Print

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

[Chronas]

So I sent my squad of swordsdwarf trainees with wooden practice swords after him so they can skill up for a few months.

only wrestling skill can be gained from beating up an unconscious foe

[Paul]

I've been playing around a bit more in arena mode.

Battle axes reign supreme (steel and adamantine) for most situations. Unarmored, battle axes are deadly. Wearing iron armor, battle axes are still best - but shortswords start to have a better chance. Steel armor shortswords seem to be a teensy bit better, or at least equal - pulling off quite a few kills by simply bleeding the opponent from thrusting. Using all adamantine makes the shortswords pull ahead, winning almost every fight (funnily enough its almost always death by losing a bunch of fingers and ears and such, which are apparently not protected by gauntlets or helms).

So apparently shortswords are good against very heavy armor, but in most cases battleaxes are the best. Spears had a good showing for armored fights too, but they mostly just inflict red wounds and disable opponents and they wind up dieing to a bunch of pokes (one fight the spear guy managed to inflict red wounds to both the axe dwarf's eyes, then he bled to death). Spears would suck vs anything that doesn't bleed, though - so not very practical in fortress mode.

And hammers still suck against pretty much any situation unless made out of non-weapon materials (platinum is good), and even then they don't stand up to a good steel or adamantine battle axe.

[Craftling]

Yeah, I saw one of my axedwarves carve up four blind ogres in a few seconds, whereas my swordsdwarf never got around to killing one.
They both ahd the same skill level and both had only bronze weapons.

[Azkanan]

I've spent the last year fighting off Giant Bats, Giant Olmans, Giant Toads and little bastards called Crundles.
After all of that, I finally began to dig out a FARMING CHAMBER, and I had 30+ immigrants at once? I havn't anything to attract them with!

In any case, if I did get ambushed, I wouldn't know, seeing as all my dwarves are locked 40+ underground with a single 4-wide ramproad to the surface (which is kind of cool).
Sieges will be... Interesting.

[Dr. Melon]

I just close my drawbridge - there is no way into the fort when it is closed.

[de5me7]

the only difference ive noted in sieges is that the goblins bring animals with em, and megabeasts are far more common. My fort is about 6 years old. Ive had 2 ambushes, 2 sieges, 1 minor mega beast (a cyclops turned up in year 2) a major mega beast - titan, and one forgotton beast.

Ive found the combat to be very random, sometimes i kill loads with few casualties other times i loose lots of causlties (but i havent been inspecting the detail.)

[mrdvant]

How do you guys who're saying you have legendary fighters getting them? I have one legendary wrestler, who I think got that way in one fight with an ettin than showed up, but my weapon wielding dwarfs are only adequate and they've been training for two years.

[de5me7]

i dont have any legendary but i do have a number of adept spear and swrod dorfs.

Dorfs train best wen left to inactive. create  a new alert, put may be 1 training session, and a couple of patrols through areas with some mildly dangerous wildlife and leave the rest as unassigned. When inactive most of your squad will do individual drills. They tend to drill with the weapons theyve got. Most of my dorfs have very little armour skill, minimal sheild skill but good dodging, weapons skill, and fighting skill.

[mrdvant]

Alright, I'll give that a try. When you do that, do the off months count as not being on patrol? A lot of mine get pissed off by long patrol when I have them training every month.

[The Mad Engineer]

Bah!  My one man military does pelvic thrusts at the general direction of your sieges! (While under 40 z levels of stone, of course)

[RebelZhouYuWu]

My 16 man steel equipped dwarves do fairly well against goblins sieges.  I have lost a few but migrants replace them faster than I lose them and they are fairly well armored from all the equip I have gotten from the goblins.  I have around 6 sword dwarves, 7 spear dwarves, and 6 hammer dwarves (2 are stuck due to hospital bug, and one lost a leg.)

[Craftling]

How do you guys who're saying you have legendary fighters getting them? I have one legendary wrestler, who I think got that way in one fight with an ettin than showed up, but my weapon wielding dwarfs are only adequate and they've been training for two years.

3 recruits had a year long battle with 2 blind cave ogres, boosting them to legendary status. In the end we called a draw, but when they come back...

[Mr Frog]

Not a full-on siege, but I managed to weather an assload of huge ambushes that came after I struck adamantine far too early... and made 4 ruby-encrusted exeptional adamantine statues... and a 1 million dorfbuck artifact spear... yeah, okay, I guess I sort of brought it on myself.

Interestingly, the number of fatalities I sustained was far higher with just adamantine plate, greaves, high boots, etc. than it was after I put bronze and iron chain mail underneath. I'm guessing breastplates don't have full coverage (makes sense; they need to be able to move). My immediate thought was "Holy Urist, chainmail isn't just crappy platemail now!"

[Blood]

Just got my first siege in 2010.  16 crossbowgoblins, including one riding a Giant Cave Swallow.  This should be interesting.

EDIT:  They're just sitting at the edge of the map.  How disappointing.

[Azkanan]

Just got my first siege in 2010.  16 crossbowgoblins, including one riding a Giant Cave Swallow.  This should be interesting.

EDIT:  They're just sitting at the edge of the map.  How disappointing.

They're actually engaging in a new feature Toady put in, where they'll spend a few days planning tactics before attacking.