Print

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

[steve296]

Hi fellas.

Today was my first goblin ambush, and I had some issues I couldn't understand.
First off, after searching the forums, I switched the civilian alert status to "stay indoors", linked to a burrow which is completely inside the fotrtess. Then I set the two squads' alert to Defend, scheluding defend burrows. I hit resume, and what I see happening is that every dwarf, including the military ones (they get their civilian titles back, according to the announcements) retreating into the indoors burrow. That last bit wasn't part of the plan obviously, so I decided to use direct order to station them in the barracks (near the bottleneck entrance loaded with traps). Then I see that a dwarf (a fisher?) couldn't go inside in time, and is being chased by goblins. After 3 goblins get cage-trapped, and the other 4 chase poor Urist McCollateralDamage, I gave the order to kill the green fellows. After some stabbing and hitting, and a lot of vomiting, not to mention some mild-wounded dwarves, oh, and 2-3 dead pets (Rest In Pieces), the threat has been dealt with (at least I hope it was only 1 squad of gobbos). But there's a dwarf who cannot move, he's so wounded. And nobody seems to care picking him up to the hospital.

My questions:
a) How do you tell your dwarves to carry injured fellows?
b) Why did _every_ dwarf go retreattotheburrowslikehell, when I only set CIV to do that, setting both squads to defend the entrance hall & the explicit-indoors burrow? i.e. the military folks decided to go civilian, even changing back their clothes (only graphically I think - I use mayday green) and getting their civ titles back.
c) How often do dwarves die in their wounds, if they are treated properly? And how do you know if a dwarf is infected/has infected wound?

[Lytha]

My questions:
a) How do you tell your dwarves to carry injured fellows?
b) Why did _every_ dwarf go retreattotheburrowslikehell, when I only set CIV to do that, setting both squads to defend the entrance hall & the explicit-indoors burrow? i.e. the military folks decided to go civilian, even changing back their clothes (only graphically I think - I use mayday green) and getting their civ titles back.
c) How often do dwarves die in their wounds, if they are treated properly? And how do you know if a dwarf is infected/has infected wound?

a) They should do that on their own, if they have nothing more important to do (i.e. feeding and drinking and sleeping, or dumping rocks.) If you've idlers, and they don't carry the wounded, then maybe something with your burrows settings is wrong.

b) No idea, I don't understand the 31.x military, alerts and burrows and don't use it.

c) Erm, well, this experience is from 31.02 or so, but I once had a dwarf who was wounded in a tantrum spiral. He was the only survivor, so there was no doctor to treat him. He just kept doing the stuff he was assigned to do, with that undiagnozed wound of his. All was just fine.

Then a bunch of migrants arrived and I made one into a doctor. And well, the dwarf then died during the treatment, because I had no thread at all. Or something like that.


Another story from 31.08 of mine includes an awesome woodcutter who had killed a forgotten beast almost all by himself with his axe. Something was wrong with his legs (they were marked as red, with some nerve damage and stuff) and he went into the hospital.

After some years, the doctor and the other dwarves just forgot about giving him food and water, and so he died.


That were actually the only two times I had hospital stuff going on so far, because I build secluded fortresses in worlds without goblins. Traps take care of the entrance, walls take care of the caverns.

Two hospital stories, two dead patients.

Maybe I'm just unlucky though. 

[steve296]

a) They should do that on their own, if they have nothing more important to do (i.e. feeding and drinking and sleeping, or dumping rocks.) If you've idlers, and they don't carry the wounded, then maybe something with your burrows settings is wrong.

Right... I'm asking because, all the wounded dwarves I've seen in my games have _always_ draggen themselves to the hospital, and not once have they been picked up by somebody else to carry. Is it a criteria that they _cannot move by themselves_?

Oh, and somehow, one of my dwarves are inside an iron cage. A military one, to be exact. I mean, the dorf is military. I think I know how to get him out, but.... did he trigger one of my cage traps?

EDIT: do yellow wounds heal? I have a couple of dwarves with yellow wounds, and they happily continue training as soldiers. Aren't those things, as nerve damage, um.... serious?

[3]

If he lost conciousness on the same tile as the trap, it'd go off on him (this applies to all allied creatures, and all traps).

[DTF]

Yeah I had one of my dwarfs been shred to pieces by a weapon trap after he fell unconscious due to a broken finger or something.

b) The problem I think is: Once you change a squad's scheduled order (e.g. setting them to a different alert status) they go off duty for a split second - like on every 1st day of the month. At least thats the way it looks for me in my games. Just set the squad's alert level first and then restrict the burrows or just give them a "move" order. I start to dislike the new schedule, burrow and patrol path stuff, although it seems like a nice thing to make you military do everything without your input, they sometimes seem to do nothing at all.
I set up some towers, accessible only via underground, that covered some bottlenecks. I ordered some dwarfs to defend these via defend burrows command. A kobold ambush came, slaughtered the dogs that were chained next to the tower (to spot the ambushers) while the 2 dwarfs up the tower were just watching.

Hospitals work great, never had a dwarf that wasnt healed within days (apart from broken nerve tissue etc). Just make sure you put a well in or near the hospital and dont (!) make any gypsum plaster - use splints instead.

[KrazyDocK]

My questions:
a) How do you tell your dwarves to carry injured fellows?
b) Why did _every_ dwarf go retreattotheburrowslikehell, when I only set CIV to do that, setting both squads to defend the entrance hall & the explicit-indoors burrow? i.e. the military folks decided to go civilian, even changing back their clothes (only graphically I think - I use mayday green) and getting their civ titles back.
c) How often do dwarves die in their wounds, if they are treated properly? And how do you know if a dwarf is infected/has infected wound?

a) In your case, did you remember to de-activate the civilian alert?  Because if you didn't, and your injured dwarf is outside that burrow, then nobody will pick him up.

b) If you set the squad to defend the indoor burrow, they will GO TO that burrow!  At least that is always how it worked in my experience.

c) Dwarves sometimes heal and sometimes don't.  Better healthcare SHOULD lead to better outcomes too.  It sounds like injured patients starving to death is more common than medical mistakes.

I hope that helps.
KD

[Pitah]

You can check the dwarf's wound status, including infection, on v-z-h.

I haven't had a dwarf die after managing to crawl his way to my hospital yet. But then again a few red wounds is the worst I had.

[steve296]

Thanks for the answers. Here are my results:

My left-behind wounded dwarf dragged himself into the hospital after snapping out of unconsciousness, and got healed pretty nicely, only having yellow-coloured (nerve?) damage left, like most of his fellow wounded fellows. Now, time to try out my brand new green punching bags...

EDIT: Right! I knew I forgot something!

After the ambush was dealt with, I of course told my civilians to go anywhere unrestricted, so that wasn't the issue when they refused to pick the injured dwarf up. And yes, I do have a nurse dwarf, whose labour is solely the two last healthcare tasks - except cleaning, I leave that on for every dwarf, I don't know exactly how does that labour affect them if they would have to clean themselves, for example, after hunting, but better be on the safe side.

b) your military got new orders when you clicked on them in the alert screen.
It's stupid, but your military actually count as civilians at times. That is, they will follow often follow the civilian orders. So always change your civilians first, unpause, pause, then order your military to do something. Guarantees they don't decide to follow the civvies.

Yep, that may have been the problem. I gave out orders in one pause.

Another thanks for the answers folks. My dwarf highly appreciate them

[Lord Darkstar]

Hi fellas.

My questions:
a) How do you tell your dwarves to carry injured fellows?
b) Why did _every_ dwarf go retreattotheburrowslikehell, when I only set CIV to do that, setting both squads to defend the entrance hall & the explicit-indoors burrow? i.e. the military folks decided to go civilian, even changing back their clothes (only graphically I think - I use mayday green) and getting their civ titles back.
c) How often do dwarves die in their wounds, if they are treated properly? And how do you know if a dwarf is infected/has infected wound?

a) remove all their other tasks and TURN OFF YOUR CIVILIANS ON ALERT (let them go everywhere).
If you look under the healthcare labors, you'll see by default the last two tasks are on. They are feed/water patients and retrieve wounded, IIRC. Retrieving wounded isn't a high priority task, so if you want a nurse or corpseman to go grab up the wounded, you need to make sure they don't have many other tasks, like cleaning, garbage or other item hauling, etc.

b) your military got new orders when you clicked on them in the alert screen.
It's stupid, but your military actually count as civilians at times. That is, they will follow often follow the civilian orders. So always change your civilians first, unpause, pause, then order your military to do something. Guarantees they don't decide to follow the civvies.

Also note that when you change the militia's burrows, it automatically clears their current orders. So if you order them to your guard house burrows AFTER you set them to "Inside Fortress" alert, whatever orders you gave them for "Inside Fortress" will be wiped out. For things like this (alert where all military run to the guard burrow), I'd suggest making a new alert level, set that alert level to have the guard burrow(s) activated, and then you can set your civilians to "Inside Fortress" alert AND your milita to "Emergency Guard Duty" alert, sending them to the guard house. Of course, that doesn't make them change from civilian to militia mode--- that just changes what BURROWS they are supposed to be in. To actually get them to be SOLDIERS, you still have to give them station orders--- at least, that's the only way I've found to get them to swap modes.

c) If dwarves can get some actual medical care, not very often.