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[Randos]

I have become pretty damn good at setting up a nice, customized military and getting everyone training, fighting, and shooting their targets as they should. BUT STILL. When big groups of goblins come in, even with a team of 40 well trained dwarfs in various skills... they either wipe me out or kill all but 20% of my military before I take victory. I've had some success with setting up elaborate traps and siege equipment, but I'm thinking there must be an easier tactic to get this done with military for when I don't have time, and also don't feel like waiting out the siege.

I have no strategy with military because I don't know what works, I just set them loose to fight the goblins on ground while restricting the other dwarfs to a safe zone burrow, and sometimes closing the main gate.vThe archers seem to do the best job at staying alive, probably because of their distance. So before I lose this current fort, I am wondering...

Can I restrict teams of archers in designated burrows on a platform above the fort wall and assume they will start shooting?

I remember some type of "fortification wall" which archers can shoot through? Does this work? Can the enemy also shoot back through at the dwarfs?

If the archers are set to kill the enemy but the gate is closed, will they automatically find the ledge I build for them, climb up, and start shooting at enemies outside the wall? Or is there some other tactic of getting them to behave like a "archery tower" ?

MOST IMPORTANTLY: After setting up any of the above, is there any way to TEST if it works before going under siege? Like setting up archery targets outside the wall? Or giving orders to kill an animal when the gate is closed?

[Dragula]

Can't you just station them?

[Randos]

Can't you just station them?

Perhaps this is the missing link. I don't know anything about stations. If I station them will they fire at will whenever an enemy is close enough?

Why is a station different from a burrow?

Can they stay permanently at a station and take care of themselves?

[Shonai_Dweller]

I put a burrow in an enclosed bunker with fortifications carved into the walls. When the enemy arrive, I just switch on the alert to send the archers there from below (defend burrows schedule).

That works OK. Especially for any enemies lacking armour. Softens them up before the reach the main entrance where the real soldiers and some traps are waiting for them.

Gotta make sure there's a roof, or archers will just climb out and charge the gobbos.

And you might lose a couple as they get shot at (mostly due to them dodging buggily through the fortifications...).

[Dragula]

Can't you just station them?

Perhaps this is the missing link. I don't know anything about stations. If I station them will they fire at will whenever an enemy is close enough?

Why is a station different from a burrow?

Can they stay permanently at a station and take care of themselves?

Station is an order you give under the squad menu, s -> a -> m. They will move to the position and be stationed there. They will run and get food and booze from what I've seen if their backpacks/waterskins run out, but a part from that they will stay there. And yes they will fire from higher elevation at enemies that come close.

[Saiko Kila]

It is possible to install a chain/rope and tie a wild aggressive animal or goblin to it. You need it caught first. Then you can test as much as you want. The goblin handler may be maltreated a big by the goblin-prisoner after chaining up, so beware. Archers shoot at the chained gobbo no problem, so you can test the range, visibility etc.

As for military, in vanilla a highly trained melee dwarf can kill dozens of enemies, even more than 50 during a single siege, though it works better if there is a couple of such dwarves (to distract enemies and as a backup), and if there are some passive obstacles, so enemies are separated a bit. For a simple example, if you have a city walls, and siege comes from north, close all the gates except southern one. Then enemies will split into two groups, one will come to the east, one to the west, trying to encircle the city and enter the south gate. If you send a squad to the east (by the south gate), and position the other squad near the gate, each of the squads will have to engage only about half of the forces.

[Sarmatian123]

Did you forget about... leather/wooden shields?
How about making all civilian clothing, but socks, out of leather?
How about dropping metal breast plate and graves for master quality leather armor to give your military some more movement speed in combat?
How about the scheme of training just 2 squadies per month just in wrestling, when wearing for armor only metal chain mail?

[Urist9876]

Using archers is one way of reducing casualties on your side. But they often require some setup, so they cannot go in melee from their position. There need to be walls, fortifications and sometimes locked doors.

Both burrows and station order allow dwarfs to shoot.
Burrows allow for more control.

Dwarfs have to stand right next to fortifications to shoot through them. Or they have to be elite markdwarfs.

I sometimes deliberately position my archers away from the fortification or even make a double row of fortifications. This requires a lot of bolts to train up your archers. But it is very rare the enemy can shoot through that.

If you can get your hands on a few GCS that also shoot through fortifications, you can create a really nasty ranged setup. Enemies will be too busy struggling the webs to move or shoot most of the time.

A raising bridge between fortifications could be used to temporary close them off. Your archers will be almost perfectly safe. Urist McLeverPuller can be found meditating at the temple.

As for melee fighting: it works best when you have many melee dwarfs together fighting the enemy in a small space.
That way they can gang up on someone and finish him off quickly. For that you need to setup your fort so that the enemy can be fought inside.
Near the entrance I build only some workshops related to outdoor activities. Sometimes a trading depot. Then some archer defences. Then the barracks.
By allowing the enemy to come to the barracks they are forced through your tunnel and not jump you with 100 goblins at the same time.
When trolls came along you might have to rebuild a few workshops.

Melee stays dangerous. You can always have that lucky lasher slashing through a masterful steel helm with his copper whip.

[Schmaven]

Has anyone tried digging ditches around an archery tower to force goblins to go close but not too close for several passes worth of being shot at?  I'm thinking of a labyrinth style maze for maximum exposure to marks-dwarves.

[Deus Machina]

I have to build walls of floors on top of the fortifications. Otherwise they've gotten the habit of climbing over to try to melee the goblins.
Otherwise, not many issues with them actually doing it, just not effectively because not many of them decide to actually train.

I have had good luck with the ditch idea. It either needs to be in a choke point or have some kind of lure.
In my last fortress, I dug a dry moat and then completely covered it with drawbridges. This lured the goblins--at least the archers--in close to shoot through it, and then I just dumped them in the moat.
Which was now home to the GCSs and beak dogs I raided from those same goblins.

[Purdurabo]

You are overthinking this entirely too much. A 10 strong group of very well trained and armoured dwarves will be able to take on just about any threat in this game short of hell and your archers are just the fallback for dust spewing forgotten beasts.

Anyway dwarves make very unreliable archers and it is best to just give them proper weapons instead of them trying to use their crossbows as a mace.

[Sver]

On the subject of tactics, there is a nice thread where several players have shared their musings, including yours truly.

On the subject of archers and fortifications, check out this post by Robsoie. Also, Defend Burrow and Patrol orders are preferable to Station, as "stationed" archers love to go into melee, for whatever reason.

On the subject of equipment, wooden/leather shields will do, if you have no metal at all, but they will break eventually (because soldiers love to strike enemies with them); a copper (or any metal) shield will pretty much never break though. If you have no sources of iron/flux on your map, trade with caravans for steel and steel items to smelt, then forge battle axes or spears out of it - steel edged weapons give a tremendous advantage against the gobs; ordering steel breastplates from the liaison is a good pick, as each one will give 3 bars at once.

And as an addition: dogs tend to breed a lot. Instead of just butchering them, train them for war and put them somewhere in path of the invaders. Now, they are renowned cowards in the game, but at least they will provide a distraction for enemies, so that your dwarves would get hit less.

[Shonai_Dweller]

You are overthinking this entirely too much. A 10 strong group of very well trained and armoured dwarves will be able to take on just about any threat in this game short of hell and your archers are just the fallback for dust spewing forgotten beasts.

Anyway dwarves make very unreliable archers and it is best to just give them proper weapons instead of them trying to use their crossbows as a mace.

Yes. But a drawbridge also does a perfect job. It's just not very fun. And shooting at an oncoming horde is. There are lots of things in the game that have no meaning. Like most of Fortress Mode. Doesn't mean we don't want to try them.

There are simple ways around the various archer issues (stuck bolts, no archer tactic AI, etc), so why not give them a go?

Besides, when I have an oncoming rush of minotaurs, I prefer a few of them to be crawling before they meet my 10 well-armoured dwarves. There are a heck of a lot of things the game can conceivably send at you once you've started fiddling with the simulation a little.

[C4lv1n]

All you need to do to make crossbow dwarves work is to keep them from running towards the enemy like a bunch of idiots. The easiest way to do that it to make it physically impossible for the dwarves to mount such a charge. The simplest thing to do then is to set up a firing position with [F]ortifications, and to put a roof over the top so the dwarves can't climb out and the enemies can't climb in. Set the area inside the bunker as a burrow and set up an alert condition that has them defending that burrow. When it's time to defend set them to that alert level. They'll all pack into the bunker and wait for enemies to come into range.

As for more general defensive tips, I strongly disagree that the answer to anything is any number of melee dwarves. Even a maxed out squad in full steel or full adamantium is going to eventually tire and get kicked to death, particularly since you might not be able to put such a squad together in the first place depending on how mature your fort is and what kind of materials you're working with.

Should melee dwarves be part of your defensive preparations? Absolutely. Are they all you would use? Certainly not.

So what should you actually do to defend yourself?

I am a big fan of the entrance labyrinth. Basically you have two entrances to your fort, a short one used by traders and dwarves venturing out to slaughter trees, and a long one used by uninvited guests. A pair of drawbridges control which is open, and while you can have a pit under the drawbridge, it's not required. Bridges are building-destroyer proof as long as you're not trying to open/close them with a megabeast sized monster on or under it.

The labyrinth itself is really just one really long corridor full of nasty traps. I tend to set aside an entire soil layer just for the labyrinth, and designate a twisting corridor full of switchbacks to maximize the effective length of the labyrinth.

Now, you might be wondering, where do the marksdwarves fit in?

Well the marksdwarves get to be one of the nasty traps. Rather than build a bunker on the surface you just need to dig out a room with fortifications along one wall. You'll want some space between the fortified position and where the enemies will be walking along, otherwise potential enemy ranged units might shoot back at your dwarves. So I tend to leave a space of five or so tiles with a pit below so enemies can't get adjacent to the fortifications. If you set up a lot of switchbacks with a pit below you can even keep the enemies within the threat range of the crossbows for as long as possible.

It's also a good idea to keep the marksdwarf's training area as close to this burrow as possible. I tend to have the barracks a z-level up or down so that they can respond quickly when I need them.

I tend to have my melee dwarves, if I even bother with them, set to defend a burrow at the very end of the labyrinth. I also tend to have another drawbridge at the very end so I can raise it in emergencies. Don't raise it until you really need to though, otherwise they won't bother pathing through your elaborate deathtraps. On the other hand, once the whole enemy force is within the maze you could also raise both bridges and trap them within. Then shoot them to pieces from multiple different fortification points set into the maze walls.