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[UnexpectedSalad]

I think I'd just learned a lot of the basics of dwarf fortress and was moving on to some more advanced stuff ( trying to pump magma into some tunnels for magma smelters. Then all hell broke loose.

This is my 4th fortress, I had 83 dwarfs. I had like 40 assorted weapon and cage traps lining the long corridor into my fortress along with some fortifications that had some marksdwarfs posted near them.

It seemed like they just kept coming, I caught a good amount of them in the cages, but they started getting mowed up by the weapon traps after a while. They eventually got near the last couple weapon traps and another group didn't come in for a minute or so.

It looked like 3 more squads, or groups whatever you call them came out of nowhere, slaughtered my 10 hammerdwarfs and 5 marksdwarfs. Then proceeded to murder every single dwarf besides one that was miles underground at the time.

I think he is going insane.

Lol, well I'm kind of looking forward to reclaiming that fortress. Feels like a bit of a disaster, but a learning experience nevertheless.

Anywho, could anyone offer some general tips or advice on what they find is a good idea to do when starting a new fortress?

When a good time to start creating the military is? I relied on traps up till this point, figured out the military thing but they where not well trained or equiped enough.

[rephikul]

When a good time to start creating the military is? I relied on traps up till this point, figured out the military thing but they where not well trained or equiped enough.

Day 1. The first thing coming out of your carpenter workshop shouldnt be a bed, barrel or bin but a SHIELD.

[ClkWrkJester]

Well, I usually do a pretty minimal embark, and take no finished tools, just enough to forge my starting tools on embark... so I try to take the materials needed to make at least a couple suits of armor and weapons as well. the two dorfs that get those become my two squad leaders, and everyone that isn't working on food, or making mugs to trade for later food/drink, is devoted to the quest for metal or sand. 

Metal is used if I want a more proactive military defense, or sand if I decide to just turtle inside while I build up because nothing say "Go away" like a set of goblin grinders made of 10 glass sawblades per square.  The first season til the traders is really the most nuts,but once you strip the first few trade caravans of everything edible using a storm of mugs, even if the gobbos do come you can wall yourself in and survive on just the caverns until you're ready to kick them off your lawn again.

Thats actually another thing I do... toss a pick to a migrant when they arrive, usually a useless one, and let him breach the caverns as soon as possible so i can start indoor farming, tree farming, and pasturing asap.

[Chilton]

Bridges.
Bridges will save You until You get better at building Traps and Defenses.
...So long as the Fort is self sufficient from within.

[Molay]

I might be a bit radical in that aspect, but... Military, boy, get the military running! Right on embark you will want to dedicate atleast 2 dwarves as future squad leaders for melee and have them train together, even if they have different weapon specializations. Try to pick those that heal quick, are rarely sick and tend to be though, strong and agile if you have any. The better they become, the easier for your future squads of recruits to train. And training melee is by far more time consuming if you ask me.

Also, keep in mind how POWERFUL farming is. Two farmers will produce enough to feed and brew drinks for a fort of over 100 dwarves. Trading for the alcohol and food is also rather cheap and you should do it. A few fine crafts can again fill the stomach and hydrate your dwarves for months. Therefore, to survive, you don't need a lot of dwarves. 2 dedicated (everything but farming turned off) planters are enough. A few more to brew and cook (don't forget poultry! Eggs are great at creating food, and getting one type of poultry and forbidding these eggs to lets them explode gives you a ton of meat and leather to use in cooking and armoring).

Therefore, your basic needs are covered by a couple dwarves only. Another couple to mine, cut wood and process them to finished good and so forth. You don't need a booming economy in my opinion, it only has to be decent. On the other hand, you can never have enough dwarves. I put about half my population into military, with 10 dwarves dedicated to the metal industry (I embark with a 5point armorer and 5point weaponsmith so I'm sure to have that!) to create armor for all of them, all those other industries can easily be covered by the leftovers. That weaponsmith can be busy all day long making metal bolts while improving his skill for your battleaxes of doom. And the armorer... Well, he should be busy for a couple years atleast (if you equip your military maximally).

Also, make sure that your military is equipped in an optimal fashion. Read this carefully! And never underestimate the fighting skills. Once I had a skilled goblin (must have been the squad leader) in an ambush slaughter 10 speardwarves (don't ask me why I went spears...), just because they had no skills at all. Try to avoid direct engagements in the first years, until your military has some skills. Use traps to bridge the gap, and marksdwarves behind fortifications. Make sure to raise a horde of dogs (embark with multiple female and a male dog) for wardogs. Even better, get yourself a couple of breeding lions, tigers or something of that sort!

You can try making multiple control points in your defence. Don't rely just on one heavily defended entry to your fort. Make sure those goblins have to pass multiple control points, and make them pay in blood for every control point they pass. Use animals as a bait if you want them to run into just_too_obvious traps.

Consider having another 3 dedicated siege operators and create a ballista battery as a last defence (or a first? Your choice!). Again, make sure those siege operators are skilled, and that your siege engineer is skilled as well (could get one on embark, too!) to create high quality siege engines (quality matters!) and high quality siege ammo (quality matters!).

Aside from that, just cross your fingers and pray to Armok

Molay

[Jelle]

Getting rid of all that rubbish on a standard embark and instead taking along a full set of bronze armor works for me.
By the time the goblins come you'll have at least one armored dwarf with more then enough training.

[Loud Whispers]

I start my military before I embark. Bring a trained teacher and militia Dwarf, and set up squads from there. You can never have enough soldiers!

[Zahariel]

Armor makes a HUGE difference to a melee fighter. If you sent your hammerdwarves in to fight the goblins unarmored, with low skills, and low-quality hammers, yeah, they're going to get beat up pretty bad. Most deaths in combat are caused by a blow to the head, heart, or vitals, so even just simple iron mail, breastplates, helms, and shields protect against a large proportion of instant-kill attacks. It worked for the Romans, and it will work for you too.

Weapon traps tend to get jammed, especially if you put 10 weapons in each trap like some people suggest. I don't do this myself; sure, it vaporizes the first poor gobbo to step on the thing, but it's virtually certain to get jammed on the first hit, thus making it useless for the next gobbo who comes along. I generally just put 1 large serrated disc and 1 spiked ball in each trap, plus whatever useless goblinite I happen to have around; this still usually kills/multiple-amputates any goblins or trolls, and it usually manages 3-4 attacks before jamming. It's also good to set up your traps on a precarious catwalk above a long fall onto spikes, in case you get any skilled dodgers in your goblin attacks.

As far as starting military, I generally try to arrange for one of my starting dwarves to have a non-demanding job (like expedition leader) and be mostly military-focused. Give him Armor User at embark, which is the hardest military skill to train up. Get him a helm, mail, breastplate, and shield as fast as manageable; Shield User is one of the best defensive skills, and helm+mail+breastplate blocks almost all instant-kill attacks. As the fortress progresses, recruit any immigrants with no useful skills (high master lye maker, proficient dyer, "peasant", you've seen them) into the military, so that by the time you start to worry about sieges at 80 dwarves, you have a full melee squad and a mostly-full crossbow squad. Soldiers set to train no longer forget to eat, so you can safely set them to "Train, 10 min" all year and they should get high enough that they no longer mind long patrol duty just before they get angry enough about it to go on a ballistic rampage. Probably. If the "long patrol duty" bug ever gets fixed, you might want to give each squad one month off every season, but as it stands this doesn't actually prevent the bad thought so the only hope is to train them to champions quickly. Danger rooms work great for this purpose; if you think this is an exploit, I agree with you but it appears to be the only way to get them trained high enough in time to work around the bug, because sparring is so gimped and hard for them to set up.

Weapons and armor are hugely dependent on quality, so try to get a high-level weaponsmith and armorsmith. You might even consider bringing those skills at embark, they're relatively uncommon skills for immigrants. (If I had one Proficient Weaponsmith for every three High Master Potash Makers I've got as immigrants, I'd have a lot more weaponsmiths than I've in fact seen.) The easy way I found to train them up is to order tons of armor and weapons made through the manager, and constantly melt down any that didn't come out at least "exceptional", but the fuel cost tends to be prohibitive until you have magma. Quality of mechanisms in weapon traps is also important, but trap-specific weapons are so insanely deadly (serrated discs especially) that their quality doesn't matter as much as for hand weapons.

War dogs are good too; they're not much use offensively but they serve as a great distraction. Just don't make the mistake I did the first time and assign them to your soldiers; if you do this they're considered pets and the soldiers will be sad when their pet war dogs are inevitably slaughtered.

Battle axes and warhammers are usually better than short swords and maces, respectively. Battle axes are usually better against unarmored targets; warhammers are strong against armored targets. Spears are more effective than either for killing large, unarmored things (like elephants, hydra, and dragons) because of their extremely high penetration depth, but they are generally not as good against goblins.

Of course, all this advice is useless if the goblins bring lasher squads. Run away from goblin lashers. You cannot fight them. We mean it. They're not called "Sith wargoblins" for nothing. Let the traps and marksdwarves deal with them.

[Triaxx2]

I find one well trained Military Dwarf with the most powerful weapon I can embark with to be sufficient until I get metal works up. A leather armored proficient Axe Dwarf with an Iron Axe is enough to splatter most ambushes, which only furthers his skill. I do tend to try and get the Dwarf a shield as quickly as possible, just for defensive purposes.

[Crashmaster]

don't underestimate the value of stats, an indefatigable, tough and agile dwarf is worth a lot in early military situations

[UnexpectedSalad]

Thank you all very very much for the responses.

It seems most people say to get one or two good military dwarfs going from the start, so I'm sure going to try that.

A quick question regarding shields and the early ambushes.

How much defense does a .. wooden shield, or a shield in general add? I know there isn't a stat for defense but I mean. A decent trained military dwarf with some leather armor and a warhammer vs the same, but with a wooden shield?

And the early ambushes, are the goblins generally not armed very well? no armor, leather, etc? so one good dwarf could wipe out 5-7 crappy goblins?

I never really checked what they were wearing, the early goblins got caught in the cages, disarmed and thrown in a pit.

[UnexpectedSalad]

Armor makes a HUGE difference to a melee fighter. If you sent your hammerdwarves in to fight the goblins unarmored, with low skills, and low-quality hammers, yeah, they're going to get beat up pretty bad. Most deaths in combat are caused by a blow to the head, heart, or vitals, so even just simple iron mail, breastplates, helms, and shields protect against a large proportion of instant-kill attacks. It worked for the Romans, and it will work for you too.

Weapon traps tend to get jammed, especially if you put 10 weapons in each trap like some people suggest. I don't do this myself; sure, it vaporizes the first poor gobbo to step on the thing, but it's virtually certain to get jammed on the first hit, thus making it useless for the next gobbo who comes along. I generally just put 1 large serrated disc and 1 spiked ball in each trap, plus whatever useless goblinite I happen to have around; this still usually kills/multiple-amputates any goblins or trolls, and it usually manages 3-4 attacks before jamming. It's also good to set up your traps on a precarious catwalk above a long fall onto spikes, in case you get any skilled dodgers in your goblin attacks.

As far as starting military, I generally try to arrange for one of my starting dwarves to have a non-demanding job (like expedition leader) and be mostly military-focused. Give him Armor User at embark, which is the hardest military skill to train up. Get him a helm, mail, breastplate, and shield as fast as manageable; Shield User is one of the best defensive skills, and helm+mail+breastplate blocks almost all instant-kill attacks. As the fortress progresses, recruit any immigrants with no useful skills (high master lye maker, proficient dyer, "peasant", you've seen them) into the military, so that by the time you start to worry about sieges at 80 dwarves, you have a full melee squad and a mostly-full crossbow squad. Soldiers set to train no longer forget to eat, so you can safely set them to "Train, 10 min" all year and they should get high enough that they no longer mind long patrol duty just before they get angry enough about it to go on a ballistic rampage. Probably. If the "long patrol duty" bug ever gets fixed, you might want to give each squad one month off every season, but as it stands this doesn't actually prevent the bad thought so the only hope is to train them to champions quickly. Danger rooms work great for this purpose; if you think this is an exploit, I agree with you but it appears to be the only way to get them trained high enough in time to work around the bug, because sparring is so gimped and hard for them to set up.

Weapons and armor are hugely dependent on quality, so try to get a high-level weaponsmith and armorsmith. You might even consider bringing those skills at embark, they're relatively uncommon skills for immigrants. (If I had one Proficient Weaponsmith for every three High Master Potash Makers I've got as immigrants, I'd have a lot more weaponsmiths than I've in fact seen.) The easy way I found to train them up is to order tons of armor and weapons made through the manager, and constantly melt down any that didn't come out at least "exceptional", but the fuel cost tends to be prohibitive until you have magma. Quality of mechanisms in weapon traps is also important, but trap-specific weapons are so insanely deadly (serrated discs especially) that their quality doesn't matter as much as for hand weapons.

War dogs are good too; they're not much use offensively but they serve as a great distraction. Just don't make the mistake I did the first time and assign them to your soldiers; if you do this they're considered pets and the soldiers will be sad when their pet war dogs are inevitably slaughtered.

Battle axes and warhammers are usually better than short swords and maces, respectively. Battle axes are usually better against unarmored targets; warhammers are strong against armored targets. Spears are more effective than either for killing large, unarmored things (like elephants, hydra, and dragons) because of their extremely high penetration depth, but they are generally not as good against goblins.

Of course, all this advice is useless if the goblins bring lasher squads. Run away from goblin lashers. You cannot fight them. We mean it. They're not called "Sith wargoblins" for nothing. Let the traps and marksdwarves deal with them.

Oh, well I guess that explains why when I was checking the wounds of my dwarves most of them had their heads smashed in. I forgot to make a lot of helmets.

Regarding weapon traps, uhhh. You use to to 'soften' them up for your military? I was throwing in as many obsidian swords and serrated discs as I could in each one to kill them when they stood on it.

Lye makers and dyers are considered not very useful ?

I've been chaining my wardogs around the corner to the entrance of my fortress to take care of any weak enemys who can avoid traps, is this a bad use for them?

Lashers... I'm gonna look on the wiki for that.

[Nan]

Shields are very good. Shield material doesn't matter except for bashing, where metal is better, masterwork probably does help for blocking - so if you have a high level carpenter or leatherworker (and don't have a high level armorsmith), mass produce wood or leather shields to get masterwork ones.

Try embarking with 2 military dwarves, arm them with a weapon and shield each, put them in a squad together, and have them train together all game long. Sparring is amazing for military skill gain. Sometimes they can be legendary before the autumn caravan arrives. Such a duo can annihilate multiple ambushes with ease, lashers are nothing to them. Only complaint I've heard about this method is it makes the game too easy, but that's what Fortress Defense mod is for .

[UnexpectedSalad]

Shields are very good. Shield material doesn't matter except for bashing, where metal is better, masterwork probably does help for blocking - so if you have a high level carpenter or leatherworker (and don't have a high level armorsmith), mass produce wood or leather shields to get masterwork ones.

Try embarking with 2 military dwarves, arm them with a weapon and shield each, put them in a squad together, and have them train together all game long. Sparring is amazing for military skill gain. Sometimes they can be legendary before the autumn caravan arrives. Such a duo can annihilate multiple ambushes with ease, lashers are nothing to them. Only complaint I've heard about this method is it makes the game too easy, but that's what Fortress Defense mod is for .

Thanks!

I'm gonna try that.

One quick question, those two dwarfs that I'll be training up. They should be used as the militia commander or captain? does a more experienced military dwarf help train my useless recruits better?

[Loud Whispers]

Shields are very good. Shield material doesn't matter except for bashing, where metal is better, masterwork probably does help for blocking - so if you have a high level carpenter or leatherworker (and don't have a high level armorsmith), mass produce wood or leather shields to get masterwork ones.

Try embarking with 2 military dwarves, arm them with a weapon and shield each, put them in a squad together, and have them train together all game long. Sparring is amazing for military skill gain. Sometimes they can be legendary before the autumn caravan arrives. Such a duo can annihilate multiple ambushes with ease, lashers are nothing to them. Only complaint I've heard about this method is it makes the game too easy, but that's what Fortress Defense mod is for .

Copper is the best material for shields, densest armour grade metal there is
Also, embarking with just two means you'll norm. have to add a third from your starting 7, which seems a bit like a waste if you're going to put a lot into the first two. Plus they'll be grumbling about long patrol, and then you'll need a way to deal with them when they inevitably get angry because their pet peahen dodged into the large serrated disc hallway. I find that embarking with one dwarf with a proficient weapon skill and proficient teaching, you can selectively train large amounts of novices to proficient within the first year, and split them off into 3 man sparring squads while all of this goes on

Thanks!

I'm gonna try that.

One quick question, those two dwarfs that I'll be training up. They should be used as the militia commander or captain? does a more experienced military dwarf help train my useless recruits better?

Some people have the militia commander be a noble or craftsdwarf who will never see combat, purely to save the trouble of replacing him/her if (s)he dies. Personally, it adds to the depth to have the militia commander with a 2 man bodyguard sparring every year in the name of the fort
And Dwarfs with a good teaching skill teach other Dwarfs in demonstrations quicker, whereas Dwarfs who are skilled in basic combat skills will gain more experience from sparring, which is why large squads of novices trained by a few veterans gains more xp overall until they can spar effectively.