Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sir E Brum]

Sorry for the attention-whoring title. No cavalry, just a question concerning training of war animals and breeding. I recently acquired two grizzly bears and a cougar (all males) from our freakishly tall pointy eared friends and I really want to train one of the bears into a war animal and as soon as I get some male cubs, the jaguar as well. My question is, if the father on the map is trained as a war animal and is assigned to say, my militia commander, will it still send out the breeder spores? I really don't want to lose the opportunity to have an angry wall of bears and jaguars annihilate my enemies and guard my caverns.

Thank you in advance.

[Girlinhat]

1: Don't overestimate animal power.  They're unarmored and sober, they're not all that impressive, BUT they provide a great distraction and in numbers can cause hilarious bloodshed.  Plus, gladiator fights.

2: Yes, any male will be sporing and any female will accept spores, regardless of training or tame-ness.  Wild bears on the map will get your females pregnant.

[Teneb]

Also, elves are the same size as a dwarf in DF

[Sir E Brum]

1: Don't overestimate animal power.  They're unarmored and sober, they're not all that impressive, BUT they provide a great distraction and in numbers can cause hilarious bloodshed.  Plus, gladiator fights.

2: Yes, any male will be sporing and any female will accept spores, regardless of training or tame-ness.  Wild bears on the map will get your females pregnant.

Just checking. I've had adventurers get ripped to shreds by ambushes of large carnivores before, although in each of those cases, the animals outnumbered me by a factor of more than ten and one of them got a lucky suckershot in. Still, I want to just drop like 50 bears on an FB or a goblin siege to see what happens. The combat logs would be huge.

[DrKillPatient]

Bear drops might be quite effective in large numbers, if they all gang up on one goblin at a time, he'll pass out quickly and get mauled. The problem would be keeping the goblins distracted as the bears feed; crossbowdwarves perhaps?

[krisslanza]

1: Don't overestimate animal power.  They're unarmored and sober, they're not all that impressive, BUT they provide a great distraction and in numbers can cause hilarious bloodshed.  Plus, gladiator fights.

2: Yes, any male will be sporing and any female will accept spores, regardless of training or tame-ness.  Wild bears on the map will get your females pregnant.

Just checking. I've had adventurers get ripped to shreds by ambushes of large carnivores before, although in each of those cases, the animals outnumbered me by a factor of more than ten and one of them got a lucky suckershot in. Still, I want to just drop like 50 bears on an FB or a goblin siege to see what happens. The combat logs would be huge.

Wolves in adventurer mode seem to have god mode on or something. You usually don't see lucky shots like that in Fortress Mode. Still, nothing wrong with an attack force of bears. Who doesn't like bears?

[JDF117]

  I've never had any real problems with wolves in Adventure mode. I normally just throw dirt at them, chip bones, and when they one by one 'give into the pain' I chop their heads off.

Another plus to getting a whole bunch of war bears is when they die you can butcher them!

Also 'Sir E Brum' reference.

Edit: You can't butcher a dead war animal? Whoops....

[Girlinhat]

You can't butcher a dead war animal ಠ_ಠ

Elves are the same volume, but they're taller.  When a dwarf wears elf armor, it leaves their belly exposed and they look silly.  (not really, but we have to rationalize elves, right?)

[Teronsuke]

You can't butcher a dead war animal ಠ_ಠ

Elves are the same volume, but they're taller.  When a dwarf wears elf armor, it leaves their belly exposed and they look silly.  (not really, but we have to rationalize elves, right?)

All hail the dwarven muffin top. It menaces with rolls of flesh, and tufts of hair.

I'm going to go do some self-trepanation and bleach my brain now.

[Ubiq]

Either pit the males in a safe location or shove them in a cage and train the females as war animals instead and then assign them. Offspring follow their mother around.

[Girlinhat]

War animals also follow whoever trained them.  Enable animal training on your commander.

And really, wtf with that suggestion though?  "Let's get all the breeding females and their small, weakling offspring and pit them to battle!"  While I must respect the promotion of bloodshed, this is possibly the WORST way to EVER utilize a war animal.  Aside from perhaps selling them to caravans.  I mean, even that'd earn you some buying power, but who doesn't have acres of loose goblinite to sell?

[Wannazzaki]

Am i the only person who just dumps junk in magma and thrives soley on home produced stuff? I am anal retentive over junk. :T

[Girlinhat]

I sell junk.  "Hail, friendly elves, we welcome you!  My you brought some strong yak to carry those bits of yarn!  It would be a crime to let all that yak muscle go to waste!  Here, you carry this rock, it'll be good exercise for the yak!"

[Ubiq]

And really, wtf with that suggestion though?  "Let's get all the breeding females and their small, weakling offspring and pit them to battle!"  While I must respect the promotion of bloodshed, this is possibly the WORST way to EVER utilize a war animal.

Right now, the only purpose of a war animal against an armored enemy is delay the opponent long enough for their master to either kill said enemy or run away. Increasing the number of animals in the vicinity makes that even more effective. A cub isn't any less effective at diverting the attention of a given goblin than a fully grown bear.

Individual war animals are the worst way to use them since that reduces the number of potential targets immensely.

[Wannazzaki]

You can't butcher a dead war animal ಠ_ಠ

Elves are the same volume, but they're taller.  When a dwarf wears elf armor, it leaves their belly exposed and they look silly.  (not really, but we have to rationalize elves, right?)

All hail the dwarven muffin top. It menaces with rolls of flesh, and tufts of hair.

I'm going to go do some self-trepanation and bleach my brain now.

Reminds me of something Gimli said... "It's the Dwarves that go swimming with little, hairy woman."