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[Sethatos]

I thought I'd share some of the things I've learned on invasions. Currently getting an average of 5 sieges a year of forces between 200 - 400 enemies that we defeat using about 20 military dwarves.
The main trick to succeeding in these scenarios is not having your dwarves pass out from exhaustion. You must start off with legendary skilled warriors because they obviously have the skills and the stats to succeed. Also having them wear adamantine armor is a big advantage due to how light it is over steel.

But next come the tactics. You absolutely need a long narrow passageway to meet the enemy in, around 5 or 6 tiles wide which will allow a good front line to form. Here's an example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The dwarves forming the front line will take turns attacking the enemy and dodging incoming attacks, and every time a dwarf isn't attacking or dodging he automatically recovers a little bit of stamina. If someone does get over exerted and falls unconscious the other dwarves will protect their comrade by keeping the attacker busy with attacks so they can't strangle the unconscious dwarf to death. But as long as they can maintain a generally cohesive front line your dwarves shouldn't over  exert themselves.

Then blammo, watch them mow down the enemy.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Sver]

That's a fairly good tactic. Although, I personally prefer to split the invasion (using equally long pathways) instead of bottlenecking, but it's nice to see that the AI avoiding to step on a tile with a friendly creature actually works for recovering stamina in the backline.
Which made me think. This is a bit offtopic, but have you seen any invaders path out from exhaustion or are they impervious to it?

By the way, if you are annoyed by the armor weighting way too much, I suggest lowering the LAYER_SIZE values in the item raws to something like 10 for plate and 6 for mail. Those are far more realistic weights, the effect on troop endurance is noticeably good, and no malus on he defensive qualities has been observed whatsoever.

[Sethatos]

I've never seen an invader pass out from exhaustion but they do get tired sometimes as you can see by looking at their wound list. They don't survive long enough generally to expend that much energy.

As far as armor goes, you could also stick them all in leather with an adamantine weapon, helmet, and shield and they would be perfectly fine. Although it's too undwarfy for me, by the time they are legendary fighters, they can dodge or parry just about any attack from regular invaders.

[Sver]

Nice to hear. Seems like the rumors I heard about invaders being unaffected by stamina were false.

Yeah, if not beefed up by natural skills, siegers are a joke for almost any militia.

[Staalo]

One very useful trick in handling large invader forces is to use water to slow enemies down. Force the attacking force to cross a body of water with depth alternating between 3 and 4. This will let only few enemies through at a time, leaving you more time to rest your troops between butchering invaders in manageable little waves.

Rotate your squads so that you always have rested troops facing the next wave of enemies. One idea I've been experimenting lately is multiple killboxes with a squad in each, with some way of routing enemies to the room with the freshest warriors. This would also need a way to stop warriors from charging out of the killbox and getting overwhelmed by the next approaching group of invaders.

[FantasticDorf]

Isn't the best defence just not to fight?

On that topic you could probably set up useless traps like rows of pressure plates on purpose to be seen by visiting diplomats (whomever relevant) and avoided by incoming troops to fufill your design and make them walk in narrow marching lines avoiding the traps directly in the line of fire of ballistae or catapults, whether the traps actually do anything though is up to you, might mulch a few war animals/trolls before you send your 20 man squad in to clean up.

I mean call me a noob but 10 man legendary miner squads are easy to train and effective enough to take down unarmored foes into tiniest viscera bits just by doing a bit of fortress labour, strapping on some leather armor, bone gauntlets & leggings and a breastplate ready to go out the door and murder everything in sight, why wouldn't i just want that times x3?

I might be over thinking it, are there benefits to conquering & requesting non-dwarves (elves, goblins) to fight? Id been considering a few elite weapons teams with unlimited lifespan (and hopefully 2nd generation breed the xeno-thought crimes out of them and endow beards) to train in order to form a force to guard my artifact museum and a few other sensitive places.

[anewaname]

Sometimes it is nice to play a fort with the invader cap about 1k, but without traps, drowning/burning chambers, and without minecart blenders. Your military is your superproject.

[Sver]

I might be over thinking it, are there benefits to conquering & requesting non-dwarves (elves, goblins) to fight? Id been considering a few elite weapons teams with unlimited lifespan (and hopefully 2nd generation breed the xeno-thought crimes out of them and endow beards) to train in order to form a force to guard my artifact museum and a few other sensitive places.

Goblins - immortal, no hunger, no thirst. They can make much better sentries/patrols than dwarves, but come with a downside of being really bad tempered.
Elves - immortal, the fastest runners among civilized races. While sorta cool on paper, there really is no good use for them other than as non-aging soldiers. Their speed is negated by the fact they don't enter martial trances.
Humans - the size! It allows them to use the full spectre of weapons and gives a reasonable advantage in many combat situations. The downside is relatively small lifespan and the need to create specifically sized armor.

[Sethatos]

Isn't the best defence just not to fight?

I mean yeah you could just pour lava on them and call it a day, but then you don't get scores on your weapons like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Bumber]

On that topic you could probably set up useless traps like rows of pressure plates on purpose to be seen by visiting diplomats (whomever relevant) and avoided by incoming troops to fufill your design and make them walk in narrow marching lines avoiding the traps directly in the line of fire of ballistae or catapults, whether the traps actually do anything though is up to you, might mulch a few war animals/trolls before you send your 20 man squad in to clean up.

Doesn't that just cause them to walk over the pressure plates without triggering them? I don't think they avoid pathing through them.

[Fleeting Frames]

This would also need a way to stop warriors from charging out of the killbox and getting overwhelmed by the next approaching group of invaders.

Considered floating doors over ramps? Although vulnerable to building destroyers, creatures don't open the door while going through it.

As for water, do you mean the old childcare water flushing backwards from source to drain, or do you mean just a static depression with some tiles 3 some 4?

[Saiko Kila]

Which made me think. This is a bit offtopic, but have you seen any invaders path out from exhaustion or are they impervious to it?

I see enemies passing out from exhaustion quite often. Especially if they fight the undead. Also animals often pass from exhaustion, much often flying ones, when panicking, because flying at high speed apparently takes more stamina.

I also saw very nimble enemies passing out, when dodging much - for example if fighting a forgotten beast.

Another case when passing from exhaustion happens is when you have marksdwarves keeping the enemies in check, for example from a guardtower. The enemies are incapacitaded often, forced to dodge constantly, and you see something like this in the log repeatedly:

Code: [Select]

The troll regains consciousness.
The troll passes out from exhaustion.
Sometimes alternated with "gives in to pain", and of course the hit description.

[Staalo]

Considered floating doors over ramps? Although vulnerable to building destroyers, creatures don't open the door while going through it.

That's what I'm currently doing, although any doors tend to get destroyed sooner or later when couple hundred Trolls walk into the map.

As for water, do you mean the old childcare water flushing backwards from source to drain, or do you mean just a static depression with some tiles 3 some 4?

A static pool, basically just a swimming pool with suitable amount of water. Invaders enter freely into wading-depth water and are then forced to stop when they hit swimming-depth. This will let them through one at a time to be picked off by the fortress militia.

[FantasticDorf]

I might be over thinking it, are there benefits to conquering & requesting non-dwarves (elves, goblins) to fight? Id been considering a few elite weapons teams with unlimited lifespan (and hopefully 2nd generation breed the xeno-thought crimes out of them and endow beards) to train in order to form a force to guard my artifact museum and a few other sensitive places.

Goblins - immortal, no hunger, no thirst. They can make much better sentries/patrols than dwarves, but come with a downside of being really bad tempered.
Elves - immortal, the fastest runners among civilized races. While sorta cool on paper, there really is no good use for them other than as non-aging soldiers. Their speed is negated by the fact they don't enter martial trances.
Humans - the size! It allows them to use the full spectre of weapons and gives a reasonable advantage in many combat situations. The downside is relatively small lifespan and the need to create specifically sized armor.

> Elves would be best to put into heavy armor on account of their grace, and enough time to train up armor usage, some swordsmen to chase down fleeing foes for instance (2nd generation only, elf facets are pretty terrible for dwarves)

> Goblins on the other hand can use their anger in battle by becoming enraged to compensate for trances with better and more heavy hits, but need to individually train and stay ontop of it because from experience modding with goblin forts, they'll attempt to kill the nearest grudged person (or instigator of anger) and then meet a swift fate at the hammerer in vanilla for murder by dwarven justice.

> Humans are probably the easiest to breed on paper so maintaining a population of sexually compatible humans with lightwieght training rather than legendary specialists should be A-ok

[Cathar]

> Humans are probably the easiest to breed on paper so maintaining a population of sexually compatible humans with lightwieght training rather than legendary specialists should be A-ok

I don't understand that trope of "humans should be the worst in everything", I see popping out everywhere in fantasy. Humans are the best fighters due to their size and have access to the best technology after dwarves. Their lack of immortality make them lag behind in terms of headcounts (elves and goblins can line up an infinite number of generations on the battlefield), which should mechanically push them toward the high end of quality troops in a setting like dwarf fortress, to maximize their innate advantage