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[lemonpieman]

Hey guys, I can't figure out how to capture wild animals. Groundhogs, in this case. I was going to set up a breeding center for the, but i can't figure out how to get them caged so I can dump them in the breeding grounds.

If there is no simple way of doing this, I'm open to crazy ways of doing it like using 1000 dogs to chase them all or some crap like that.

[Demonic Spoon]

Catching groundhogs, the Demonic Spoon way:



IF you look very hard and squint a bit you might be able to see that I've put cage traps all along the map edge. I have more wild animals than I know what to do with, the horrible part is that most of them are elephants. 

Though animals will wander into random traps scattered all over the place suprisingly often.

[SquirrelWizard]

If you dont have the patients to trap the edges of the map, see if you can exploit chokepoints.

not only will these traps collect animals, but will serve as a passive ambush defense (as it will reveal the ambushing party when one of them hits it.)

also, what i would do, is errect some ambush/siege capture traps. Which is a small constructed building that has a winding narrow corridor full of cage traps that leads to a chained up puppy. any predator or invader in the area will likely try to seek out and kill the bait animal resulting in it getting caged, should they overpower the cage traps (IE come in a big enough number) they kill the dog which is no big loss considering you'll likely have dogs coming out of your ears.

a note about this, when you first hear about an ambush or siege, make sure you forbid your traps, or else Urist McMechanic will try to run out and refill them with hilarious results.

and by hilarious I mean fun, and by fun I mean the standard dwarf fortress definition of fun.

[lemonpieman]

Alright thanks you two, that helped a lot.

[Quietust]

a note about this, when you first hear about an ambush or siege, make sure you forbid your traps, or else Urist McMechanic will try to run out and refill them with hilarious results.

Even better, simply forbid the traps the instant they are built and loaded, then reclaim them after the siege when it's safe to reload. For cage traps, you can forbid the cage as well, so your other dwarves won't go rushing to retrieve it.

[Ubiq]

Another option is to not have Animal Stockpiles and just leave the cages lying around until you need them. If you want them out of the workshop/forge and to avoid having Onul Onulsson, Mechanic Extraordinaire charge out to his unfortunate demise, then just build them somewhere out of the way and then deconstruct the cage when you're ready to load it into a trap.

[Untelligent]

Back when cliffs were goddamn flat instead of these wimpy slopes, I had fort full of natural chokepoints on a mountain bordering a rainforest.

I set up a couple rows of cage traps in each of my chokepoints and armed my hunters with melee weapons so they'd chase elephants all over the map.

[JubalHarshaw]

Is it just me or do Animal Traps + Capture Live Land Animal task always end up with vermin?

[sunshaker]

Is it just me or do Animal Traps + Capture Live Land Animal task always end up with vermin?

Yes that is the way it is supposed to work.

[sunshaker]

Hey guys, I can't figure out how to capture wild animals. Groundhogs, in this case. I was going to set up a breeding center for the, but i can't figure out how to get them caged so I can dump them in the breeding grounds.

If there is no simple way of doing this, I'm open to crazy ways of doing it like using 1000 dogs to chase them all or some crap like that.

Build an artificial choke points in areas where you see lots of animals (in one of my games I had herds of horses in one area, deer in another and a wolf pack in a third). The easiest choke points are channels, though you can use walls or fortifications if you want. Building the choke points you have two real options, the straight line with gap(s) and the "+", I personally favor the "+".

To build the line with gaps channel a "dotted" line (each dot being a 1x1 square that holds a trap) however long you like. Any animal or ambush attempting to cross that line will have to path through one of the dots and thus step on the trap. Downside is that often animals and ambushes will sometimes not want to cross the line and will just walk parallel to it.

To build the "+" find a good spot, leave the hub of the + intact (to place your trap as animals and ambushes will path through that spot) and channel each arm 5 or so squares long. Placing 3 or 4 of these in a semi random pattern through out the area tends to work really well.

You could build a large "dotted" line cross, box or grid pattern if you wanted to trap out an entire area.