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[Achanei]

So, since I am currently stuck without being able to play DF for a couple of days, after reading the dwarven daycare experiments and some other things, I started to wonder what'd be the deadliest dwarven military force in the current release (and the upcoming release, because i want to equip them with custom adamantine armor with obsidian spikes and gem decoration and images of terrible slaughter, of course) - I am talking about actual military, however, not (exclusively) undead carrion birds (though the zombie nerf might make that less viable anyways).

So far, I've done a bunch of survivability experiments in adventure mode (thats what I choose to call my *masterwork bad ideas* that lead to messy deaths) and I once threw a smashed vampire into my fort's well, but generally I tend to rely on traps and magma for defense, so I dont have that much experience with military beyond some crossbow squads and heavily armored hammerdwarves, and the associated basic training/danger rooms etc.

Generally, I'd like to keep things in the vanilla space of possibilities, I don't mind hacking the game to force very unlikely things to happen (like a specific werebeast type or somesuch), but actually modding how things work seems pointless because then you could just turn all your military into steel colossi or whatever.

so generally I see two main things to consider:

a) raw power and toughness - efficiency against different enemies from elephants to clowns, resistance to these attacks, and various other hazards (drowning/falling/syndromes/etc) and long time regeneration/survivability (like werebeast regeneration)

b) attrition/setup complication - how long will it take to get there, and what is the fatality rate of the training process? doesn't mean crazy 1% survival rate stuff isnt viable, but it is something to consider, for example werebeast infection seems to be somewhat risky and unreliable, while dropping necromancer's weekly at the local library is pretty trivial. on the other hand, necromancerism freezes attributes while wereism does not, so it makes more sense to throw all migrants into a werepit and see what crawls out, than to accidentally murder half your legendary axedwarves later.

a third thing that might come into play is the risk of unintended extra fun, such as loyalty cascades from werebeast transformations or necros getting eaten by their own zombies etc.


This is the research topic, some notes and ideas of my own to start this off in the next post.

[Achanei]

I am not quite certain how much the last releases changed weapon efficiency, lashers still seem incredibly dangerous to anything that feels pain/can pass out, but did crossbow bolts get nerfed? hammerdwarves tear through goblins as usual, but i'd very much appreciate more information from all your military states out there.

From adventure mode, I've had the greatest success with adventurers with rare material-weakness wereism (regeneration helps a lot for long-term survival) that learned the secrets of life and death later for additional out-of-wereform thoughness (drowning immunity etc.) This should also be doable in fortress mode, although it will probably require some extra care handling the interaction with civilians, or turn the entire fortress and have a party once a month (however maintenance-intensive and probably rather high-attrition).

The main weakness of wereism I find is the moment of transforming back, when the rampaging weremammoth turns into urist mcpantsless right in the middle of that elven ambush and gets killed by a stick. afaik there are some creature types with smaller sizes, maybe it's possible to find one that has dwarven size, so they don't lose their armor? armored werebeasts would probably be really, really hardcore.

My next fortress will probably be some experiments with all-military forts (I've never done this before, but north korea seems to be a great role model, what could go wrong) and seeing if its possible to control weremilitary without massive micromanagement/completely walling them off.

Weremilitary is probably the most survivable, especially if we can armor them somehow (considering that we can already produce different-sized armor for all kinds of creatures, this might be not as difficult as it used to be) because sooner or later, something *will* go wrong, and the regeneration will fix a lot of things. What might be worth looking into is to see how well regeneration does against syndromes, especially the more deadly ones, on their own and with "dwarven medicine" like infecting syndrome-blind dwarves and poking their eyes out so they grow new ones.


Another interesting thing are mercenaries - in my current game I have a honey badger swordsman currently in training, I'm very curious how that one will turn out once he is up to legendary. is it possible to "breed" animal people via petition citizenship, if one gets a matching pair? a snake man military sounds pretty rad.

War animals to support are also something to look at, without meddling with [trainable] tags, what is the best animal companion for a space marine? a dragon sounds like a friendly fire incident waiting to happen...what is the best war-trainable creature? I've had some success with grizzly bears, sadly the species got wiped by a syndrome incident before I had more than half a dozen...

Does anyone know the exact mechanics regarding multi-legendary skills, and how viable it is to train beyond legendary+5? For things like armor user, weapon skills etc, is there a hard cap after which increase becomes completely useless?


For low-maintenance and good workflow, vampire forts seem good as there is no once-a-month rampage, and no messy undead loyalty problems... if one murders or (seperately) turns migrants, nothing will disrupt the fort, and with temples and taverns, there shouldn't be happyness problems either (though i'm not quite sure if its a good idea to allow visitors, unless they can be turned as well somehow). problem is, in terms of min-maxing, soldier training for attributes has to happen before ingesting blood, (since iirc vampirism doubles physical attributes and then freezes them) - but that just means that retroactively drafted dwarves will be somewhat sub-par compared to the ones trained before turning, but they should still perform quite well compared to the average.

Vampire military will probably be quite excellent against sieges, since they are immune vs pain (lashers) and can go strolling through undead. Perhaps vampirism could be combined with certain animal people, that are inherently more dangerous than dwarves - I'm thinking brown recluse spider man vampires, or some snakemen with good poisons - the vampirism should make up for the smaller size, they can be armed and armored, and the spider men can even web according to the wiki. Has anyone tested how vampirism and poison bites interact? they might have a higher tendency to bite, which could be really cool.

[Sethatos]

If you have enough patience, war cave dragons over 50 years old are very effective when assigned to Elite Marksdwarves. They can take a lot of abuse before going down, have "talented" combat skills, they don't breathe fire so no accidents, are immune to fire which helps enormously when fighting FB's, Titans, and clowns with fire attributes, and they are also consequently immune to smoke so they won't lose sight of a target during a fire. Cave dragons are also immortal age-wise, so you don't have to constantly re-birth more.

[Achanei]

yeah, cave dragons would be badass and might be easier to come by than the other two trainable megabeasts, assuming the wiki article is up to date and goblins still bring them for sieges. Rocs grow a lot faster though, takes only 20y to fully grow instead of, well, 1000.

I did manage to run some very brief arena testing sessions with some animal men (before this very crappy laptop froze from the strain) and animal man mercs certainly seem promising in terms of combat ability - serpent men are pretty big, though the one i had got beaten by the brown recluse man - it lost a few arms, but that might've been due to lack of armor. those things have a lot of arms, which makes limb loss less of an issue - not sure yet how a good gear setup for a brown recluse man would look - but just the idea of one swinging a bunch of weapons seems really awesome. will have to check if their small size becomes an issue, but I suspect vampirism might help with that.
so I guess the main question on that front woulld be if it is somehow possible to increase the chances of interesting (merc) visitors, perhaps by recruiting the animal men in adventure mode, leading them into fights until they become historical figures, and then retiring nearby?
Another big question for long-term viability would be if permanent resident/citizen animalpeople breed, and if yes, what kind of status their children have - if those are automatically members of the society, a patient player could essentially switch races, or at least sustain a population of murderserpents as a military caste. the vampirism would require careful handling, however, to avoid accidental sterilization. maybe only turn the males (except one), and leave the females somewhere vampire-safe.

I guess this idea need a lot of research and experiments on the visitor/citizen dynamics, and at the and of the day I'm not sure if the difference between "normal" dwarf vampire fighters and animal people vampires would be big enough to be worth the extra effort - either group should slice through sieges like nobody's business, and be equally more vulnerable against titans, FBs and clowns - biting those is most likely not going to work anyways. well, except if spider men actually use webs in combat, that would be a big advantage against all the trapavoid stuff, but I haven't seen that yet. There is a rather large factor of awesome in having immortal candy-clad serpent guards in your fortress though.

In the latest fotf was a question from someone who genned 1000 werebeasts and did some data crunching regarding creature type, I'll try to contact them and ask if they have any data to share regarding size variation and perhaps material vulnerability. I still want armored werebeasts.

[Admiral Obvious]

PTW

[Thorgrim Grudgebearer]

I know I am gonna get executed for this but...

STEEL GLAD ELF'S ARE FUCKING BADASS
 
seriously with steel Armour and weapons they can dodge like pro's and hit like trucks.

Sure when they use their traditional methods of wood they are screwed!

But with dwarf-en re-education they can become utter monsters against goblins and all manner of threats.

JUST IMAGINE WERE ELF"S

IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE

IS IT WRONG

ARE WE PUSHING !SCIENCE! TO FAR!

WHO KNOWS UNTIL WE TRY!

 

[Amperzand]

This thread is relevant to my interests.

With regard to werebeasts, my experience is that low-level soldiers often survive encounters with them, becoming infected in the process. I understand standard procedure for such things is to get them killed, but I prefer to keep them in double-sealed rooms as emergency shock troops, since any fight they walk away from, they can be reused after.

[Achanei]

seriously with steel Armour and weapons they can dodge like pro's and hit like trucks.

For some reason, I have yet to actually enlist elves in my military - got three humans, four goblins and the areforementioned honey badger man, but no elves.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure if any of the visiting experiments bards and scientists are elven...but there are elves around, I even get a caravan every year (for now). maybe there is some cultural problem that discourages them from wandering. I'll check some stuff as soon as I have access to my save again.

JUST IMAGINE WERE ELF"S

IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE

IS IT WRONG

ARE WE PUSHING !SCIENCE! TO FAR!

WHO KNOWS UNTIL WE TRY!

Larger creatures like elves and humans might be in the same size category as smaller werebeasts and therefore keep their armor - so that could actually become a thing.
I generally defend the position that anything that is really good at murdering things is inherently dwarfish, no matter its origins - and at the end of the day, all werecats are grey in the dark. with glowing eyes. and armor.

With regard to werebeasts, my experience is that low-level soldiers often survive encounters with them, becoming infected in the process. I understand standard procedure for such things is to get them killed, but I prefer to keep them in double-sealed rooms as emergency shock troops, since any fight they walk away from, they can be reused after.

yeah, I have a similar room for the unfortunate fisherdwarf that got infected from a very early werebeast surprise attack, though I have to admit that due to the building destroyer tag, I have not found much use for him so far. still, no point in wasting lives,all that keeping him has cost me so far is a few stone blocks for some...really solid doors. I should experiment how much I can influence him as a recruit, though.


One other thing I have noticed regarding animal men - due to one-handed weapon size restrictions, most of the syndrome-inflicting animal people are at a disadvantage when using actual weapons. The notable exception would be the serpent man, with a base size of 50000 only slightly smaller than a dwarf, and therefore should be mostly able to wield dwarven weaponry one-handed.
Another, somewhat more exotic exception, would be the brown recluse spider men and (I assume) bark scorpion men - they have six arms, so using multiple for weapons might not be an issue. However, I have no clue regarding dual- (or sextuple-?)wielding mechanics.
I included the bark scorpion men because they have a syndrome-incucing stinger, however I have not tested this and am just assuming based on the BODY:SPIDER tag that (as far as I can tell) is the reason for the extra arms - thes might be different due to pincer things messing here, however.

The best weapons for small creatures seem to be silver whips, considering that silver is the best whip material and those are reasonably easy to attain via goblinite. quality might be an issue, though, so at some point masterwork (steel/adamantine) shortswords and spears might outperform them. I will run some preliminary tests on this.

Late edit: I have to correct my above assumptions, bark scorpion men do not have multiple arms. in a naked wrestling session, the brown recluse spider man won hands down (pun intended), I only got halfway through the combat log before my machine crapped out, but I guess having six arms is kinda helpful for wrestling. this, combined with my suspicion that the stinger body part will be hard to provide armor for, unlike the extra arms of the spider man, makes me think spider men should outperform scorpion men. Will require more testing to confirm, however.

[Thorgrim Grudgebearer]

In response to animal men dual wielding or sex-tuple wielding weapons. I remember reading a thread last year were the poster was able to get animal men with multiple arms to equip multiple weapons (This was in arena btw) so it is possible, Might test this when i have the chance   

[NRDL]

PTW

[Achanei]

The only thread I found discussing dual-wielding in the current combat system was this adventure mode one. However, it seems rather anecdotal, so I will try to obtain some more statistically significant results as soon as possible.

In response to animal men dual wielding or sex-tuple wielding weapons. I remember reading a thread last year were the poster was able to get animal men with multiple arms to equip multiple weapons (This was in arena btw) so it is possible, Might test this when i have the chance

They keep all (three pairs of) gauntlets and five swords and one shield in arena mode. however, in some quick 1v1s I set up, the single shortsword+shield spidermen won against the quintuple-wielders nine times out of ten. this was with all relevant skills grandmaster and adamantine armor and weapons.
However, this might be the size issue mentioned above, and the one-handed spiders winning due to being able to multigrasp - I do not know if arena-generated creatures are created randomly or average, and the description doesn't seem to give that information either.
I will perform a second series of tests later, with one sword versus two swords. if the disadvantage is from dual-wielding per se, the one-sword group should still perform significantly better, however if it is a multigrasp issue, the results should be about even.

[90908]

Would an application of helpful syndromes do anything? I remember reading something about a syndrome that got rid of pain by way of essentially skinning dwarves. Would something like this be overly useful? And if so, the question is what effects we want to get the most out of the evil beings from the dark depths whose only purpose is to kill, maim and destroy.

Goddamnit. I love this game and I love what you people are doing with it.

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

IIRC, in .34 at least, dual-wielding did not allow you to increase rate of attacks either in mêlée or at range.

[Achanei]

Would an application of helpful syndromes do anything? I remember reading something about a syndrome that got rid of pain by way of essentially skinning dwarves. Would something like this be overly useful? And if so, the question is what effects we want to get the most out of the evil beings from the dark depths whose only purpose is to kill, maim and destroy.

Goddamnit. I love this game and I love what you people are doing with it.

I did wonder if it was possible to remove all nerves in a dwarf to get pain immunity, but Urist McMengele, Surgeon has not entered a fell mood yet (we should totally have a special frankensteinesque mood product for medical dwarves). The thing is, pain immunity is a lot easier and more reliable to get via vampirism, and werebeasts would regenerate most or all syndrome effects away (however that particular interaction could need some extra !!science!!, according to this post). since one or the other is probably going to be in the mix for our super soldiers, there'd need to be a different helpful syndrome effect that is not gained from vampirism or resistant to were-regen. I can't quite think of one (though my experience with syndromes is limited) besides perhaps something that does not affect our dwarves but gets transmitted by them, if we can get a "cloud of instant death syndrome" that doesn't affect our vamps, we'd probably have a winner. I don't think such a thing exists, however.

edit: well, if the rage syndrome is actually a thing, we might find some other helpful syndromes after all. perhaps a pine-shaped FB happiness dispenser?

IIRC, in .34 at least, dual-wielding did not allow you to increase rate of attacks either in mêlée or at range.

yes, but along with the climbing stuff there was the separation of movement and attack speed, and I vaguely remember toady posting about things like attack windup and multiattacks, so I wouldn't rely on data from before ~2014.

one more thing I forgot to mention earlier, the brown recluse men did not use any webs as far as I've seen in arena mode (~25 fights) and upon assuming control, do not seem to possess the ability at all (in the abilities menu). upon closer inspection of the raws, they do not have the [MATERIAL_EMISSION] reaction that GCS have, so the Web tag in the wiki might be wrong, or this is a bug/oversight on the development side.

edit2: this thread both explains the brown recluse spider webs and is relevant to our research.

[Madman198237]

Wow---I might just have to invest in an arena.

That or see if any of my werebeast-attacked dwarves (No skin-penetrating bites, but I was warned that the disease may be transmitted through successful bite attacks, not necessarily skin-breaking) turn into werekangaroos and try to kill things.

If they do, it's sturdy doors and emergency lever time. Speaking of which, is a werekangaroo close to dwarf size? If it is, maybe I can use that to test armored werebeast shock troops.

On another note---one of my livestock (A puppy) was bit by the beast (And had that leg ripped off...). Can livestock go werebeasty?