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[Angel Of Death]

Any tips for someone who's being seiged for the first time?

[Necro910]

MAGMAAAAAAA

[Angel Of Death]

I don't have any magma that can be pumped up, right now.

Alright, I do, but it would be far to costly.

[Necro910]

I don't have any magma that can be pumped up, right now.

Alright, I do, but it would be far to costly.

...
Far too costly?

I smell an elf.

[Lectorog]

Close the gates.

Seriously, for the first siege, just hole up while you train your military. If you don't have easy access to metal, train a bunch of wrestlers and war dogs; if you do, make some weapons (hammers and axes are dwarven standards). Have the soldiers train in the barracks with each other until they have a reasonable skill level.

If you're impatient, rushed, and/or not opposed to the sort of thing, I recommend a danger room. It gets them trained very fast.

[NecroRebel]

If absolutely necessary, you can simply seal your entrances and wait the siege out.

The bravest way of handling sieges is probably to send soldiers out after them. This is also probably the fastest means available, though cleanup's a bitch, and has the added advantage of giving your soldiers training. The downside is that you risk losing soldiers.

A deep enough field of weapon traps will take out pretty much any siege that might appear.

Various architecture traps, including classic magma or drowning traps, "dodge this" traps, atom smashers, degrinchinators, and the like, can also deal with sieges quite effectively and safely.

If it's an early siege, there might only be one or two squads. If that's the case and you've trained all of your dogs for war, you might be able to take the siege down just by having a war dogpile on them.



If you've not prepared, though, the best way to handle the first siege is simply to raise the drawbridges and hide away like little pansies. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all, and cowardice is the better part of discretion, so clearly cowardice has some part in courage.

[Angel Of Death]

Actually, I repelled this siege with no trouble at all.

I used my steel armed soldiers to bait the siegers to my bridge, then I pulled the levers that trapped them in the bridge. I then ordered a repeated pulling of the lever that operates the spears. They were impaled or they fell into the magma below.

Pretty good for a first seige, eh?

[Syrup Roast]

Close the gates.

Seriously, for the first siege, just hole up while you train your military. If you don't have easy access to metal, train a bunch of wrestlers and war dogs; if you do, make some weapons (hammers and axes are dwarven standards). Have the soldiers train in the barracks with each other until they have a reasonable skill level.

If you're impatient, rushed, and/or not opposed to the sort of thing, I recommend a danger room. It gets them trained very fast.

it's worth nothing that without a danger room, it takes quite a few years for the soldiers to train to a "reasonable" level.

The first siege is commonly taken care of with copious amounts of cage traps (since I likely won't be making masterwork mechanisms for some time, barring strange moods). At least in my forts.

[Poindexterity]

what is the advantage to masterwork mechanisms (besides the good thought from walking past one)?

[MythagoWoods]

what is the advantage to masterwork mechanisms (besides the good thought from walking past one)?

When added to weapon/spike traps it increases their effectiveness.  A fully loaded weapon trap with a masterpiece mechanism is a variable swiss army knife of death.

[iyaerP]

what is the advantage to masterwork mechanisms (besides the good thought from walking past one)?

They greatly increase the "skill" of the weapon traps that they are used in.

So rather than having ten steel serrated disks that attack as if swung by a drunk kobold, they are now aiming as if they had been swung by your legendary slaughtermiester.

[Keldane]

It's worth nothing that without a danger room, it takes quite a few years for the soldiers to train to a "reasonable" level.

The first siege is commonly taken care of with copious amounts of cage traps (since you likely won't be making masterwork mechanisms for some time, barring strange moods).

I'm inclined to disagree, and it really depends on how many dwarves you're trying to train, how early you start, and whether or not you bring anyone with some seed skills. I have, by year 3, successfully achieved two spear lords with eight others a short step away from that level through the use of two-man 'all training, all the time' squads. In theory, it should be as simple as keeping an eye on skill growth and pairing your most skilled military dwarves with your least skilled ones, then swapping them out/splitting them up as necessary to spread the experience around.

what is the advantage to masterwork mechanisms (besides the good thought from walking past one)?

The accuracy of traps is directly related to the quality of the mechanism used. Artifact or masterwork mechanisms have the highest chance of striking.

[Poindexterity]

what is the advantage to masterwork mechanisms (besides the good thought from walking past one)?

They greatly increase the "skill" of the weapon traps that they are used in.

So rather than having ten steel serrated disks that attack as if swung by a drunk kobold, they are now aiming as if they had been swung by your legendary slaughtermiester.

oh god.
does this mean im gonna have to go rip up the 20 some odd 10 weapon a piece traps i put up while training the mechanic?

it does doesn't it?

[wuphonsreach]

Setup a trap maze that draws them in, makes them fall down 1Z, but doesn't attempt to kill them until the reach the exit from the lower maze.  This maximizes the number of goblins that will get sucked into the trap maze before you start slaughtering.  That means the outer portions of the lower maze area should focus on blunt weapon traps (spiked balls), and the initial area of the upper maze should also focus on blunt weapon traps.  Save the steel serrated discs for where the siege members have to exit the lower maze.

Bonus points for:

- Setting up fortifications on the wall, which overlooks the maze area, allowing marksdwarves to fire down on the enemy as they attempt to navigate.  Double-bonus if you orient the passages so that the marksdwarves can fire down long corridors and there are few, if any, places for an enemy to loiter without being shot at.

- Using all iron or magma-safe weapons (and mechanisms?) so that you can flood the lower maze with magma.

- You lose points for every goblin that manages to escape to the map edge.

An old design that I used to use is:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

All of the brown bridges up the middle would get retracted during a siege, forcing the enemy to path over 40+ trap-filled tiles in order to get into the fort.  And if they fell down, they'd come back up in the middle of the upper paths, giving them low odds of actually escaping before falling down again.

Make sure you leave bait somewhere in the maze.  For building destroyers like trolls, spare low-quality armor stands or weapon racks make dandy troll bait.  For other enemies, you may need to hide a kitten or puppy behind a fortification, or around a U-bend.

[wuphonsreach]

And as a follow-up - in the upper sections and the non-lethal sections of a trap maze - 1 weapon per trap, mechanisms of superior or higher quality only is ideal.  Far better to have 10 tiles covered with 1 weapon per tile, then only a single tile with 10 weapons.

Make a stockpile near your future trap maze that only takes superior or better mechanisms.  I suggest having at least a 50-tile stockpile for that as you can quickly burn through a lot of mechanisms while setting up a trap field / maze.  Or if you have legendary mechanics, limit it to exceptional or above.  Sell off the lower quality mechanisms by making a stockpile near the trade depot that takes low-quality mechanisms, and use the superior or fine mechanisms for cage traps where quality doesn't matter (other then for giving dwarves happy thoughts).

(Weapon traps that used edge weapons will frequently jam if they score a kill.  So more traps with fewer weapons is preferred.  I never put more then three iron/steel discs in a single trap.  And early on, they might all be single disc traps until I have time to rip them up and replace them with higher quantities.)