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[Girlinhat]

So, I got FD mod, it adds like a dozen or so civs that are always hostile.  Pretty much all of them siege.  I'm on a pocket world with most of the civs present, and getting sieged multiple times per season.  I recently got 2 goblin ambushes, 2 putrid blendec sieges, 1 warwolf siege, and 1 white tigerman siege.  This would have been amazing, except they all fight goblins.  The various siegers don't fight each other, so I've got 3 sieges outside now (one of the blendec's left) and my military is still slowly training indoors.

I counted 16 pages of Invader in the unit screen at the peak, roughly 300 individual units.  Plus my ~120 dwarves and dogs.  I suffered some FPS drop, but I've started playing without FPS visible, it helps keep me calm, so I couldn't give you an exact number but probably 30~40, on a 3x3 embark with no running water or magma.  Now, with THIS in mind, I'm soooo looking forward to the army arc!  Large scale battles look awesome and very possible.

[Urist McGyver]

Well, hopefully Toady will have fixed the macros used for pathfinding and fluids by then. If not oooh boy I'll remain in .18 D:

[Girlinhat]

Well, I ran pretty well with all these badies on the map.  Not amazingly well, but I was getting very decent FPS.

[Hyndis]

You may want to rig up an airlock system to only allow a portion of the invaders in at a time. If they all flood into your fortress at the same time they will almost certainly overwhelm your defenses, but if you can get in 20-30 at once your military should be able to handle them.

And yes, use your military to handle them. No cheating! No flooding the map with magma, or using death bridges or any other lever powered machines of doom.

GLORY AND HONOR 

[Duntada Man]

How is pumping molten rock from the very center of the earth, all the way to the surface, into a small controlled location to kill my enemies, dousing it with water, then using the solidified rock made from this into statues proclaiming my awesomeness, cheating?
It's harder to do then to train a few crazed drunkards how to hit things with an axe.

[malroth]

Elves fight with weapons and armour and sing songs about honor,  Dwarves use !!SCIENCE!!

[Girlinhat]

Actually, I've gotten quite a few kills using wood and bone bolts, particularly using wood until my squad got elite, then swapping to bone bolts because now they're getting more kills and bringing in more bones.  With all the kills, and even the non-lethal hits that cause the enemy to drop their weapon or shield, I've started melting copper crud and forging copper menacing spikes, which I'm building into an entire carpet over my entrance.  The next siege will find the entire ground beneath their feet to be alive with the ferocity of masterwork spikes.

[Hyndis]

I try to make as many iron bolts as possible, using goblinite. However since it is very hard to have enough ammunition when doing this I often time end up with shortages, and so end up just making wood bolts as filler.

I let the marksdwarves pick up any kind of ammo they want. I just keep stuffing the ammo bins full and let them grab the most convenient bolts. Eventually it all gets used up anyways. Wood bolts generally aren't very lethal but even a wooden bolt can be crippling if it sticks into a limb. Wood bolts are also infinite in supply. Either claim the caverns as a massive farm or make your own underground tree farm and you can produce enormous numbers of wood bolts.

Bone is saved for decorations.


I don't do any archery range training at all. All of my dwarves only do live fire training. They are not very accurate at first but I make up for this with sheer volume of fire. Lots of ammunition always available within just a few steps. It only takes a few sieges for them to become skilled marksdwarves.

[Girlinhat]

I was using a few shooting ranges, but was running out of bolts at siege time so I scrapped that.  Replaced the ranges with rows of butchers, 12 total, and 3 more tanners.  Since I modded ethics to allow butchering sentients, I'm getting a lot of white tigerman and dark strangler bones, as well as goblins since all the other civs kill goblins on sight.  I'm in no shortage of cheap bones, and they and break through copper helms to shatter brain-cases, unlike wood that bounces off anything other than cloth.  All of my archers are trained from live fire.

Speaking of ammo, they seem to have real trouble using it...  I had an ammo stockpile, but they preferred to stand around blankly instead.  Since I place them atop my wall, with the door closed, they cannot run out and bash enemies, and instead just stand around.  I seem to have discovered that it's related to their orders.  The "fetch ammo" job seems to be just that, a job.  While on duty, they refuse to do any jobs like hauling or eating or fetching ammo.  So only off-duty archers will refill their quivers.  Having a schedule that allows 5 on the wall and 5 idle, seems to, well, put 1 on the wall firing, 4 standing around, and 5 others sleeping/eating/loitering, but this is better than before where no one would get ammo...

[BurnedToast]

You may want to rig up an airlock system to only allow a portion of the invaders in at a time. If they all flood into your fortress at the same time they will almost certainly overwhelm your defenses, but if you can get in 20-30 at once your military should be able to handle them.

And yes, use your military to handle them. No cheating! No flooding the map with magma, or using death bridges or any other lever powered machines of doom.

GLORY AND HONOR 

How is using an airlock system to chop them into manageable, easily defeated groups not cheating?

I mean, that sort of defeats the point of fortress defense mod, which is a massive horde of creatures that will probably kill you eventually.

(actually I stopped using fortress defense mod because it's impossible to stop you military from suicide charging out rather then holding the line )

[Hyndis]

By allowing them in only in smallish groups you can force your dwarves to hold the line, so they can only engage the groups that get through. Bridges work well for this. You can drop them down 1 level into your barracks and engage them in melee that way.

[Girlinhat]

It helps to abuse squads, and their orders.  Instead of scheduling someone to a location, you manually order them there.  Once they get in over their heads, like the one soldier rushing out ahead, you can pause, find his squad in the s menu, hit p to select individuals, then order him in specific to have no orders.  He'll instantly turn civilian, and run away like a cowardly lye maker.  This applies to whole squads too, but you can micromanage to your heart's content.  The problem is, once you're totally overpowered, it's hard to order all your troops to flee into the fort.  They tend to scatter, and flee towards the enemy half the time.

[BurnedToast]

I tried that on the squad level - getting one squad to fall back past a second, then re-stationing them behind (and moving the second guys up if needed). It worked OK and I like to think it stopped them from getting tired as much (though I don't know how much that matters) but like you said sometimes they ran the wrong way and all died anyway. I never thought to do it per member, that's a pretty good idea and maybe I'll give it another shot.

There really should be some 'stay in this zone no matter what, period, even if there are elves sitting right outside taunting you' order. Maybe dwarves could have a discipline skill gained by drilling in the barracks that helps them obey and be less impetuous in battle (I believe a similar trait already exists, which could modify the skill) because when they managed to kill slowly enough to pile up enemies in the chokepoints and the archers managed to miraculously have bolts and work right firing into that pile.... it was GLORIOUS.

[EveryZig]

So, I got FD mod, it adds like a dozen or so civs that are always hostile.  Pretty much all of them siege.  I'm on a pocket world with most of the civs present, and getting sieged multiple times per season.  I recently got 2 goblin ambushes, 2 putrid blendec sieges, 1 warwolf siege, and 1 white tigerman siege.  This would have been amazing, except they all fight goblins.  The various siegers don't fight each other, so I've got 3 sieges outside now (one of the blendec's left) and my military is still slowly training indoors.

What is your wealth/population? I am using Defense Mod but have so fare only seen stranglers/tigermen/goblins

[Girlinhat]

Right now?  53 and 1.2mil, but the warwolf/blendec sieges started around 50 and ~500k.

Also, I would LOVE for a "stay your ass in THIS square, dammit!" order.  The best you can do though, is to make hatches around the area you want to defend, and pressure plates set to dwarf-weight, activated by citizens.  This means that whenever a dwarf tries to chase someone out of the area, the pressure plat trips the hatch, removing his path and locking him in the square.  This is, however, very lame at best...