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Author Topic: Orcs: More things to kill - Now for DF2010!  (Read 151864 times)

Martin

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #255 on: March 14, 2009, 12:20:24 am »

Yeah, I've seen several people complaining about the amount of hauling that happens with Orcs, though I suspect that that's mostly a quantity + frequency thing. And the local leaders who show up with pages of leather and bone jewelery, which I can't do anything about without giving them industries that I don't want to give them. If I took away gauntlets and boots, I'd probably balance it with an increase in DAMBLOCK so they still had equivalent protection.

I think that's a good move. I don't mind the hauling. I've complained about it, but I'm working with just 9 laborers. Even so, they're getting it done (including all the caravans that the orcs wipe out).

An increase to DAMBLOCK would be nice. Not a lot, though. I'm using the upgraded goblin mod (the one with the ender gobbos), and the weakest upgraded gobbos have a nice balance. My champion marksdwarf usually has to pump 4-6 bolts into a gobbo to kill them, and a dozen isn't uncommon. By comparison he just chews through orcs, even armored ones. Any way to give them a more effective shield than dwarves can use? I'm thinking something like a tower shield that could block bolts better, but maybe is too big for a dwarf to use.

I think just getting them so they can't be regularly one-shotted by a marksdwarf or a champion hammerer get the balance set. At that point their numbers will make them reasonably challenging if you don't meet them with a superior force.

But I'm liking all the iron. Now, can you get them to drop flux stone?

Xanares

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #256 on: March 14, 2009, 06:44:27 am »

In my mind, they are tending towards the Dwarf Fortress equivalent of the Vandals and Huns. Smallish tribes, limited agriculture and hunting, burn the civilized world etc. I'm not familiar with the background behind Warhammer, nor have I head of Darklands, but I'd say that Tolkien's orc's ties to Sauron/Sauruman make them a bit too controlled for my liking.

Quite level with you on this. Like orcs with tribal leaders but no overarching power to "guide" them.

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They definitely need all of the protection that they can get from arrows and bolts. I like the idea of giving them larger axes (and swords, and such). How did ring mail compare to chain mail (historically, I'd expect it to be worse). I had kept them with bows because a) it fit with the hunting tribe idea, even if they can run down most wildlife and b) non-ranged forces are entirely too easy to kill with ranged forces, so making them have no ranged weapons at all seemed like a mistake. I could see giving them something else as a ranged weapon, though. Staff slings or thrown spears come to mind.

Ringmail is a bit like chainmail but the rings are not interlocked and thus simpler, not so heavy and more flexible. Less protection maybe, but doing up for that in beforementioned traits, so I equal it with chain in DF. Although one could argue orcish armourers would just focus on crude but heavy/strong plate armour.

Yes, I was thinking about slings or throwing spears too. I totally agree that in DF they need some ranged weapon to be a sufficient threat to people just trapping and shooting them;D
Let me try and do both and we see how it works out. 

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I like the chain and the general "larger and heavier" theme. I think I'd want to avoid just making everything larger (since they aren't *that* much larger than humans, and likely get a bit of their stuff by raiding them), but I could see orcish spears, flails, and hammers. They already use the human two-handed swords in one hand, so that's taken care of.

I agree not everything should be larger. I've kept scimitars, scourges etc. My reasoning for heavier and orcish special weapons is that they generally are much stronger than humans albeit almost same size. Their main focus is on brute force and not on finesse, and thus humans can keep long swords to themselves and they would not be able to wield orcish weapons easily, even twohanded.

In my testing I have sofar seen barbed spears, spiked hammers, great swords and dire pikes; strangely only the pike was twohanded if I remember correctly, even if that is set as size 8 vs great sword size 10 for twohanded. My guess is that it is hardcoded or I am making a mistake.
(I have never seen dwarves and humans fly so much btw hehe.)

The metal knuckles are not equipped by the wrestlers.

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Yeah, I've seen several people complaining about the amount of hauling that happens with Orcs, though I suspect that that's mostly a quantity + frequency thing. And the local leaders who show up with pages of leather and bone jewelery, which I can't do anything about without giving them industries that I don't want to give them. If I took away gauntlets and boots, I'd probably balance it with an increase in DAMBLOCK so they still had equivalent protection.

Agreed, it is worth trying although also fine as is imo.

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Check the legends on one of your abandoned forts sometime, you'll see goblins go to war with something about scholars being unable to determine the cause of hostilities. The mounts (as before) only show up if the invading civ has them in their territory, but the added mounts greatly expand the terrains that will give them mounts (previously only evil swamps, now evil swamps/forest/grassland/jungle). The first siege also tends to be light on mounts, so they may have only had their squad leaders on mounts.

For extra fun, change the war elephants (or spiders) to [ANY_LAND]. The elephants are obvious, but I'm not really sure that anyone has realized the full potential for having dozens of (effectively) giant cave spiders attacking a fortress at once.

Maybe I have just been "unlucky" sofar in that respect; it could be a lack of evil area in my maps. Dire wolves at least could be almost anywhere I think.
« Last Edit: March 14, 2009, 06:48:56 am by Xanares »
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shadow_archmagi

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #257 on: March 14, 2009, 07:23:48 pm »

So, do I need to remove goblins for orcs to show up?
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Raphite1

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #258 on: March 14, 2009, 09:30:05 pm »

What exactly is it that makes a race use particular creatures as mounts? Wasn't clear to me from looking at the files here.

bunsoth datannil

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #259 on: March 14, 2009, 10:37:47 pm »

What exactly is it that makes a race use particular creatures as mounts? Wasn't clear to me from looking at the files here.

it's part of entity files,    [USE_EVIL_ANIMALS]
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Martin

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #260 on: March 15, 2009, 12:44:56 pm »

So, do I need to remove goblins for orcs to show up?

No, I have both gobbos and orcs. Not in the same season, but when I don't have orcs, I definitely have gobbos. I didn't get orcs showing up for a few years because I had humans ambushing on my map at embark. It took a few years to stumble across them, but once that ambush was gone, the orcs started showing up. You might want to scout around your map and see if you trigger something.

Rysith

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #261 on: March 16, 2009, 01:31:59 am »

What exactly is it that makes a race use particular creatures as mounts? Wasn't clear to me from looking at the files here.

The mounts have [EVIL] and [MOUNT], the orcs have [USE_EVIL_ANIMALS]. Any creature that the civilization can use with the [MOUNT] tag can show up as a mount in a siege. For example, horses have [MOUNT] and [COMMON_DOMESTIC], and humans have [COMMON_DOMESTIC_MOUNT]. The mounts aren't tied specifically to the Orcs, so it's certainly possible to get a war elephant goblin siege.

Now to find an embark spot where the goblins ride elephants and the orcs ride spiders...
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Vattic

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #262 on: March 16, 2009, 03:00:59 pm »

On the topic of mounts I notice that Dire Wolves have no [MOUNT] tag. Hope it hasn't already been mentioned.
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Martin

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #263 on: March 16, 2009, 06:18:37 pm »

Ok, Orcs need to get tougher.

I just had a dwarven caravan show up and 2 days later a siege started. A bunch spawned right outside the fort, and there was really no way to prevent them from coming in. 80 orcs in 5 squads came in and some of the caravan ended up surviving with no assistance from me. That was about 8-10 dwarves in usual dwarven gear (crappy quality steel) killing about 60 of the orcs before they turned tail and ran (no ranged orcs, I should note). All of the dwarven guards ultimately died as did a few of the traders, but still, they were outnumbered 10:1 and had no real skills relative to what a player would have in their fortress.

Maybe something a bit closer to the Intimidating Goblin?

Raphite1

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #264 on: March 18, 2009, 04:06:45 pm »

Bah! Just spent hours genning worlds, scouring for embark sites, and planning out my customized-for-the-landscape fort on paper, only to have ye olde problem of Orcs showing up to trade during the first winter. I thought I had followed the instructions for [CAN_SPEAK] addition/removal carefully, but I guess not.

Is there any way to make them aggressive now, or do I have to start over from the beginning?

Rysith

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #265 on: March 18, 2009, 05:08:44 pm »

Ok, Orcs need to get tougher.
[snip]

Maybe something a bit closer to the Intimidating Goblin?

I had really hoped to avoid going the direction of the intimidating goblin, since part of the point (for me, at least) of the orcs was an alternative to the exercise in impossible-to-kill monsters that the better goblins mod turned into.

In my tests, a single squad (16 orcs) was able to take down a 6-wagon caravan plus guards, with around 50% casualties most of the time. Sometimes the some of the caravan would be able to flee, but the wagons + pack animals were dead,. Except in one test were a muskox killed the squad leader and the rest of them fled, but I wrote that off as an anomaly. I can't actually think of anything that should have made that possible, really. Especially since the leaders should be multi-legendary killing machines...

Any way you could provide a save/movie/something so that I can try to figure out how they died?
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Martin

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #266 on: March 18, 2009, 05:46:43 pm »

No movie now nor save, unfortunately, but let me try to get one next time. One of the orcs was an elite wrestler and he went down in a snap. Might have been a fluke though. The bastard left 37 screens of -cave swallowman earrings- to clean up. I let the orcs have their way with the trade caravans pretty frequently - it's just to much work to haul back all their crap if they get massacred on the other side of the map.

I agree the at the better gobbo mod really does go pretty far, but the lowest level ones really aren't too bad, and they wouldn't need to be quite that tough. The biggest challenge with them is that they are fast, so it's hard to run away when they ambush, but that's not much of a problem with siegers as you have some time to get your act together.

Mostly the orcs have been wiping out elves and humans, but I'll see if I can get them to work over the dwarves next time they visit. Not directly related, it seems to me that if 9 normal attackers (one on each side, plus one on your guy) can't take out a champion - at least to wound them with some regularity, then the balance is off. I realize ranged units change things, but dealing with them should be a different strategic matter.

Anyway, let me see how the next encounter goes and I'll try and get you some details.

Rysith

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #267 on: March 18, 2009, 06:26:20 pm »

Not directly related, it seems to me that if 9 normal attackers (one on each side, plus one on your guy) can't take out a champion - at least to wound them with some regularity, then the balance is off. I realize ranged units change things, but dealing with them should be a different strategic matter.

Anyway, let me see how the next encounter goes and I'll try and get you some details.

Oddly enough, that's the balance that I normally saw with the Orcish squad leaders: 9 dwarven sword/axe champions surrounding them and they would normally take down a champion before dying, hence why I was surprised at the battle result. Movies of that here (Dark blue Orc guard) and here (Orc slasher). I look forward to seeing the details, since the Orcs (especially 80 of them) should be able to easily destroy a dwarven caravan, or they aren't working as intended.
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Raphite1

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #268 on: March 18, 2009, 08:11:48 pm »

Even after re-reading the last couple of pages of this thread, I'm still really not clear on when to add/remove the [CAN_SPEAK] token. Can someone post a precise order of operations?

Also, if orcs have sent a caravan, will removing [CAN_SPEAK] turn them hostile for the future?

BirdoPrey

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Re: Orcs: More things to kill
« Reply #269 on: March 18, 2009, 08:35:37 pm »

Gah! My first winter's siege my dwarves were too busy dumping rocks to pull the drawbridge lever and they all got slaughtered.

Here's the weird part: When I reclaimed (with about 70 military dwarves) the orcs on the map were all friendly! I couldn't avenge my fallen settlers! What's up with that?
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