Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[newguy12354]

I hate those silly chuck norris goblins with crossbows....

9 dwarves versus 4 goblin's ambushes. Out of the whole group of enemy, 3 are crossbowmen.

Out of my group, 6 elite wrestlers and 3 champions... All wearing FULL equipment made by my best metalsmith or whatever.

My 3 champions charge first, as usual and one get "one shot/one kill"ed by one of the crossbowmen. My 2 other champions go into martial trance and 3 elite wrestlers join the fight. As usual, my only jeweler decides to go outside and get thrown into a nearby pond, but that doesn't surprise me as it happens in every fight I got since my third fortress... XD

So fight continue, A few kill for my champions when both get wounded badly BY THOSE STUPID CROSSBOWMEN while my remaining 3 arrive for the fight. While my champions are getting thorn to pieces because they can barely fight back, my elite wrestlers attempt to save them, but get picked one by one by the crossbowmen. I let my dwarf out and ask for the drawbridge to be closed because my emergency military sucks and my fortress would be able to hold the ambushes without ever needing to go outside, but a crossbowmen decides it would be fun to sit there and pick anyone who dares approach my lever(Yeah, made the mistake to build it outside, I am dumb.)

Now, my questions:

1.Was it me, or I didn't stand a chance?

2.Bad luck or it is normal that my first champion got hit and killed with the first bolt thrown at him?

3.Why does in almost every game, I lose my only jeweler(Cause he seems to want to go outside when there are ambushes)?

4.What should I have done?

[Captain Mayday]

Now, my questions:

1.Was it me, or I didn't stand a chance?

It was you. You made a bunch of mistakes there.
Lever outside.
Engaging enemy crossbowmen with melee (and mere champions at that. Championship is where they only start learning how to fight. To fight crossbowmen they really need their legendary skills in wrestling and in shields.)
You need some crossbowdwarves. Soften up the enemy before they hit your guys.

2.Bad luck or it is normal that my first champion got hit and killed with the first bolt thrown at him?

Happens a fair bit.

3.Why does in almost every game, I lose my only jeweler(Cause he seems to want to go outside when there are ambushes)?

Because Jewelers have nothing else to do and tend to go pull levers and pick up stuff from corpses on the battlefield, during the battle.

4.What should I have done?

Crossbowdwarves
Traps
Lever inside
Train champions in wrestling. This helps them dodge all attacks, including ranged. Equipment is nothing against good skills.

[Org]

1-Were you using adamantine? Thats the only thing I use.
2-I never get crossbowgobbos. Only swordgobbos, wrestlegobbos, and macegobbos.
3-Make sure to order that ONLY soldiers may go outside.(Hit o, then i twice, i think)
4-Train more than wrestlers, get LOTS of marksdwarves. Easiest way is to make bone crossbows, and make bone bolts like crazy. Give all those you want marksdwarves into hunters, let them hunt. They will get up their skills.

[Gork]

* One of the most important skills in defending against x-bow fire is Shield User. Were your champions any good at it? Bolts have a high crit rate, so any hit can be deadly - your champion's early death wasn't that unusual.

* Ranged units are quite overpowered, if you ask a lot of people on these forums. Currently, the best way to fight back is with marksdwarves of your own (behind fortifications, preferably) or with dwarven engineering! Traps, moats and magmapults all avoid casualties during combat.

* Move that lever indoors, posthaste. Also, order civilians to stay inside and forbid your dwarves' corpses and belongings upon death.

[Captain Mayday]

* Ranged units are quite overpowered, if you ask a lot of people on these forums. Currently, the best way to fight back is with marksdwarves of your own (behind fortifications, preferably) or with dwarven engineering! Traps, moats and magmapults all avoid casualties during combat.

I feel that people usually just whinge about them being overpowered. They're not, really. The problem is more based in how attacks work with them. There is no time spent loading them, for instance. That's the real sore point. Hence legendaries look like machine gunners (although over the course of a fortress day they probably only shoot about 30 bolts)
With shields and dodging at high levels, they'll be hit a lot less often. To be honest, if you got hit by a crossbow bolt in real life, you'd probably be quite badly wounded then, too.

[Org]

* Ranged units are quite overpowered, if you ask a lot of people on these forums. Currently, the best way to fight back is with marksdwarves of your own (behind fortifications, preferably) or with dwarven engineering! Traps, moats and magmapults all avoid casualties during combat.

I feel that people usually just whinge about them being overpowered. They're not, really. The problem is more based in how attacks work with them. There is no time spent loading them, for instance. That's the real sore point. Hence legendaries look like machine gunners (although over the course of a fortress day they probably only shoot about 30 bolts)
With shields and dodging at high levels, they'll be hit a lot less often. To be honest, if you got hit by a crossbow bolt in real life, you'd probably be quite badly wounded then, too.

But if you had adamantine plate mail(like me), this happens less often.

[Captain Mayday]

* Ranged units are quite overpowered, if you ask a lot of people on these forums. Currently, the best way to fight back is with marksdwarves of your own (behind fortifications, preferably) or with dwarven engineering! Traps, moats and magmapults all avoid casualties during combat.

I feel that people usually just whinge about them being overpowered. They're not, really. The problem is more based in how attacks work with them. There is no time spent loading them, for instance. That's the real sore point. Hence legendaries look like machine gunners (although over the course of a fortress day they probably only shoot about 30 bolts)
With shields and dodging at high levels, they'll be hit a lot less often. To be honest, if you got hit by a crossbow bolt in real life, you'd probably be quite badly wounded then, too.

But if you had adamantine plate mail(like me), this happens less often.

Nearly never happens to my warriors... of course they've spent 30 years honing their art and can evidently destroy a dragon with a hammer strike or two. Might not be the best example.

[Jay]

* Ranged units are quite overpowered, if you ask a lot of people on these forums. Currently, the best way to fight back is with marksdwarves of your own (behind fortifications, preferably) or with dwarven engineering! Traps, moats and magmapults all avoid casualties during combat.

I feel that people usually just whinge about them being overpowered. They're not, really. The problem is more based in how attacks work with them. There is no time spent loading them, for instance. That's the real sore point. Hence legendaries look like machine gunners (although over the course of a fortress day they probably only shoot about 30 bolts)
With shields and dodging at high levels, they'll be hit a lot less often. To be honest, if you got hit by a crossbow bolt in real life, you'd probably be quite badly wounded then, too.

But if you had adamantine plate mail(like me), this happens less often.

Except that plate mail is utterly useless against piercing weapons.
You need to wear chainmail under it.

[jester]

3 other tricks for defeating ranged attackers:

1.  layered armour (briefly mentioned above)  set all you military to on duty, set them to no armour, wait a bit then set them to leather (you did dump all your crap leather armour on the caravan and make good stuff right?), then wait a bit and set them to chain, wait a bit then set them to plate. you should now have layers of all 3 types of armour.  This helps a fair bit.  Also use your first lots of steel for top quality shields, these are THE MOST IMPORTANT BIT OF ARMOUR.

2.  Meat shield:  chain up the biggest/toughest animals you can get (elephants are great for this, horses and cows will work ok, if not just use lots of cats) a bit infront of your fortress, give them a few layers of fortifications to hide behind if you are feeling kind.  bowgobs will happily blaze away at the closest enemy they can see, make that enemy something expendable and tough as nails.  Most gobs only carry about 25-30 arrows so they run out pretty quick

3.  ranged attackers usually come decked out in leater armour and move a bit faster than their mellee companions (at about the same pace as wrestlers though) therefor they are the first to hit your defences if they have a decent way to walk.  My cage traps on my bridge ( i use a huge moated courtyard with one 3 wide bridge)  mostly catch elites, bowgobs and wrestlers.  A "minefield" of randomly placed stonefall traps will work pretty well too.

[Martin]

I never engage ranged opponents in melee. It takes a long time to get a dwarf experienced in the right things to not get cut down. That's when you stop their advance out of range and engage with your own ranged units on your terms.

During combat I constantly pause and forbid everything on the battlefield. Nobody should be so stupid as to walk into a melee to pick up a sock.

[Solarn]

It was you. You made a bunch of mistakes there.
Lever outside.
Engaging enemy crossbowmen with melee (and mere champions at that. Championship is where they only start learning how to fight. To fight crossbowmen they really need their legendary skills in wrestling and in shields.)

Err... Champion is the title a dwarf gets when he is legendary in one or more weapon skills. They WERE legendary wrestlers.

[Captain Mayday]

It was you. You made a bunch of mistakes there.
Lever outside.
Engaging enemy crossbowmen with melee (and mere champions at that. Championship is where they only start learning how to fight. To fight crossbowmen they really need their legendary skills in wrestling and in shields.)

Err... Champion is the title a dwarf gets when he is legendary in one or more weapon skills. They WERE legendary wrestlers.

Champions, yeah, they need to be champions in more than just one thing.
Shields will help champion wrestlers. Sounds like you just happened not to avoid that one shot, and it got through shield and all.

[Solarn]

It was you. You made a bunch of mistakes there.
Lever outside.
Engaging enemy crossbowmen with melee (and mere champions at that. Championship is where they only start learning how to fight. To fight crossbowmen they really need their legendary skills in wrestling and in shields.)

Err... Champion is the title a dwarf gets when he is legendary in one or more weapon skills. They WERE legendary wrestlers.

Champions, yeah, they need to be champions in more than just one thing.
Shields will help champion wrestlers. Sounds like you just happened not to avoid that one shot, and it got through shield and all.

Ah, okay, I just misunderstood you then. By the way, I'm not the OP. Just to clear that up, since you seemed to address me as such.

I've got a bunch of Champion wrestlers in one of my fortresses as well and I just started to equip them with armor. So you say that I should concentrate on shields first?

[Shurikane]

At least your champs went and fought.

I had a siege of orcs coming one time early on in my game.  I placed my four champions past the drawbridge to get the matter over with quickly.

3 decided to go eat.

So, yeah.   

[Captain Mayday]

It was you. You made a bunch of mistakes there.
Lever outside.
Engaging enemy crossbowmen with melee (and mere champions at that. Championship is where they only start learning how to fight. To fight crossbowmen they really need their legendary skills in wrestling and in shields.)

Err... Champion is the title a dwarf gets when he is legendary in one or more weapon skills. They WERE legendary wrestlers.

Champions, yeah, they need to be champions in more than just one thing.
Shields will help champion wrestlers. Sounds like you just happened not to avoid that one shot, and it got through shield and all.

Ah, okay, I just misunderstood you then. By the way, I'm not the OP. Just to clear that up, since you seemed to address me as such.

I've got a bunch of Champion wrestlers in one of my fortresses as well and I just started to equip them with armor. So you say that I should concentrate on shields first?

Ehh, sorry, I was at work when posting that and got distracted. Shields give them a good chance to be able to block stuff. But you can train armour and shields whilst training wrestling. I typically fully armour and train before giving weapons out.