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[Zaranthan]

Ninjas Upright spikes. Thousands of them.

[Xanares]

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?

Haha I had the exact same thing. Messed up reclaim code I'd say.

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?

Yes it will - at least that is what happened to me.

I do this:
1) enable can_speak for world gen and embark
2) save, quit, disable can_speak, resume game

You can also have it disabled all the time - which probably makes orcs more hostile in world gen. Although that will create a lot of unnamed orcs.

There is no great way to ensure both names and hostility currently. The trick is to get at WAR with them, which you apparently only do on first siege or as a result of world gen chance. So, once you are at WAR you should be able to enable can_speak again and have named orcs. Bit confusing I know, but just look at it from a WAR point of view. You need the WAR. 


@ Rysith/Martin:
I am hoping weapons can help here - doing final testing on them now. Much more importantly though, my first siege on this test had an orcish lasher riding a giant wolf spider hehehe! 16 orcs, all died but 2 (fled) - not any super orcs among them and my six double legend wrestlers in no armour plus two archers did it. Was a bit surprised I had no casualties or injuries, but to be fair it was the first siege, so it was the orcish eqvivalent of fisherdwarves I'd say.

[Rysith]

@ Rysith/Martin:
I am hoping weapons can help here - doing final testing on them now. Much more importantly though, my first siege on this test had an orcish lasher riding a giant wolf spider hehehe! 16 orcs, all died but 2 (fled) - not any super orcs among them and my six double legend wrestlers in no armour plus two archers did it. Was a bit surprised I had no casualties or injuries, but to be fair it was the first siege, so it was the orcish eqvivalent of fisherdwarves I'd say.

I'm a bit surprised too, though legendary wrestlers might well be able to dodge well enough that they don't need armor. Part of the issue, of course, is that the average dwarven defenders will be much better trained and equipped than I can get the orcs to be, at least until we get access to the siege logic and can generate trained siegers.

How did the spider fare?

[Xanares]

I'm a bit surprised too, though legendary wrestlers might well be able to dodge well enough that they don't need armor. Part of the issue, of course, is that the average dwarven defenders will be much better trained and equipped than I can get the orcs to be, at least until we get access to the siege logic and can generate trained siegers.

How did the spider fare?

The spider got a bit ahead with Lasher on him and thus got mobbed by all wrestlers at once. Took far longer to kill it than any of the orcs though, although I was surprised it didn't seem to be using any webbing.

[Chromie]

I just had my first successful (read: did not immediately result in local dwarf genocide) orc siege, and I have to say, thumbs up!

I had 4 elite wrestlers, equipped with wooden crossbows and bone bolts shooting from a 4z high tower behind a curtain wall/moat... but they didn't do much besides provoke the orcs. I had to do a bit of a dance raising and lowering the drawbridge (and lost my bowyer immigrant that supplied me with the wooden pew pew, alas) to draw them closer, but the real massacre happened because I dug a 1 tile wide doorway into the ground level opening of my magma pool.

One curious fire imp got all but 1 of the dozen orcs (by burning the world), two ran off and the last unlucky sod got plinked and punched to death after he got into my courtyard.

The fire imp took some orc damage, and unconscious on the side of the mountain, he got taken care of by my elite wrestlers.

Much more fun than goblins.

[Xanares]

Hoowah second siege filled with spiders!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Some 25 orcs on spiders, this is going to be interesting!

Unfort. I have to leave for skiing vacation now, so will have to wait hehe. At least I will go to the mountains and hit the ground a bit.

Rysith, sending you pm with weapons stuff. Good weekend mining everydwarf!

[Kethas]

Hey, love the idea of having more serious threats from outside the fortress and I'm trying to install. A couple things:

1) My version of entity_orc.txt does NOT have a [SIEGER] tag. Is that correct? If so, how do the orcs, well, siege?
2) I didn't know if I installed the mod correctly, so I made a skeleton fortress and just ran it for ~2 years. No orcs at all. First, is there any way to test that I've installed them correctly? I've read earlier in this thread about people asking "can you see orcs on the embark screen / in your civ list." What does that mean - how do I check it? Where on the embark screen should I be able to see/select civs? (I'm also confused because I've read elsewhere I should be able to pick different civs to play as in Fortress mode, but I never see a relevant selection screen - it lets me pick an embark site, and then next I'm setting up my *dwarf* embark party.) If I don't see any Orc civs in the civ screen ('c' once playing in Fortress mode) does that mean orcs don't know about my fortress and I'll never be attacked/sieged?

I read about how the orc entity has population, production, and trade triggers of 1, 2, and 1 respectively - I assume (hope?) that's why I never saw orcs in my skeleton-crew, pretty-much-afk fortress. What do those trigger values (pop 1, production 2, trade 1) correspond to, roughly? Again, is there a way I can confirm the mod's installed correctly, rather than invest five years in a fort just for no orcs to show up?

Thanks for the help - I'm finding vanilla DF to be really, really easy (three-tile-wide moat = invulnerable, goblins leave quickly and I can wait a month or two to harvest wood etc), and am not enjoying the lack of challenge. I'm looking forward to having my economy/engineering put to the test by the orcs. (I've actually already changed entity_orc.txt to make them active in all four seasons. I'm just a glutton for punishment.) I just don't want spend hours/days creating the perfect fortress only to discover that no orcs will be forthcoming.

[InsanityPrelude]

Goblins don't have a [SIEGER] tag either, interestingly. I just checked my raws.

[Arvidsem]

Sieger is, I think for human and elf type civs that siege from the player angering them. The default behavior for a at-war civilization is sieging. The problem is that it's quite hard to have a intelligent civ actually stay at war with someone. Thus all the screwing around with CAN_SPEAK to prevent diplomacy from ruining our horrible orcish raping.

[gumball135]

1) My version of entity_orc.txt does NOT have a [SIEGER] tag. Is that correct? If so, how do the orcs, well, siege?

I think the sieger tag only makes the entity siege you if you anger them, not straight away. That'd be down to removing the [CAN_SPEAK] tag, or if two races disagree with each other's ethics.

2) I didn't know if I installed the mod correctly, so I made a skeleton fortress and just ran it for ~2 years. No orcs at all. First, is there any way to test that I've installed them correctly? I've read earlier in this thread about people asking "can you see orcs on the embark screen / in your civ list." What does that mean - how do I check it? Where on the embark screen should I be able to see/select civs? (I'm also confused because I've read elsewhere I should be able to pick different civs to play as in Fortress mode, but I never see a relevant selection screen - it lets me pick an embark site, and then next I'm setting up my *dwarf* embark party.) If I don't see any Orc civs in the civ screen ('c' once playing in Fortress mode) does that mean orcs don't know about my fortress and I'll never be attacked/sieged?

When selecting your site, press TAB. This will cycle through the different info screens: the height of an area, the different civilizations, the different groups you can embark as (in vanilla, or unmodded DF, you can only play as the dwarves, but the dwarven civ is divided into several different allied factions, IE "the drunken beards", "the severed lances", and "the beer mongers", who all own different fortresses in different sections of the map). If several red "-"s are next to a civs name, they will be aggressive towards you.

As far as I'm aware, Rysith's mod doesn't allow you to actually play as the orcs.

I read about how the orc entity has population, production, and trade triggers of 1, 2, and 1 respectively - I assume (hope?) that's why I never saw orcs in my skeleton-crew, pretty-much-afk fortress. What do those trigger values (pop 1, production 2, trade 1) correspond to, roughly? Again, is there a way I can confirm the mod's installed correctly, rather than invest five years in a fort just for no orcs to show up?

I'm unsure of what the different trigger values correspond to. I think you've gotta keep the value of your items traded under 1000 dwarfolians when the first caravans come. No clue about production or population. I'm think the population means that they'll come straight away? But that's with emphasis on the "think".

The orcs nearly always come in the first Winter. Check if they're present in the civilization thingy I mentioned above. Otherwise, perhaps you have a goblin ambush hidden somewhere in the map. Only one ambush/siege can occur at once, at the moment anyways.

Thanks for the help - I'm finding vanilla DF to be really, really easy (three-tile-wide moat = invulnerable, goblins leave quickly and I can wait a month or two to harvest wood etc), and am not enjoying the lack of challenge. I'm looking forward to having my economy/engineering put to the test by the orcs. (I've actually already changed entity_orc.txt to make them active in all four seasons. I'm just a glutton for punishment.) I just don't want spend hours/days creating the perfect fortress only to discover that no orcs will be forthcoming.

If you lock yourself in and surround your fort with a moat, there's only really so much challenge ANY creature can give you, unless they're flying building destroyers. The orc's battering rams (elephants) won't be able to reach your gate over water. Maybe in future versions, your enemies will bring along siege engines, ladders, towers and the like, but at the moment, if you want to increase the difficulty for yourself, you're going to have to set limits on your defences.

*Pant pant*

Hope that helps you on your quest for fun!

EDIT: After doing a bit of research on the wiki, the BABYSNATCHER tag also makes a civ aggressive, but they also ambush you and steal your babies. And that's not very Orcy, is it?

[WJLIII3]

Now, the important question. Has anyone tried playing as the Orcs? Can it be done?

[Rysith]

Hey, love the idea of having more serious threats from outside the fortress and I'm trying to install. A couple things:

1) My version of entity_orc.txt does NOT have a [SIEGER] tag. Is that correct? If so, how do the orcs, well, siege?

[SIEGER] makes them gather around a campfire and sit around telling scary stories for a few months before they attack your fortress, like the humans do. Theoretically, it's supposed to make you need to come out and meet them on the field to break the siege, but since breaking sieges isn't really ever a priority it's kind of pointless. Plus, since Orcs can't pillage your fortress site, it's not very orcy at all to wait to attack you.

Right now, Orcs attack you because they don't have [CAN_SPEAK], which means that they are always hostile to everyone all the time. Since they are hostile and don't have [BABYSNATCHER] or [ITEM_THIEF], the only way that they can express their hostility is by laying siege. If they had [BABYSNATCHER], they would also always be hostile but would be able to steal your babies and ambush you as well (non-orcy, as Gumball said), and if they had [ITEM_THIEF] they would be able to send thieves (as Kobolds do), which again isn't very orcy.

2) I didn't know if I installed the mod correctly, so I made a skeleton fortress and just ran it for ~2 years. No orcs at all. First, is there any way to test that I've installed them correctly? I've read earlier in this thread about people asking "can you see orcs on the embark screen / in your civ list." What does that mean - how do I check it? Where on the embark screen should I be able to see/select civs? (I'm also confused because I've read elsewhere I should be able to pick different civs to play as in Fortress mode, but I never see a relevant selection screen - it lets me pick an embark site, and then next I'm setting up my *dwarf* embark party.) If I don't see any Orc civs in the civ screen ('c' once playing in Fortress mode) does that mean orcs don't know about my fortress and I'll never be attacked/sieged?

I read about how the orc entity has population, production, and trade triggers of 1, 2, and 1 respectively - I assume (hope?) that's why I never saw orcs in my skeleton-crew, pretty-much-afk fortress. What do those trigger values (pop 1, production 2, trade 1) correspond to, roughly? Again, is there a way I can confirm the mod's installed correctly, rather than invest five years in a fort just for no orcs to show up?

Population 1 is at about 20, trade 1 is at about 1000 exported wealth, and I'm not sure where production is, other than that it's based on created wealth and I've only hit it when I'm actively trying to avoid the other two. Both population and trade should be quite easy to hit by the first winter if you're playing actively.

Thanks for the help - I'm finding vanilla DF to be really, really easy (three-tile-wide moat = invulnerable, goblins leave quickly and I can wait a month or two to harvest wood etc), and am not enjoying the lack of challenge. I'm looking forward to having my economy/engineering put to the test by the orcs. (I've actually already changed entity_orc.txt to make them active in all four seasons. I'm just a glutton for punishment.) I just don't want spend hours/days creating the perfect fortress only to discover that no orcs will be forthcoming.

Yeah, unfortunately there isn't a good way to get them to deal with moats (flying mounts don't work, unfortunately), so you may have to avoid sealing your fort completely to get a challenge. But, if you leave your fortress open you should get a reasonable challenge out of them.

Gumball/WJLIII3: My mod doesn't allow you to play as the orcs, though I see no reason why you couldn't. It should work just like playing as any other custom race.

[RoboCicero]

Hm, does removing CAN_SPEAK after you reclaim work? I have a bunch of friendly orcs wandering around my fort at the moment -- it's making cleaning up very easy, but I do want to give it another go in the near future.

[kefkakrazy]

I buggered something up, probably playing with CAN_SPEAK, and the orcs were... FRIENDLY. AN ORCISH CARAVAN! THE HORROR!

So I took everything they had and deleted CAN_SPEAK from the orc raws.

[Raz]

Nice addon, but I don't like the fact that they ride spiders. Spiders shouldn't even be trainable at all.