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[Kontraband]

maybe not an english longbow man but a taff with a long bow may .  But that point aside what does it matter if u lose 1 limb or 2 on a medieval battlefield, the end result would be much the same.  what im trying to say is a single shot from a bow kills you dead and i think missile weapons do not need to be reduced in strength.

[Romantic Warrior]

quote:Originally posted by Kontraband:
<STRONG>Wells thats the power of missile weapons,  if u dont beleive me read about agincourt.  missile weapons are the bollocks and i dont think this should be toned down.</STRONG>

Modern scholars question both the extent of how outnumbered the English were(making the victory less outstanding) and how effective the longbow was. Both the battle and the longbow were used as tools of propaganda by the English, so the truth is hard to find. Regardless, all accounts agree that French still closed into melee, where Henry V was nearly killed. It was here that the battle was won. Despite how effective some people believe the longbow to be, it didn't find favor anywhere else.

[Funkadelic Jive Turkey]

Let's even assume that the English longbow WAS an awp pwnxz0r deth machine...I somehow doubt it had a fire rate rivaling an MG42; goblin technology on the other hand...

[Draco18s]

quote:Originally posted by Eagle of Fire:
<STRONG>The only reason why I rely on traps for defense is quite simple: a single goblin archer can kill or outright wound and stop at least half my attacking force before any melee combat is even near engagement.

Balance the fights, I'll be happy to fight. Remove traps and I don't really know what I'd do to simply survive...</STRONG>

Originally posted by sorbius:
<STRONG>marksdwarves?</STRONG>

Marksdwarves are not the answer.  Goblins move while shooting, marksdwarves do not.  A single goblin archer can murder at least three marksdwarves (even extremely well trained ones) before getting hit.

[Bovinepro]

A nice balance would be to have magic beat missle users, melle beat magic, and misslle beat melle!

[Digger]

quote:Originally posted by Draco18s:
<STRONG>Marksdwarves are not the answer.  Goblins move while shooting, marksdwarves do not.  A single goblin archer can murder at least three marksdwarves (even extremely well trained ones) before getting hit.</STRONG>

Fortifications behind the moat + marksdwarves?

[penguinofhonor]

.

[Stromko]

I think both camps are valid. One side enjoys the military arc, doesn't mind training up an elite, well-equipped army, and wants a stiff challenge that necessitates such an army. The other side sometimes just wants to play with the economy and fort design without worrying about being overwhelmed.

I'm hoping Toady brings back traps hurting friendly foreigners as an init option. Peaceful types can set it to 'no' and be pretty safe behind many rows of traps, while the warmongers require a big army to keep the trade route from being the death of them.

Moats will surely be defeatable eventually, just by letting siegers build a bridge out of logs or stone they find laying around out there, and more 'building destroyer' flags.

For now, I think that since by definition a raised drawbridge defense would cause your fortress to be shut off and inaccessible by both caravans and migrants, it comes with a good trade-off.

[Eagle of Fire]

I would not mind raising an "elite" army, with all the disavantages of having "heroes" who don't work, if I knew for sure they have a decent chance not to die without even landing a blow.

I don't think I'm asking much...

[Jayfrin]

Personally the idea of mor eintense seiges sounds good but the control of military units should be given entirly to the player isntead of jsut "patrol here" they shoudl be able to select an individual or many military units and say you move here or attack here it would make defendign easier with military and add micrommanagment aspect.

[Entropy]

I'm all for great sieges - very much looking forward to them.
That being said, I certainly do not send a bunch of melee dwarfs out to meet the invaders.  Goblin archers, with an absurd rate of fire, can mow down twice their number with ease.  Especially when you consider dwarf tactics are nothing short of idiotic.

Better control over troops, substantially lower rates of fire, and with better protection from armor and shields, would make things a little better (not to mention more realistic).  

A spattering of dwarfs wandering out to get turned into pincushions is just dumb.  A disciplined formation of dwarfs behind a shield wall advancing into the goblins has a good chance of surviving.

[Stromko]

quote:Originally posted by Eagle of Fire:
<STRONG>I would not mind raising an "elite" army, with all the disavantages of having "heroes" who don't work, if I knew for sure they have a decent chance not to die without even landing a blow.</STRONG>

Ranged attacks are a bit overpowered and have been so for a long time. I've had good luck this time with Legendary dwarves fully kitted out in exceptional iron full-plate, probably because they had completely epic stats from their amazing Conversation skills.

I remember engaging a squad of ten bow-goblins led by an elite bowgoblin, with my military being 10 Champion hammer-dwarves, 10 elite marksdwarves, and 10 almost-elite marksdwarves(of course half of my military was too busy or far away to show up to the fight), and taking no losses in the battle. Apparently my hammerdwarves even managed to get hits before the marksdwarves killed everything as I remember seeing foes flung through the air in many battles.

But I've just seen an adventurer with the same armor but without the advantage of stats bloated by convo skills, almost die a couple times while trying to close the distance with a goblin guard who was shooting him with a copper bow. A plain copper bow (half damage?), probably copper arrows (half damage), fired by a being who probably wasn't very skilled in its use... well I'm very frightened because somewhere in  this place there is an elite bow-user who won't have those disadvantages and so will logically kill me ten times over. Admittedly, many of the guard's arrows glanced off, it seemed about right but probably only because of the Material disadvantages and the high-quality armor.

I get the sense Toady likes the challenge as he didn't seem to mind getting annihilated by a few errant bolts on the 02/15/2008 dev-log.

(edit) And yes, in that fortress where I did well against goblin bow-users I was using shield-wall tactics.. of a sort. I tried to send in the champions first since they had shields and were much much cheaper to train, then quickly followed up with the marksdwarves. When it came to static defense I'd also place  the champion melee-dwarves directly in front the marksdwarves. It helped a lot,   even if they got killed it was a lot easier to train-up replacements.

[ February 23, 2008: Message edited by: Stromko ]

[ February 23, 2008: Message edited by: Stromko ]

[isitanos]

I believe sieges should be made much tougher: peaceful players can settle in an area without nasty neighbours, isn't it? You can see your neighbours at the site selection screen.

I like the idea of a goblin horde whose corpses slowly fill the moats or clog the traps: right now lots of creatures is usually associated with "slow", but I'm sure Toady could code up some "horde" AI with very dumb pathfinding, that basically charges behind a leader (or in front of a leader, more likely  . Of course managing all the combat and body parts would still be processor-intensive.

[Eagle of Fire]

The only time I ever tryied to raise an army, it was on the third year and I was getting sieged for the X's time. X being higher than the number of years I was there.

Out of spite of not having any immigration for as long as I could remember, I sent all the military I was training to meet the goblins after backing up my game, just in case. The goblins were outnumbering us 1 to 10, but they were divided in several group turning it 1 to 1.5. My group was constituted of 2 of each weapons, marksmen included and they were all equiped with iron weapons and armor of different quality ranges.

None of them even hurt a single goblin. There was only one single goblin marksman in the goblin group, and he killed 90% of my dwarves before they got to melee and the remaining dwarves (including the markdwarves who simply were too scared to do anything in front of the goblin charge) were wounded before they could land a hit.

That's when I decided not to bother with military ever again.

One version later, goblins stopped sieging altogether. I wanted to find more iron in my fortress but I could not find any, and one year and a half later the game crawled to around 10FPS and I abandoned the game.

I seriously doubt I could raise such a great army than you're describing in any game I play, much less have the time to train a weapon and armorsmith to the level required to have high quality weapon and armour...

[aha]

Bowgoblins? Release the cats and dogs - they'll waste their arrows