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[Fickauge]

Hey there, I'm still getting into this game. My last fortress was quite good compared to my previous tries 

I have a question about keeping my dwarfs safe during sieges, but first my situation:

I had a small underground fortress and walled a surface-area in for aboveground farming and animal-storage (they feed on grass if i got this right)
My very first siege came and I raised my bridge that is the only entrance for hunters, caravans and enemys so I could fill the underground-path to my fortress with traps. My aboveground camp was walled with a one-level-wall.

fun1: I got 10 - 15 giblins, only archers. they stepped up a hill next to my fort and made it look like a rain of arrows that painted my pastures in animal blood. Almost all died. Even some dwarfes got hit, but thats not MY problem is it?!
-> got to remember: level adjacent hills or build higher walls

fun2: All traps are set: cages, stone- and weapontraps. OPEN THE GATES AND LET THEM COME IN!
opposite happened: everyone rushed out to welcome the goblins. Too bad theese weren't my soldiers since I had none. Blood everywhere. Abandon Fortress.

My hunter shot one
-> dwarves: one ; goblins: fifty-three 


I want to know how to order my dwarves to stay inside when I think it's better for them. Something with burrows? Something with zones? Alerts? I looked through these ingame and couldnt find anything.
I'll then try that on my next fortress.

[EmperorJon]

Set a burrow, for inside, then in the military alert menu, create a new alert, and where it says Burrow Restriction or whatever on the right, choose the burrow. Now when you activate the alert, all civilians are confined to the burrow.

[FuzzyZergling]

You should also set [ o ]rders to forbid death items, so that your dwarves don't run out to grab Urist McShotintheface's socks.

[Taren]

Burrows are very effective, you can set them over as many levels as you like.

For a siege you would most likely benefit from having a few alerts. As an example - training, siege, run! Setting the civilians and squads to this via the military - alert screen when the time is right.

You set burrows with the w key, highlight across the various levels, and don't forget you can include as many z lower and higher levels as you like. Many people use this to simply deny outside access for the civilians and put their military in appropriate spots.

You then set defend burrow orders for your military through their schedules as you would training, in the new alert you've made. While you set where the civs should be in the screen where you set the alert itself, don't forget to specify this in the alert screen too.

For some examples - I usually have a winding lower entrance section, where my marksdwarves can run from one fortified shooting spot to the next above them, before the enemy even hits the hall traps, and then the inner gate melee dwarves if they make it that far.

Some people choose to have several alerts depending on how the battle is going, in an advanced fort I have at least two, one for the 'gate guard' for if they get past the traps, and one for - fall back we are in trouble! Where I pull everyone back to the very center of the fort to inner bunkers. When you strike (to avoid spoilers) 'other dangers' you might consider an additional alert for instance that puts the civs higher up and the guard lower.

[Fickauge]

Thanks. After reading EmperorJon's post I tried the menu-paths and found it alle at once. I'll try this once my new fortress is more developed.

btw, is there a way to do the opposite? I mean, a way to restrict an area so a certain path will not be used at whatever costs. So if all my dwarfes are safe I can release them from the burrow but block the exit with an "invisible wall". Just in case I don't want to burrow my whole fortress but want my dwarfs to continue work once they're all inside.

[EmperorJon]

You'll have to set a burrow over the entire fort I'm afraid.

[Taren]

You can use preferred routes too, so you can set high use, normal use low or restricted traffic routes. d - o, Other than that you can use floodgates with levers, or drawbridges to block routes entirely, pressure plates can be used creatively too I am told but I haven't made use of them yet.

-edit

I agree I kind of miss the old system of denying outside access, a deny all burrow would be great. However you can burrow multiple levels in very little time if you just set a wide area to burrow at once, skip down a level repeat, it takes 30 seconds at most and then it is done. Especially if you think about it, if you set a common room with beds, the workshops, food stocks, maybe farms and you are set really.

Finally I should say they will go through restricted routes but only at the cost of 25 to 1 normal tile, at the default cost. You can specific this to be higher in the txt files.

[Guedez]

Finally I should say they will go through restricted routes but only at the cost of 25 to 1 normal tile, at the default cost. You can specific this to be higher in the txt files.

They will still use if if it's the only way to the place they want to go, that also means where the gobs is, since he want that sock that much

[Fickauge]

I'll keep all that in mind when I invite some gobs for dinner.

Can I define an "outside" area as "inside" once I walled it in and consider it safe?

[FuzzyZergling]

You can add to the burrow, if that's what you mean.

[Fickauge]

Example: I want my dwarfs to pick up refuse on my farm which is just a fenced area of "outside"

[AdeleneDawner]

"Forbid outside" is an old feature that doesn't exist any more. Burrows replaced it, and you can set burrows wherever you like, indoors or outdoors or whatever. Also, dwarves will work when they're restricted to a burrow, they just won't try to use any materials or workshops that are outside of the burrow they're restricted to.

[Psieye]

Example: I want my dwarfs to pick up refuse on my farm which is just a fenced area of "outside"

The concept of a burrow as far as restricting civilian movements at the chosen alert level is "perform jobs that require you to stand inside these areas and ignore jobs asking you to come somewhere not designated". There is no concept of "inside" or "outside" for burrows, it just so happens we players most often use them to define the entire 'indoors' as our safe zone. So yes, there's nothing wrong with defining your 'safe zone' burrow to include bits of the "outside" too.

Incidentally, consider building bridges to make a roof over your outdoor pasture. If you insist on having an outdoor pasture at all that is - grazing animals will eat moss too which grows on soil and muddy subterranean tiles once you breach the caverns (doesn't matter if you immediately seal them off again). Only reasons for a walled off section of the outdoors is:

- Surface farms
- Sunlit meeting zone/barracks to stop cave adaptation
- Corpse storage area which doesn't stink up everything with miasma

All these function just fine even if you build a roof over them.