Print

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

[CobaltKobold]

Spiders will fire through fortifications...if they can path to walk to their target. Otherwise, they won't.

This leads to the odd solutions like alternating doors.

[Nobbins]

Getting everyone ready as soon as a siege starts, then seeing them run towards the river, with no weapons, to get a drink. All the while charging at one fleet of kobolds.

[Reese]

Spiders will fire through fortifications...if they can path to walk to their target. Otherwise, they won't.

This leads to the odd solutions like alternating doors.

Or just set the door as unlocked, not pet passable; the spider will be able to path, but not move through the door.

[NW_Kohaku]

This isn't so much a facepalm on my part as it is just laughing at the stupidity of the way seiges sometimes go...

I was largely bored, not having any seiges because the goblins apparently decided to call off their war with me, but still chugging through because I was trying to get my major waterworks project done, plus finish all my absurd security measures to protect my dwarves from threats that don't appear.

Then I got the goblin seige that showed up that I talked about in the "gradual rise in difficulty" thread - only one goblin was a threat, the elite marksman who taught me that highly trained marksmen are completely immune to fortifications, and only stopped slaying dwarves because he ran out of ammo.  He was also the only goblin who actually managed to reach my gates (and promptly got caught in my very outer cage trap), while every other goblin just turned and fled.

OK, lessons learned, I'm two dwarves down, (and that makes 8 dwarves total, including the unfortunate accidents, I try to run a fairly safe fort) but ready for the next wave!

It shows up:  This time, they are led by legendaries, goblin local leaders, all three squads!  Umm... wait, what's this?  One of them's MISSING BOTH LEGS?  His socks and boots fly off as soon as he appears, and he pretty much promptly falls unconscious from the pain.  The goblin invasion stops because they don't know how to do anything but follow the leader.

Then the last living fire imp who is missing an arm because of picking too many fights with wandering unicorns regains consciousness long enough to chuck a fireball at them, and torches the whole squad.

VILE FORCES OF DARKNESS, BABY!  Slaughtered by random wildlife that is bleeding out!  OH YEAH!

----

This, however, was only one squad.

The other squads (which had marksmen in them) came as per normal.  Now, because the dwarven caravan had come, I had marked some nearby narrow leather crap for trading.  When the gobbos came, I forbid them going outside.  So my dwarves would try to go outside to pick stuff up, then realize they were outside, and turned around... then went to try to pick it back up.

Because "outside" would be in shooting range, I decided to forbid that crap.  They wouldn't pick up forbidden things, right?  HAHA! NOPE!  That just means that they'll keep trying to go there, AND when I marked that stuff off the list in the trade depot, they STILL went for it.

So, I unforbid the stuff, THEN mark it off the trade depot, and FINALLY, it works... only, my dwarves ARE STILL GOING FOR THE CRAP!  They are listed as having "No Job", but they won't go back until they stand over the crap that they aren't even going to pick up.  Activating and deactivating them in the military does nothing. The gobbos are getting close, so I activate the dwarves in the military, and station them back inside my base.  HAHA! TOO LATE, SUCKER!  They decide that as newly recruited army dwarves, the best thing they can do is make a headlong suicidal charge at a dozen goblin marksmen.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU-

Hang on, it gets better, I'm still trying to get my dwarves to stop killing themselves!

Now, I savescummed that last piece of beautiful bug results away, because I don't consider it cheating to undo what I consider a flaw in the programming.  (And not being able to prevent your people from going outside by declaring it forbidden to go outside, forbidding the items that are outside, and removing the job order that would make them outside IS A GODD BUG.) 

So now, no more unarmed civilians (including the mayor) running headlong into goblin bowmen!

Wait, why are my wrestlers running out into a crowd of bowmen?

Oh, remember that part where I stationed them outside?  Yeah, they won't listen to that order until they actually go stand at the point that they had previously been stationed, and not even deactivating them will make them reconsider their pathing once they start moving.

So they run headlong into a dozen bowmen and get slaughtered while they have that blue "?" trying to figure out whether to follow orders and not stand out in the open when they are getting shot at, or just rush headlong into enemy lines. (They chose the latter).

Savescummed.

So now, I LOCK THE GODD DOORS near the trade depot/enterance.  They ram head-first into a door (why doesn't it open?  What's Locked mean?) before running outside to get slaughtered, get the red "?" which means they are trying to find another path, then realize that HEY! They're not supposed to stand outside like total sitting ducks anymore, they're supposed to be sitting behind the blind corner so they don't get turned to pincushions! 

Yay! problem averted, right?  HAHA! You haven't learned anything yet, these f ers I'm leading are worse than godd lemmings.  Lemmings just march blindly into danger, THESE dwarves find inventive new ways to GO OUT OF THEIR WAY to kill themselves.

OK, so now I have just a few civilians that I can't clear out of this hall because I'm just locking the d doors.  So they go on break.  Hey, since we're on break, let's go chug a few beers!  Hey, there's that barrel of beer out in the enterance that somone dropped because they were hauling it outside for no good reason when the outside got forbidden! Let's drink the booze that's right out in the open just as the goblin archers are coming, even though that barrel has already been forbidden!

Savescummed. 

At this point, I'm saying "F     it, traps only, no casualties, FINAL DESTINATION!"  So, I selectively lock and unlock doors to prevent anyone from getting to the main hallway, and let some of the dwarves who want into the fort proper back in.  Then I notice one of my dwarves that, instead of eating in the dining hall like a good dwarf, decided to drink the booze in the barracks decides to dump something at the exit of the fortress.  ARROWDED!

SAVESCUMMED!

I'm literally saving every 5 steps at this point, just trying to figure out what every single one  of these twits is THINKING, as they try and outwit me to find a new way to jump out in front of this firing squad against MULTIPLE DIRECT ORDERS.

I swear to god that Activating and Deactivating dwarves was supposed to AT LEAST make them re-path what they were doing, but NO!  They are DEAD SET on destroying themselves!  If I can't get it this time, I'm breaking open Dwarf Companion, and TELEPORTING these twits to the bottom of my (still dry) water tower, just so that, hopefully, they won't be able to find their way out in time for the goblin seige.

---------------

edit: Oops!  I forgot to censor myself.  For some reason, I broke out into swearing like a dwarven sailor finding out his rum was replaced with seawater.

Replacing all curse words with FUN!

[Doomshifter]

-huge quote-

Wow. Just... wow.

I mean, I know dwarves are dumb, but... they were actively seeking death! You'd think maybe they hate you or something!

[sproingie]

Armok thirsts, and he won't be denied.

[darkflagrance]

You should just let them die for their stupidity. What's another soapmaker here and there? Their corpses will look spiffy decorating the walls of your crypts.

[NW_Kohaku]

Oh, and hey, here's an additional bit of fun!

Turns out, I was glancing over at Dwarf Therapist in between waves of goblins, and I saw that one of my dwarves was actually in the "unhappy" zone.  I looked her up to see why she was unhappy, and the reasons were "Starving" and "Dehydrating".

Whoops!  I had built a floodgate at the bottom of that still-dry water tower, and because some dwarves were clearing stones out of the dig site, they had been shut in, even though the floodgate constructor had not been.  This wouldn't have been a problem, because I had concurrently built a lever, and linked it to the floodgate as soon as it had been built... but then I was under seige and savescumming for a couple days, and completely forgot about the guys at the bottom of the well!

Good thing I caught this with Dwarf Therapist... now if only I could remember why I looked at Dwarf Therapist in the first place...

[NW_Kohaku]

You should just let them die for their stupidity. What's another soapmaker here and there? Their corpses will look spiffy decorating the walls of your crypts.

These aren't soapmakers.  One of them is one of my five-skill-legendaries mayor.

And the first one involved about 7 dwarves, three of which had been trained in skills I really use, like weaponsmith, and the wrestler had 8 ranks in wrestling, 14 in record keeping, and 8 in pump operator.

In fact, in the second wave, that same wrestler, for COMPLETELY inexplicable reasons, went rushing out to take on a completely fresh squad of goblin pikemen (plus a legendary local leader elite lasher) solo after I managed to kill off all the marksmen wave (except for one who managed to limp off the map with no kneecap) by letting them hit my traps, and ambushing them with my marksdwarves from my bunker as the survivors fled. 

(One of my marksdwarves also inexplicably rushed out into the field from inside the lower level of the bunker, then ran back inside, even though it was a 100-tile trip each way, but this occured between waves, so I didn't get too frustrated by it... I actually think he wanted to pick up one of the bolts he fired, in spite of literally standing on top of a bolt stockpile in the bunker.)

edit:  Savescummed away that last wrestler running out there.  He actually was doing well against the legendary goblin lasher and two goblins, but then he got hit by the horde, and was pretty much ripped limb from limb in an explosive fashion.  My six marksdwarves popped up and lit the goblins up like a candle, but they couldn't take down enough of them to matter to the wrestler.

I'm just deactivating my non-marksdwarves (getting them some kills is NOT worth this headache, they can just wrestle the 40-odd gobbos stuck in cages all around the surface once I finally have enough free dwarves to collect them and I build an arena), and keeping my marksdwarves hidden below my fortification level on my bunker

[CobaltKobold]

...Wow.

[NW_Kohaku]

Oh, and I think I've figured out why, of my 6 marksdwarves, only one, and occasionally two, were actually being useful.  (Also, maybe why a marksdwarf went running OUT of my fortress to grab the stack of bolts the goblin marksman had.)  You see, while my USEFUL marksdwarves were sitting in their bunker, on top of a iron bolt stockpile produced as a side-product of training my smiths, my MORON marksdwarves had quivers with a single elf bone arrow inside it, probably leftovers from training.  This means that, after firing one bolt (into the fortifications, because they were so excited to see goblins that they prematurely ejac fired their crossbows without actually moving up to the fortifications, then decided that the dead goblin marksmen outside had shinier crossbow bolts than the stockpile they were literally standing in the middle of at the time.  As such, I STILL have the same pair of marksdwarves running out to grab more crossbow bolts from dead goblins even as the goblin squad is heading directly for them.

(That, or, since it is "close to their station", the ammo-less dwarves think that they can just run 100 tiles over to bludgeon the gobbos to death with their crossbow instead of just picking up the ammo they are F ING STANDING ON.)

edit: There were five squads of goblins to start with (I actually didn't see them all at first).  I have killed or routed 3 of them.  One was killed by a fire imp throwing a fireball.  The last has a goblin local leader who is continuously unconscious because of the damage he had suffered in worldgen, and as such, isn't actually moving.  I've pretty much just let my dwarves outside again, because my aboveground farm (even though it is inside, it counts as "outside" for some stupid reason, just because it was once outside) is going to have an entire season's worth of crops rot on the vine if I don't.  (It's the 2nd of Sandstone, Late Summer.  That means the seige has been here for almost two straight months, now.  And this is the second season in a row for these seiges.)

Then the game pauses.  A dragon is rampaging.

I didn't even get to secure the cage with the titan that just rampaged on map 2 months ago, and I get another dragon.

I should point out that I haven't had ANYTHING, not even goblin ambushes, for the past three straight years.

When it rains, it f ing convinces your dwarves to bust down the levees themselves so they can drown.

[BigD145]

Oh, and hey, here's an additional bit of fun!

Turns out, I was glancing over at Dwarf Therapist in between waves of goblins, and I saw that one of my dwarves was actually in the "unhappy" zone.  I looked her up to see why she was unhappy, and the reasons were "Starving" and "Dehydrating".

Whoops!  I had built a floodgate at the bottom of that still-dry water tower, and because some dwarves were clearing stones out of the dig site, they had been shut in, even though the floodgate constructor had not been.  This wouldn't have been a problem, because I had concurrently built a lever, and linked it to the floodgate as soon as it had been built... but then I was under seige and savescumming for a couple days, and completely forgot about the guys at the bottom of the well!

Good thing I caught this with Dwarf Therapist... now if only I could remember why I looked at Dwarf Therapist in the first place...

I usually try to build my floodgates and set up a Pull Lever at the end of the list.

[NW_Kohaku]

Just for funsies, I went ahead and let the dragon rampage without doing anything.

I had already set my dwarves to cut away a bunch of ramps near my enterance, so that you couldn't just walk over the mountain, down a nearly shear cliff, and just u-turn into my fortress's enterance, and was cutting it so that the corners would lead into my cage traps, basically ensuring that anything not coming from due east of my fortress (which is still a field) would involve stepping on cage traps.  They didn't cut the right ramps in time, though, so the dragon managed to get through.  Some of my legendary miners tried to wrestle with the dragon.  They didn't deal damage.  4 dead legendary miners, 3 dead other highly skilled dwarves.  3 dead wardogs and 1 dead pet wolf.  Then the dragon blew up the drawbridge that is the only enterance into my fort, got confused, and turned around, and walked into a cage trap.

Fun, but there isn't much I have to do to prevent that from happening...  Really, all I need to is send out my useless suicidal wrestlers military dwarves as bait on the other side of the cage traps, and pull the lever on my bridge so they are the only dwarves that you can path to.

Fun fact: This is the last female dragon in my world.  The only remaining dragon is a male.  When he attacks (at this rate, probably next week), I will tame them both, and mod them to be matable, and start a dragon soap factory.  (Until then, I'll keep her in a cage near my chained Titan/goddess.)

Edit: now HERE's the real facepalm/just shoot me now moment...

I just forgot to backup my save before letting the dragon rampage and slay a half dozen legendaries and starting a tantrum spiral.  My last backup that I didn't copy over was from the very start of this seige.

I have to do THIS ENTIRE F ING THING OVER AGAIN.

heh  HAHAHAAHAHAHA! This.  This is terrific.


----

edit again: Playing through this once more, I am amazed by the fact that I can't pay any attention to the actual goblins, because I am spending all my time watching my dwarves, selectively locking or unlocking doors to let dwarves in without letting the damn things out.

I feel like Maxwell's Demon.

----

keep on editing:

Oddly enough, the gobbos somehow coordinated their attack this time, and the two melee gobbo squads hit my base at basically the same time, just after the marksman gobbos were almost utterly destroyed, which meant that I didn't have time to duck my marksdwarves back behind cover to re-ambush them.  Instead, it turned into a bloody slaughter as gobbos tried to rush the bridge in a rare display of bravery.

I have no idea how those gobbo squads managed to book for my bridge that fast, as it took them 8 more game days to get there last play through.  Still, the results are an impressive river of blood in the making, and my better marksdwarves racking up 10 kills each plus filling out every spot in their names.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(Apparently, my marksdwarf mother who juggles her babies between volleys of crossbow bolts and whose older daughter talks to her while she fights goblins has gained the title "The Annoys Simple of Men")

----

New facepalm, some of my useless marksdwarves are standing at the fortifications, with crossbow and bolts in hand, (and not out of ammo... although I AM on my last two stacks of bolts in my stockpile, which means I've already fired 200 bolts so far) NOT shooting at goblins 5 tiles away from them.

I have NO idea why.

----

My marksdwarf mother managed to reload and step back up to the task.  She's completely insane, and has hit martial trance, which is pretty impressive for someone who starts this seige off as "competent".  A surprisingly low number of goblins managed to flee.  5 actually got out of crossbow range (out of about 50, although 7 hit random outdoor cage traps for trapping wildlife), and only two of those have no injuries (some limping away on red legs or with an arrow embedded in their red lower torso).  The remaining goblins are unconscious with at least one red injury, and basically just waiting for mercy shots to finish them off. 

It's now the 23rd of Limestone.  I have 9 days to throw out the welcome mat for that dragon.

Now that I actually know what it is I have to do, this seige is actually kind of fun (and/or my brain broke, and I am confusing masochism with fun).  I wonder if anyone would like the save for the start of this season (or last summer) uploaded?

[Set_Beadra]

Cancel spam from an injured permanently unconscious cripple. And I accidentally tamed this spider. Meant to try and tame the titan I had captured but got the names mixed up and tamed the spider instead. Turns out I can't even tame the titan for w/e reason. I thought having a dungeon master made that possible.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[darthbob88]

Cancel spam from an injured permanently unconscious cripple. And I accidentally tamed this spider. Meant to try and tame the titan I had captured but got the names mixed up and tamed the spider instead. Turns out I can't even tame the titan for w/e reason. I thought having a dungeon master made that possible.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

While I refuse to make any certain statements, you can only tame animals which have the tag [PET] or [PET_EXOTIC], and the latter require the DM. If the titan doesn't have either of those tags, no can do. While we're on the subject, [trAINABLE] is the tag used to determine whether something can be turned into a war/hunting animal, and [CHILD:X] is the tag required to breed anything, with X being the number of years to adulthood. Use Dwarf Companion to make one of your animals another titan, get a breeding pair, and breed war titans!