Well, not WITHOUT metal, but I decided to start a Faerie Fort on Phyllite and Schist, meaning not much chance of anything useful out of the earth. It's an Untamed Wilds freezing Taiga with 2-level aquifer (otherwise no water) surrounded by a terrifying tundra, and Rysith's Orcs loaded.
We got through the aquifer by the end of the first spring, and in the process made sure that we could farm on the surface even in a freezing biome, something I was only 95% sure of. Our mining confirmed my worst fears; we have nothing in this area but zinc, meaning nothing useful. Even some tetrahydrite would have made all the difference in the world.
Thanks to not taking an anvil, we had plenty of wood and "soft" craftfey skills (stonecrafting, boneworking, leatherworking) plus a nice set of animals; two breeding pairs of elk, 2 cougars, and two cats. In addition to this we got a mule and a muskox as draft animals. We ate the mule and kept the muskox around until a mate could be provided (this eventually happened, but that's not imporant right now). I'd packed some rhesus marque leather along, so after the necessities of life (and a bloody big perimeter ditch) were provided we settled down to making leather armour, shields, and wooden bows.
On previous games with the Orcs, I'd defended myself earlier on by using a large perimeter ditch (later backed by a fortified wall) with a single drawbridged entrance flanked by fortifications. Outside this channels create a 3-wide entrance corridor which is loaded with weapon traps, and flanking channels are set up to make the orcs approach in a more predictable fashion (making their marksorcs unlikely to approach close enough to fire through).
*=channel
I=wall
#=fortification
x=traps
B=bridge, channel underneath.
*I
*I
***************#
*#
*#
*************#
xxxx B
xxxx B
xxxx B
*************#
*#
*#
***************#
*I
*I
Please excuse wonky lines. Problem here is that in previous games I'd had sharpenable rock and glass to use as trap components, here all I had was wood. I produced lots of spiked wooden balls to fill the traps, not knowing if they'd be effective at all against the big, brawny Orcs. To my surprise they actually wound up doing the job rather nicely, sometimes completely destroying an orc wrestler's body (about 3 weapons to a trap, often with a joker like a couple of (large copper daggers)) but that's not important right now.
First Orc attack, in the second summer, was beaten off really easily. The orc warband of Stabbers (spears and Pikes) and wrestlers got split up rather badly by undead wildlife crossing the tundra and reached the gate in dribs and drabs. We had eight champions and elite wrestlers in leather holding a mixture of wooden bows and assorted melee weapons bought from the first caravan (such as a bronze battle-axe), backed up by a trembling mob of miners (all founders) woodcutters drafted to hold the gate. Disappointingly, only the Orc vangard (all but one wrestlers) were bought down by traps and dabbling bowwork before the others called it a day. Our loot consisted of one shield, a pike, and a set of stout chain to melt down.
The second orc attack of the following autumn was a near-disaster. In fact, it WAS a disaster.
I hadn't realised just how close my front gate (facing west) was to the edge of the local area, I had a couple of woodcutters and a hauler out working when an Orc stabber group appeared right on top of them and cut them off from the gate. A second mob of markorcs appeared more distantly to the north. I took too long to realise the plight of the woodcutters and by the time I realised I was actually going to have to order a charge, it was too late. We put the stabbers to bloody rout, but their swordmaster leader managed to chase down and kill the woodcutters and my axewielding-wrestler was left wounded in no-man's-land with the markorcs approaching fast.
My next decision was really stupid. I should note that the axewielder had done very good work the previous season cutting down Skuskoxen that had been harassing my migrants and I didn't want to lose him. I gave the civilians clearance to go outside, in the hope that one of them would recover the wounded soldier first.
Of course they ignored him and all ran into the teeth of the markorcs to try to...what? I'm still not sure. The Markorcs, B-movie heavies that they are, aren't great shots but they sure are persistent. They can't miss all the time. I have to charge again.
Of course, half my military are still checking out new ammunition, and in any case they don't have the shield training to take charge into the teeth of arrow fire in ones and twos. Charging in like this costs me 2 champions, 2 elite wrestlers, and four civilians including a founding mechanic, though we certainly do take down some of the enemy (including that prat of a swordmaster). I desperately order a fall back to the gate and discover I'm now down to 2 bow-wielding champions able-bodied, plus a third seriously wounded who is now fallen in a ditch. It looks like make or break time.
To my amazement, one of my surviving champions, against orders, decides he'll take his stand standing in the middle of the gate uncovered by the fortifications. He's totally in the open and exchanging fire with an entire warband, pine arrows against iron. He's had minimal bow training and his accuracy is not impressive, but something about the sight of him standing there really bothers the remaining marksorcs, and the siege is broken. They never hit him. Definitely a Fey moment.
In total here, we lost 2 champions (plus one badly wounded), 3 elite wrestlers, and 7 civilians. A hard loss, for a fort that only had 38 population to start with.
Orc losses were a swordmaster, 8 marksorcs, 5 stabbers, and about 15 wrestlers. Not enough. The close area edge made it too easy for them to escape. We captured a number of decent bows and quivers and some iron arrows, some shields and spears, a scimitar and the usual rubbish.
Mentioning the arrows brings up the REAL problem with playing without useful ore in your local area, it's not trading and melting, scrimping and saving, to get decent armour on your military. That's actually kind of fun. It's NICE to have every -iron chain mail- represent a real achievement rather than a result of basic management. Similarly, it's not having to rely on trade and capture for your weapons (except bows), that too, is rather fun and lets you fool around with things you normally wouldn't bother with.
The real problem is ammunition. You have to micromanage your ammo stocks quite carefully to cut a balance between having your bow-wielders shoot off all your ammunition in practice and leaving enough to let them train at all. A lot of the iron obtained from melting down the orc equipment got used to make more arrows, just to give me a safety net. Leading to the question, why is the same "military metals" criteria imposed on ammunition as on anything else? I mean, I can see why swords or armour shouldn't be made out of zinc, but why not arrows? Arrows only have to work once.
After the battle, I carried out a drastic cutdown on the civilian sector and drafted a whole bunch of people. This led to people training with the captured scimitar, with an (-iron long sword-) I'd got off the humans, with a copper morning star, with a couple of (iron spears), you get the idea. The next bunch of migrants in spring got the same treatment.
To prevent the orcs spawning a short distance to the west and surprising us again, we dug a channel along that local area edge, stopping a fair distance to the north and to the south of our perimeter. Orcs that spawn there in future will have a bit of a walkaround.
By the time of the next attack (third summer) we had 2 (functional) champions with bows and a degree of bow practice, 8 elite wrestlers (2 bows, 6 assorted melee weapons) and 6 wrestlers (handed bows at the last minute). The bow-champions and the meleeists had chain mail of some description. The attack involved 2 Orc Carver (Axeorc) warbands and 2 Mauler (maceorc) bands.
One Carver warband got split by the western edge channel, and aside from beating up on some Skelks accomplished nothing, since they couldn't figure out how to advance as a team with the ditch bisecting their path, but the others closed handsomely. My best archers were off duty at the time of the attack, so much of the early part of the action was dominated by the wrestlers-holding-bows, whose slow fire decimated the first mauler warband (one of these guys, an ex-ranger, got titles). Eventually enough orcs turned up to rush the traps. Each trap killed an orc (and bow fire killed more), but the leaders got past. One of these guys was shot by a wrestler, the other two fell in the ditch, where they were shot (by wrestlers). Eventually my guys with actual bow training turned up, and decimated the enemy. My meleeists are constantly trying to get to grips, but I keep reigning them back. Only one gets a kill. They're too frail to risk just yet.
My copper-morning-star person gets to swap her weapon for an (iron mace). I think that's progress.
Now we have to replace the ammunition before autumn.
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Topic: Playing without metal except for that kindly provided by Rysith's Retailers. (Read 1840 times)