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[Hyperturtle]

For the most part, I've trapped the bejesus out of everything around my fort entrance.

I finally got enough dwarfs to get two squads of ten assembled.  They spar.  They rotate on and off (6 required in a group of 10).  I see their skills go up.

Then ambush!  Goody time to test out the combat.  And what do they do?  out of 16 dwarfs that responded, only two bothered to equip weapons.  Nearly everyone died.  The last goblin remaining had lost the lower half of his body (thanks to the axedwarf that remembered to bring it) but was crawling around and decimating my wrestling dwarfs. 

This item thing is even despite my removing the "any melee weapon" choice and saying "mace" or "sword" or whatever.  It was luck he was training with his axe.

Having them equipped with training items is just as a disaster, since they'll run off into combat with wooden swords rather than drop them.  Should I equip a wooden one and a real one?

Of course, this time around non of the goblins bothered approaching the entrance where all the traps were.  I think I'll reload from a save and just burrow everyone into my cafeteria and let the goblins
mow down the elf caravan that triggered this... I can make use of all of their wooden weapons and armor! ha!

[DarthCloakedDwarf]

Maybe you could give this thing a test run. It won't protect the dwarves outside a fortress, but the ones inside your fortress will be perfectly safe.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=55001.0

[Hyndis]

Three options:

1) Traps. Lots of spikes and/or discs. Stone fall traps don't do enough damage, but weapon traps still work fine.

2) Seal off the outside world completely. Always works, never fails. You can use an airlock system of bridges to let traders in.

3) Military dwarves.




The best way I've found to get the military working is to do this, in this order:

1) Build a weapon rack. Place it in a room, designate it to be a room.
2) Go to the military screen and create a new uniform. Set it up how you want and name it something you can remember.
3) Create a squad of dorfs. Preferably expendable dorfs.
4) When you create the squad it will ask you for a uniform, select the uniform you made in step 2.
5) Designate a burrow encompassing the entire surface. Call this burrow "surface" or something similar.
6) Go to scheduling.
7) Create alternating schedule that change each month. Rotate between defend burrow (surface) and no orders. Leave all 10 dorfs required for this.
Go back to the weapon rack that is your barracks, highlight your new squad and push T, they will now go here for individual training during their off months.


What these steps have done is to make your dwarves equip all of their gear, assuming it is available and your arsenal dwarf is not on break. During even months the dwarves will scour the outside world, attacking any hostiles spotted. During odd months they will do individual training, as well as eat/sleep/drink so they will not starve to death.

To ensure full coverage, create two squads. Have the schedules offset so that at any given time, 1 squad is defending the burrow while the other has no orders, which means they will do individual training.

This will give you 10 dwarves on patrol and 10 dwarves eating/sleeping/boozing/training at any given time. Go ahead and assign everyone plate armor, shields, and swords or axes from the very start, even if you don't have it available right now. Your arsenal dwarf will assign the gear to them as it becomes available.

Don't skimp on the armor though! Armor is EXTREMELY important. In the previous version it was all about dodging and shield skills, now its all about armor.

To detect an ambush so that your military dwarves will rush over there to start chopping things, just chain up a single animal at your entrance, so the ambush will be uncloaked by the sacrificial animal.

Alternatively, you can use a punishment burrow.

Make food stockpile and well at your entrance room. Make it a burrow. Assign dwarves you don't like to that burrow, so they will eat/drink/sleep/die in that burrow. Bonus points if that dwarf is a noble.

[Rotten]

Just curious, do you have an arsenal dwarf? I spent months trying to get my axedwarf to equip an axe RIGHT NEXT TO HER ASGFKUDYGD and she wouldn't. I assign arsenal dwarf, he makes equipment manifest, I now have 5 suited up, axe armored dwarves. All legendary at axes too. They chop enemies (even FB's) clean in two.

If you do, I would suggest not even bothering with training weapons- I have never seen dwarves spar, and normal weapons are perfectly safe with individual combat drills. If your dwarves are sparring, I don't know what you should do.

[Hyndis]

I don't use training weapons myself. Individual training works fine with regular weapons, and they never spar so there is no risk involved.

Just give the newbies masterwork steel axes and they're good to go.

[blackmagechill]

Canal a murky pool ful of carp into the entry chamber to your fort, and use retractable bridges. when they come, retract the bridges and watch the foul things eat those lashers like candy.

[Hyperturtle]

I have an arsenal dwarf, and he has his office and frequently does his assignments.

I just recently had an ambush, and some dwarfs ran into combat wearing silk and no armor and no weapons.  One guy ran off after a racoon and wrestled it to death while the goblins were shooting horses and donkeys and whatnot.  As for the dwarfs in underwear, I know at one point they had armor equipped.  And I have seen dwarfs walk around off duty with their armor on, so I have no idea what caused them to strip down.

I set them to station in my general work area outside, near the entrance, to wait for the goblins.  They eventually spread out all over the map, and I did get a lot of "rest cancelled, interrupted by goblin maceman" messages...

I might need to restart this fortress because it's carved into the side of a high cliff, with a gazillion access points (not entrances, just ways to visit) from up slope and down slope.

[delphey]

I didn't read all the above, but to make them equip non-suicidal weapons, disband the squad and re-make them.  For me this was the only way to make them unequip stuff. 

[zagibu]

I'm going with an airlock-entrance currently, but the problem is whenever those ambushers spawn, FPS drops down from 80 to 20 or so...

[ISGC]

I keep them constantly equipped and then send them down to cavern cleaning duty for practice.
The only function I've used so far is the kill order, order them down, and then take it off and they go lay about in their barracks for a while.

[Hyperturtle]

I agree, I am suffering from a pretty bad frame rate.  I know I could use some pathway improvement in the layout of my fortress, but... a badly planned fortress tends to stay that way!

When the goblins ambush, they thoughtfully do it from all sides.  I also noticed that when in the squad menu, the game doesn't necessarily pause, so I pick the squad, say kill, and the goblin has already left the zlevel.

[Hyperturtle]

yes time to restart the fortress.  I noticed my graveyard was 25 zlevels up from my fortress entrance.  The river is some 30 zlevels below... and most of the trip is down one or two square-wide ledges, which has proven incredibly difficult to defend, even with my underwear armored dwarfs.

[Hyperturtle]

Doh and I restarted with play now!  aagh fish dissectors and jewelers with only one miner!!

[stormyseasons]

airlocks are good. airlocks that you can seal up to keep the outside surface away for good are very good against sieges.

[beorn080]

Cage traps. Ambushes/sieges break against cage traps. Its not optimal or dwarven, but it does work. Also, you now have goblins you can play with in any way you want.