Print

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

[farecoal]

So, I have a question. Thanks to the magic of DF Wiki, I know sieges eventually stop and the invaders leave. Do ambushes do the same thing? Because if they don't, I have been wasting my time.

Also, how do you see the fort name?

[h3lblad3]

I believe it tells you at the top when you hit z.
But I don't know for sure.

[farecoal]

Yes it does. Thank you.

[Arekis]

Ambushers do go away at some point I believe.  If they don't have any bowmen, you could outfit a couple of dwarves with crossbows and start taking potshots at them from atop fortifications.  Once they get a few bolts stuck in their livers, they'll consider leaving much sooner.

[slothen]

ah yes, I haven't tried this since marksdwarves have been buggy in 2010, but I want to see if I can use burrows and scheduling to put up a few archer towers with permanent guards.

[farecoal]

No marksdwarves (I don't think I want to do that yet), so I'll just wait it out. Thanks.

[greycat]

Marksdwarves are much less buggy now (as of somewhere around .11, I think).  They're still not bug-free, but they're actually useful.  And nothing says "Get off my lawn!" like a bolt through the liver.

[Vulcanius]

In the past I've found that embarking in a "civilized" area can make my life much more peaceful. The human/elf/goblin/etc inhabitants make amazing meat shields and are experts at triggering ambushes, and often times can fend them off just fine without my intervention.

[petersohn]

As for "triggering" ambushes, a few traps scattered on the map does the trick pretty well. Preferably cage traps, which may catch some wild animals for a good food (or pet) source. However, sometimes (maybe if their leader is caught in a cage trap?) the goblins will just stay there and not move after they trigger a cage trap. This way you must send out your military to deal with them instead of the deathtraps installed at the entrance.

[Arekis]

One thing to watch out for with cage traps scattered outside the fort is that as soon as something's in them, one dwarf will drop everything he's doing and try to put it in a stockpile.  Kinda sucks if the goblin in the cage has 10 of his friends standing right around him.  I usually try forbidding the traps or limiting the dwarves to burrows.

[FleshForge]

In my experience if you do wait them out, they sit there until the next ambush, which replaces them.
edit Hmm actually, this current ambush didn't stick around, so I guess either it's random how long they'll stay, or sieges work differently from ambushes.

[ottottott]

Well... This thread isn't exactly what I wanted but it's close enough so no need for me to make a new thread. I would like to wait it out too but the problem isn't will they leave but the problem is how to keep my dwarves from going outside. I remember there was a button for it or something but I couldn't find it.

[magicwalker]

In d40, if you go to the O-rders menu, you can change it so Dwarves stay inside/Soldiers allowed outside/Dwarves allowed outside.

Otherwise you need to make a burrow assignment (the mechanics of which I am not familiar)

[petersohn]

Yeah, you should use burrows in the new version. Read the Magmawiki article on it, because it's not that straightforward to use.

In 40d, you can order your dwarves inside, but it is bugged, so don't expect them to be very productive. They will happily pick up outside jobs, then cancel them when they realise that they are outside. Then pick up the job again.

[FleshForge]

A really, really simple way to do this in one place is to put a door at the entrance and forbid passage (Q menu for the door, "forbid").  A downside is that merchants are also forbidden and can't path into your fortress (not always really a bad thing though).

A better way is to set standing orders to keep your lads from going nuts whenever somebody dies - "Forbid your death items" (o-F-i) and "Forbid your dead" (o-F-c), although you probably want to leave your dead permitted/claimed when not in emergency mode.  You may want to also set "Forbid other dead" (o-F-o).