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[slothen]

Ever since the summer of the second year i've gotten multiple ambushes per year, with the ambushes usually consisting of 2 or 3 squads each.  in four years I've been able to successfully trade once, every other caravan has been mercilessly slaughtered.  No less than three liasons have gone insane while unable to escape my fortress, and now the humans have seen fit to siege me.  For the first year since the siege, I merely closed my gates, worked on building defenses, and more or less have been able to prosper and live unaffected.

The problem is I lowered my gates and still the humans will not attack.  They just sit at the edges.  they have killed dwarves that have strayed too close.  There are a couple factors at work here.

1)  I think they know about many of my traps, and to avoid them they are not pathing in.
2)  All of the humans are riding GIANT WAR EAGLES.  I know they can fly since I see them in the air sometimes.  There are a few entrances to my fort that are without traps that an eagle could use to get in, but in years they have not even attempted to get in through those ways.
3)  The squads of siegers are separated by a body of water, so I'm wondering if they are waiting to meet up before attacking.  Then again, they are on eagles, so if they wanted to get together it wouldn't be a problem to just fly over the river.
4)  Totally unrelated, but every squad of goblin ambushers has been led by an elf with a goblin name.

I've spent the last year trapping the entrances I have, I'm considering making a third NEW entrance with traps and see if they'll attack through that method.  At this point I just want them to charge in and attack regardless of the consequences, I need more fun.

[darkflagrance]

1 & 2) Humans have the [SIEGER] tag that causes them to prefer to sit outside your fort for seasons on end to deny your dwarves access to trade and the surface. They will eventually attack, but not after a long time has passed. You can either wait them out or force them off by killing them.

3) Flying creatures can only cross impassable land barriers if there are alternate land routes to whatever they are pathing to. If there is no bridge over the river, for instance, they will probably not cross it.

4) Those elves are descendants of elves who were kidnapped and raised as goblins during worldgen. I think due to their higher speed they are better fighters than normal goblins. If you keep killing them, eventually the goblins will run out of elves.

[Jayce]

Yep humans just sit outside for a year,they sometimes charge in near the end.Also i had one human siege army simply bypass all my traps,might of been cause they where riding horses.This happened 3 years in a row to my dwarfs,ive got a colossus cage set up outside my fort if this happens again and battlements overlooking the valley.

[monkeyfetus]

I've heard that any traps that a human diplomat sees when visiting your fortress will be bypassed by human siegers.

[sjaakwortel]

way better than my everlasting empty gobbo siege (4 years now), still no result finding a cure

[Jayce]

way better than my everlasting empty gobbo siege (4 years now), still no result finding a cure

You mean your under siege but theres no goblins?.Hmm maybe theres a small group hiding somewhere.

[ledgekindred]

I have had this happen before with human sieges.  They sat around outside, making campfires even with my gates wide open.  (Don't mind those suspiciously sharp looking bushes, or the red-hot floodgates set into the sides of the walled-off entryway...)  I eventually got tired of waiting and had my miners tunnel towards them until I had dug out a big room on the cliff overlooking the majority of their forces, including their leader.  (Who was also riding a giant eagle.)  I happened to have a Legendary and a couple of High Master marksdwarfs at the time so I carved some fortifications, which I was lucky enough didn't attract the attention of the siege, and stationed my marksdwarves.  One of the first things they killed was the leader and his eagle.  Then proceeded to knock off buckets of invaders as they tried to flee when their leader died.

The legendary had something like 21 out of 25 kills as one-shot headshots, using wooden bolts.

[slothen]

I happened to have a Legendary and a couple of High Master marksdwarfs at the time so I carved some fortifications,

well that would be great, but my marksdwarves don't seem to want to practice archery more than one or two at a time.  My sword-squad trains all the time both active and inactive but their exp gains are still impossibly slow (been watching with dwarf therapist), even after killing 30 or so goblin prisoners.  Does training pick up significantly once dwarves get a few levels in teacher/student/observer/organizer as well as some decent skill in the skill being demonstrated?

[darkflagrance]

way better than my everlasting empty gobbo siege (4 years now), still no result finding a cure

Either you have a goblin that happened to be falling when the game was saved, causing it to be trapped in a state of perpetual fall, or somewhere on the edge of your map, a gobbo that tried to enter the map got bugged and got stuck at the edge still invisible. In the latter case, you need to memory hack the game with DFHack somehow to find the gobbo and get rid of it.

[Dariush]

3) Flying creatures can only cross impassable land barriers if there are alternate land routes to whatever they are pathing to. If there is no bridge over the river, for instance, they will probably not cross it.

Are you sure about that bit? How do clowns get up the blue-metal shafts then?

[ledgekindred]

I happened to have a Legendary and a couple of High Master marksdwarfs at the time so I carved some fortifications,

well that would be great, but my marksdwarves don't seem to want to practice archery more than one or two at a time.  My sword-squad trains all the time both active and inactive but their exp gains are still impossibly slow (been watching with dwarf therapist), even after killing 30 or so goblin prisoners.  Does training pick up significantly once dwarves get a few levels in teacher/student/observer/organizer as well as some decent skill in the skill being demonstrated?

I've had the best luck with marksman skills by assigning all my archers to hunt.  They'll level to near-legendary in a year or so as long as there is stuff to hunt.  Obviously you don't want to do this now with a siege in place...  The biggest problems I've seen getting marksdwarves to practice is picking up ammo.  Make sure you have LOTS of ammo available and don't put it in bins.  I haven't had much problems getting my marksdwarves up to a reasonable level in a couple seasons.

Build a Danger Room for your swordsdwarves:

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Danger_room

It helps raise Fighting the most, Armor Use and Shield Use a little slower, and also seems to help level their weapon skill.  It raises Dodge a little bit also but it doesn't go nearly as fast since their armor blocks everything. 

I've personally also noticed that when I had a three-man squad of Legendaries, I put each one of them in charge of their own three-man squads of noobs and the noobs leveled to Legendary in a couple of seasons.  It seems that once you have a very high skilled dwarf in the squad teaching the other dwarves in a Danger Room, they will level extremely fast.  This also seems to affect the Marksdwarves train when they have a Legendary to watch.

If the humans stick around long enough you can probably send a squad of Legendary sworddwarves after them in a couple more seasons.

[Akura]

Humans ride Giant War Eagles? Awesome.
Goblins ride Giant Olms? Cool.
Dwarves ride hungry Giant War Cave Spiders. Well, try to, but that particular posting has some pretty tough requirements, namely being able to ride a hungry Giant War Cave Spider.

And elves? They ride tree branches.

[darkflagrance]

3) Flying creatures can only cross impassable land barriers if there are alternate land routes to whatever they are pathing to. If there is no bridge over the river, for instance, they will probably not cross it.

Are you sure about that bit? How do clowns get up the blue-metal shafts then?

I think it is due to how they are spawned in the air and are part of a hardcoded event. In any case, the pathfinding for invaders is different from that of hfs.

[breadbocks]

Humans ride Giant War Eagles? Awesome.
Goblins ride Giant Olms? Cool.
Dwarves ride hungry Giant War Cave Spiders. Well, try to, but that particular posting has some pretty tough requirements, namely being able to ride a hungry Giant War Cave Spider.

And elves? They ride tree branches.

Not with the [TAMEABLE_WAR] tag