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[SpiralDimentia]

You know, if you take every capital letter in that it's TAOD. switch the A and O and it's TOAD...hm...

anyways, I hate to make two threads at once but this really has nothing to do with casts or splints. Let's say my military storms out to deal with a forgotten beast, and it turns out that he's stronger than I thought and starts tossing dwarves around left and right. I know I can tell my dwarves to ''oh god run for your lives it's every man for himself'', but they rarely ever listen. They normally continue to fight until they are paste. Is there a way to stop this? Is there a way to make them stop fighting and get to safety?

[Darkmere]

Removing them from active duty *MIGHT* make them run. Might.


It's generally better if you have the option, to make whatever it is fight you on your terms when you can. Not always ideal, but there's really no way to retreat, dwarfs is dumb and bloodthirsty dumb.

[SpiralDimentia]

Well, My current fortress has only 10 melee dwarves and they generally butcher whatever they fight. I thought it would be nice, however, to have tactics when fighting larger seiges.. like if I fight them outside my entrance to avoid getting blood on everything, having them split their seige into two more managable groups.. or maybe use 1 group to lure the seige into an ambush where my second group charges down a hill and slams into them form the side... just things like that. I mean fighting to the death every single time is cool and all.. but sometimes I only want to hold off the enemies while my civs get to safety, then pull back.

Increasing difficulty would also be cool.. I mean once I can wipe out a 50+ seige of copper-wearing goblins with 10 steelclad dwarves, there isn't much else that worries me anymore and it gets alittle boring.

[CognitiveDissonance]

... there isn't much else that worries me anymore and it gets alittle boring.

Mods. Defense Mod comes to mind.

[SpiralDimentia]

That means I'm pretty much SOL. I don't touch mods. You guys have talked me into screwing with the data files and stuff some, but I generally just avoid mods. I suppose I could just start making my dwarves fight without armor.. that should increase the difficulty.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Most mods of that nature simply add more creatures, make them more aggressive, and give them better equipment.
Orcs mod also comes to mind.

[Blade Master Model 42]

I like this idea immensely. Simply allowing your dwarves to retreat advance in the opposite direction would add many, many new options to dealing with aggressors. As of right now, it's more or less 'Fight them where they stand, and don't stop until one side is all corpsified.'

Getting my dwarves to fall back through the trap hallway alone would be hilarious.

[sambojin]

Could burrows be the answer? Or do the silly buggers only withdraw when they want to still?

[DrKillPatient]

Drawing a path of movement, which dwarves are allowed to stray SLIGHTLY to attack from, would allow for tactics like a pincer movement (surrounding a siege from two sides at once while coming from the front) and all that. I support such a thing.

[Niseg]

This is a picture from a similar thread about Moving Civilians During Sieges . I showed how I used traffic zone before enabling the alert which made civilians take the path I wanted  them to take (this works in game):

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This forced the civilians to avoid the threat('w's) when going from their  position  (S) to fort entrance  (D). This works in game just fine just have to remember to do it before enabling the alert.

I think you might be able to utilize traffic zones to force your military dwarves  to take a path you want them to take. The only problem you'll have is if dwarves ignore traffic  (I doubt it).  The problem with DF is that once a dwarf found a path it will use it until it's interrupted. I think that with military you can use cancel order then press and give them a new station which would cause them to find  a path.

The problem is that it's well known that Military dwarves are extremely brave while civilian dwarves are  the exact opposite . The only effective way you can make them retreat is to deactivate them (from the military). Before you do that (deactivate ) you can redraw traffic zone to encourage them to take a certain path home. This way you might be able to lead your enemies into your "minefield".

[SpiralDimentia]

That sounds horribly, horribly complicated. I think I'd rather just let them duke it out than go through all that.

Though, making it so dwarves run away make a tactical advance in the opposite direction when I order them too would be cool, Toady, if you ever read this. I'm Just Super Saiyan.

[Niseg]

Maybe you should suggest adding "line drawing"  in designation menu in addition to  filled rectangles . I've added line drawing to my simulator before adding filled and empty rectangles. I admit coding line drawing isn't as intuitive as rectangle but there is plenty of code on the web for that .

Here is a simple ambush setup done with traffic zone(image).

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It works on the simulator I'm not sure about the game. You may want to make sure the dwarves don't look at the goblins and if they do they might take the path around rather than the direct path below . you may be able to improve on it to work with two squads but I admit it's hard to create a battle plan by drawing traffic zones over and over.

[Durin Stronginthearm]

Just having a "flee" command in the squads menu to make them bug out and scatter would be better than what we have now, albeit not quite what the OP is asking for. "Disengage and move to station" would be even better. It's a pain when you're carefully moving a several squads into position, when a lone trooper sees a load of goblins and rushes in to fight them on his own, being able to tell Urist McDeathWish to fall back would be very useful.

[Naryar]

Remove them from duty. Watch as they flee.

[SpiralDimentia]

Remove them from duty. Watch as they flee. get caught by a goblin, stalled for a second, then overwhelmed and butchered by the rest of the goblins.

fix'd