Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ancistrus]

I feel like starting a new game, but I dont wanna waste a few hours only to find out nothing interesting is happenning.
Also, are kobolds still nonexistent?

[Sarmatian123]

There are Kobolts and Goblins. Other FUN is too. Question is only if they ever visit your embark. Particularly Kobolts, as their caves are hidden in contrary to all other civilizations settlements. Also count on visits from hostile dwarven civilizations too.

Pick small or pocket size. Make sure to max on savage and civilizations. There is also a customization for starting options, which can turn almost entire world into evil killer fog zone, if you want. This last could make adventure mode more interesting later on, when you are done with fortress mode. Specially when you are done after 1st ingame month in poaching all monsters out of existence.

[ancistrus]

Ok that didnt quite work right, so lets be a bit more specific.
When you start a new world, is there a greater than 50% chance of getting a goblin siege or ambush within first 3 years?

Feel free to expand on it, but that is the crux of what i want to know and i am not much interested in evil zones, or titans, or savagery or whatever.

[George_Chickens]

I get goblin harassment within the second year about 70% of the time. Usually there's a big invasion by year 3 to 5. It really depends on your map, where you embark (how close to them), how well you expand, and what your actions are. If you're not getting invasions, you can always start a war with the goblins to get some coming your way.

[ancistrus]

I get goblin harassment within the second year about 70% of the time. Usually there's a big invasion by year 3 to 5. It really depends on your map, where you embark (how close to them), how well you expand, and what your actions are. If you're not getting invasions, you can always start a war with the goblins to get some coming your way.

Ok thats promising. Do you go out of your way to embark close to goblin civs? Do you check the goblin populations before embarking?

[Sarmatian123]

Just make sure the land path from dark fortress to your fortress is walk-able and passable. Also if there are many other dwarven settlements around you, there is a chance goblins will rather hit them first for many many years and when your civ is locally dead, then they will come to pay you some respect too. Not because they hate you, but because merely your civ is annoying to them. Just keep sending couple times a year a 10 dwarves squad to raid loot & free slaves from closest dark fortress, then they will look into your embark more acutely and tend to it more intently. You can expect even 2 goblin raids yearly from only one dark tower. Maybe more per year, if more settlements those goblins have too. However, if you play pacifist towards them, do your thing and just defend against sieges, chance is they will ignore you for a long long time. Just make sure you have those 100-200 cage traps for them all in your 1st or 2nd year and get busy on mass pit too.

[pamelrabo]

Also, you can tweak the population trigger for invasions (default is ¿80?) so you become a target earlier (can't remember where it is, but I'm sure the wiki will tell you).

[Shonai_Dweller]

Embark near other civs. Raid them all. Someone will attack you 99% of the time.

It's not guaranteed, because if you embark in a world with no goblins, they won't attack you. If you never raid them and never reach the population trigger (80 in vanilla, adjust as you like) they won't attack you. If the nearest goblin pit is on the other side of the world and there are a thousand other sites between you and them, they won't attack you.

So, much more likely than in, say, 40.24 where a bug would prevent them from coming, but you still have to understand what the game is to a certain extent (i.e, not a fortress-defence style goblin generator).

(Triggers for sieges are adjusted in entity_default.txt, you can turn on the wealth triggers there and adjust the population trigger down a bit if 80 is too high for you). Settings at the wiki:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Entity_token#LAYER_LINKED

[PatrikLundell]

Yes, the default pop cap trigger for goblin invasions is 3 = 80, with 2 = 50 and 1 = 20. Embarking close to a strong goblin civ works almost every time (my may get unlucky have have the fortress clobbered by someone else).
As mentioned, raiding can be used to goad others into attacking you (in which case you forfeit the pop cap protection), although I haven't tried it myself (I'm having enough trouble to process the goblins caught from the standard hostile neighbor process).

If you want war with goblins you ought to embark close to them as well as to verify that they're healthy and strong (using Legends Mode info). I also check other races to ensure I've got a decent chance to get visitors and trade (and I use yearly Legends Mode exports to check up petitioning visitors).

[Nopenope]

From what I gather goblins don't ambush you anymore because the [AMBUSHER] tag has been removed from their entity token for some reason.

[anewaname]

I attempt to embark within range of multiple dark fortresses, attempt to embark closer to the dark fortress than any other civ, and check the populations of them. The only time this has not worked is when there was a revolt in the dark fortress and the demon leader killed all but a few goblins within the first year.

When creating a world, I increase the number of civs and decrease the number of sites (more goblin capitals and fewer goblin pits).

[George_Chickens]

I get goblin harassment within the second year about 70% of the time. Usually there's a big invasion by year 3 to 5. It really depends on your map, where you embark (how close to them), how well you expand, and what your actions are. If you're not getting invasions, you can always start a war with the goblins to get some coming your way.

Ok thats promising. Do you go out of your way to embark close to goblin civs? Do you check the goblin populations before embarking?

I generally embark close to them, as I love to prepare for brutally difficult sieges. But, I have been blindsided by sudden sieges when embarking intentionally out of the way of goblins. Generally these are pretty nasty, too. I never check goblin pop.

If you want guaranteed sieges, definitely embark close to goblins. Make sure your embark isn't blocked off by oceans or mountains, too. And make the first blow to really rile them up.

[Sver]

From what I gather goblins don't ambush you anymore because the [AMBUSHER] tag has been removed from their entity token for some reason.

They never had the tag, it's more like that Toady altered the behaviour of "evil" entities (the ones that have neither [SIEGER] nor [AMBUSHER]). So yeah, the goblins will never attack the player, unless the fort's population is currently 80 or higher; raid-triggered sieges are the sole exception, I recall.

But I've been getting goblin sieges reliably in the 0.44.xx versions each time after hitting that cap.

[Saiko Kila]

Ok that didnt quite work right, so lets be a bit more specific.
When you start a new world, is there a greater than 50% chance of getting a goblin siege or ambush within first 3 years?

Feel free to expand on it, but that is the crux of what i want to know and i am not much interested in evil zones, or titans, or savagery or whatever.

I always have siege in the first three years. However, sieges are relatively low chance, after meeting requirements (population), especially after that first one or two, when goblins have their asses handed to them by humans or other more proficient adversaries. They just have other priorities than attacking your fort then (like surviving or similar).

If you save-scumm then it's possible to get more sieges - if you didn't have a siege in a long time (over a year), and don't have siege in the same day of the month or so as the last one (near beginning of the first month of the season), then you may reload a game save a day or two before the end of previous month. This will eventually give you a siege, but can be very tedious and requires many tries sometimes.

Alternatively just send raid to weaker goblin forts. It could be that their weaker fort is the dark fortress...

Kobolds, as thieves, are quite common (multiple dens, at least as many as goblin civs in my games). Their lairs are not revealed after first contact, so you can have trouble attacking them, even if they stole something from you.

[Dorsidwarf]

It could be worth generating a world with an evil bent to encourage the domination in WG of goblin civs.