My fortress got sieged the other day. I've never really had to deal with a siege before, since this is the first fort that I've actually been able to keep going for a long enough time to reach the necessary population. There were only ten goblins without any war animals or anything, which is leagues smaller than the sieges in DF that I had heard about from other players, so I sent all the civilians inside, waited until the goblins were knocking on the door, then sent the guard out to deal with them. Until a short while before this, my fortress' militia consisted solely of a few miners / peasants, so after acquiring a guard with proper weapons and shit, meager though they were, I was pretty confident that they could deal with absolutely anything. This turned out not to be the case, the goblins slaughtering them effortlessly as they struggled to land even a single hit. After the guard had been completely destroyed, they proceeded inside unhindered and started killing random people. I ended up having to savescum to before they got to the doors, sent absolutely everyone inside, and then built a wall to barricade the front door so I could wait them out. After the siege finally retreated, The trade caravan for that year notified me that The Lucky Monster had been conquering fortresses everywhere. Sure enough, they were the ones who attacked me. I'm assuming they're at war with our civilization, but when I embarked it never said anything about that.
A long time (I wasn't keeping track of how long) passed, and the fortress guard got plenty of training as well as a second squad dedicated solely to archers. The citizens of Dragonsouls lived a peaceful, prosperous life, but everything changed when The Lucky Monster attacked. Again. I looked at the unit list as soon as I got the alert, and there were only six guys. Suspicious, I sent everyone except the guards inside again, waited a few moments, took another look at the unit list, and there were a good 60 invaders decked out in iron equipment, with trolls and beakdogs mixed in. Comparing that to my 10 meelee units with leather armor and copper weapons and 7 archers with bone crossbows and no armor, I figured I was completely fucked. I placed another wall / barricade behind the guard barracks (which was also the entrance) though I knew that when the trolls got past the guard, they would easily be able to break through it and nothing else would be left protecting the people of Dragonsouls. I positioned the guards just behind the front door with the archers a little further behind them and prepared for them to make their last stand.
As the first goblin entered the door, he was immediately, relentlessly attacked. As he attempted to strike one of the axedwarves who parried every attack, he received a surprise stab in the leg from one of the speardwarves, fell over and then was chopped to pieces. My guys had spent a lot of time training and defending the fortress from cavern creatures, so they were a lot more skilled than before, and a couple of them had steel weapons that I had traded for, so I figured it made sense that they could take on one goblin at a time as a team, though I also figured that the rest of the battle would not go so well should they take on all the rest of the enemies at once. As if they could read my thoughts and saw this as an insult, every one of them charged outside and took the enemy horde head on.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The guard split up and began to tear up the enemy forces faster than they could advance. One by one, they all slew beakdog, goblin and troll alike despite their inferior equipment and numbers. As the battle raged on, some grew tired and injured, a few even having bones broken, but still they fought and defeated the enemy. Soon enough, the attacking force had been reduced to about four goblins, who survived only because they ran for their mothers before they had a chance to be killed as well. My forces took a grand total of two casualties, one of which I shouldn't be counting since he was just a marksdwarf who chose to rush into and melee attack an enemy despite having plenty of bolts. Though some others were injured, none of the injuries in question sounded permanent thanks to the doctor. I am currently in the process of having adamantine weapons created for them, that they might become invincible.
Dwarf Fortress
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Topic: How did you last *own*? (Read 1349938 times)