Print

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

[Bob Kelso]

It seems my little human burg of 67 has attracted the ire of the goblins, and come every caravan season 3 or 4 different ambushes spring up consecutively around my wall-less village, making for some challenging gameplay. Having 6 semi-experienced bowmen and as many swordsmen/flailmen helped me a ton, resulting in around one or two citizens getting injured/dying each time, but I feel I've been getting a bit lucky.

See, a common hotspot for attack is the trade depot near the great hall, where the caravan guards usually end up dispatching any threats. But given that my society works almost entirely outdoors, I'm scared to death of a sniper ambush near an area where many tasks are focused (i.e. felling trees, gathering wood, aboveground farming - I have roughly 8 woodcutters and 8 farmers) and thereby an outright massacre occurring.

That's where I'm unclear: Does an ambush first appear at the edge of the map like a siege does, but stays "stealthed" until the ambushers see a hostile target? Or do they spawn at any spot on the map and attack all nearby hostiles? If the former, I'm thinking of a security system where several "outposts" are set up around the perimeter of the map. I draft several civilians of questionable worth as sentries (recruits) and station them in the outposts which are 2 or 3 z-levels high and are accessed via a ladder/stairs to a small windowed room with a trapdoor, which I assume can be locked so the sentry doesn't go running to his death.

Unfortunately none of my migrants came with dogs, so guard dogs are right out, but I'm liking this sentry idea. I'm THIS close to editing horses in the raws so they can be trained into war animals, because goddamn, it's a frickin' horsplosion over here. Thoughts?

[Foehamster]

Ambushes appear at the edge of the map.  Either build walls to protect the town and escort your woodcutters or have lots of patrols.

[thobal]

Ambushes appear at the edge of the map.  Either build walls to protect the town and escort your woodcutters or have lots of patrols.

Unless the map is rectangular.

[Rowanas]

But assuming a square map, making horses trainable is child's play, but having sentries high up won't help. Ambushes are spotted by coming within 1 tile of a friendly/neutral creature, so patrolling sentries would work, held sentries won't.

[Grendus]

Chain up watchdogs. Ambushes target all of your creatures, including tamed animals. So the goblin wrestler feels a compulsion to go kill the dog, who makes a racket and alerts the town watch.

I'd recommend against using "questionable worth" haulers as sentries. If they go to sleep, eat, or drink when an ambush arrives, you're screwed. Animals currently have none of those problems, so guard dogs/kittens work very well.

[darkflagrance]

It is said that one night Rome was saved from destruction by a fortuitous watch-goose.

The advantage/disadvantage of the animal watch strategy is that unless you go to the precaution of positioning them in choke points and surrounding them with glass windows (they can spot enemies through those, or fortifications), you are guaranteed to have losses - be sure to forbid the watch animal corpses or prevent refuse gathering.

I did this with guard grizzly bears; the best part was letting my bone carvers then turn the resulting bear skulls into valuable goblin bone-encrusted trade goods.

[Grendus]

It is said that one night Rome was saved from destruction by a fortuitous watch-goose.

The advantage/disadvantage of the animal watch strategy is that unless you go to the precaution of positioning them in choke points and surrounding them with glass windows (they can spot enemies through those, or fortifications), you are guaranteed to have losses - be sure to forbid the watch animal corpses or prevent refuse gathering.

I did this with guard grizzly bears; the best part was letting my bone carvers then turn the resulting bear skulls into valuable goblin bone-encrusted trade goods.

What a waste of training ammo. And grizzly bears. Chain up those damn catsplosivinzing kittens.

[atomicwinter]

Why do you need forward sentries? The game already alerts you when the ambush is happening. I just get all of my dwarfs into my base, and my entire first floor is full of all sorts of traps. Ambush goes through the traps and kabam! They be all dead 

[Grendus]

Why do you need forward sentries? The game already alerts you when the ambush is happening. I just get all of my dwarfs into my base, and my entire first floor is full of all sorts of traps. Ambush goes through the traps and kabam! They be all dead 

Unless you're talking about the lag spike that you get (which can be caused by anything as simple as 20 dwarves canceling their jobs because they saw a woodchuck), then I have to say: huh?

Are you talking about elf sieges? Those are very different, either you pissed off the elves or your civ did.

[MrFake]

You could try a ballsy idea.  Build a number of cages equidistant around a desired perimeter, and assign a stray, non-cat animal to each one.  After a while, release the animals from their cages.  They'll stick close to the cages for quite a while, with a bit of room to roam, providing you with a statistically significant better chance for detection than a chained animal.  Goblins don't necessarily head for the closest kill anyway, so chained animals aren't the best choice unless there are a lot; you need something that can bump into the invaders.  As the animals deviate too far, or if they manage to get adopted, just assign a new one to the cage, wait, and release.

As a less ridiculous idea, train up a healthy number of steel-clad, wrestling and weapon-trained champions.  Assign them in squads of three and have each patrol a section of the perimeter.  One champion wrestler can take down an entire squad of goblins with little trouble, and three watch each others' backs.  You'll lose some when the bowgobs come, but hey, wrestlers train quickly!  For a 6x6 unmodded map, I can attest that three steel-clad champions can clear a siege on their own before it reaches the center area (bar bowgobs).

Use the right-side map to get an idea of holes in the perimeter: blue tinted tiles contain a fort native on some z-level.

[darkflagrance]

You could try a ballsy idea.  Build a number of cages equidistant around a desired perimeter, and assign a stray, non-cat animal to each one.  After a while, release the animals from their cages.  They'll stick close to the cages for quite a while, with a bit of room to roam, providing you with a statistically significant better chance for detection than a chained animal.  Goblins don't necessarily head for the closest kill anyway, so chained animals aren't the best choice unless there are a lot; you need something that can bump into the invaders.  As the animals deviate too far, or if they manage to get adopted, just assign a new one to the cage, wait, and release.

As a less ridiculous idea, train up a healthy number of steel-clad, wrestling and weapon-trained champions.  Assign them in squads of three and have each patrol a section of the perimeter.  One champion wrestler can take down an entire squad of goblins with little trouble, and three watch each others' backs.  You'll lose some when the bowgobs come, but hey, wrestlers train quickly!  For a 6x6 unmodded map, I can attest that three steel-clad champions can clear a siege on their own before it reaches the center area (bar bowgobs).

Use the right-side map to get an idea of holes in the perimeter: blue tinted tiles contain a fort native on some z-level.

That's relatively high maintenance outside of disposing of the inevitable animal corpses (the eventuality of animal sentries). Far more efficient just to guess where enemies tend to spawn and position animals in the general area between that area and a fortress entrance.

Edit: I will give you credit for ballsy. At least you'll get herds of grizzlies and foxes stalking the map this way.

[MrFake]

Hence it's a ridiculous idea.  But ... er ... it's Dwarf Fortress.  Reason and efficiency aren't even in the lexicon (I know, I checked the raws).