Previewing Edit: I took so long to type this damned thing up (House was on) that three posts were made whilst I thought up something actually applicable. To these three:
Tack: Why thank you. I believe arguing over whether to implement digging or not is bad and a derailment. I think an argument over -how- it should be implemented (and combated -muahaha!) is a part of this thread. Siege camps? Damned if that wouldn't look awesome. Invisible enemies? Agreed. More champions? I'm a bit iffy on that as I've only had wrestling champions, but I've heard reliably that most others take a helluva long time to championize, so perhaps. I see nothing wrong, quite honestly, with spicing up a siege. That makes it more difficult, which is -needed. See post below though on limitations.
bjlong: Could be cool, them having a defense around their siege camp. Could be very interesting...
irmo: I utterly agree on different degrees of sieges and a sort of difficulty curve. See post below, of course. Aheheheh, I might be one of those people you just mentioned, bar that I set out next to the tower for the -purpose- of my small commando team of dwarfs to bring down the fortress, asymmetrical warfare style. I see no problem with others closing off tunnels or filling them in.
On to my original post!
Tunneling is dangerous, unreliable, slow and difficult. They will try to find a way to use any weak spot before tunneling: it should really be a measure of last resort.
I just wanted to quote this because it's one of the most reasonable requests in this entire thread, nae, the entire forum. It is a statement well-evaluated, and I feel it's been unnoticed.
I have always thought that whatever can be done should be done in terms of war- to z-level 15 with your fancy fortress, bad things happen to people who don't necessarily deserve it! Enemy masons, miners, siege engineers and operators, mechanics, siege weapons that can destroy constructions, biological (dead body lobbing), chemical (lighting the place on fire through alcohol bombing and other such things as well as poisoning water sources), and magical warfare (The old form of nuking a place- turn everyone inside a certain zone into ash or the like), and enemies that can flood a fortress with fire and water! The enemy will do all to end your lives! But I realized something- Goblins are greedy SOB's. Hateful, immortal, enslaving, child-kidnapping, creatures of rage that want to destroy... but greedy. If they're going to invest in sieging a place, they're going to do their damnedest to get a payoff to make their losses (which I guarantee each and every one of us will die making sure their victory was one soaked in their blood every inch into our domain) worthwhile. They won't flood our fortress and funnel magma into our entire dwelling if they want to take it. There's lengths that they won't go to to take down our fortress. And that must be recognized, and used to our advantage. They might not want to destroy their spoils... What should stop us? If they tunnel into our residential district (and you're paranoid, overplanning, and militarily-dictatorially inclined like myself, having floodgates, traps, and all sorts of nasty things planned for any thing that thinks they can take my fortress without a fight)... Seal the area. Pray for those locked inside. Make a memorial to their sacrifice. And tunnel in magma to the location. The tunnel leading into your residential area will be flooded, and anything still underground will meet a death more terrible than a quick slit-throat.
Along the similar line of thought: the activity should be scaled, as previously stated. The goblin high-priestess of sodomy won't come down from her tower to turn every dwarf outside your fortress into pillars of salt if you have only a measly million monies to your fortress's name- theoretically, of course, since I don't know how a magebomb would work and am only using the pillar of salt thing because it's what came first to my mind due to my first catholic school. But the point still stands. Goblins, any creatures aside from HFS, who destroy because they
like it, who are sentient, won't utterly destroy what you've made when it could be theirs. This provides a difficulty curve in sieges. Wealth goes up, so should your ability to defend yourself, in theory. But when the shit has really hit the fan, and all the troubles of the world have come home to roost, you had better be prepared, because you must expect no quarter- and you must be ready to give none, as always.
A simple phrase to remember will generally keep you alive through the whole of these things:
Prepare or die.Substitute in the expletive of your choice to reinforce the point. There is absolutely nothing more difficult than trying to survive a siege with absolutely no defensive preparations. Don't wait for a vile force of darkness to arrive. Don't wait for ambushes. Don't wait for snatchers, or kobolds, or even curious wildlife (namely the type curious to see if dwarf is digestible). The first thing you do is find a suitable, defensible location. I'm surprised Defensible is a word and "defendable" is not. But I digress! Defensible location! If you're in a somewhat hilly area, use hills (if possible) to cut down on how much wall construction you'll need to do later and hook them up together with that lovely construction as of yet impenetrable, the wall. Or a fortification with floors over them so you can have people patrol over the top and start shooting things if they see something getting within five miles of your fortress with so much as a copper dagger. If you're on the plains, channel out a perimeter, which you may later floor over and enlarge to suit your needs. If you're on a mountainous area, take off the natural up-down ramps all about you and start tunneling in. Always build around advantageous natural resources, like a river (not full of carp). START DEFENSIVE CONSTRUCTION IMMEDIATELY. Do it back-to-back with preliminary mining operations, stockpiling, and setting up fields for farming underground. Get it all done, and get it done quickly. Mine out separate areas to allow your fortress compartmentalization, such as an utter isolation of your trade depot from your fortress. Any opening to your fortress is the most obvious liability. In addition to the nasty things I use with my Trade Depot in case I start getting lip from the traders, I set choke points, traps, turns, and all sort of nasty things to stop anything and everything from getting into my fortress, not the least being a ballista at the end of a long (1x20 something usually) hallway right before entering my fortress, and the ground to get THERE is strewn with traps, weapon, stonefall, and cage. When your primary weaknesses are covered, focus wholly on fortress management, such as farms and whatnot... But a hidden addition is to make little airlocks, three by one hallways to all locations instead of just a hole where you plop a door and be done. Floodgate, spike trap hooked up to a lever (mainly because I haven't learned whether I can place pressure plates and a spike trap on the same tile yet), second floodgate. Nasty things. Get inventive, get creative, and make sure you're getting lethal on the whole. Certainly you can focus on dwarfy projects such as an arena or a Cathedral to Armok or a Mead Hall fit for gods... Just be sure they can all be sealed off, at any given time.
Above all, do not underestimate any army, fortress guard or military. Those layabout fortress guardsmen can and will be the salvation of your fortress if your soldiers have left a hole in the line. Train everyone to champion in wrestling, armor, and shield first go if possible, but always wrestling. Specialize after that- I lean towards axes, hammers, and marksdwarfs. I really don't see the need for much else. Arrows for range, axes for general dissuasion through a specific loss of limbs, and hammer for when organ damage won't make your enemy blink (and, I admit it, I want to see an enemy fly thirty tiles into a tree and -explode!-). Your military will be your most mobile fortress defense, but also your most costly. Take care of all your military dwarfs, and you can safely expect them, with proper stationing, patrolling, weapons, defense, and training, to take care of you. For a fortress so prepared, let this be your anthem, let this be the anthem of all your fighting dwarfs to their last breath, knowing that they can and must hold their position for the safety of all within the base:
Not one step back!
I think I got rather more into that than I expected I would. What can I say? I love the fighting and planning aspect of DF. I think I'm almost in a strange mood to create a pure defensive tactical thread...
Now, a summary:
((AI improvement of enemies)^(tactics+strategy))+"Combat Engineering" - cheap stupid pointless abilities and things making the game harder without a reward corresponding to how hard the difficulty was and or without realistic reasons for this increase in difficulty = Starycat's Algorithm of Awesome Difficulty
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Topic: Goblin advanced Sieges (Read 9439 times)