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[Cypress]

I just started my first serious military fort. In the past I always relied on traps and atomsmashers and all the other good things, but this time I wanted to do it the non-overpowered way.
...
And it looks like I'm gonna have to keep looking. I drafted almost all incoming migrants, gave them no armor and no weapons, and let them train two seasons before setting them on patrol.
And with the exception of one guy who fell to his death in training, there have been no casualties. Whenever enemies appear my wrestlers tear through them like a chainsaw through wet tissue. I shudder to think what will happen when I actually Arm them.
Are my dorfs just kung-fu masters, or am I doing something wrong?

[darthbob88]

Well, for one thing wrestling, unarmed combat, covers dodging and avoiding blows as well as breaking kobolds in half. This is one of the reasons my early military becomes champion wrestlers before anything else, they become nigh-unhittable, and even at Great level, they dodge pretty damn well. Especially if you've got a massive army, they'll do terrible terrible things to anything they encounter. And on top of all that, you're probably fighting goblins, which are same size and DAMBLOCK as dwarfs, and possibly have a numerical advantage on ambushes, which leads to yet more effortless butchery.

[Acanthus117]

They're kung-fu masters. If you give them hammers or other weapons, it'll take them longer to train. It seems that wrestling training takes a shorter time than say, sword training.

[Cypress]

Update: my squad of four wrestler dorfs found an ambush of six gobbos, and tore them into fine gibblets. End results, six bodies, and one broken arm.

[Pkassad]

Expect heavy casualties if you run into bow goblins.  My current is almost on its 5 year fort I have lost 7 dwarfs, 6 to goblin bowmen, 4 were Champion wrestlers with only shield and the other was a champion wrestler in a full suit of steel armor. 

You will want to at least give your dwarfs chain mail, leggings, and a shield, if you can add helms.  Plate mail, gloves and boots are just nice to have as extra defense.  But when you encounter ranged goblins you'll want all the armor you can get. 

Also, the reason why most people start with wrestling for training is for three reasons.
1) It allows them to dodge better
2) Reduces sparring injuries when weapons are added
3) If your dwarf gets his weapon stuck in the gobo, he can still fight very well unarmed. 

I also suggest that you train up your marks dwarfs hammer skills.  It really sucks when your marks dwarfs get forced into melee combat, if they have decent hammerskill and a decent cross-bow, they'll rape who ever gets to close.

Also, when you arm them, dont send them into combat unless they have good skills in their weapon, they will not do well that way.

[Cypress]

I'll do it for the champions, but part of the plan for this fort was to have a very high casualty rate, just to study (among other things), tantrum spirals.
I've played a lot of very stable, very small forts, I want to try and make some stable big forts...so first I'm studying how they fail.

[Grif]

Are my dorfs just kung-fu masters, or am I doing something wrong?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[El-Ravager]

Champion Wrestlers, wich you will ahve after 2 seasons of training normally, usually make short work of most wild animals and other close combat stuff, unless they are vastly outnumbered. Its when the bows come that you will see casulties, thou if you give them shields as well, it will be less. Armor never seems to do much for me agianst arrows.

[sarack]

Try using the dig deeper mod. If you send unarmoured wrestlers against orks then the massacre of dwarven champions will change your mind.

[mizipzor]

In addition to Dig Deeper, you might want to check the Relentless Assault mod. I think its purpose is to have sieges earlier, stronger and more often.

[Satarus]

Dragons and Bronze Colosi will make short work of your champions.  Titans and hydras will have some trouble because they don't have the NOEXERT tag.

[the woods]

Well you don't really have to study how fortresses fail to make a big fortress, just start making a big fortress, no need to waste time pussyfooting around.

But if you want to murder your own dwarves in a fit of thanatotic madness consider catching and training prisoners.

Requirements:
Huge array of cage traps at fortress entrance
Huge array of donkeys and baby donkeys

Three small chambers (diagram below) connected to and seperated from each other and your main corridor by lever-controlled floodgates. They can be as small as 3x3 I guess, but should be bigger to give lots of room for lots of prisoners. You should also sequester this entire node away from your main fortress by drawbridge or a hallway full of cagetraps to catch those who escape.

Code: [Select]

Main hallway [x-A] Goblin Dropoff chamber
                                 [x-B]                           
                       Goblin chillout chamber  [x-C] Donkey dropoff chamber

[x-i] is "floodgate i"

Thing to do:

What you do is dig 1x1 channels above the goblin dropoff and donkey dropoff chambers. Open floodgate B. Toss a goblin in the dropoff chamber. Once he crosses into the chillout chamber by natural meandering, close floodgate B. You can do this with plain peons-and-levers system or flesh out a more clever design on your own using pressure plates and intermediary mechanics work. The reason for closing the floodgate is so that further animal haulers won't get afraid of the goblin down in the dropoff chamber and run away, ruining everything.

Toss one baby donkey into the donkey dropoff chamber. Open floodgate C. The goblin will kill the donkey and get some points in the weapon he used. I did this a bunch of times in a previous game and got a goblin up from no stats to Extremely Strong before sending him to an arena. One baby donkey will not be enough, so you have two options:
0. Wait until the goblin goes back to his chillout chamber, close floodgate C, drop off a donkey, open floodgate C repeatedly.
1. Drop off like thirty donkeys and let the goblin kill all at once.

Similarly you can add in goblins one-by-one to the chillout chamber (recommended) or several at a time. Just make sure that currently imprisoned goblins will not be visible to the haulers tossing them in the dropoff chamber, or the hauler will run away and leave your level-1 goblin to get wasted by a mob of drafted maggot milkers. [Easy option I just realized: do that and draft no military. The goblin will kill everyone and the dwarves will just try to run away.] You should add some intermediary floodgates to help control this.

Anyway you can add bigger animals once the goblins start getting better attributes and can kill more without getting exerted. You can train your prisoners and also add angst to the baron by sending the consort to pull a lever next to floodgate A that opens it, raise the drawbridge, and open floodgate B. The goblins will tear the consort apart and the baron will get mad sadpoints. Let the freed goblins wander into cage traps and toss them back in.

When they have built up skills and attributes and a large number, turn them loose in your fort. Station your military as close to ground 0 as you want. If you want to test unarmed recruits station them  on the opposite end of the map and draft everyone in the fort.

[Dude_Jebawe]

Are my dorfs just kung-fu masters?

That depends, are your cats fast as lightning?

[Hyndis]

My military usually consists of completely naked (aside from innumerable layers of mud, vomit, and blood), unarmed dwarves with wooden shields.

They terrorize and destroy absolutely everything, without any casualties, and they do it in a manner of seconds.

The reason being they're naked and unarmed is that their masterwork steel plate is still in the workshops, being decorated with bling for the past 3 decades.

Only when I deem their armor to be sufficiently blinged out do I allow them to put it on. Same deal with weapons.

[Akura]

Dragons and Bronze Colosi will make short work of your champions.  Titans and hydras will have some trouble because they don't have the NOEXERT tag.

Not really, since my Xaolin Dwarves fought two dragons; the first one only crippled a Marksdwarf, and killed one probably with fire(it didn't say "...died in the heat", though), and the second was annihilated almost instantly, without so much a scratch on my dwarves. Haven't seen a Bronze Colossus, but I figure they'll just break off its arms and legs. What's it gonna do then, sneeze on them?
Then again, it might... it is DF after all...