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[Mandaril]

*sniff* I am so proud of my military.

So, to start from the beginning. My military consists basically of 1 squad. I had 39 dwarves at the time of the ambush, 8 of them in the military. One dwarf who seemed to prefer pickaxes, 1 axedwarf, one hammerdwarf and rest were wrestlers/recruits. I had only recently made real weapons from iron for them, and I hadn't managed to give any real armor to any of them.

So, I get the ambush message and see that around 8 to 10 goblins have appeared in the middle of my wood cutting/plant gathering area, which is 20 to 40 squares away from my main entrance. One bowgoblin, maybe one speargoblin and rest were wielding maces. The goblins were approaching fast and I fumbled with burrow thing a bit, so I ordered my squad of 8 to rush out and save my civilians.

Military dwarves run out of my gates, and then I realized how to use burrows and alerts to keep civilians safe inside the food storage, but it was already too late: 2 civilians were already killed and the goblins were in pursuit of others.

For some reason my wrestlers reached the goblins first, resulting in 3 wrestlers dying. Goblins wearing iron weapons pretty much slaughtered them, while wrestlers were helplessly getting deflected by the iron armor. Then the hero of the day. Now known as 'Lòr Kadôlidos Kengokon Arceth, "Lòr Gemcalls the Steamy Burden of Strategy", militia commander'. Wearing his Iron Pick, Steel Cap & Bronze chain leggings, my Lòr single handedly kills 5 goblins. The other dwarves helped a bit, but Lòr did all the heavy lifting, with his heavy hits piercing through any iron armor goblins were wearing.

And in all this, Lòr didn't recieve a single wound. He is perfectly healthy without any need for medical attention.

I am so proud of this dwarf right now. Without the DF2010 improved combat reports I wouldn't have been able to appreciate him this much. Anyway, here's screenshots of the dwarfs stats:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler tags because of large size of the picture.

I see some criticism about the DF2010 combat system here, but this ambush proved it works. For me at least.

[lastofthelight]

I've not really mastered burrows, or even found them as anything other then a source of annoyance. The most I can do is go by hand and painstakingly turn my entire fortress into a burrow and add every dwarf to it, but that keeps anyone from going outside and getting supplies of any sort.


Since you like them I'm keen on your thoughts/tips.

[n00bs4uce]

The key to victory is neatly combed sideburns.

[Mandaril]

I've not really mastered burrows, or even found them as anything other then a source of annoyance. The most I can do is go by hand and painstakingly turn my entire fortress into a burrow and add every dwarf to it, but that keeps anyone from going outside and getting supplies of any sort.


Since you like them I'm keen on your thoughts/tips.

Actually, I did it just like you did, but I only left out military dwarves from the burrow list

I have personally no idea how to properly control the burrows. But someone elses insight is always appreciated

[Aavak]

I use multiple overlapping burrows. I'm not sure from your posts whether you know that a dwarf can belong to several burrows at once?

For example, when I first embark I designate the area I'll be digging into and setting up a quick sleeping hall, dining room and indoors stock pile (and an office for my book keeper and a hospital too, if I stay for a while) as the burrow 'base camp' and everyone is a member of that. Base camp only extends to the entrance of my camp, and a walled off out doors area used as a refuse pile so that my indoor dwarves can still clean up the place.

Then I mark everywhere outside as a burrow called 'outdoors' and assign my hunters to that burrow as well so they can go get fresh meat. If I use fishermen (I don't on embark, but eventually do) I assign them to this as well if there are lots of random pools, otherwise I create a burrow that reaches only to the lakes/river(sometimes only a small section of it) that they will be allowed to fish at, with a section of the burrow reaching back to the entrance of my camp.

I do a similar thing for wood cutters and planters, I find the parts they'll need to be able to access, make that a burrow while ensuring it links up with the camp burrow. If it's a small embark zone I may just put them into the outdoors burrow, but I generally prefer finer control.

Once my fort is big enough I start to manage my burrows internally too. Instead of one mega-burrow, I'll have 'districts', such as a noble only district, a craftsdwarf only district, a mason only district, etc. The beauty of this is that if I set the input stockpile in my crafts dwarf district to only accept Jet, for example, and my mason district to only accept marble, then I know that when I set up orders to repeat rock crafts and rock blocks, that they will only use jet for the crafts and marble for the blocks/doors/etc. I've gone as far as to have two masons workshops with their own districts, one only making furniture, the other making blocks for my out-side buildings, and having each one use a different stone... I admit I'm very picky when it comes to aesthetics, but I was like this before the 2010 update and back then it was a //real// pain in the backside to get them to make stuff out of the right material. I could rarely leave them on repeat orders for example, I needed to keep a much closer eye on things if I wanted to not waste valuable stones on building supplies.

Theoretically, though I've not done this yet as I've not lasted long enough to need to (unfortunately...) you should be able to set up workshops right next to one another, but just paint the 3x3 of the workshop in the burrow you want, then wherever you have your stockpile for stone (if you use one) make it out of an array of 5 x 5 stockpiles, each one set to store a specific stone. Then when you want a certain stone used for a specific task, you just paint that stockpile with the right burrow and the dwarves should do the rest. I'm not sure if it'll work as the burrows would be disjointed, but I can't see why it wouldn't. Likewise, this would allow you to do the same for metalwork too. Obviously this is more complicated and approaching the level of micromanagement of the old system but while that's true I think the end result is achievable with far fewer button presses than the old way was. And much less hauling into specific custom build storage piles that lie closest to the workshop so you can be sure the next table is made of andersite because your count absolutely adores it.

I hope this has helped illustrate some of the ways burrows can be useful. The stuff about stockpiles is less important but being able to restrict who goes out and where they are allowed to go is /really/ useful and something that's made keeping people safe much easier. Not to mention snatchers now /have/ to come indoors to grab the kids who are wandering on their own. Because they're never allowed in the outside burrows.

[Eduren]

I've not really mastered burrows, or even found them as anything other then a source of annoyance. The most I can do is go by hand and painstakingly turn my entire fortress into a burrow and add every dwarf to it, but that keeps anyone from going outside and getting supplies of any sort.


Since you like them I'm keen on your thoughts/tips.

Actually, I did it just like you did, but I only left out military dwarves from the burrow list

I have personally no idea how to properly control the burrows. But someone elses insight is always appreciated

Its actually quite easy. Make a Borrow of your "Safe" zone. Don't add people too it, just designate it. Then, in the Alerts screen of the military, create a new alert named "Danger" or something more creative. Select the alert, and on the far right should be a list of your burrows. Assign the Danger alert to the Safe burrow. Now, when an ambush occurs, you go to the Alerts screen and move the [Civ] tag to the Danger burrow by pressing enter on it. This automatically restricts the civilian population to the burrow. Then when danger is over, move [Civ] back to the Inactive alert.