders and knock heavily armed goblins on the head ... before I finish equipping them with high-grade armor. Currently, that's a set of leather ... but it's better than the weapon and shield they had when they decided to rush a goblin siege. Two dead fools and a crippled dwarf later, the melee lords got there and ... well, it went poorly, to say very, very little. Recently, I lost a recruit, a child, and a freakin Expert mason to a blasted Titan who wandered up. Deadly bite, some form of ... ahhh... either gecko or chameleon, I'm not sure. Had scales and what not - Axelord made good work of him. Three pages of cuts and crap and he just keels over and dies - marksdwarves poured five bolts in, swordsdwarf didn't even get there... I was waiting for a speardwarf because the axes were apparently ineffective; but clearly, I was wrong.
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Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6122773 times)