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[Kylaer]

My most recent fort is on a hot, untamed wilds (I think?) map, and you know what that means...

E    E
E

E  E

I lose dwarves to them. Quite a lot of dwarves. However, I found that the grey-bodied swarms had a silver lining, as it were: once I had a trap corridor set up, dug into the cliff face well away from my fortress entrance, I was killing lots of elephants, producing huge amounts of meat, fat, and bones (training arrows in stacks of 80, yes indeed). Between trade and harvesting elephants, I barely need to farm for food (although I have to grow plump helmets for alcohol).

I also set up a few cage traps, and caught some live elephants. I set a peasant to tame them, not knowing if he would survive the ordeal, but it turns out they stay in their cages while being tamed - not dangerous at all. Now I have guard elephants on ropes lining the road leading to my trade depot.   Dangerous things can be turned to your advantage, one of the great aspects of Dwarf Fortress...

[Woodstock]

Did you block off the elephants' path to direct them into your trapped corridor?

Has that had any effect on caravans?

I'm on a Terrifying map with TONS of elephants.

[ January 07, 2007: Message edited by: Woodstock ]

[Old-Man-Gator]

Two elephants is literally tons of elephants.

[Jeon]

Elephants herds also make very good distractions for when a bronze colossus shows up.

Well... until they walked right past the front door and the colossus saw a cat pop it's head out.

My hammer lords were finally trained up enough by then (he had been running around for about a year chasing elephants) to make short work of him in a few swings which was a relief.

[Kylaer]

quote:Originally posted by Woodstock:
<STRONG>Did you block off the elephants' path to direct them into your trapped corridor?

Has that had any effect on caravans?

I'm on a Terrifying map with TONS of elephants.

[ January 07, 2007: Message edited by: Woodstock ]</STRONG>

Yes, I blocked it, but I did it well south of my actual fort entrance. If I'd planned better from the start, I could have had another one to the north, but I dug my massive tree farm too close to the cliff to squeeze one in.

It has had no effect on caravans, they come straight down my main road.

[ January 08, 2007: Message edited by: Kylaer ]

[puke]

mine is similar.  I divided the map in thirds with long horizontal canals both north and sough of my "G"ate.  then I dug channels along either side of my road to keep the caravan safe.

looong tunnels run down the cliff face from each of the two canals to near my enterance, and the traps are all near where the elephants let out.  I throttle elephant slaughtering by marking the tunnel doors as "keep tightly shut"

of course, dwarves that have to path through there to fish or cut trees sometimes end up dead.  and early on when good traps are hard to finance, sometimes the elephants overload the stonefall traps and kill a few dwarfs.

but whats a few dead dwarfs each year, when you get hundreds of free meat and bone and hide?

two full time craftdwarf workshops are more than enough to buy out every single visiting trader, and nowhere near enough to deal with all the bone thats produced.  you'll be rolling in tallow roasts, have meat coming out your ears, and basically be in elephant fort heaven.

perhaps all the senseless slaughter might eventually warn animals away from your fort?  or cull their population after a while?  this would have to be offset by the introduction of new animals that are not part of what starts on the map...

or just left as it is...

[Eiba]

One question, How effective would this trap tunnel be at mass elephant slaughter:

code:

....XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
....X__FXXXXXXXXXXX
.....B...........XX
______XXXXXXXXXX.XX
.....B.P.........XX
....XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Where . is empty ground, X is rock, _ is a channel, B is a bridge over a channel, F is a floodgate, and P is a pressure plate, attached to both bridges and the floodgate. It can be made longer and twistier as necessary to catch the whole herd, but the real question is if the water would actually kill all the elephants automatically as they go through, with no need for tons of weapons or maintenance-heavy stone traps? You would need 7 mechanisms just for what you see there, and probably another three to bring up the floodgate and four more to turn the bridges back on... (wouldn't want to turn everything back on at the same time, or you'd probably get an infinite flood, I think...)

This whole thing just strikes me as more clean than a boatload of weapon traps in a twisting corridor...

[puke]

it depends.  if the initial water bearing _ is connected to the outside river, you'll likely end up with a permaflood.  and you may want to move your pressureplate back a bit, as there is a bit of delay on them.

maybe something like this:

code:

...XXX
.._D.X
...X.X
...X.X
___F.X
...XPX
...X.X
.._D.X
...XXX

of course it gets streached or widened or somethign, but you get the idea.  dont link the doors to anything, rely on the outside chanels to stop the flood if a door is accidentially opened (in fact, the door is only there so that you can easily throttle your elephant production).

rely on the length of the hallway to drown the elephants, so you dont necessarily need to trap them inside.

now the real downside to this is, that your DWARVES often need to pass through these areas to get to different parts of the map.  i mean, if you are going to screwup elephant pathfinding to force them through the trap, youre not going to somehow make your dwarves immune to the same screwing.  and you dont want the dwarves caught in there with elephants and drowned.

[puke]

this just gave me a thought on pathfinding.  i will have to test later to see if "forbidden" trumps "tightly closed" but if not, we could fix it so dwarves and elephants take alternate paths:

code:

...XXXXXX
.._D....X
...XXXX.X
...D.XX.X
...X.XX.X
____B_F.X
...X.XX.X
...D.XX.X
...XXXX.X
.._D...PX
...XXXXXX

so that the long loop doors are pet passable but not dwarf passable, and the short doors are dwarf passable but not pet passable.

you could even raise that bridge in a seige to force gobbos through the elephant drowning trap.

[Soulwynd]

Genius... I think I shall do that in my elephant/warhog infested map... It also had some other bugger I don't know... I need to check the wiki to see what it is.

I was thinking about doing something like this... To avoid small corridors and ultra-pathfinding bogging (and flooding D: ).

code:

   ####
   ^^^#
   #^^#
~~~#^^#
   #^^#
   ^^^#
   ####

Had an idea, you could also be silly and do this:

code:

   ##########
   ^^^+^^^^^#     '=' = fortification
   #^^O====+#
~~~#^^= Barr#
   #^^= acks###
   ^^^=     + -> To fotress
   ############

Just to be silly... Can use it to give your silly guards something to do. Altho, I hope invading hordes wouldn't use that little path to... er... invade... A pillar trap/lever would fix that and block the passage in that case, I suppose.

[ January 11, 2007: Message edited by: Soulwynd ]

[Eiba]

quote:if the initial water bearing _ is connected to the outside river, you'll likely end up with a permaflood.

Really? I was under the impression that that was only an issue if a surface flood came in contact with a river... I've never had an issue with surface fluids coming in contact with a channel connected to a river (as full channels must be)...

In any case, I realize that it could (and to save resources should) easily be done without bridges... (I'd still rather loose an unlucky woodcutter/plant gatherer than a mechanic reloading a stone trap- I guess weapon traps are still better provided the infrastructure to make them)

(Oh, and thanks for the tip on pressure plates, I've never actually used them before...)

[puke]

Soulwynd, thats a solid idea thats been done before, lineing up some fortifications so your marksdwarfs can fire into your trap cooridoor.  but if you put a door there like that, Trolls will head right for it.

you can keep the same basic plan by lengthening the trap run, or moving the door somewhere safer.

[Soulwynd]

I was thinking on making a room with a pillar linked to a lever, so in case of siege/whatever. I just pull the lever and block the whole thing from the main fortress.

Right now I have a trap room like that, but it's not linked to the fortress, so it's pretty much safe.

[jonhuang]

Think this will work?

Ultimate Elephant Trap?

code:

....XXXXXXXXXXXXX
....XXXXXXXXXXXXX
....DDD......XXXX
....X#XXXXXX.XXXX
....X#XXXXXX.XXXX
OOO d._....X.XXXX
OmO.X#XXXX.X.XXXX
OOO d_...X.X.XXXX
....XXXX.X.X.XXXX
....XXXX.X.X.XXXX
....XXXX.X.X.XXXX
______XXPXPX.XXXX
....X|XX.X.X.XXXX
....X|_F.X.X.XXXX
....X|XX.X.X.XXXX
....dB._.X.X.XXXX
OOO.X|XXXX.X.XXXX
OmO.XFXXXX.X.XXXX
OOO_d......X.XXXX
....XXXXXXXX.XXXX
....XXXXXXXX.XXXX
....XXXXXXXX.XXXX
....DDD......XXXX
....XXXXXXXXXXXXX
....XXXXXXXXXXXXX

X = wall
. = empty
_ or | = channel
B = bridge
D = door, tightly shut
d = door, open
# = door, forbidden
F = floodgate
P = pressure plate

There are three tunnels.
The outermost one is for dwarves only, and has a airlocks of "tightly shut" doors.

The two inner tunnels are flood traps. Why two? Auto-reloading. The pressure plates the open one floodgate close the other, so successive waves of critters will open the other tunnel while flooding their own.

The "m" is a mandrill. The O's are glass windows. You may substitute with other hostiles and statues if you prefer. Why? It will hopefully scare away civilian dwarves from the death tunnels!

Opening the '#' doors will let your dwarves get the bodies out for meat or bones. You may want to shut the other 'd' doors for safety first, though it should work regardless.

[ January 15, 2007: Message edited by: jonhuang ]

[Escobar]

I'm pretty sure Forbidden does not trump tightly closed... a wandering cat whispered it into my ear, and then promptly drowned along with most of my dwarves.