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[the Dregs]

Is there a repack of this available with orcs and a decent tile set with orc graphics already installed? I'll mess it up if I try, I just know it.

[Martin]

How would a legendary wrestler with copper plate armor fare in a 1v1 situation?

Pretty well, assuming you can keep it 1x1. The challenge with orcs is that it pretty easily becomes 1x4 or worse, and then you'll have a problem, but wrestling is what they'll do the most of with orcs - just due to the squad size they'll pretty much always have an orc on them. If you can get them up in armor and shield skills (even a copper shield helps) that really helps a lot. It's hard to overstate the importance of shield/armor skill.

[timmeh]

Pretty well, assuming you can keep it 1x1. The challenge with orcs is that it pretty easily becomes 1x4 or worse, and then you'll have a problem, but wrestling is what they'll do the most of with orcs - just due to the squad size they'll pretty much always have an orc on them. If you can get them up in armor and shield skills (even a copper shield helps) that really helps a lot. It's hard to overstate the importance of shield/armor skill.

I've built an air-lock of sorts to allow me to control how many come in at a time.  I'm working on getting all the squad commanders trained to use axes, but so far they're just dabbling, and already removed a recruit's head....

Thanks!

[kurisukun]

installed this.  I've heard/read a lot about these, and figured I could take on the hoard with little/no problems.


*looks at his blasted bloodied destroyed fortress*

Wait... what happened?  Why is my spleen all the way over there?  Sweet jesus these things are NASTY!


I approve wholeheartedly.  Thanks!  I had a ton of fun

[NewoTigra]

I actually had a 7 seasons siege at one point.
Orcs arrived in winter, then went away after a season. Interestingly enough another siege arrived at exactly the same time as the first ended.
Repeat x6

[ToonyMan]

Multiple sieges are always awesome.  Happened twice in DeathQuest.

[Coaldiamond]

Damn. Just lost my first fortress to an invasion. That never happened with the goblins.

These guys are a nice extra challenge.

[The13thRonin]

I notice people in this thread are fine with the [trAPAVOID]!

Over at the [DIG DEEPER] thread I get a lot of people requesting the removal of the aforementioned tag. I think that it fits quite well though.

[Magua]

Loving it.

So, I'm thinking about orc defense.  They knock down doors -- great.  They avoid traps -- great.  But they can still be stopped by a simple drawbridge and dry moat, much less a sophisticated autodrowning chamber setup. 

So I played my first orc fortress last night, and I had eight legendary military dwarves die to the orcs before I was even through the second spring.  This is, in my mind, awesome, but I'm curious now: does anyone defend against the orc onslaught without using bridges/moats?  Is it even possible to have a military only defense?

[Rockphed]

Loving it.

So, I'm thinking about orc defense.  They knock down doors -- great.  They avoid traps -- great.  But they can still be stopped by a simple drawbridge and dry moat, much less a sophisticated autodrowning chamber setup. 

So I played my first orc fortress last night, and I had eight legendary military dwarves die to the orcs before I was even through the second spring.  This is, in my mind, awesome, but I'm curious now: does anyone defend against the orc onslaught without using bridges/moats?  Is it even possible to have a military only defense?

At the end of a 30 year fortress, my champions wielding artifact weapons and wearing artifact armor managed to kill orcs without traps or bridges.

[KaelGotDwarves]

The usual legendary crossbowdwarves/bow kobolds with meat shields make short work of EVERYTHING.

Doesn't matter how many orcs there are as long as they still got ammo.

[Magua]

Ok.  New question.

I got tired of seeing a lot of 'nameless Orc'.  So, I added [CAN_SPEAK] onto the creature_orc.txt file on an already started fortress.

Now, though, I'm not getting orc sieges -- just orc caravans (my civ is listed as at peace with the orcs).  Of course, I could remove CAN_SPEAK to undo this, but I was under the impression there would be a way to get both.  Is there?

[Martin]

Is it even possible to have a military only defense?

You have to work up to it. Morul takes out 5 full squad sieges of upgraded orcs (steel armor/weapons, upgraded to size/damblock of colossi) solo, all melee, without a scratch. So not only is it possible, you can do it without risk to your army of one.

It just takes time. An army likely doesn't have much in the shield/armor skills by the 2nd year - and when you are wickedly outnumbered as tends to happen with orcs, job #1 is not getting hurt. If I were starting out again on an orc map with no other fixed defenses, I'd keep at least 1/2 of my fortress in the military and put everything into getting the best armor/shields on them possible - and have them focus on wrestling. That skills up fastest and when you are outnumbered you spend most of your time wrestling anyway.

But you'd need to keep grinding them up in skills and equipment. If you can get them into masterwork steel, it's probably all downhill from there.

[Magua]

By year 5, I have a (non-marksdwarf) military force that can take out an orc siege without casualties.  52 military out of 96 dwarfs; 42 of them are champions.  Steel armor and crucible steel weapons (using the Dig Deeper mod).

I did end up having to raise the drawbridge during an entire siege during year #2, though.

But now: orc siege arrives, champions are put on duty and stationed at the entrance.  Orcs move closer, champions move closer....computer freezes for a few minutes....and then THE BLOOD OH GOD THE BLOOD ITS EVERYWHERE.

I did suffer massive -- and I mean massive -- sparring deaths / injuries for the first four years though.  My regimen was:
1) Set new recruits to off duty, unarmed, plate and shield.  (I didn't have any plate for most of this, so a lot of them ended up with leather armor and wooden shields).
2) When they reached legendary wrestler, give them a sword.

I ended up changing step #2 to hammer instead of sword.  I'm not sure if the decrease in sparring injuries was due to using hammers, or if it was because I suddenly had a large amount of steel armor available.

[Rysith]

So I played my first orc fortress last night, and I had eight legendary military dwarves die to the orcs before I was even through the second spring.  This is, in my mind, awesome, but I'm curious now: does anyone defend against the orc onslaught without using bridges/moats?  Is it even possible to have a military only defense?

As others have mentioned, sufficient numbers of champions and/or sufficiently skilled champions are definitely what you need to have a military-only defense. training early helps, shields help (both against the orcs and to prevent sparring injuries).

I tend to switch recruits over to their weapons as soon as they move from "recruit" to "wrestler", since I find giving legendary wrestlers weapons actually increases sparring accidents (a single "real" hit does much more damage after the attribute gains). I also don't find wrestlers that effective against orcs, since if you've got reasonable odds (2:1 orcs:dwarves, or so) you can kill a lot more orcs a lot faster with weapons than strangling each of them to death individually. Shorter battles mean less chance for someone to get in a lucky insta-kill on one of your dwarves.