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[Thunderstick]

My pride and joy at repelling my first Goblin invasion was matched only by my disappointment at seeing my troops immediately start throwing tantrums after the battle due to losing friends to tragedy.

Traumatic as battle may be, I think it's a little unrealistic for my military to suddenly turn on their friends after... their other friends have been killed. Besides, military dwarves should have some kind of military discipline. Right now, sparring strictly teaches weapon skills.

How about a way to teach your military dwarves to resist shell shock through military discipline? I think idle soldiers should be able to toughen up emotionally as well as physically. Perhaps gather for some kind of parade or drill?

Instead of two dwarves going to spar, you could have five doing marches back in forth in a barracks, or a separately assigned room.

[20,000leeks]

Drilling wouldn't really do *that* much to improve a soldier's resistance to shock, even if they were to drill for years on end.

But for veteran soldiers, you'd expect it to be another matter entirely. Maybe if there was a way to determine if a soldier had 'seen conflict', and that would affect them... maybe more likely to go berzerk, but less likely to be affected by witnessing death?

[AlStar]

I have a couple dwarves that say in their profile "He is getting used to tragedy." I'd assume that this is equivalent to shock resistance... or maybe it just means my dwarves are getting rather gloomy and pessimistic.
Anyway, how many dwarves did you lose in the siege?
Military dwarves tend to make friends with each other (since they're constantly sparring) so if you took too many losses all at once, yeah, they'd probably start going nuts.

[ October 30, 2006: Message edited by: AlStar ]

[Thunderstick]

I think I lost 3 out of 13 swordsdwarves in that fight while another got badly wounded. My swordsmaster was a KILLING MACHINE in that fight  

Here's another idea. Perhaps, if the dwarf who died killed X (2 or 3) monsters or members of enemy civilizations in a small time period before their death, their friends would be "encouraged by a friend's death as a hero" and get a significant boost in morale.

[Seryntas]

Death in battle is the only noble death.  Any dwarf who dies with a weapon in his hands and a song of battle on his lips (or while wrestling, too, I guess) should uplift his fellows with his courage.

[CogDissident]

I think that there should be a happyness bonus based on "avenging" a dwarf. Maybe something attached to friends of the dwarf who died, so if the killer is killed, it will give most of the happyness that was cost in his death abck as "revenge" happyness from having his killer put down. What do you all think?

[Shingo]

I really hate to butt in with a (somewhat) unrelated question, but how many years has it usually taken for you to encounter goblin sieges?

[CogDissident]

Year 5 is usually the first year for sieges.