Print

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

[Urist9876]

Mysteries. Sometimes it looks like everyone is playing a different version of DF.

Often I use burrows of 3x1 tile and a full squad moves onto those 3 tiles adjacent to a fortification. Some others say it will act similar as station?

Some say archers will path towards the enemy and not get new ammo? My archers often freak out as soon as their quiver is empty, because getting new ammo seems to be a civilian job? Eventually they will get the ammo.

I often have an open path towards the invaders, but it is a very long walk for the archers. So they rarely try that.

Dwarfs seem to favor their highest skill. Sometimes I do cross training with hammers, to get armor and other skills up. However this makes them much more likely to go into melee. The default armor for archers is bad. Just give them good armor, so they do not die instantly when in enemy contact.

Archers need to be trained well to shoot through fortifications they are not adjacent to. So double fortifications will only work for archers that had some prior training.

Castle like surface buildings will often fail in some way. I had much more luck with having my archers overlooking a long entrance hall. Archer towers are good to defend the surface, but no proper dwarf wants to be there anyway?

[Garfunkel]

Well unfortunately I am obsessed with getting a major surface castle working with a hundred or more dwarves in it so I'll have to keep trying.

[Schmaven]

I've been using archer towers / bunkers in all my forts for the past several versions and never had any trouble.  But also in all of my forts I train the marksdwarves up to legendary status before deploying them, and also have sealed roofs to the towers, as well as ammo stockpiles in the same tower.  I usually go with a 7 x 7 footprint because that's the general wandering radius around a station command.  It doesn't take that many casualties to route a siege.  Often a single well timed ballista volley can do just that, so the archers generally don't have to reload more than once per siege.  I'll try relying more on the marksdwarves and see how effective they can be purely on their own.

[Saiko Kila]

Well, these problems are strange to me. Not because there isn't a problem with dodging - there is one. It's strange because enemies need very high level marksmen to shoot through fortification (unless they are standing next to it, which in case of towers is irrelevant). I rarely see enemy archers above level 5, usually they are in range 2-5, or even without skill, like zombies. And I have a fort which is besieged at least twice yearly, but sometimes even every season, by elves, humans, goblins and assorted products of necromancy.

However, I've lost a dwarf, my legendary doctor who was also a legendary marksman, to the above mentioned bug. He somehow jumped out of tower, and landed under it. My towers are not high (higher tower means lower range), so he was only temporarily stunned, and thanks to his skills he almost survived till the soldiers came to defence, but even the best soldier won't do much against a pile of 15 goblins, all of them in a single tile. I suspect a dodge from a dog caused it, because dogs and other critters sometimes charge when crowded, and this may trigger a dodge. But not arrows - arrows need better archers than average gobbos have.

I use the standard and necessary precautions so dwarves don't charge, and the tower cannot be climbed - the edge is protruding, the fortifications have a roof above the standing place for dwarves. The place is only one tile wide (which may have contributed to the death of my medic) to let dwarves under level 10 to shoot through them. Though I use such training regime, that the dwarves get level 10 after about 2 weeks.

Code: [Select]

__                       __
F                         F
 W                       W
 W                       W <-enemies come at this level
WW                       WWW
WW  barracks at level -1 WWW

W = wall
F = fortification
_ = floor (one above fortification is a part of original wall, which was then carved into fortification)

Dwarves are standing next to F
 


My tower is on the beach, with narrow passage between it and the ocean. I named the beach "Omaha", because no enemy comes through it unscathed. In fact many stay here as corpses for months. The marksdwarves are super effective. Not as much as melee of the same level, but they are safe while doing so, and if I let the melee dwarves out, the crossbowmen give an outstanding support. Every enemy resembles a pincushion.