Post by: GavJ on November 18, 2014, 01:59:06 pm
I embark on several forts at this point, in places that clearly indicate lots of neighbors, one of them was even at war with both humans and elves and hostile goblins all at once.
I make millions and millions of created wealth. That same fort that was at war with everybody was cranking out like 20 superior adamantine serrated discs a year just to try and get invaders.
I am just in a regular old foresty area, not on a weird mountain or anything inaccessible. And these civs are within a few tiles of me on the world map, not right at the edge of my range.
Yet 5 years, 6 years in, nobody, nothing. Not a single wimpy goblin sieges. Not even a baby snatcher. Titans and forgotten beasts flow in like water, so the wealth is definitely working on one leve. I've killed a dozen in each fort. I also get plenty of traders from any civs I'm not at war with, no problem. yet NO INVADERS.
The hell?
Post by: Archereon on November 18, 2014, 02:00:49 pm
Post by: GavJ on November 18, 2014, 02:04:10 pm
Even if they do invade, that doesn't help me fix the issue of the ones I actually want to invade still not doing so.
Post by: Lemunde on November 18, 2014, 02:20:52 pm
Post by: Fr1gid on November 18, 2014, 02:27:18 pm
Post by: pisskop on November 18, 2014, 02:28:16 pm
I have a world where the gobos and dwarves are at war and neither side is curbstomping the other. Im going to run a fort and probably pray that they show up.
Post by: GavJ on November 18, 2014, 06:08:58 pm
Same here. I made a really awesome drowning trap and nobody ever showed up to trip it. Maybe there's some kind of trigger other than wealth that attracts them. Do you have a population cap? Artifacts turned off?artifacts are always on in my forts, most of them have pop 20-30 capped, but my most recent one I set to 80, and have been at 80 for a year or two and still nothing.
(if that is a trigger, though, it shouldn't be)
Post by: smeeprocket on November 18, 2014, 06:11:16 pm
Although the rest of the civs around me don't seem to have problems with attacks.
Post by: Dyret on November 18, 2014, 06:20:49 pm
Although the rest of the civs around me don't seem to have problems with attacks.
They don't seem to tell you about most battles. After I retired my last fort and checked the legends everyone seemed to have been attacked by everyone at some point, but the liason never bothered to tell me about it, except for when invaders successfully grabbed a Dwarf site.
Post by: kingu on November 18, 2014, 06:32:27 pm
Post by: StagnantSoul on November 18, 2014, 06:51:22 pm
Question: would weapon traps full of silver war hammers and spiked ball one-hit the undead, since that's blunt damage?
Post by: pisskop on November 18, 2014, 07:03:49 pm
I just had a 90 goblin attack. First siege in weeks. Real life weeks. Tough siege too, five cave dragons and some jabberers and ogres. Even had a demon made of rose gold.
Question: would weapon traps full of silver war hammers and spiked ball one-hit the undead, since that's blunt damage?
one-hit? Not guaranteed. But given all the damage I cant see them not getting mauled.
Blunt damage seems to be better because it doesnt sever parts and bruising everything seems to count for pulping as cutting would. and since its easier to bruise . . .
Post by: smeeprocket on November 18, 2014, 07:08:14 pm
I just had a 90 goblin attack. First siege in weeks. Real life weeks. Tough siege too, five cave dragons and some jabberers and ogres. Even had a demon made of rose gold.
Question: would weapon traps full of silver war hammers and spiked ball one-hit the undead, since that's blunt damage?
Dear God, how many sieges does one go through before it gets to that?
Incidentally, what is the length of time between each siege on average? I need a lot of recovery time.
Post by: StagnantSoul on November 18, 2014, 07:15:22 pm
Post by: Fniff on November 18, 2014, 07:20:02 pm
Post by: smeeprocket on November 18, 2014, 07:24:15 pm
Post by: utunnels on November 18, 2014, 07:24:51 pm
Sometimes when I got a siege, I close the game without saving.
When I reloaded the save (before the siege), there's no siege.
I can understand werebeast, titan and fb attacks are random, but shouldn't a siege army travel to your place before attack? Or perhaps they changed their mind on the way?
Post by: StagnantSoul on November 18, 2014, 07:25:49 pm
Post by: Weremammoth on November 18, 2014, 07:30:24 pm
Post by: Frogging101 on November 18, 2014, 07:32:52 pm
I noticed something.
Sometimes when I got a siege, I close the game without saving.
When I reloaded the save (before the siege), there's no siege.
I can understand werebeast, titan and fb attacks are random, but shouldn't a siege army travel to your place before attack? Or perhaps they changed their mind on the way?
This happened to me too. I closed the game and reloaded before the siege (yeah, save scumming is bad, but my marksdwarves had gone out with no ammo through no fault of mine, and I thought that was stupid and unfair), and the siege just didn't happen after I reloaded.
Post by: smeeprocket on November 18, 2014, 07:40:10 pm
Post by: Aslandus on November 18, 2014, 08:15:48 pm
Usually it's about a year, but with world simulation now a thing it's not really something you can predict as well as previous versions...I just had a 90 goblin attack. First siege in weeks. Real life weeks. Tough siege too, five cave dragons and some jabberers and ogres. Even had a demon made of rose gold.
Question: would weapon traps full of silver war hammers and spiked ball one-hit the undead, since that's blunt damage?
Dear God, how many sieges does one go through before it gets to that?
Incidentally, what is the length of time between each siege on average? I need a lot of recovery time.
As for the not getting sieges thing, it might just be the way your world genned, I've had a couple of goblin invasions, though nothing with more than 30 invaders at once...
Post by: StagnantSoul on November 18, 2014, 08:17:17 pm
Post by: GavJ on November 18, 2014, 08:18:27 pm
Post by: Aslandus on November 18, 2014, 09:17:41 pm
I'm not sure what you mean by "just the way the world genned" It genned with 2 wars in range. What other worldgen detail would override that?! And how do i make it not?I don't know anything about worldgen either, I guessed something that sounded luck-based, because what I meant is that you just haven't had the "luck" of getting attacked (assuming you consider being attacked a good thing, which it appears you do).
Maybe the goblins don't have the population to be sending raiding parties (in which case it may just be a matter of time before they do start attacking), maybe the goblin fortresses themselves are landlocked in some way, but if you're willing to cycle through several fortresses to get attacked, perhaps you would be willing to save your current world to a backup folder and gen a new one, though I can't be sure it'll help...
Post by: StagnantSoul on November 18, 2014, 09:19:30 pm
Post by: GavJ on November 19, 2014, 12:29:40 am
So although it may very well be a world gen issue, it's definitely not a "one weird quirky world outlier" situation, because I am observing this over several worlds associated with my several 2014 forts.
Post by: Lemunde on November 19, 2014, 12:03:53 pm
After checking legends I found that even though my current fortress is still technically neighbors with goblins, it's located in a region well outside their borders. However some human civs seem to be contesting their territory.
Edit: Also this might be an issue with a history that's too short. Your world might not be generating enough sites if there isn't enough history for them to do so.
Post by: GavJ on November 19, 2014, 04:13:57 pm
Them attacking each other shouldn't change with mroe sites, because both targets and attackers are increasing at the same time.
However, as time goes on, and my fort size isn't changing, then I become a smaller and smaller portion of the total population and less of a relative interest that would be worth sending an army to.
Post by: Sergarr on November 19, 2014, 04:26:14 pm
I would actually expect the opposite to be true. A shorter history with fewer sites should attack me more.I don't think invaders are currently attacking sites based on their population...
Them attacking each other shouldn't change with mroe sites, because both targets and attackers are increasing at the same time.
However, as time goes on, and my fort size isn't changing, then I become a smaller and smaller portion of the total population and less of a relative interest that would be worth sending an army to.
And the targets are most certainly not increasing with more sites, since there is a snowball kind of effect; one side which have the initial advantage is likely to increase that advantage. Therefore, after a long history, the number of invadable entities is probably not that high.
Post by: Melting Sky on November 19, 2014, 04:53:39 pm
Another possible cause of the problem could be related to that bug we had earlier in the release where the over world pathing was broken when determining neighbors. I remember for instance having forts that were literally right next to necromancer towers or goblin civs yet they would not show up as neighbors. I remember one forest fortress I had in particular where it should have had 4 or 5 necromancer towers in range yet not even half showed up as neighbors. Toady patched this bug which allowed the neighbors to show up properly again, but perhaps there is still some underlying over world movement and pathing problems that are still going on where civs that should be able to reach you still think they can't and thus don't send sieges? I assume you've checked to see if the neighboring hostiles have normal population levels? If they are dying or fledgling sites with only a handful of citizens they won't have troops to attack you with.
You mentioned that you always start your forts in a fresh world because you have very specific conditions that your embarks sites must meet. Perhaps it is something about the topography and other specific conditions you look for in an embark that is related to the problem. Have you tried just picking a completely random embark site with a lot of hostile neighbors to see if its the type of embarks you are choosing that is somehow related to the issue?
My final guess is that perhaps you are just astronomically unlucky in this regard and the game has been sending you mega beasts instead of sieges. I don't know if this still holds true in the new version or not since troops and their movements are now modeled in greater detail, but in past versions if you save scummed before a siege, sometimes instead of a siege a mega beast would show up and vice versa. It seemed like the game would determine if you met the conditions required to incur an attack and would then choose from a list of possible local threats and pick one randomly. To test this theory you could save scum repeatedly the next time you are attacked and see if it changes what you are attacked by or not. If this is the case you could probably increase the odds of being attacked by civs instead of mega beasts by decreasing beast numbers in world gen or simply letting world gen run longer. How long of a history do you run when you play? You aren't starting in like year 10 or something, are you?
The fact that others are reporting being sieged normally and you are not suggests it may be something you are doing different than everyone else that has uncovered the quirky game behavior.
Edit: I should add that in general sieges seem to be considerably less common in DF 2014 than in the older versions but they shouldn't be non-existent under normal circumstances. The decrease in sieges is a consequence of the fact that the game doesn't conjure the troops out of thin air like it used to. Anything that decreases the populations of aggressive civs will negatively impact the number and size of the sieges you can expect to receive. A couple of suspect world gen perimeters that come to mind include the number of mega beasts, history length and savagery. You might want to tinker with those variables if you have set them to unusual values during world gen.
Post by: kingu on November 25, 2014, 03:22:51 am
Post by: Skuggen on November 25, 2014, 07:32:01 am
Post by: Lemunde on December 02, 2014, 03:14:05 am
[PROGRESS_TRIGGER_POP_SIEGE:3]
After googling around I figured out that this number represents a certain population tiers. Specifically 3 represents a population of 80 where (as someone mentioned earlier) certain things start happening. I'm going to try lowering this to 1, genning a new world and starting a new fort with a population cap of 50 to see what happens. I'll keep you posted.
Edit: This is a very old thread but I think it's relevant. http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=58013.0
Post by: GavJ on December 02, 2014, 03:39:59 am
Quote
3 represents a population of 80Wow that's ridiculous, okay. "Hey what units should we use for a population requirement in the user init files?" "Hmm... how about groups of 27 dwarves?" "Not just dwarves period?" "No, definitely 27 dwarf units" "Okay, well I'll just go label that th--" "No, don't label the units. Everybody will just know that it is 27 dwarves, trust me."
... *facepalm*
Anyway, that's probably it then. I've only hit 80 with one fort for a year and a half or something.
Post by: WDDworf on December 02, 2014, 03:45:45 am
I've been running my fort for 4, or 5 years with Human, Dwarves and Goblin neighbours.
The Dwarves shown up from year 1 with a goblin liaison.
The Humans started showing up from year.. 3 I think.
The Goblin just showed up in the last year with about 10 men strong in a siege (for the first time, except for kobolds/gremlins).
The humans also have an Olm man diplomat.
I've had more than 100 dwarves pretty soon.. I think in year 2.. and the produced wealth must be getting pretty high as well.
Multiple forgotten beasts (twice a human giant); always elves showing up as werebeasts.
I had the feeling several Dwarven settlements got attacked (and lost) by the Goblin.. and only after that I got sieged.
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 02, 2014, 07:50:28 am
Post by: Lemunde on December 02, 2014, 08:37:37 am
Is the popcap "trigger" based on total dwarven numbers or the number of adults (soo many babies!!)? I too have never been sieged :(
Hard to say. I would assume it's the total population as having to keep up with a different number for adults would require slightly more programming. You know, path of least resistance and all that. But you never know.
Post by: pisskop on December 02, 2014, 08:39:59 am
otherwise only ambushes or smaller forms of conflict will occur.
but i have no clue how anything affects size of siege/frequency
Post by: smakemupagus on December 02, 2014, 08:54:33 am
Quote3 represents a population of 80Wow that's ridiculous, okay. "Hey what units should we use for a population requirement in the user init files?" "Hmm... how about groups of 27 dwarves?" "Not just dwarves period?" "No, definitely 27 dwarf units" "Okay, well I'll just go label that th--" "No, don't label the units. Everybody will just know that it is 27 dwarves, trust me."
... *facepalm*
Anyway, that's probably it then. I've only hit 80 with one fort for a year and a half or something.
The units for several different triggers (population, wealth, etc.) are all normalized to a common five point scale.
Post by: MDFification on December 02, 2014, 04:40:12 pm
Same here. I made a really awesome drowning trap and nobody ever showed up to trip it. Maybe there's some kind of trigger other than wealth that attracts them. Do you have a population cap? Artifacts turned off?artifacts are always on in my forts, most of them have pop 20-30 capped, but my most recent one I set to 80, and have been at 80 for a year or two and still nothing.
(if that is a trigger, though, it shouldn't be)
20-30 pop cap is far too low to attract goblin sieges. Raising it was a good move.
Post by: TheHossofMoss on December 02, 2014, 05:38:55 pm
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 03, 2014, 01:25:28 am
... although their timing was perfect. I was doing a major re-org of my squads and they had weapons and piece of armor missing. One of them bashed a goblin to death with a wooden shield, and I think another went with naked legs. Not too worried though, one axelord decapitated 4 gobos by himself :D
Post by: Voidlord on December 03, 2014, 08:04:05 am
Post by: Naryar on December 03, 2014, 03:51:17 pm
I'll see if more hostile civs = more attacks.
But if attacks are that rare, I may just stop playing df2014. Or maybe just build stuff, but half the fun of DF IS crushing your enemies and spilling blood for Armok, after all.
Post by: smeeprocket on December 03, 2014, 03:53:13 pm
It starts to get crowded without large amounts of war casualties.
Post by: Baffler on December 03, 2014, 04:05:59 pm
yea I rely on those invasions to cull large swaths of my population.
It starts to get crowded without large amounts of war casualties.
There's a solution now though, just put the more useless dwarves in webbed cages and deport them to
Post by: GavJ on December 03, 2014, 04:06:50 pm
Check the error log, you might have the error that armies camp forever, so no sieges...What error log? Also, if it is that error, is there anything I could do about it anyway?
Post by: smeeprocket on December 03, 2014, 04:07:40 pm
There is significant anecdotal evidence that holding goblin prisoners will increase the number of attackers in sieges, presumably trying to recover the prisoners before you can subject them to whatever horrible things you have planned for them.yea I rely on those invasions to cull large swaths of my population.
It starts to get crowded without large amounts of war casualties.
There's a solution now though, just put the more useless dwarves in webbed cages and deport them toSiberiathe Mountainhomes with the traders.
I think what I need is more military tbh. and it needs to be training around the clock. I only have 3 or 4 people in a squad train in a month, but I just need full time military for the sieges that probably won't happen.
I've been avoiding cage traps, tho, those things are easy mode.
Post by: Voidlord on December 03, 2014, 04:53:23 pm
the errorlog will be under in the dwarf fortress folder.Check the error log, you might have the error that armies camp forever, so no sieges...What error log? Also, if it is that error, is there anything I could do about it anyway?
the error I have seen is this: camp order missing parent -- army will camp forever.
I have had large fortresses, with a lot of wealth and not been sieged, and the common feature is this in the errorlog
Post by: Uronym on December 03, 2014, 10:27:13 pm
Necromancers are happy to rush you in the first year with endless hordes practically invincible zombies, but if goblins show up anymore, it is usually extremely late, possibly decades after embark, and extremely small; at that point in the game, even just jokes.
One theory in a thread I made a while ago was that goblins were taking a long time to arrive at your site, because some people reported getting regular invasion progression after several years of nothing, and armies have to travel now. Still, embarking right next to goblin civilizations doesn't necessarily get you the desired attacks, so it's probably something else really complicated.
The one sure solution is to fall back to previous versions, which is a shame. This seems like a pretty critical bug, but without any leads, Toady will probably not look into it for a while at least.
Post by: GavJ on December 03, 2014, 10:44:16 pm
Quote
without any leads, Toady will probably not look into it for a while at least.post above yours:
Quote
I have had large fortresses, with a lot of wealth and not been sieged, and the common feature is this in the errorlog
Sounds like a lead to me! Not too useful to me as a player if I can't prevent or change it, but surely useful to toady.
Post by: Uronym on December 03, 2014, 10:48:52 pm
Quotewithout any leads, Toady will probably not look into it for a while at least.post above yours:QuoteI have had large fortresses, with a lot of wealth and not been sieged, and the common feature is this in the errorlog
Sounds like a lead to me! Not too useful to me as a player if I can't prevent or change it, but surely useful to toady.
Sounds great, then; we just need to see if Toady knows what it means, or find out ourselves before making a bug report.
Post by: TheHossofMoss on December 04, 2014, 09:29:23 am
Ahh.... those were the good days.
Post by: IgnacM991 on December 04, 2014, 11:07:46 am
Well, it seems that my i7 can't handle the DF at this moment.
Post by: Broseph Stalin on December 04, 2014, 11:23:26 am
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 04, 2014, 11:56:13 am
Post by: TheHossofMoss on December 04, 2014, 12:04:55 pm
I would personally love to see big sieges with trolls smashing through those stupid 1 tile thick wooden walls and drawbridges, or goblins setting them alight, but it seems that they have been unintentionally weakened. Giving siegers the option of destroying certain fortifications and walls would make them far more potent.
Or at least giving them the ability to have "sappers" that dig a hole under the wall, or ladders to get over them. That may be planned, I'm not sure. But it would make sense. Especially the ladder part, considering we now have stepladders.
Post by: smeeprocket on December 04, 2014, 01:40:54 pm
Post by: Voidlord on December 04, 2014, 02:00:51 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 04, 2014, 02:05:43 pm
I would settle for them just actually appearing. Baby steps.
That just seems like a bug fix, really. Adding sappers and wall destruction would require more serious work and cannot be expected until DF2016.
Post by: Bartok on December 04, 2014, 02:18:42 pm
Post by: MDFification on December 04, 2014, 03:40:00 pm
I would settle for them just actually appearing. Baby steps.
That just seems like a bug fix, really. Adding sappers and wall destruction would require more serious work and cannot be expected until DF2016.
Or a DFhack plugin.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 04, 2014, 03:57:54 pm
Post by: smjjames on December 04, 2014, 04:06:01 pm
the errorlog will be under in the dwarf fortress folder.Check the error log, you might have the error that armies camp forever, so no sieges...What error log? Also, if it is that error, is there anything I could do about it anyway?
the error I have seen is this: camp order missing parent -- army will camp forever.
I have had large fortresses, with a lot of wealth and not been sieged, and the common feature is this in the errorlog
Even if nobody really knows what's going on with the army will camp forever error, you should still post a bug report IMO, not sure if theres a corelating bug report though.
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 04, 2014, 07:09:41 pm
Post by: thegoatgod_pan on December 05, 2014, 04:36:34 am
Year 3, no goblins.
I've attacked the humans, hopefully this will provoke a war with them.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 05, 2014, 11:23:18 am
sappers would totally change the dynamics. The main strength of the dwarves is their ability to shape the environment. Sappers would severely diminish the value of this ability
Yes, and that would be a good thing, because beating up goblins was far too easy even when they did arrive. A squad of 10 legendary dwarves in even steel equipment trashed any number of goblins which arrived.
Post by: The Bard on December 05, 2014, 12:22:27 pm
Post by: pisskop on December 05, 2014, 12:27:23 pm
All sappers would do is murder you via FPS death with their pathing and leaving tunnels everywhere.Hardly. If sappers were a thing Im certain both pathing and refilling open spacing would be improved
Post by: Aslandus on December 05, 2014, 01:13:11 pm
Legendary dwarves in steel armor are SUPPOSED to be nigh invincible to goblins, unless you are facing ten weaponmasters all in full steel from the gobbo side there's no way the goblins could match that head on (and dwarves are the only ones who know how to make steel). Keeping in mind how much infrastructure goes into the training and arming of those troops, should the goblins who just found some stuff and decided to attack a fortress really be that lethal to an established military complex?sappers would totally change the dynamics. The main strength of the dwarves is their ability to shape the environment. Sappers would severely diminish the value of this ability
Yes, and that would be a good thing, because beating up goblins was far too easy even when they did arrive. A squad of 10 legendary dwarves in even steel equipment trashed any number of goblins which arrived.
Sappers or ladder carriers are good ideas to be sure, more things you would have to design you defenses around and safety of walls could only be temporary. But keep in mind that the point of a "siege" is more about isolation than murder, tearing down walls is hard but if it was a little harder to feed and clothe your dwarves without the stuff brought by caravans, being trapped where caravans can't reach could be much more deadly...
Pperhaps a new type of invasion like a "raid" would be where sappers come in, where they focus on breaking through defenses and stealing your stuff rather than just hunting down and killing all the dwarves they find...
Post by: GavJ on December 05, 2014, 01:21:17 pm
The concept of a siege wouldn't make sense anymore. You could stand there for 500 years and still never starve them out. It's either attack or go home.
Unless you add things like sappers.
Post by: Melting Sky on December 05, 2014, 02:12:42 pm
I would settle for them just actually appearing. Baby steps.
That just seems like a bug fix, really. Adding sappers and wall destruction would require more serious work and cannot be expected until DF2016.
Although there are probably some bugs involved with this, it is also the fundamental change to how sieges are generated and actually simulated that is causing most of the lack of goblin sieges. In the past the goblins were basically conjured from thin air whenever the game determined it was time for you to be attacked. Now each individual goblin that attacks you is actually simulated. We can never go back to the way things were where you would get hit by a 100+ goblins and trolls a year simply because the game doesn't work that way anymore. Getting more goblins to attack is actually a much more serious programing undertaking than most of the other suggestions that have been made since it involves over world pathing, army logistics and site population mechanics etc.
Even if you make the AI target the player way more often than other sites it still won't provide the sort of constant seiges we are used to from the older versions. Adding a building destroyer 3 tag to the game that would allow a creature to destroy any construction would not take much programing at all nor would giving goblins better equipment such as full suits of iron/bronze for their elite or better yet the new divine metal gear if that goblin civ includes a fortress on a demon's spire. Making goblin engineers capable of disarming traps also probably wouldn't be that heavy of a programing task.
Some of the other suggestions such as improved pathing AI and undermining/burrowing are admittedly serious programing undertakings that will need to be part of a serious game version update rather than a quick patch.
Post by: GavJ on December 05, 2014, 02:37:19 pm
I'm not saying we go back to making them out of thin air. But you also probably don't want the world to simulate goblins COMPLETELY realistically as in treating you no differently than any other fort. You'll need something in between -- adding parameters in that cause them to bias toward your fort beyond its actual strategic value or the actual chance of stumbling across it.
And you say the populations can't support that. Okay, so up the populations and the gobline breeding rate too so that they can!
Etc. etc. Excuses for a boring game don't make the game fun. Fixing the problem makes a game fun.
If there turns out to be no way to really fix the problem, then the feature should be rolled back, honestly. I don't think this is likely -- I think there are probably lots of ways to make it work with dynamic simulation. But IF there weren't, then it would be rolled back, not just "oh well, the game doesn't do what we want anymore" and give up...
(this is all a bit hyperbolic. It's still a fun game. But just less so.)
Post by: GavJ on December 05, 2014, 02:39:23 pm
If you can fix it easily, do so ASAP.
If you can't fix it easily, roll back the change until you have time to do whatever difficult stuff it takes to fix it.
Post by: Naryar on December 05, 2014, 02:48:36 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 05, 2014, 04:45:17 pm
Which is still pretty much a bug or rather an error in design, though... Players want to be attacked. Changing the fundamental structure of the game in a way that makes players not get attacked anymore is making the game less of a good game and may need to be seriously reconsidered, and soon... I.e., that's not just a sufficient explanation or justification by itself to say that it has changed.
I'm not saying we go back to making them out of thin air. But you also probably don't want the world to simulate goblins COMPLETELY realistically as in treating you no differently than any other fort. You'll need something in between -- adding parameters in that cause them to bias toward your fort beyond its actual strategic value or the actual chance of stumbling across it.
And you say the populations can't support that. Okay, so up the populations and the gobline breeding rate too so that they can!
Etc. etc. Excuses for a boring game don't make the game fun. Fixing the problem makes a game fun.
If there turns out to be no way to really fix the problem, then the feature should be rolled back, honestly. I don't think this is likely -- I think there are probably lots of ways to make it work with dynamic simulation. But IF there weren't, then it would be rolled back, not just "oh well, the game doesn't do what we want anymore" and give up...
(this is all a bit hyperbolic. It's still a fun game. But just less so.)
Actually, if I had the choice of conjuring goblins from the air or blasting them towards the player's fort and the current system, I would take the current system. The persistent world and total simulation is a great step forward for the game, and goblins should not be exempt from that. Nor do I want any favouritism towards the player's fort - that is simply a lazy way of making fake difficulty which the other forts in the game do not experience and unbalances the simulation. If players want to be attacked they can embark next to a necromancer tower or goblin fort which should just attack them by proximity. Rather than making goblin attacks come from nothing, or sending them towards the player all the time, it would be better to just make them much stronger and capable of doing things like tunnelling and destroying some walls, so that when they did come, there would be a serious fight and likely the end of the fortress unless the dwarves were very well prepared.
Rolling back the feature would be a big step back for the simulation, which is one of the best things about DF. This is not a game of COD zombies where the enemies come endlessly. Each enemy must be tracked and act in a sensible (by dwarven standards) way, with logistics and so on. And I prefer it like this, knowing that no stupid stuff is being stacked against me. If that means no invasions every year, then that means no invasions every year.
Of course, if players still want more fights, there is always the possibility of making underground animal men and other foes much, much more threatening...no invasions may come from above, but many from below...
Post by: pisskop on December 05, 2014, 04:53:39 pm
I've found out that the goblins arent using some of the weapons they could be, like giant axes, due to a bug. I reduced the minsize of several 2h weapons from 62500 to 60000, the size of gobbos. They are doing much better now . . . Even keeping parity with their elven oppressors.
Seriously, for better goblins, give them the ability to use the very weapons they can make!
A side benefit is giving dwarves who are large enough the ability to use those weapons as well.
Post by: bluephoenix on December 05, 2014, 05:22:13 pm
There are other things to do besides squashing goblins.
Also it is good that the players fort does not get attacked constantly like in any random RTS, it would bother me a lot now that the world is alive.
Look here we have the NPC fortress "cavesprinkled" in the green mountains, what a nice fort, oh look player fortress "troubledchairs" that is right next to cavesprinkled gets a huge goblin siege every 6 months... That would look really out of place, why is the players fort different?
If you want to get attacked, you can dig down any time you like.
Post by: Naryar on December 05, 2014, 06:50:05 pm
Now people are happy with not being sieged every year :O
Post by: GavJ on December 05, 2014, 07:21:34 pm
Quote
so that when they did come, there would be a serious fight and likely the end of the fortress unless the dwarves were very well prepared.This does not sound remotely fun, sorry. Sit around for 20 years being bored then sudden random annihilation of your fort unless you have been constantly vigilant, which you wouldn't be because an attack almost never happens and that would be super annoying and unreasonable to expect to be always prepared for it. No thanks.
Quote
Rolling back the feature would be a big step back for the simulationUh I'm simply referring to the goblins and sieges, not the entire simulation of the game world!!! That would be absurd to roll back.
By "roll back" I mean only the sieges aspect. I.e. go ahead and keep having armies walking aroudn and everything else, but simply temporarily stick in a few lines of code that say "armies ignore player + other goblins are spawned to attack player only, until we have time to get around to fixing the problem that was caused, then we'll put it back."
Post by: Aslandus on December 06, 2014, 12:20:57 am
What kind of defenses are you using that require you to be constantly vigilant or your fortress just explodes? If you had 20 years to prepare, you had time to build walls, about 600 traps, train a legendary military and clad them all in steel armor and steel weapons. Basically, you should've been ready...Quoteso that when they did come, there would be a serious fight and likely the end of the fortress unless the dwarves were very well prepared.This does not sound remotely fun, sorry. Sit around for 20 years being bored then sudden random annihilation of your fort unless you have been constantly vigilant, which you wouldn't be because an attack almost never happens and that would be super annoying and unreasonable to expect to be always prepared for it. No thanks.
Etc. etc. Excuses for a boring game don't make the game fun. Fixing the problem makes a game fun.I'll cut to the chase: people want different things. Some people want more things to kill, some people want to be left alone, some people want a realistic simulation of a world so they can feel like they're actually keeping a community of dwarves alive rather than just "playing a game". You can probably revert to older versions or find a mod that does what you want (or make one if you know how) but I personally like the more simulation, less gamey approach that is being taken.
Post by: GavJ on December 06, 2014, 02:46:18 am
Quote
If you had 20 years to prepare, you had time to build walls, about 600 traps, train a legendary military and clad them all in steel armor and steel weapons. Basically, you should've been ready...But nobody is going to do that. That's such a colossal, unfun, ridiculous waste of time. I don't even remember the last time I played a fort for 20 years, if ever, or even 10, really. I would NOT do ANY of those things, because the chances would be much higher that I would get bored of the fort before anything came of it, and it would just be riling myself up for nothing.
BEST case scenario, I prepared for 10 hours of gameplay for a minute and 35 second event. Uh no. Screw that. If the game were like that, I would just completely ignore defense entirely, and on the off chance goblins attacked after only 4 years, just go "oh well" and make a new fort. Because that would be way less annoying than spending hours preparing for epic goblins in 12 forts without ever seeing one.
Quote
You can probably revert to older versionsAnd not get any benefit from any other updates? That is not a reasonable solution.
Notice that I did not say at any point the game should not ultimately be realistically simualted. I said it should be fixed soon, or if not a high priority, then a TEMPORARY stopgap should be put in place to fix the broken side effect, until such time as it can be made to work well while still running off of the full simulation and actual historical figures. I agree that is the best ultimate goal. Ideally with parameters that control underlying things in the realistic simulation to make it, realistically, provide different kinds of gameplay that different people enjoy.
But that's not what we have now. We have an undercooked system that wasn't apparently ready yet, and it needs some bandaids until it is fully baked.
Also notice that the stopgap measure DOES allow almost everybody of diverse interests to get what they want -- if you want few invasions or more invasions, or for them to come in different general time periods, random or not random, different sizes of invasions, any of those preferences are easily accommodated. Generated goblins just for sieges would be trivial to control with a custom parameters until a better realistically driven system is in place. Thus, the solution satisfies every group of people except the ones who happen to like simulations for their own sake aside from gameplay. Which I dare say is probably a small minority.
So am I maybe a small minority too. But not me + the people who want later but reliable sieges + the people who want lots of ambushes + the people who want blah blah, everybody else who would benefit from a less capricious and broken system.
Post by: Naryar on December 06, 2014, 04:53:28 am
If some
If some players want occasional fighting, then put your fortress far away from a goblin encampment and necromancer towers. Besides, goblins are only active in winter, 1 attack per year is a reasonable pace.
And if players want some action, like first ambushes in end of year 2 - year 3 and the first siege a few years thereafter, and then some consequent goblin attacks, they should have it !
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 06, 2014, 05:26:16 am
When goblins arrived, I never said they would be unbeatable, or anything close to unbeatable. I just said that they would wreck the fortress if players had not prepared properly with traps, concentric defences and loads of legendary dwarves. If they had, the goblins would be soundly beaten. And, sure enough, I and many other players do not find preparing fort defences to be boring. Remember that if they are sieging, it is because they think they can win - nobody starts a fight with somebody he thinks will batter him if he has any sense.
If people are not being attacked even if they embark right next to a goblin fort/necromancer tower, then something is wrong, but that fix needs to come based on the current system, by making goblins attack more, making them stronger, breed faster and so on, not by using simulation breaking, lazy, "gamey" tactics like making loads of goblins appear for no reason and throwing them at the player's fort. One of the best things about DF is its simulation. If it resorts to launching waves of enemies at the player, it is turning into COD zombies, and that is not a good thing.
Post by: Col_Jessep on December 06, 2014, 06:22:43 am
The system is neither capricious nor broken. Armies just behave in a sensible way and do not beeline for the player's fort. A lot of you seem to want extra goblins spawning without regard to logistics and so on, which would unbalance the simulation and be a massive inconsistency...I embarked in a tile away from a dark fortress with 10,000 gobbos and 5,000 trolls. Nothing happened for years. I think it would feel more "realistic" if the goblins would send a couple of soldiers ASAP to fuck up those 7 crazy dwarfs who are trying to build a new fortress within spitting distance of their capital.
Besides, DF has no problem conjuring migrants, traders and even your monarch from thin air. I'd have no problem with it if it would just generate a couple of raiders and bandits and the odd siege every now and then.
Realism is all nice and stuff but in games it's better to make things fun and then put them into a setting that makes them seem plausible. And who said Armok can't just create 50 goblins and trolls from thin air because he is bored?
Post by: Sergarr on December 06, 2014, 07:20:26 am
These two bugs combine with each other to make DF unplayable as a war game.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 06, 2014, 10:34:17 am
The system is neither capricious nor broken. Armies just behave in a sensible way and do not beeline for the player's fort. A lot of you seem to want extra goblins spawning without regard to logistics and so on, which would unbalance the simulation and be a massive inconsistency...I embarked in a tile away from a dark fortress with 10,000 gobbos and 5,000 trolls. Nothing happened for years. I think it would feel more "realistic" if the goblins would send a couple of soldiers ASAP to fuck up those 7 crazy dwarfs who are trying to build a new fortress within spitting distance of their capital.
Besides, DF has no problem conjuring migrants, traders and even your monarch from thin air. I'd have no problem with it if it would just generate a couple of raiders and bandits and the odd siege every now and then.
Realism is all nice and stuff but in games it's better to make things fun and then put them into a setting that makes them seem plausible. And who said Armok can't just create 50 goblins and trolls from thin air because he is bored?
This shows a problem with the current situation, but the solution is just to make that dark fortress attack small nearby settlements more often, resulting in your being attacked, not conjuring goblins from the air. Armok conjuring things, if it is in game, should apply to all races and not be focused solely on the player's fort. If there are 10,000 goblins around it should not be hard to make 20 of them come to attack the fort. I agree that it is silly that no goblins have attacked, but I would prefer for the goblins to just be much more aggressive to small nearby settlements and try to "nip the bud" before they grow with small armies. That seems doable and fits with the current, better model of the game.
To Sergarr:
DF is not a war game. I do agree that goblins do not attack enough in some cases, but goblins sieges are not and should not be the focus of the game.
Post by: Aslandus on December 06, 2014, 11:52:35 am
That sounds like a more sensible solution, have the goblins actually attack more often when you are closer rather than having a static "will attack or won't attack" if you're in range... (granted I don't know what the coding actually looks like but it seems from the existence of this thread that proximity isn't considered very much)The system is neither capricious nor broken. Armies just behave in a sensible way and do not beeline for the player's fort. A lot of you seem to want extra goblins spawning without regard to logistics and so on, which would unbalance the simulation and be a massive inconsistency...I embarked in a tile away from a dark fortress with 10,000 gobbos and 5,000 trolls. Nothing happened for years. I think it would feel more "realistic" if the goblins would send a couple of soldiers ASAP to fuck up those 7 crazy dwarfs who are trying to build a new fortress within spitting distance of their capital.
Besides, DF has no problem conjuring migrants, traders and even your monarch from thin air. I'd have no problem with it if it would just generate a couple of raiders and bandits and the odd siege every now and then.
Realism is all nice and stuff but in games it's better to make things fun and then put them into a setting that makes them seem plausible. And who said Armok can't just create 50 goblins and trolls from thin air because he is bored?
This shows a problem with the current situation, but the solution is just to make that dark fortress attack small nearby settlements more often, resulting in your being attacked, not conjuring goblins from the air. Armok conjuring things, if it is in game, should apply to all races and not be focused solely on the player's fort. If there are 10,000 goblins around it should not be hard to make 20 of them come to attack the fort. I agree that it is silly that no goblins have attacked, but I would prefer for the goblins to just be much more aggressive to small nearby settlements and try to "nip the bud" before they grow with small armies. That seems doable and fits with the current, better model of the game.
To Sergarr:
DF is not a war game. I do agree that goblins do not attack enough in some cases, but goblins sieges are not and should not be the focus of the game.
Also I'm surprised people think this game is supposed to be centered around killing goblins rather than building fortresses or leading dwarves, I mean it's called "Dwarf Fortress" not "Goblin Murder Simulator"...
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 06, 2014, 11:59:34 am
Post by: Sergarr on December 06, 2014, 12:00:07 pm
Also, most of mechanics in the game are used only during combat. Bodyparts, weapons, armor, traps, siege weapons, physical strength, all these things matter only for combat. You can deny it all you want, but Dwarf Fortress is a game centered around killing stuff.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 06, 2014, 12:38:52 pm
Post by: GavJ on December 06, 2014, 02:48:30 pm
I embarked in a tile away from a dark fortress with 10,000 gobbos and 5,000 trolls. Nothing happened for years. I think it would feel more "realistic" if the goblins would send a couple of soldiers ASAP to fuck up those 7 crazy dwarfs who are trying to build a new fortress within spitting distance of their capital.This. The current setup should be satisfying to NEITHER people who want to be attacked NOR people who enjoy realism, because it is accomplishing neither.
If you can fix it by just making them slightly more aggressive or something, then great. If it's too much more complicated than that, though, then I don't think we should have to wait for 2 years for a more complicated solution with a game that is boring for anybody who knows the basics of setting up a fort already.
Spawning goblins is an easy fix until the more complicated things can be put in place. But sure, only if actually necessary. Go ahead and try some simple realistic fixes first, by all means. Smaller armies that circulate more might help too.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 06, 2014, 03:16:33 pm
Spawning goblins, if it is implemented as a stopgap fix, should be optional, at least by DFhack or something.
Post by: dwarf_reform on December 06, 2014, 04:16:55 pm
I dunno.. I may not muster up the eloquence I need, here.. :> For now it feels like every siege can be handled with the exact same tactics, and it barely matters who is out there needing killed.. Just with the enhanced fruit/plant set-up, its easier than ever to just close the gate and ignore attackers.. It always makes me think of Terraria and their "clown" enemy, who had the unique power of being able to destroy things you built.. That clown had the power to strike fear into your heart, and enough people complained about fear so that now the clown bombs cannot destroy blocks (and as a result I view the clown as.. well, a clown!)
Not saying we complained the fear out of DF, at all! Just saying that recent updates have enhanced survivability while adding little-to-no new danger elements to the game.. For instance, now that food production is quite a bit easier, maybe its time to consider implementing that food-rot/preservation mechanic fully.. or maybe try to get rising water levels added back in..
A part of the "I'm SAFE!!" feeling a lot of players have had recently could be due to a lack of danger in the natural world.. Somewhere I suggested 'animal migration' swarms, where a herd of randomized-yet-plausible animals (wolves, bears, keas, snakes, birds, anything, really..) enter and cross the map from east-to-west/west-to-east or north-south/south-north, like they're migrating across.. I'm sure other things are coming later on, like on-site sabotage, but for now I think DF balance is thrown off by an overly large influx of "good" content..
We need more evil :> Ah, and its always nice to keep options available for setting up a fully peaceful world (or fully psychotic world), just to cater to that play style..
Post by: Bigheaded on December 06, 2014, 04:18:55 pm
Might try very few civilisations and hope the lack of them encourages the goblins to attack me, rather than anyone else.
As LOSING IS FUN, and it's getting harder to lose, not losing is quite often quite boring.
Post by: Uronym on December 06, 2014, 04:27:25 pm
But Dwarf Fortress is a special kind of both, and more. That's why I play it, anyway. Or used to. I'll have to wait until invasions actually happen again.
It's fun and all to make defenses, that is true. But it's no fun unless they are eventually tested, so that we can see how well they work, or die hilariously.
Post by: Magistrum on December 06, 2014, 04:36:47 pm
Post by: Naryar on December 06, 2014, 04:45:39 pm
All I have seen is three kobold thieves. Nothing more.
It's not worth it playing dwarf fortress without enemies.
Post by: Magistrum on December 06, 2014, 04:58:57 pm
Post by: Naryar on December 06, 2014, 05:00:47 pm
Post by: Magistrum on December 06, 2014, 05:04:56 pm
Post by: Bigheaded on December 06, 2014, 07:32:31 pm
Feel free to ask for a turn: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=142169.300
Post by: Robsoie on December 06, 2014, 11:56:30 pm
Unfortunately there's a big bug there ( reported here (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6798) ) that is present since the 1st release of DF2014 : you will notice those armies will stop to camp, but then will never move again, when you get to such location, you usually notice that the "armies" are not only very small, ... but more importantly they're sleeping, you can wait day , night , months, whatever , they will never wake up.
It's not only armies, it's nearly every groups (refugees too) and not only goblins but dwarves/humans/elven "armies" (well small parties i should say) that are affected.
Now that Fortress Mode is working together with Adventure Mode, i wonder if this big adventure mode bug is responsible too of the boring lack of invaders despite one may play with invaders enabled and close to goblin sites.
Post by: smjjames on December 07, 2014, 12:06:49 am
I don't know if anyone play Adventure mode , but in adventure mode you sometime run into "army in march" , troops that leave their homeplace to go attack another location.
Unfortunately there's a big bug there ( reported here (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=6798) ) that is present since the 1st release of DF2014 : you will notice those armies will stop to camp, but then will never move again, when you get to such location, you usually notice that the "armies" are not only very small, ... but more importantly they're sleeping, you can wait day , night , months, whatever , they will never wake up.
It's not only armies, it's nearly every groups (refugees too) and not only goblins but dwarves/humans/elven "armies" (well small parties i should say) that are affected.
Now that Fortress Mode is working together with Adventure Mode, i wonder if this big adventure mode bug is responsible too of the boring lack of invaders despite one may play with invaders enabled and close to goblin sites.
Actually, I've seen big groups, including the one I linked to in the report there. Oddly, that army kept respawning, even after using DFhack to give them a magma bath.
I've also seen armies consisting of animals for some odd reason.
Post by: GavJ on December 07, 2014, 12:45:45 am
Quote
I think you guys are suffering from the old "forgot to check neighborhood before embarking" problemThere are like half a dozen people in the thread including myself who said they embarked in the same tile or right next to gigantic civilizations full of goblins and still don't get attacked for years and years...
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 07, 2014, 05:06:58 am
QuoteI think you guys are suffering from the old "forgot to check neighborhood before embarking" problemThere are like half a dozen people in the thread including myself who said they embarked in the same tile or right next to gigantic civilizations full of goblins and still don't get attacked for years and years...
...which is certainly a serious problem, which may be the fault of goblins not sending out raiding parties or the camps not moving bug that Robsole posted.
Post by: Col_Jessep on December 07, 2014, 05:35:56 am
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I'll start training my civilians for war now. Somebody could have got hurt! =P
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 07, 2014, 07:27:19 am
Post by: Broseph Stalin on December 07, 2014, 08:25:37 am
Post by: Col_Jessep on December 07, 2014, 08:26:02 am
The Giantess Nemen Illuduthra has come!
A gigantic creature resembling a human, almost unparalleled in size!
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Oh...
I expected a gigantic creature of unparalleled size to be a tiny bit more pain resistant. I get that they can't hit a legendary swordsdwarf but it would be nice if they would not give in to pain after the first strike... :'(
Post by: Broseph Stalin on December 07, 2014, 08:28:15 am
Post by: Naryar on December 07, 2014, 08:38:21 am
More dragons and rocs is totally possible (just increase the number of megabeast "caves" which is actually a limit on the number of megabeasts), the only issue is that they start to burninate towns to the ground and i'm pretty sure 10x normal number of megabeasts (as i have now) kills off civilizations.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 07, 2014, 10:27:57 am
The way it works right now is the first guy to get injured passes out so the only way for something to be remotely threatening is for it to be difficult to hit (try to avoid flanking something with more than two dwarves), heavily armored, or incapable of feeling pain.
This system is daft. Animals often fight after being injured worse than the wounds described. The whole gives in to pain thing needs to be massively reduced.
Post by: bluephoenix on December 07, 2014, 10:50:20 am
See how it says "fracturing the bone"?Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Oh...
I expected a gigantic creature of unparalleled size to be a tiny bit more pain resistant. I get that they can't hit a legendary swordsdwarf but it would be nice if they would not give in to pain after the first strike... :'([/spoiler]
That is the problem, bones have waaay too many pain receptors right now.
You need to go to your raw folder and change tissue_template_default to make bone have less pain receptors, I have it on 17.
Post by: smjjames on December 07, 2014, 10:53:09 am
The way it works right now is the first guy to get injured passes out so the only way for something to be remotely threatening is for it to be difficult to hit (try to avoid flanking something with more than two dwarves), heavily armored, or incapable of feeling pain.
This system is daft. Animals often fight after being injured worse than the wounds described. The whole gives in to pain thing needs to be massively reduced.
Yeah, theres a bug report or two on it.
Post by: Col_Jessep on December 07, 2014, 11:49:03 am
Semimegabeasts are nonthreatening, this ain't nothing new. They have been weak since 0.31 at least. You want a challenge ? Bronze colossus, hydra, dragon, or a good forgotten beast.After the cyclops I reloaded and didn't send in my military. The cyclops did quite a number on my civilians. They can be quite dangerous in an early fort but not after 7 years. I have 40 legendary swordsdorfs (and 10 lazy-ass markdorfs who only train a couple of hours when they feel like it).
A giantess or cyclops could bring some family or friends later in the game. That would make the fight more interesting. Or maybe they could use a door or table as shield and a log as club... :D
I think the main problem is that the balance probably works well for adventure mode but is too easy for fortress mode. Some enemy types are too rare. I've never seen a bronze colossus, hydra, roc or dragon! Never had a vampire in my fort either. My fort size is 82+4 kids with 3.5 million in wealth so the FUN stuff should trigger.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 07, 2014, 12:23:03 pm
See how it says "fracturing the bone"?
That is the problem, bones have waaay too many pain receptors right now.
You need to go to your raw folder and change tissue_template_default to make bone have less pain receptors, I have it on 17.
As soon as I read "bones have pain receptors" I knew something was wrong. All receptors of any kind are found in the flesh, most in the skin. While a raws edit could solve these problems (there should really be a "better raws" mod, maybe I should make one), it would be much better if it was fixed by default.
Post by: Naryar on December 07, 2014, 12:58:15 pm
However, the hand has quite a bit of bones and cartilage so fractures are messy AND the hand has the most receptors of any body surface overall (no idea about if it has the most pain receptors of any body surface), so there's also that.
Still I doubt a broken hand would have people (or cyclopses) pass out from the pain. Have maluses to fighting due to shock doubtlessly, but pass out from the pain ?
Semimegabeasts are nonthreatening, this ain't nothing new. They have been weak since 0.31 at least. You want a challenge ? Bronze colossus, hydra, dragon, or a good forgotten beast.After the cyclops I reloaded and didn't send in my military. The cyclops did quite a number on my civilians. They can be quite dangerous in an early fort but not after 7 years. I have 40 legendary swordsdorfs (and 10 lazy-ass markdorfs who only train a couple of hours when they feel like it).
Well, yeah, any semimegabeast will kill civilian dwarves easily (then again if they fall on an adept miner it's another thing). They are however rather weak against any worthy militia.
Post by: Sergarr on December 07, 2014, 01:05:09 pm
In fact, it appears from my cursory raw examination that the bones in DF have the biggest number of pain receptors out of all tissues!See how it says "fracturing the bone"?
That is the problem, bones have waaay too many pain receptors right now.
You need to go to your raw folder and change tissue_template_default to make bone have less pain receptors, I have it on 17.
As soon as I read "bones have pain receptors" I knew something was wrong. All receptors of any kind are found in the flesh, most in the skin. While a raws edit could solve these problems (there should really be a "better raws" mod, maybe I should make one), it would be much better if it was fixed by default.
In fact, it's 10 times bigger than the next runner up (50 for bones vs 5 for skin, muscles and the like).
Hilariously enough, the actual nervous tissue doesn't appear to have any pain receptors in it at all. YEAH.
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 07, 2014, 01:52:50 pm
See how it says "fracturing the bone"?
That is the problem, bones have waaay too many pain receptors right now.
You need to go to your raw folder and change tissue_template_default to make bone have less pain receptors, I have it on 17.
As soon as I read "bones have pain receptors" I knew something was wrong. All receptors of any kind are found in the flesh, most in the skin. While a raws edit could solve these problems (there should really be a "better raws" mod, maybe I should make one), it would be much better if it was fixed by default.
Erm... While the "minerally" part of bones have no pain receptors per say, they are surrounded with tissue that *does*, called the Periosteum. When the fracture damages this layer of tissue, severe pain follows. Having the game put pain receptors inside the bone is an acceptable approximation of reality IMO. There may be too many, but there should be some.
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 07, 2014, 01:53:57 pm
Semimegabeasts are nonthreatening, this ain't nothing new. They have been weak since 0.31 at least. You want a challenge ? Bronze colossus, hydra, dragon, or a good forgotten beast.After the cyclops I reloaded and didn't send in my military. The cyclops did quite a number on my civilians. They can be quite dangerous in an early fort but not after 7 years. I have 40 legendary swordsdorfs (and 10 lazy-ass markdorfs who only train a couple of hours when they feel like it).
A giantess or cyclops could bring some family or friends later in the game. That would make the fight more interesting. Or maybe they could use a door or table as shield and a log as club... :D
I think the main problem is that the balance probably works well for adventure mode but is too easy for fortress mode. Some enemy types are too rare. I've never seen a bronze colossus, hydra, roc or dragon! Never had a vampire in my fort either. My fort size is 82+4 kids with 3.5 million in wealth so the FUN stuff should trigger.
Make sure you have more than 100 dwarves, that seems to be an important treshold for sieges.
Post by: Bigheaded on December 07, 2014, 03:10:03 pm
Quote
Make sure you have more than 100 dwarves, that seems to be an important treshold for sieges.It's 80 (that includes children), just had a full goblin assault at 81 pop. Although no mounts.
Also, i tried making a slightly more evil region to help the goblins through, and it appears to have worked, i've had the first thieves i've seen in a long time turn up within a year.
I'm pretty sure i'll be getting attacked soon.
Idea is, is that in a non savage world, the animals don't kill half the siege before it gets to you, i've seen 3 worlds now where an elephant has taken out a dragon (i was trying to get the right sort of world and i decided to check legends to see how many goblins were in the legends and noticed all these dead dragons).
I think the chances of goblins surviving walking past badgers is pretty decent. Although my bets probably on the badgers... especially if honey is involved.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 07, 2014, 03:53:40 pm
Erm... While the "minerally" part of bones have no pain receptors per say, they are surrounded with tissue that *does*, called the Periosteum. When the fracture damages this layer of tissue, severe pain follows. Having the game put pain receptors inside the bone is an acceptable approximation of reality IMO. There may be too many, but there should be some.
I would consider that tissue to fall within the remit of "flesh" myself, but I understand that having receptors in the bones represents that. The numbers must still be reduced to stop monsters fainting as described earlier.
Post by: Col_Jessep on December 08, 2014, 11:49:35 am
The Cyclops Ata has come!
A giant humanoid monster with a single eye set in its forehead.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I guess we all know how this went for the giant monster... =3
Didn't bother to alarm the civies since the clever monster bee-lined it to my veteran swordsdorf squad.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 08, 2014, 12:11:48 pm
Post by: Sergarr on December 08, 2014, 01:56:39 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 08, 2014, 02:21:48 pm
Post by: Button on December 08, 2014, 03:06:44 pm
Post by: Col_Jessep on December 08, 2014, 03:08:43 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
She lasted longer than the megabeasts. And that strike to the teeth was brutal, teeth flying everywhere:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Tearing apart the muscle and the spleen! Jeez, getting a pickaxe jammed into your spleen, I guess that's really a good reason to give in to pain. :o
PS. I agree with the forgotten beasts, Button.
Post by: Sergarr on December 08, 2014, 03:40:51 pm
I agree that too many attacks break bones in the first place, but an animal should not faint from a single broken bone in an extremity anyway. Swords in particular should not break bones very often at all, mostly just cutting the flesh.That happens because cutting weapons have ridiculous penetration values, vastly exceeding the comparative thickness of body layers.
I've just calculated it and the average swordsman with a steel sword has enough force behind his slash to cut the leg's bones ten times over (assuming he cuts through the skin and muscle beforehand). I'm preeeeetty sure that's not how it is in real life.
(though I'm not sure if my calcs are actually correct...)
Post by: Naryar on December 08, 2014, 03:42:25 pm
One feature of DF2014 which is reducing my Fun is forgotten beasts fighting in the caverns - with the wildlife and with each other. It used to be that if you ignored FBs they'd pile up, so you had an incentive to try to take them out quickly. Now they just kill each other - and with all their syndromes, it's too often fatal to both beasts. Occasionally even normal wildlife will take them out - my dining room has a bunch of engravings of the (wild) jabberer Tattooedwealthy laughing as Esnust the Abyssal Urn makes a plaintive gesture. While I agree that that's pretty awesome, rushing to get your military trained and your cavern defenses up because if you don't hurry, all the Forgotten Beasts will be dead is like... the opposite of Dwarf Fortress.
What fun reduction ? You are not simply thinking dwarven enough.
Wall off the caverns, use cagetraps+cave-in traps to catch FB's and everything in the caverns.
Then build an arena and MAKE THEM FIGHT EACH OTHER for your dwarves's viewing pleasure. And yours as well, of course.
Cavern Wars!
Also yes, jabberers are bad-ass and definitely can kill some FB's.
Post by: BoredVirulence on December 08, 2014, 03:58:16 pm
I agree that too many attacks break bones in the first place, but an animal should not faint from a single broken bone in an extremity anyway. Swords in particular should not break bones very often at all, mostly just cutting the flesh.That happens because cutting weapons have ridiculous penetration values, vastly exceeding the comparative thickness of body layers.
I've just calculated it and the average swordsman with a steel sword has enough force behind his slash to cut the leg's bones ten times over (assuming he cuts through the skin and muscle beforehand). I'm preeeeetty sure that's not how it is in real life.
(though I'm not sure if my calcs are actually correct...)
Swords should nearly always break someones bones. Even a dull sword will often fracture the bones underneath if there is no protective gear. A sharpened sword can cleave through a mans torso, not to mention what it would do to the femur...
The numbers may be off (and indeed, a single slash should not cleave through 10 femurs), but a sharpened sword against anything unarmored is pretty much a 1 hit kill in real life.
Post by: Sergarr on December 08, 2014, 04:12:01 pm
The penetration values on weapons are so big that a sword sword can (if wielded by somebody very strong and huge) cut off an elephant's leg in one slash. I'm pretty sure that's physically impossible.
In fact, if you mod the short sword to have x100 velocity that it has, you can easily sever elephant's legs. That's probably kinda unrealistic right here.
I'm pretty sure the penetration values should be equal to weapon's size or lesser than that, since that's what the game uses for body part attacks. For a short sword, that would mean the difference between 4000 penetration and 300 penetration. The thickness of an elephant's leg is about 400, so that should help alleviate that problem.
In general, DF's physics are so crude the only reason why nobody has figured them out is because all these values are hidden deeply inside the code. But now, armed with formulas and calculators, we should make things right.
Post by: BoredVirulence on December 08, 2014, 04:33:31 pm
Okay I've found a little mistake here. It's not 10 times over. It's "just" three times. And that's just a dull sword, with a masterwork weapon, you can cleave through a bone six times bigger than a human arm's one in one slash.
The penetration values on weapons are so big that a sword sword can (if wielded by somebody very strong and huge) cut off an elephant's leg in one slash. I'm pretty sure that's physically impossible.
Considering dwarf fortress has no such thing as a dull sword, I'm going to assume we mean a low quality sword. A sharpened, but otherwise ordinary, sword should be able to cut through at least 2 human femurs, which is the strongest bone in your body. 3 could very well be possible, but I certainly won't claim it. The humerus isn't a particularly strong bone, so I could imagine cutting through 6 in one swing (not really the same thing as making one giant super bone), although this could too be implausible.
Bone is a peculiar thing, it doesn't cut very well, and its really just the blunt force on a small area that causes very specific breaks, so as we start adding, things behave much more differently and become difficult to predict. The more outlandish scenarios are pretty hard to predict.
However I believe that the right man, with a large two handed sword, could cut through an elephants leg in a single swing. Keep in mind that the macuahuitl could cut through a horses torso. It wasn't really a single swing, there would be sawing action, but for a wooden club with bits of glass on the side, that's impressive. A great sword has a much better cutting edge, and likely even more momentum than the macuahuitl, so it may be up to the task. I assume your calculations were for a dwarven short sword, and that certainly couldn't do the job.
So I'll agree, the numbers are off. But I honestly think some people here have unrealistic beliefs on the limitations of these weapons. That's understandable, we don't usually slice each other up anymore, but think about the forces involved. If a normal sword (granted not a short sword) can cut through two pigs torso's (closest human analog) in a single swing, it has the potential to do some damage. Even without its cutting edge, the sheer momentum involved in a metal club with a small contact area is certainly going to break some bones.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 09, 2014, 11:19:14 am
Stories of creatures being bisected by swords should be taken with some scepticism. It is likely that the horse cut by the macuahuitl was sawn in half rather than being sliced with a single blow. A great sword was NOT sharper than a macuahuitl - obsidian edges are usually better at cutting that metal ones - but it was stronger and less likely to chip and break.
Post by: Button on December 09, 2014, 02:30:00 pm
One feature of DF2014 which is reducing my Fun is forgotten beasts fighting in the caverns - with the wildlife and with each other. It used to be that if you ignored FBs they'd pile up, so you had an incentive to try to take them out quickly. Now they just kill each other - and with all their syndromes, it's too often fatal to both beasts. Occasionally even normal wildlife will take them out - my dining room has a bunch of engravings of the (wild) jabberer Tattooedwealthy laughing as Esnust the Abyssal Urn makes a plaintive gesture. While I agree that that's pretty awesome, rushing to get your military trained and your cavern defenses up because if you don't hurry, all the Forgotten Beasts will be dead is like... the opposite of Dwarf Fortress.
What fun reduction ? You are not simply thinking dwarven enough.
Wall off the caverns, use cagetraps+cave-in traps to catch FB's and everything in the caverns.
Then build an arena and MAKE THEM FIGHT EACH OTHER for your dwarves's viewing pleasure. And yours as well, of course.
Cavern Wars!
Also yes, jabberers are bad-ass and definitely can kill some FB's.
That's what I was hoping to do, but they're dying before I get around to them. I shouldn't be thinking, "I need to hurry up and catch that FB before something kills it!".
Post by: Bigheaded on December 09, 2014, 02:32:06 pm
I think the semi-megabeasts are just giant babies. Here, a giant rattlesnake was tip-toeing around my main entrance and I send a squad:Spoiler (click to show/hide)
She lasted longer than the megabeasts. And that strike to the teeth was brutal, teeth flying everywhere:Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Tearing apart the muscle and the spleen! Jeez, getting a pickaxe jammed into your spleen, I guess that's really a good reason to give in to pain. :o
PS. I agree with the forgotten beasts, Button.
I've an idea which i'm considering. What if... everything in the caverns was absolutely crazy freaking dangerous?
Imagine giant cave spiders... where 4 of them spawn... at 10 times the size!
Also, Crundles regularly will charge directly into your fort (i find most cavern beasts like to hang out ouside your meeting hall, which is interesting). Also had a forgotten beast wandering the hospital, which makes me wonder where they attack.
Not entirely sure how graphics work, it may be simple enough to add some extra graphics and add in some extra animals also. Or just reuse some.
Changing the amount of GCS and their size is fairly easy, not entirely sure how to make them grow faster, which would be quite key, Although if using a 200 year old world, these animals should be near to fully grown (although it takes 1000 years for a cave dragon to fully grow).
Worth a thought anyway and would be funny just catching a few in traps then unleashing them on goblins and such just to see the results.
Now if a siege came along with goblins riding a cave dragon which is 10 times its current size... well. I'll leave that thought.
Post by: BoredVirulence on December 09, 2014, 03:07:27 pm
While a strong man could cut through bone with a very strong sword if it was laid down on the ground, doing so against a moving enemy while keeping the strikes short to increase speed and decrease fatigue and strike recovery time is a different story...An average man with a decent steel sword can cut someone's arm off without it being secured to a target (Nearly free floating, inertia is the only thing providing resistance), if the arm is unarmored, and the swing is decent. It doesn't need all of the power he can muster, a full swing will generate enough momentum. It wouldn't fatigue him more than any other full swing. Bone isn't that strong, at least most aren't.
It is worth noting that since the target is nearly free floating, and inertia is what is providing resistance to the swords movement, the sword would require a good deal of momentum. Hence, a full swing is certainly needed.
... Swords were also susceptible to breaking or jamming in wounds if they dug in too deeply. A poorly executed, strong cut against bone where the flat hit the bone would often break the sword. Even good warriors often broke swords in battle - Richard I of England broke one just pushing someone aside with the flat...Most were iron swords too. Steel swords had a remarkable ability to not break. Reconstructed Ulfberht blades (rare steel sword) have shown the ability to stab directly into wooden shields, and bend rather than break. However, you do bring up a point, because most swords were crappy iron, they were likely instructed to be more careful, and that tradition would have continued even with steel swords occasionally present. Its also worth noting that while those blades are believed to be reconstructed in an authentic manner, its still possible they don't reflect the nature of the sword. Either way, right now we are talking about steel swords (Or, I thought we were).
... It is likely that the horse cut by the macuahuitl was sawn in half rather than being sliced with a single blow. A great sword was NOT sharper than a macuahuitl - obsidian edges are usually better at cutting that metal ones - but it was stronger and less likely to chip and break.Yeah, those accounts are certainly somewhat false, and they were definitely partially sawed through. While obsidian is sharper than a steel sword, it won't hold its edge. The moment it touches bone, it will snap, and it will be just the wooden club breaking the bone. A great sword has an advantage, if its steel, it won't break. The macuahuitl probably needed to saw through the horse because it lost much of its cutting power half way through. I do believe that this scenario would be very dependent on a high quality steel great sword, wielded by a very strong man, some luck, and maybe an elephant with a bone condition. It may not even be plausible, but to consider it ridiculous is an overstatement.
Post by: smjjames on December 09, 2014, 03:08:59 pm
Post by: Aslandus on December 09, 2014, 04:37:37 pm
Just wanted to note that this has been derailed for the last page and a half or so.And it will continue to do so unless the OP locks the thread
Post by: BoredVirulence on December 09, 2014, 04:39:31 pm
Or we can get back on topic. Which I would do, but I have nothing to add to that conversation. Although, I admit, I think this topic has largely been exhausted.Just wanted to note that this has been derailed for the last page and a half or so.And it will continue to do so unless the OP locks the thread
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 10, 2014, 12:03:31 pm
An average man with a decent steel sword can cut someone's arm off without it being secured to a target (Nearly free floating, inertia is the only thing providing resistance), if the arm is unarmored, and the swing is decent. It doesn't need all of the power he can muster, a full swing will generate enough momentum. It wouldn't fatigue him more than any other full swing. Bone isn't that strong, at least most aren't.
It is worth noting that since the target is nearly free floating, and inertia is what is providing resistance to the swords movement, the sword would require a good deal of momentum. Hence, a full swing is certainly needed.
Most were iron swords too. Steel swords had a remarkable ability to not break. Reconstructed Ulfberht blades (rare steel sword) have shown the ability to stab directly into wooden shields, and bend rather than break. However, you do bring up a point, because most swords were crappy iron, they were likely instructed to be more careful, and that tradition would have continued even with steel swords occasionally present. Its also worth noting that while those blades are believed to be reconstructed in an authentic manner, its still possible they don't reflect the nature of the sword. Either way, right now we are talking about steel swords (Or, I thought we were).
Yeah, those accounts are certainly somewhat false, and they were definitely partially sawed through. While obsidian is sharper than a steel sword, it won't hold its edge. The moment it touches bone, it will snap, and it will be just the wooden club breaking the bone. A great sword has an advantage, if its steel, it won't break. The macuahuitl probably needed to saw through the horse because it lost much of its cutting power half way through. I do believe that this scenario would be very dependent on a high quality steel great sword, wielded by a very strong man, some luck, and maybe an elephant with a bone condition. It may not even be plausible, but to consider it ridiculous is an overstatement.
I would consider a good steel sword (made with the right amount of carbon) to be the "very strong" sword I mentioned, compared to weaker swords made of iron, poor steel or bronze. One of the great weaknesses of the samurai sword against the European sword is that is was made from poor iron and was very sharp, but weak against hard objects. A great sword, when used properly, would not have snapped.
My point about laying the bone on the ground is, as you have said, that in a fight that bone will not be held rigidly in place as it is hit. My further point is that a "full swing" would be a stupid thing to do in a fight, because it requires lots of energy, is slower, and if it misses, which it likely will because of its slower and "telegraphed" nature, the enemy can quickly strike before the swinger has recovered to defend himself. Historical longsword fighting mostly involved short stabs and cuts for this reason. Big, lumbering swings were stupid things to do because the foe would just dodge, then strike in as the swinger recovered to swing again. The only time a "full swing" would be used is to finish a defeated opponent, or, in the DF case, if the enemy was a beast so slow that it could not dodge. Even then, the swordsdwarf would have to be careful not to get his blade stuck and be hit while trying to pull it from the foe.
European knights had their own system of martial arts which trained skilled swordsmanship and discouraged swinging the sword like a felling axe at a tree. It is likely that, given their fondness for single combat, dwarves would have something similar - Historical Dwarven Martial Arts, maybe.
Post by: BoredVirulence on December 10, 2014, 12:45:28 pm
Counter point. What of an armed assailant attacking unarmed, and unarmored, civilians? There is little reason to be cautious, so full swings will be used more often. A steel sword can most certainly cut a mans arms off, as he raises them to defend himself. The stats of the sword reflect this. If there is a bug anywhere, it should be to make short swings used more often, and full swings less often, but I think that's already modeled in game? The numbers are probably a little off, and it would be nice to see a community overhaul of the raws, adjusting things, but I would not say the numbers are far off.
If powerful strikes are used to aggressively in combat, I would support a tweak to that. Ideally, somehow influenceable by the raws so that individuals could tweak their dwarves to have the appropriate amount of restraint in combat they deem necessary. We can argue about the frequency at which bones will break with shorter swings, or the frequency that full swings would be used, maybe swords do break bones too often, but its not because the sword is modeled incorrectly, maybe combat needs a tweak?
(And here I think we've finally agreed. You're arguing breaking occurs too often, I argued a sword is very, very capable at break bones often, and the argument has since veered towards how combat is handled.)
I think the only way to solve it now is for someone to create Historical Dwarven Martial Arts, get many practitioners, stage mock-up battles, and once skill converges on a true fighting style, we take the frequency of different attacks used by those practitioners, and try and model that in game. Or we could use a historical analog, but that seems less dwarfy to me...
Post by: Max™ on December 11, 2014, 03:26:45 am
Post by: Col_Jessep on December 11, 2014, 04:34:52 am
I've never thought of a dorf as being physically much like a human...Yup, they are definitely not shorter humans. =D
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 11, 2014, 07:49:40 am
A sword strike chipping or even breaking bone is very believable to me.
And yes, material does matter a lot. Modern swords* are made of high quality steel and can be much more resilient than some of the not so great (metallurgy wise) swords of the past. I would expect dwarven swords to have reached that level of metallurgic skill.
*do not confuse a modern sword re-creation with a "sword like object", an sword-shaped wall decoration. An improperly constructed sword is a menace, and should not be swung around. Two main faults are using stainless steel (most stainless steels are too brittle, the sword will break) and improper tang construction (a thin steel rod welded to the blade, the weld being a weak point in a location of high stress).
This leads to stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2EQWCpnIR8
Post by: Aslandus on December 11, 2014, 09:27:58 am
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 11, 2014, 11:17:52 am
People are really getting into nitpicking the fighting system of this pre-alpha game that already has a more in depth combat system than 90% of games...
And because it is so much better, we think we can get it even further.
Ancalagon_TB is right about good sword technique. A good sword strike is quick and direct, not a swing. This is true regardless of strength, so a dwarf who is many times stronger than a man would still do this. The reasons for this are that a quick strike leaves less time for the opponent to react, is less exhausting and does not get stuck in the enemy. Impact energy increases much more quickly with speed than mass, since kinetic energy=half mass*velocity^2 - hence why bullets do so much damage.
These are basic facts of physics and physiology true of super strong dwarves just as much as humans.
As dwarves gain weapon skills to legendary, they should also use their weapons more sensibly. A new recruit may make huge, easily dogdeable slashes, but a legendary swordsdwarf should be much quicker and more restrained in his strikes.
A *steel short sword* should be able to cut and break bone. A copper short sword, not so much. Even a steel sword's ability to do this should be based on item quality - many historical swords were somewhat poorly made, as Ancalagon_TB said.
Post by: Sergarr on December 11, 2014, 11:35:15 am
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 11, 2014, 02:32:52 pm
In a way, it is similar to swinging a golf club - thrashing wildly at the ball leads to poor shots and quick exhaustion, while a quick but controlled strike can send the ball hundreds of metres without requiring too much effort.
Post by: Sergarr on December 11, 2014, 02:39:45 pm
Also, with current contact areas, short sword's contact area is about 10 times greater than the contact area of an average elephant's leg.
So swords in DF are not really swords, but rather gigantic shredders, if you slash with them.
DF really should depict those values directly into user's interface, or else we're going to spend eternity trying to find all these bugs.
(EDIT) For information: average contact area of an upper human body is about ~100 units. Contact area of a short short slash is 20000 units.
To get even slightly close to realism, we would need to decrease the weapon's contact areas by the factor of 1000.
Post by: Uronym on December 11, 2014, 03:01:48 pm
What bothers me is that the goblins never actually seem to come anymore, so any problems with the combat system itself are almost entirely irrelevant. There is nothing to test your defenses against, or the fighting capabilities of your dwarves, or your mobilization capability. All that can be tested is your patience as you wait for goblins that never come but only get almost literally unbeatable zombies, which are no fun at all.
(I like goblins more anyway, for their flavor; zombies make it feel like another stupid zombie defense game.)
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 11, 2014, 03:05:10 pm
I have done a little more research on the matter of swords cutting bone and found some skeletons from the Viking age which have had both legs cut with a single strike and skulls cut through. Swords were clearly capable of cutting bone, but these Viking swords were made of very pure crucible steel by very skilled swordsmiths - they would be *steel short sword*s in game. These feats should not be so possible with swords of lower quality or made from weaker materials. I have yet to research how much damage iron and bronze swords could do to bone, but I know that splitting a skull with a copper sword is somewhat unlikely.
I have little knowledge of swords made of materials other than steel, so I do not really feel qualified to say too much about them. Purchasing iron or bronze swords is a very low priority for me given how expensive well made swords are.
Post by: Sergarr on December 11, 2014, 03:10:10 pm
brb, going to mod
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 11, 2014, 05:09:07 pm
Post by: Sergarr on December 11, 2014, 05:21:06 pm
Post by: Max™ on December 11, 2014, 05:46:23 pm
I'd expect a dulled blade, a loud clang, scrapes and gouges across the armor, but not hack through, no. If anything it would dent/bend the plate inwards before the material gave out, which would hurt but again shouldn't leave a bisected corpse.
Post by: Col_Jessep on December 11, 2014, 09:07:31 pm
One other problem with DF's fighting system is the way soldiers train. I often see my soldiers train kicking, biting, wrestling... and they use those "skills" in fights a lot. I don't want my militia commander to bite or kick a forgotten beast while he is holding a masterwork steel sword or axe. Or worse he might try to strangle a zombie. GG, no RE.
Any chance you can make them use their actual weapon more? Maybe not exclusively but a lot more than they do now.
Post by: Magistrum on December 12, 2014, 09:01:55 am
Post by: Sergarr on December 12, 2014, 09:23:15 am
In other news, DF weapon physics start to behave wonky with combination of low contact area and low momentum.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 12, 2014, 10:27:22 am
Kicking, punching, grasping enemy limbs/weapons, and shield bashes are very important to fighting, so it really isn't a problem, but trying to bite a gigantic creature while you hold a steel spear might not be intend...
Shield bashes and grabs, yes, but an armed warrior would not use punches and kicks much while he still has his weapon. An ugly solution is only better if it is not too ugly.
An excellent addition would be the risk of a dwarf breaking his knuckles or teeth (not fainting as a result) after hitting or biting thick bone. Gauntlets would act as knuckle dusters and protect the dwarf's fists, allowing him to punch goblins in the head with impunity.
Post by: Magistrum on December 12, 2014, 12:21:59 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 12, 2014, 12:57:50 pm
I also think throwing a punch against a breastplate should not end well for the attacker, but kicking is really important at fighting ( knocking people out of their feet, breaking knees)
Kicking was only really used in history to soften the opponent when weapons were high (swords blocking a strike to the head, for example). In this case, a kick in the groin or knee could be very useful to shake the opponent's balance. In other cases attacks with weapons were far more useful, since the weapon being forcefully parried did not lead to the striker suffering a fall or worse. If a leg is caught kicking, the kicker can easily be thrown to the ground. As Anderson Silva learned, launching lots of leg kicks can also lead to very nasty injuries if the leg is struck with the opponent's knee, and he was not fighting enemies with swords.
Even punching a normal skull should often end badly for an untrained, unarmoured dwarf.
Post by: Magistrum on December 12, 2014, 01:05:18 pm
Post by: smeeprocket on December 12, 2014, 01:32:58 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 12, 2014, 01:41:16 pm
Even without unlucky injuries, the chance of being caught and thrown is not negligible, and in an armed battle this could easily lead to death as the downed victim is mobbed, kept down and finished. Generally, no one wants to go to the ground in a massed fight because of the dangers of being mobbed, a very different situation from an unarmed 1-on-1 fight where wrestling can offer a win and being thrown is not usually disastrous. How much damage would a kick do to some bigger DF enemies anyway? Yes, it could easily knock over a goblin if a dwarf kicked his knee, but the same does not apply to titans.
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 13, 2014, 12:18:31 am
When two good swordsmen are fighting, they are jousting for position - the "fight for the centre". You want to outmaneuver your opponent to be in a position where you can easily strike him and he has a hard time striking back. This is done both with footwork and swordplay.
Sometimes that means closing in, too close to be using swords, and well now you have a wrestling match. Sometimes the grappling will be very short - pin the other guy's arm and bash him on the head! - but sometimes the person initiating the grapple doesn't quite manage to finish the job and it's not a swordfight anymore...
All that being said, perhaps it should be a separate thread - and the point that there is no point to a combat system if the foes don't show up is rather pertinent.
Post by: Sergarr on December 13, 2014, 05:26:46 am
Think I understand now why swords had these huge contact areas now.
Goddammit.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 13, 2014, 06:45:01 am
A significant minority of swordfights would devolve into wrestling matches.
When two good swordsmen are fighting, they are jousting for position - the "fight for the centre". You want to outmaneuver your opponent to be in a position where you can easily strike him and he has a hard time striking back. This is done both with footwork and swordplay.
Sometimes that means closing in, too close to be using swords, and well now you have a wrestling match. Sometimes the grappling will be very short - pin the other guy's arm and bash him on the head! - but sometimes the person initiating the grapple doesn't quite manage to finish the job and it's not a swordfight anymore...
All that being said, perhaps it should be a separate thread - and the point that there is no point to a combat system if the foes don't show up is rather pertinent.
Sword fights did turn to wrestling sometimes, and often if both parties were armoured. Many duels ended in grappling. But if the combatants were in battle and both were wary of other foes around them who might intervene and strike them while they were on the ground, they would be much less likely to engage in such combat. Very often the 2 fighters would make a few strikes at each other, realise the other was equally skilled, and move on to attack someone easier. Becoming embroiled in single combat in the middle of a battle is not very wise, since both fighters are focused solely on each other and not on the foe coming up from behind.
The importance of formations is also true here. Wrestling obviously breaks formation and exposes the fighters to the enemy, as well as opening a gap in the lines for the enemy to penetrate.
Battles and duels (fights against multiple opponents and fights against 1 opponent) are fundamentally different in that the former saw much more tentative fighting and less grappling, with most people staying in formation, while the latter often involved wrestling and body strikes like kicks. Combat in DF would also have to be divided in this way - is the opposition 1 goblin, or 10? Tactics would be very different depending on this. In the former case, a dwarf could wrestle down the goblin, but that would be very unwise if there are 9 other goblins waiting to jump in.
Post by: Aslandus on December 13, 2014, 10:00:01 am
In this case, perhaps there should be some option for squads to either fight using a dueling mentality (for light infantry, swordsdwarf types) or in formation (more for speardwarfs and heavily-armored squads)
Battles and duels (fights against multiple opponents and fights against 1 opponent) are fundamentally different in that the former saw much more tentative fighting and less grappling, with most people staying in formation, while the latter often involved wrestling and body strikes like kicks. Combat in DF would also have to be divided in this way - is the opposition 1 goblin, or 10? Tactics would be very different depending on this. In the former case, a dwarf could wrestle down the goblin, but that would be very unwise if there are 9 other goblins waiting to jump in.
Post by: Sergarr on December 13, 2014, 10:06:02 am
You'd better wait until there are actual formations in the game. That and shit like specifying actual dimensions for weapons (so you can have long-but-thin swords and not confuse them with square-faced mauls), specifying which part of the weapon deal actual damage (not just whole of it), having weapon be made of multiple parts (mono-metal spears are stupid), and many, many more improvements to actual low-level combat.In this case, perhaps there should be some option for squads to either fight using a dueling mentality (for light infantry, swordsdwarf types) or in formation (more for speardwarfs and heavily-armored squads)
Battles and duels (fights against multiple opponents and fights against 1 opponent) are fundamentally different in that the former saw much more tentative fighting and less grappling, with most people staying in formation, while the latter often involved wrestling and body strikes like kicks. Combat in DF would also have to be divided in this way - is the opposition 1 goblin, or 10? Tactics would be very different depending on this. In the former case, a dwarf could wrestle down the goblin, but that would be very unwise if there are 9 other goblins waiting to jump in.
We would have to wait for at least 3 years for all that to occur, most likely.
Post by: Aslandus on December 13, 2014, 10:44:33 am
I thought we were just talking hypotheticals here, not actual suggestions...You'd better wait until there are actual formations in the game. That and shit like specifying actual dimensions for weapons (so you can have long-but-thin swords and not confuse them with square-faced mauls), specifying which part of the weapon deal actual damage (not just whole of it), having weapon be made of multiple parts (mono-metal spears are stupid), and many, many more improvements to actual low-level combat.In this case, perhaps there should be some option for squads to either fight using a dueling mentality (for light infantry, swordsdwarf types) or in formation (more for speardwarfs and heavily-armored squads)
Battles and duels (fights against multiple opponents and fights against 1 opponent) are fundamentally different in that the former saw much more tentative fighting and less grappling, with most people staying in formation, while the latter often involved wrestling and body strikes like kicks. Combat in DF would also have to be divided in this way - is the opposition 1 goblin, or 10? Tactics would be very different depending on this. In the former case, a dwarf could wrestle down the goblin, but that would be very unwise if there are 9 other goblins waiting to jump in.
We would have to wait for at least 3 years for all that to occur, most likely.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 13, 2014, 11:32:37 am
Attacking large numbers of enemies solo is just plain stupid, regardless of what the dwarf is using. Similarly, lining up in formation to fight a single kobold is completely unnecessary, regardless of the dwarves' equipment. How the dwarves fight should instead be decided by the number and nature of their opposition. Special tactics would be needed to defeat beasts, using siege engines, traps (the whole trapavoid thing is somewhat silly, unless it is changed to actually avoid the traps - megabeasts should not just walk through masterwork traps unscathed) and climbing onto the beast to attack its weak points, usually on its head (eyes, brain and so on). As for light infantry, they were very unlikely to fight duels, preferring to skirmish with the enemy using hit and run tactics.
Untrained dwarves would have none of these concerns and charge in uncoordinated like they do now.
A general weapons update would be excellent and go far to fix these problems. These are not only hypotheticals, since DF's combat is currently broken and needs sorting out.
Post by: Aslandus on December 13, 2014, 11:50:31 am
Most people would have different gauges for what warrants what response, and taking decisions like that out of the hands of players is the basic problem this thread is responding to and why we had a three page long discussion about making goblins appear out of the ether. I'm fine with it being an option to turn on, but it shouldn't be automatic (and that's not even taking into account the data processing required to determine what response to use automatically).
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 13, 2014, 01:06:53 pm
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 13, 2014, 01:11:03 pm
Combat in DF would also have to be divided in this way - is the opposition 1 goblin, or 10? Tactics would be very different depending on this. In the former case, a dwarf could wrestle down the goblin, but that would be very unwise if there are 9 other goblins waiting to jump in.
Ah, but the goblins also have similar considerations - it may be silly for a dwarf to get in a wrestling match with a goblin when 9 other goblins are rushing in... but it may be an *excellent* idea for the goblin! All the goblin has to do is hold on while his buddies poke holes in the dwarf.
Anyway, all this to say that I'm not too bothered by dwarves bitting, kicking etc, because I know how random and chaotic sword combat can be, and that at some instant, *not* using your sword (axe etc) is the right thing to do.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 13, 2014, 01:28:11 pm
Ah, but the goblins also have similar considerations - it may be silly for a dwarf to get in a wrestling match with a goblin when 9 other goblins are rushing in... but it may be an *excellent* idea for the goblin! All the goblin has to do is hold on while his buddies poke holes in the dwarf.
Anyway, all this to say that I'm not too bothered by dwarves bitting, kicking etc, because I know how random and chaotic sword combat can be, and that at some instant, *not* using your sword (axe etc) is the right thing to do.
The goblin would only want to if there were not 9 other dwarves ready to jump in as well. 10 goblins against 1 dwarf is MASSIVELY different from 10 goblins against 10 dwarves. In the former case, yes, the goblin would wrestle. The latter case? No, or at least not as a first choice - he might if he was disarmed or his weapon broke.
Real close combats in battle were NOT usually every man for himself, if the army was remotely disciplined, since soldiers usually want to survive far more than they want to kill the enemy. Instead, soldiers stayed together for mutual protection and picked the easiest fights. They would not get too focused on one foe in case his comrade intervened. This applied to both sides of the combat. Look at the Romans - their sword combat was very bloody, somewhat chaotic, but not random, and they usually beat foes who did not understand this. The same could be said of hoplite battles or the spear formations of the early Muslims. In fact, in all these cases, most deaths usually occurred after one side ran away - the tight formations led to few deaths during the main phase of combat. This is true for most battles at the time, where most soldiers who died died while routing, not while opposing the enemy.
Battles, except between completely wild barbarians, usually involved a lot of teamwork and soldiers protecting each other. They were not like DF's individualistic encounters. Wrestling did happen, but it was usually a second resort after a weapon broke, the enemy closed to very short range or something similar, and prolonged wrestling matches were rare indeed, with one party dumped on the ground and finished fairly quickly.
Biting someone in armour will usually only result in broken teeth. Kicking, punching and wrestling can do damage and be very useful for single combat, but in battle it is generally better to just stay in formation and try to break the opponent's.
Before you think I am trying to dismiss wrestling, I am not - in a 1-on-1 armoured duel, or a dogpiling situation as you described, it is a massive part of combat and very useful indeed. In fact, in an armoured sword duel, wrestling and half-swording are the main tactics. It would just not be the first tactic for battle.
Post by: CaptainArchmage on December 13, 2014, 02:27:02 pm
One other thing that may be stopping invasions: civilisations have a 30-tile reach, rather than a continent-wide reach barring mountain ranges and the like. On large maps this may mean you will not have any goblins or kobolds nearby.
Post by: Sergarr on December 13, 2014, 02:37:20 pm
It would require something akin to the way Adventure mode handles armies (abstracting them if you're far away). Abstracting fort's population is gotta be more difficult without losing resolution, though, but entirely possible.
Post by: Aslandus on December 13, 2014, 03:50:54 pm
Biting someone in armour will usually only result in broken teeth. Kicking, punching and wrestling can do damage and be very useful for single combat, but in battle it is generally better to just stay in formation and try to break the opponent's.Things like this make me think there should be a military menu for "martial arts" or something where, similar to how you can select equipment for a dwarf, you can select what attacks they are allowed/encouraged to use (and get angry when they don't pay attention because they have no discipline) and perhaps what defensive strategy they should use (dodging, parrying, blocking with a shield, etc.) rather than just having RNG determine attack types...
Before you think I am trying to dismiss wrestling, I am not - in a 1-on-1 armoured duel, or a dogpiling situation as you described, it is a massive part of combat and very useful indeed. In fact, in an armoured sword duel, wrestling and half-swording are the main tactics. It would just not be the first tactic for battle.
It would probably be useful in cases like live training if you want them to use less lethal attacks to make the "training dummy" last longer or to prevent your soldiers from punching and scratching the enemy when they should just be chopping its head off with their axe...
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 13, 2014, 05:20:27 pm
One feature I think players should be able to control is ordering dwarves to try to capture enemies instead of killing them. I remember seeing "non lethal combat" on Toady's development list and dwarves should be able to do it too. If dwarves are asked to capture an enemy, they will wrestle it and try not to strike killing blows. However, if the threat level escalates to the point where this is no longer possible, they will still kill the target.
Dwarves with no discipline should behave as they currently do, attacking wildly with no regard for tactics, but with less success.
Post by: bluephoenix on December 14, 2014, 05:29:40 am
We should probably resolve the main issue why long-timed forts aren't viable - FPS - first, before we start to speak of realistic fort populations (definitely more than merely 200) and realistic siege sizes and realistic wait-times.Well once you reached your pop limit, the FPS usually stay the same.
It would require something akin to the way Adventure mode handles armies (abstracting them if you're far away). Abstracting fort's population is gotta be more difficult without losing resolution, though, but entirely possible.
How would you abstract fort population? Would you have one dwarf represent 10 dwarves and call it "group of farmers" or something?
Post by: Naryar on December 14, 2014, 05:41:58 am
Yes I want my dwarves to make spear walls/pike walls, maybe even schiltroms, spearhead formations (for charging), shield walls, and be able to set up the conflict level. Of course when a dwarf actually dies it should probably go to Lethal or even No Quarter pretty quick.
Or simply the complete lack of any formation if my dwarves happen to vastly overpower the opposition.
Post by: Sergarr on December 14, 2014, 05:47:01 am
I was thinking of something like a "revolving door" type of system. So every moment there are only so many active dwarves in the gameplay, and other dwarves are not active (sleeping). The sleeping dwarves accumulate some sort of "time points", which then they use to accelerate stuff like crafting and hauling when they wake up to compensate for the time spent sleeping, but they would also have to eat/drink a lot.We should probably resolve the main issue why long-timed forts aren't viable - FPS - first, before we start to speak of realistic fort populations (definitely more than merely 200) and realistic siege sizes and realistic wait-times.Well once you reached your pop limit, the FPS usually stay the same.
It would require something akin to the way Adventure mode handles armies (abstracting them if you're far away). Abstracting fort's population is gotta be more difficult without losing resolution, though, but entirely possible.
How would you abstract fort population? Would you have one dwarf represent 10 dwarves and call it "group of farmers" or something?
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 14, 2014, 06:31:28 am
Post by: Bigheaded on December 14, 2014, 07:04:11 am
Simply the amount of dwarves & animals is probably the biggest fps killer. Although i'd say dwarves reduced it a lot more than animals.
So yes, i would say the amount of items on the map does impact the amount of FPS. Cleaning the map (removing vomit/blood etc) appears to help also.
Post by: Sergarr on December 14, 2014, 07:24:46 am
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 14, 2014, 10:29:58 am
Also, pathfinding seems to take a lot of processor time. So block off big spaces left after mining if you don't need them any more.
Do dwarves wander through these big open spaces, or are they just considered in every pathing calculation?
Post by: miauw62 on December 14, 2014, 10:39:07 am
They're considered in some pathing calculations, yes. Especially if they come from a higher Z and are going to a Z below the mined area. I recall some threads on the subject but I'm too lazy to find them.Also, pathfinding seems to take a lot of processor time. So block off big spaces left after mining if you don't need them any more.
Do dwarves wander through these big open spaces, or are they just considered in every pathing calculation?
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 14, 2014, 12:31:51 pm
Post by: CaptainLambcake on December 14, 2014, 08:20:48 pm
Year: 4
Not a single siege or ambush, only goblin sighted was a werehamster. I've killed my first FB and an ettin. They are neighbors, do I just wait?
Post by: Uronym on December 14, 2014, 09:03:35 pm
Population: 85
Year: 4
Not a single siege or ambush, only goblin sighted was a werehamster. I've killed my first FB and an ettin. They are neighbors, do I just wait?
Back when the thread was still firmly on its rails, this was discussed. We came to the conclusion that it is essentially chance; you might get goblins like in the old versions, or you might not see any ever. We simply don't understand why they show or don't show anymore.
Post by: CaptainLambcake on December 14, 2014, 09:32:27 pm
Population: 85
Year: 4
Not a single siege or ambush, only goblin sighted was a werehamster. I've killed my first FB and an ettin. They are neighbors, do I just wait?
Back when the thread was still firmly on its rails, this was discussed. We came to the conclusion that it is essentially chance; you might get goblins like in the old versions, or you might not see any ever. We simply don't understand why they show or don't show anymore.
Thank you, i'll try making a new fort.
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 15, 2014, 12:38:06 am
Population: 85
Year: 4
Not a single siege or ambush, only goblin sighted was a werehamster. I've killed my first FB and an ettin. They are neighbors, do I just wait?
I didn't get any siege at all until I exceeded 100 - then I got 2 sieges in a row (and I'm anticipating a third... at least I hope so, I built a big drowning chamber and everything!). So perhaps wait a little bit more?
Post by: Skuggen on December 15, 2014, 06:27:02 am
So if your civ is experienced at fighting elves, your dwarves will know to use certain formations and tactics when facing different types of them (shield wall when facing archers, otherwise stand around laughing at their wooden equipment).
Post by: CaptainLambcake on December 15, 2014, 05:30:59 pm
Post by: Bigheaded on December 16, 2014, 07:41:54 am
I'll try raising pop cap to 100, but I ran out of plump helmet seeds somehow so I worry about sustaining it.
If you have a large area of sand/soil. dig a large amount out, make sure you've seen the caverns. You should then get cavern plants to grow in the area you dug out. designate the area for plant gathering (d->p) once or twice a year, problem solved. Picking up some extra seeds from the caravan can't hurt either.
If you're able to get outside with a safe area for farming, it helps getting some seeds for above ground farming also.
If you're worried about food, then breeding some form of animal is usually the easiest way.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 16, 2014, 11:33:56 am
Post by: Volfgarix on December 16, 2014, 11:48:57 am
If you went to forested area, then even first years aren't hard, just gather plants/fruits and hunt animals.
Food making is so damn easy.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 16, 2014, 01:54:09 pm
Depends where you embark.
If you went to forested area, then even first years aren't hard, just gather plants/fruits and hunt animals.
Food making is so damn easy.
Too easy, especially agriculture. Crop cycles should be longer, proper irrigation, soil degradation...
All things to hope for in DF2016.
Post by: CaptainLambcake on December 16, 2014, 05:14:58 pm
Post by: Bigheaded on December 16, 2014, 05:30:36 pm
ive been playing for a year and never worried about running out of food. I come with about 50 plump seeds and i'm fine. somehow I ran out of them this time.we still don't get what the problem is. Do you have access to the outside? if so you can just designate 4 dwarves to pick plants. If you do not, go down to the caverns and make an entrance that is 1 tile think and really long, and then fill that with cage traps (about 10 should be adequate, 20 to be on the very safe side) this should produce a large amount of food if you butcher anything which comes from the caverns and get the military to train on the troglodytes. Or even just make indoor farming, i would "expect" you have at least 1 layer of soil you can use and allow plants to grow there.
Also, see how many animals you have. At worst butcher the lot and request new ones from caravan.
Post by: Aslandus on December 16, 2014, 08:33:15 pm
Not to mention how dwarves only need to eat like 4 times a year each, my current fortress has about 2000 prepared meals and growing with a population of 120...Depends where you embark.
If you went to forested area, then even first years aren't hard, just gather plants/fruits and hunt animals.
Food making is so damn easy.
Too easy, especially agriculture. Crop cycles should be longer, proper irrigation, soil degradation...
All things to hope for in DF2016.
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 17, 2014, 08:46:47 am
ive been playing for a year and never worried about running out of food. I come with about 50 plump seeds and i'm fine. somehow I ran out of them this time.
2 suggestions:
1: Make sure that in the kitchen view (U) that you aren't cooking them - that kills the seeds. The mature plant has to be eaten raw or brewed to generate more seeds
2: You have built farm plots, are you sure that they have been designated to grow specific crops? Are there barrels and stockpile to collect the mature crops? How much farm area do you have?
You shouldn't run out of plump helmets unless something is wrong.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 17, 2014, 12:03:30 pm
Post by: Snaake on December 17, 2014, 04:32:37 pm
To the 'nobody attacks me' crowdI've found out that the goblins arent using some of the weapons they could be, like giant axes, due to a bug. I reduced the minsize of several 2h weapons from 62500 to 60000, the size of gobbos. They are doing much better now . . . Even keeping parity with their elven oppressors.
Seriously, for better goblins, give them the ability to use the very weapons they can make!
A side benefit is giving dwarves who are large enough the ability to use those weapons as well.
This is a known bug from over 2½ years ago (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5812). Although goblins not using them might be a new bug, but probably related, anyway. I used to do that RAW edit-workaround all the time in 34.xx.
In general, in this thread (when it was still mostly about the no-attacks problem, although it seems to have re-railed itself somewhat) a lot of people seem to be confusing what is most likely a bug that results in a few players practically not getting attacked at all, with a new feature, which does make the game more balanced, by making sieges a *bit* more rare. 34.xx and earlier had a thread every now and then about players complaining about nonstop attacks (2-3 a year), and/or not having nearly enough time to clean up after an attack even if sieges did only happen once per year (this has happened to pretty much everyone at one point or another, I think). Now others are complaining that attacks are rare - note my previous comment that if attacks aren't happening at all, it's more probably a bug, and posting more saves/trying to narrow down the cause or causes would be more productive than whining that your war game is broken. And that that's *clearly* the one true purpose of the game, because you say so.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 18, 2014, 12:03:33 pm
I mostly agree with Snaake on this - goblin attacks have not stopped, I have got them myself, as have other players. There are fewer of them now, but the problem is the stories of players embarking next to dark fortresses and not being attacked at all (a bug) rather than goblin armies actually having to follow basic logistics and make some sense (a feature).
Post by: Miuramir on December 18, 2014, 02:38:23 pm
Abstracting fort's population is gotta be more difficult without losing resolution, though, but entirely possible.
Old-school miniatures gaming did this in a semi-abstract fashion. One physical miniature would often represent 5, 10 or even 20 men; few gamers could afford (store, transport, etc.) enough actual minis for even a late-period 1,040 man legion, let alone a pre-Marian one of over 5,000 combat effective plus support, auxiliaries, train, etc. Yet, for simplicity's sake, combat was frequently resolved as if the minis were individuals once formations were broken. Many computer games have similar abstractions; a "worker" unit off collecting wood or minerals or constructing a building would logically represent many such workers in a more realistic depiction; but simplified to increase FPS and decrease micro-management.
DF sort of does this already; 7 people is far too small to start a reasonable colony, and a hamlet of 100-200 people would not usually be nearly so self-sufficient in a wide variety of industries, for instance. If you mentally scale populations up by a factor of 10 or so things make more logical sense. In some senses the Hill Dwarf integration is supposed to help cover the above; the player's fort effectively being the "keep" and industrial hub for a much larger community.
I've got some comments on medieval combat for another time; in short, pre-1400 manuals are quite scarce, and much of what we think of as "medieval" dates from much later than DF's close date. Even the famous Liechtenauer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Liechtenauer) tradition / corpus is largely comprised of later works, although the core dates back to the proper period. (And note re: another diversion: Paulus Kal's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulus_Kal) famous list of Fencing Masters (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Liechtenauer#Society_of_Liechtenauer) includes Ott Jud (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ott_Jud), "wrestling master to the rulers of Austria".) One of my holiday projects is to go over copies of and commentary on I.33 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Armouries_Ms._I.33), which is arguably both one of the most DF-appropriate and one of the earliest Fechtbuch (combat manuals).
In another direction, DF combat is more often like Celtic or Frankish tribes squabbling amongst themselves than organized, trained Roman tactics. Very small numbers, no formations to speak of, individual "heroes" who are dramatically more effective than the ordinary rabble, etc. We don't really *have* armies until the Army Arc; what we've got are more roving bands of surly bandits.
It's nearly certain that the near-lack of attacks in some situations is not a *balance* issue, but a *bug*; or more likely a whole series of them. Generation and movement of world-map "armies" is fairly new and quite fiddly still; I have a vague suspicion that some of the "army with no valid orders" errors may be due to either their source or target being taken over while they are in route, for instance. But there are still valid questions about how often serious attacks *should* happen, once bugs are fixed.
Goblins don't need to eat or drink. Think about that for a moment. One of the reasons is so that they can build up huge populations in evil and/or inhospitable areas, and don't need to worry about a supply train when attacking things like glacier fortresses. They are frequently ruled by demons; one of the difficulties may be that the major overhaul to demons in recent versions has made them far more interesting for adventurers, but perhaps less effective at leading their goblin subjects to war. Looking ahead, one logical way of controlling things is to have goblins act (attack) in a more "video game" like fashion, without regard for politics or logistics, unlike other races; this would allow players to generate worlds and pick locations with more or less such attacks as fits their preferences. Of course, purely human politics created, and purely realistic logistics supported, the so-called "Hundred Years' War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Years%27_War)" period. By all accounts it was a terrible time to be (briefly) alive; but fairly interesting from a military history standpoint, and the earlier parts of it are period for DF.
One fascinating "end game" scenario might be that if you have a demon-ruled goblin civ nearby when you breach HFS, they might drop everything to besiege you, led by their dark ruler in person.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 18, 2014, 03:01:43 pm
Goblins not eating or drinking is because of their demonic possession, though I think they should need to, and devour the flesh of sentient beings. Having them attack without logistics would ruin and unbalance the world simulation, something Toady tries hard to avoid. DF is not a tower defence game.
The Hundred Years' War was an on-off conflict, but of course England and France (and many other humans) fought a lot over the years. No simulation breaking is necessary to create prolonged states of war.
Was that a comment on mediaeval life expectancy? The low average age of death was because of huge numbers of children dying; mediaeval adults usually lived to about 60 or so, and many lived longer than that, since even this figure is an average including childbirth deaths, plague and so on. Remember that even the ancient Bible speaks of men living for "three score and ten" (70) years.
Wrestling was immensely useful in individual, armoured fighting, and should be shown as such in DF. Half swording and stabbing through gaps in the armour should also be added.
Post by: Iamblichos on December 18, 2014, 03:48:52 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 18, 2014, 04:24:36 pm
Amazingly, now that I've updated to .40.19, I **FINALLY** got a real goblin siege with more than 7 goblins! My latest fort got three squads of greenies and a squad of trolls - all encountered the Axe Lord cuisinart and went down immediately, but it was the thought that counted. I missed the wars. So nice to see armies again!
Good news. The next thing is to give the goblins better skills and gear so they can actually compete with legendary dwarves, at least a little.
Post by: Voidlord on December 23, 2014, 06:24:29 am
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 23, 2014, 08:38:52 am
Post by: Pseudopuppet on December 23, 2014, 05:44:23 pm
Look like it might of been fixed, the .40.22 update has apparently fixed the army camps forever message, it was causing armies to get lost orr literally camping
It's for .23, not .22
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/changelog_page.php
Post by: Voidlord on December 23, 2014, 06:20:06 pm
Post by: bluephoenix on December 23, 2014, 10:08:53 pm
Look like it might of been fixed, the .40.22 update has apparently fixed the army camps forever message, it was causing armies to get lost orr literally campingYeah it was probably one of the causes of no sieges.
Why do people say might "of", that is wrong grammar. It is might "have"... (Sorry it just annoys me that almost everyone on the internet adopted this strange way of typing.)
Post by: Augster999 on December 23, 2014, 10:55:11 pm
Why do people say might "of", that is wrong grammar. It is might "have"... (Sorry it just annoys me that almost everyone on the internet adopted this strange way of typing.)"Might've", when said, sounds like "Might of," so a lot of people confuse the two.
THE MORE YOU KNOW
Post by: Ancalagon_TB on December 24, 2014, 04:04:48 am
Post by: Naryar on December 24, 2014, 05:09:40 am
Now just to wait for 0.40.23 and the obligatory dfhack/dwarf therapist updates.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 24, 2014, 08:46:32 am
Post by: Naryar on December 24, 2014, 09:20:39 am
What are you waiting for in 40.23?
The camp forever bug has been fixed, hence normally there should be more invasions.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 24, 2014, 02:31:32 pm
Post by: Ysyua on December 24, 2014, 03:58:17 pm
While we're liable to see more invaders I wouldn't expect a return to the seasonal invasions of DF2012. Really, we won't know till it comes out and we can play it.
Post by: Voidlord on December 24, 2014, 04:04:09 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 24, 2014, 04:36:51 pm
Post by: omega_dwarf on December 24, 2014, 04:42:07 pm
Wonder if there will be a flood of backlogged invasions?
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 24, 2014, 05:00:15 pm
Post by: omega_dwarf on December 24, 2014, 11:23:30 pm
I'll be interested to hear if 0.40.23 does indeed resolve it!
Post by: Ysyua on December 26, 2014, 01:10:57 am
Haven't gotten very far because of Christmas. Although I noticed a lot of my migrants have arrived with "getting used to tragedy" in their thoughts pages.
Post by: thegoatgod_pan on December 26, 2014, 03:59:42 pm
Post by: Naryar on December 26, 2014, 04:05:17 pm
Will tell you if I get sieges or ambushes.
Have the people who have played 40.23 longer than me had more sieges than the previous .40 versions ?
Post by: Maltavius on December 26, 2014, 06:20:23 pm
I've killed 5 or 6 forgotten beasts, 2 gremlins and alot of cave crocodiles but no invasions.
Post by: Voidlord on December 26, 2014, 06:45:43 pm
Post by: tussock on December 27, 2014, 06:07:36 am
The dorf caravan came, winter freeze happened, widened my aquifer punch a bit (stupid 2-layer aquifer under 1-layer soil), and then some bandits, humans and dwarves, mostly, hilariously even ... well, spoilers. Anyway, the combat speed thing is terrifying, enemies jumping over rivers and climbing walls and whatnot, all at about 4-5 ticks per step. These ones are being persistent, booze is gone, food is scarce, so I'm arming up as well as I can and trying to split them up and pick them off, which pretty much works. Aside from how their leader blocked the first thirty attacks while hacking up three dorfs and only a lucky headshot with a =steel spear=, followed by a copper pick splitting his skull like a ripe melon ... which of course upset all the rookies, which is everyone. Punching people in armour does not work.
Glad I melted the spare anvil for that spear though. Really need to stop messing around and get a defence up. If only the deep ore had been something other than Sphalerite. I hope the mountainhome likes goblets, because importing steel is expensive, and this river kills far more fishermen than it's worth to fish for shellgoods. Not to mention the giant ravens, which never seem to turn up when there's a siege on. And of course all the forgotten beasts roaming the caverns have webs or worse.
Hey, at least there's a magma tube, which I should really get on and tap.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 27, 2014, 07:35:54 am
Glad to see that punching armour is properly useless.
Post by: Sergarr on December 27, 2014, 09:58:17 am
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 27, 2014, 10:48:37 am
Pointy weapons like spears and swords (the blades) should be able to attack armoured opponents only by thrusting through gaps in the armour. This is unlikely to succeed, but can be made more likely by wrestling and gripping the weapon closer to the point (see half swording). This would accurately portray armoured sword and spear fighting, which in single combat was usually based on wrestling, stabbing through the gaps and gripping close to the point.
That said, armour bashed by war hammers should need repairing at the forge afterwards.
Post by: Aslandus on December 27, 2014, 02:45:58 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 27, 2014, 02:50:36 pm
Post by: Aslandus on December 27, 2014, 03:09:05 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 27, 2014, 03:14:53 pm
Post by: Nikow on December 27, 2014, 04:14:42 pm
Post by: Dorsidwarf on December 27, 2014, 07:30:40 pm
Post by: Aslandus on December 27, 2014, 08:00:38 pm
The necromancer who lives half a world away showed up four seasons in. Again.He heard you were embarking and immediately set out to greet your dwarves. Such a thoughtful neighbor, but his gifts leave something to be desired...
Post by: pisskop on December 27, 2014, 09:23:57 pm
Post by: Loyal on December 27, 2014, 09:31:13 pm
Post by: Graknorke on December 27, 2014, 09:50:25 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 28, 2014, 06:56:02 am
Similar measures should probably be taken with weapons as well. After all, the main reason a Silver Warhammer works so well in DF is that it won't dent or deform on impact like it would IRL.
Absolutely. Gold items should be very squishy. Extra maths is Toady's speciality anyway.
Post by: utunnels on December 28, 2014, 07:38:11 am
Otherwise, a gold maul should be able to break neck even if the target has steel helmet. Maybe it can be dented by the impact, but that doesn't prevent it from killing the target. Cutting weapons are another story, though.
Post by: Sergarr on December 28, 2014, 08:58:16 am
So much extra maths. Combat would bring the game to more of a chug than usual.Unless combat happens in your game 24/7, it won't be an issue.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 28, 2014, 11:08:44 am
Well heavier weapons should be more hard to hit the target, it depends on the strength, or perhaps the size of the wielder.
Otherwise, a gold maul should be able to break neck even if the target has steel helmet. Maybe it can be dented by the impact, but that doesn't prevent it from killing the target. Cutting weapons are another story, though.
If the warrior is wearing a bevor (neck armour), or the angle of the blow is not within certain bounds, the neck will not jerk enough to snap. What is far more likely to kill the victim of the blow is the brain smashing against the inside of the skull.
Both the weight and the weight balance of a weapon must be considered. If most of the weight is at the hilt (most swords), the weapon will be quick and easy to strike with. If most of the weight is at the striking end (war hammer) it will be much slower and more tiring to strike with. Increasing the weight of the whacking end gives more force but longer strike recovery and more fatigue.
War hammers are about the size of normal hammers, so the amount of force and fatigue involved in using one is similar. A trained dwarf would not really swing the war hammer, and certainly not take a back swing; rather, he would use short, punching strikes, hitting hard but also quickly. Air resistance makes it hard to move things with a big surface area quickly, and being stronger gives diminishing returns on this since there is still the same volume of air to move. A stronger dwarf would be able to hit harder, but hitting the target would be far more governed by skill than strength, striking past the foe's defences and predicting his movement. It would actually be much harder for a bigger creature to hit a dwarf, since the dwarf can dodge and move more quickly.
Strength is important up to a certain point, but only so much force is needed to kill a foe with a strike; after that, it is endurance and speed which matter more.
Post by: Sergarr on January 04, 2015, 05:48:48 pm
Thank you for the effort. I would be happy to test your mod once it is done if you give me the link.
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=147241.0
I finally got around to it. Testing would be appreciated.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on January 04, 2015, 06:28:13 pm
Post by: KingKaol on March 08, 2015, 11:49:10 pm
I embarked in an area with goblins, elves and humans. About 14 years, 30+million wealth, not a single goblin (no snatchers or ambushers etc.).
Supposedly the elves were 'at war' with my civ (reclaim), but I think that was actually war with an extinct civ with no survivors but a couple sites left, as I *think* the parent civ I was assigned is far away. When the elves showed up with diplomat+caravan they were listed as at 'peace'. One of my dwarves inherited a barony, and the elf diplomat started complaining about deforestation: I'm on a tundra embark so either they were complaining about cutting underground trees (i had only cut a few at that point), or they were complaining about another site my baron was in charge of? (If that's how it works, it says my dwarf is baroness of "Inkylashes", while my fort is called "Hoistpapers"; not sure if Inkylashes is just a title for the position or another site).
Anyway, I refused their demands every year but they keep coming back.
The humans initially were sending a vampire olm man diplomat. I left him alone for a few years until one of my dwarves was found drained of blood (10 years after my last migration wave, so obviously none of my current dwarves were vamps). Next year when he returned I sent the military out to kill him (which they did). But no retaliation from the humans. Next year they had a new liason (human this time) and the human caravan came as normal.
Post by: Salmeuk on March 09, 2015, 08:36:27 am
So much extra maths. Combat would bring the game to more of a chug than usual.
Combat calculations (even those that would account for wear and tear) pale in comparison to creature pathfinding and object tracking.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on March 09, 2015, 12:57:34 pm
So much extra maths. Combat would bring the game to more of a chug than usual.
Combat calculations (even those that would account for wear and tear) pale in comparison to creature pathfinding and object tracking.
Yes, and they do not go on all the time either. The biggest crushes on the CPU are dwarf pathfinding and tracking objects, which is why walling off caverns and atom smashing waste helps with FPS.
Post by: krenshala on March 09, 2015, 03:29:47 pm
Post by: Aslandus on March 09, 2015, 06:16:15 pm
I thought it was temperature change calculations, then pathfinding, and then item tracking that were the top three in order?I don't think temperature change is the biggest drag, but it has almost no downside to turning off so it's usually the first thing people get rid of...
Post by: Eldin00 on March 09, 2015, 07:08:54 pm
Post by: Sadrice on March 09, 2015, 09:43:59 pm
Replying to ancient posts, but my pedantry demands it. That giant basically got hamstrung, and a nasty broken ankle with the weight of a giant falling on it sounds like the worst compound fracture imaginable. Yeah, the "gives in to pain" thing definitely needs some adjusting, but in this case it's kinda understandable.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Oh...
I expected a gigantic creature of unparalleled size to be a tiny bit more pain resistant. I get that they can't hit a legendary swordsdwarf but it would be nice if they would not give in to pain after the first strike... :'([/spoiler]
The problem is, if you want to call that flesh, than there's flesh through the entire bone. The bone is filled with living tissue, not just the bone marrow, which is important for many things, but especially production of blood cells, but the entire part of the bone that looks solid is suffused with living tissue, including sensory nerves. If you look closely, you can see small holes for nerves and blood vessels, but there are further holes that are microscopic. Bone is not dead tissue, like hair or nails, it is living, which allows it to actively repair itself.I would consider that tissue to fall within the remit of "flesh" myself, but I understand that having receptors in the bones represents that. The numbers must still be reduced to stop monsters fainting as described earlier.Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on March 10, 2015, 08:20:46 am
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=146737.0
Post by: KingKaol on March 16, 2015, 10:16:05 am
First goblin ambush on year 29! (after making some modifications to raw/objects/entity_default.txt):
Added [AMBUSHER] token to goblins
Added [SIEGER] token to goblins
Changed from level 2 -> level 1 for [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_POPULATION:1]
Changed from level 3 -> level 1 for [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_SIEGE:1]
Here are what the default settings seem to imply if I understand them:
- Only Dwarves and Humans have [SIEGER] token:- both have siege pop trigger set to level 3 (80 dwarves).
- Elves only have [AMBUSHER] token, they have a default non-siege pop trigger of level 1 (20 dwarves) so I'm not sure why I haven't seen any (unless ambushes are effected by the siege trigger level)
- Humans only have [SIEGER] token and non-siege trade trigger
- Goblins only have [BABYSNATCHER] (no ambusher or sieger) and a non-siege pop trigger of level 2 (50 dwarves). I think this means you won't see any goblins until you have 50 dwarves, and they will never ambush or siege
- Kobolds have [AMBUSHER] and [ITEM_THIEF] with the same non-siege pop trigger of 20 dwarves. I think the kobolds in my area were wiped out (the extinct dwarven civ from my reclaim has ownership of the cave but no civilized population)
So basically goblins will not attack until population is 50, only elves and kobolds will ambush, and
By the way, if you have a currently generated world, these changes need to be made to the raws for that save.
Post by: Naryar on March 16, 2015, 12:12:35 pm
Post by: Vattic on March 16, 2015, 03:26:56 pm
Post by: Graknorke on March 17, 2015, 06:56:50 pm
If I remember correctly SIEGER just makes them build and hang around a little camp fire when they do attack you.Aww, that's sweet.
On a sort of related note, do siegers have to eat or not? I know that goblins never have to, but what about humans if you manage to upset them?
Post by: Proudnerd on March 20, 2015, 01:31:43 am
If I remember correctly SIEGER just makes them build and hang around a little camp fire when they do attack you.Aww, that's sweet.
On a sort of related note, do siegers have to eat or not? I know that goblins never have to, but what about humans if you manage to upset them?
Toady confirmed ages ago that siegers don't eat. The community was divided over the decision.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on March 20, 2015, 02:43:49 am
Post by: Button on March 20, 2015, 09:44:27 am
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on March 20, 2015, 10:14:19 am
Post by: Aslandus on March 20, 2015, 10:23:08 am
Post by: Vattic on March 20, 2015, 11:47:54 am
Are they supposed to be sustained by some kind of force like a necromancer's enchantment?From what I understand it's something to do with their demonic origins.
No NPCs eat, it's simply not a feature of the game yet, like how grazers don't require grass until they are tamed. It's probably a planned thing, but it's not really prioritized yet. If starvation was a thing for NPCs then sieges would have to bring food and drink with them or hunt the local wildlife and drink from ponds and rivers for sustenance, which would make it much easier to win simply by turtling and waiting for the siege army to die. At this point in development it seems like it's just for the sake of simplicity that they don't have to eat.Would be surprised if we didn't see non fort creatures eating / drinking in the next release's taverns.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on March 20, 2015, 04:04:37 pm
Post by: Naryar on March 20, 2015, 04:14:12 pm
No NPCs eat, it's simply not a feature of the game yet, like how grazers don't require grass until they are tamed. It's probably a planned thing, but it's not really prioritized yet. If starvation was a thing for NPCs then sieges would have to bring food and drink with them or hunt the local wildlife and drink from ponds and rivers for sustenance, which would make it much easier to win simply by turtling and waiting for the siege army to die. At this point in development it seems like it's just for the sake of simplicity that they don't have to eat.
Actually, sentient residents of your fort eat and drink if they are on your side. And I'm not only talking about dwarves.
Post by: Number7 on March 20, 2015, 05:13:33 pm
Post by: Naryar on April 06, 2015, 05:23:01 pm
They were modded Fortress Defense white tigermen babysnatchers, however - still no goblin snatchers at all.
Must be something with the goblin raws.
Post by: Dwarf_Fever on April 06, 2015, 07:40:03 pm
I don't know what's going on. I do not have invaders turned off in init...
Revert to 34.11, enjoy regular combat once again.
Post by: TheHossofMoss on April 08, 2015, 02:56:01 pm
It's just no fun when you get only 13 invaders every year, and your militia can take all of them down rather quickly. Hell, ONE of your militia can take them all down quickly.
Wasn't in because that the in the previous versions, invaders were a bit like caravan guards (randomly generated just for that instant)? Because I sure miss that....
Post by: TheFlame52 on April 08, 2015, 03:00:29 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on April 16, 2015, 05:34:33 am
Part of me wants to revert back to .34, just for the insane amounts of invaders. But then I'd also be missing out on a lot of other stuff that I like in the current version.
It's just no fun when you get only 13 invaders every year, and your militia can take all of them down rather quickly. Hell, ONE of your militia can take them all down quickly.
Wasn't in because that the in the previous versions, invaders were a bit like caravan guards (randomly generated just for that instant)? Because I sure miss that....
The solution is for Toady to make legendary dwarves weaker compared to regular trained goblins, and to introduce formations and dogpiling so individuals cannot easily defeat 10 foes at once.
Post by: TheHossofMoss on April 17, 2015, 04:46:37 pm
Part of me wants to revert back to .34, just for the insane amounts of invaders. But then I'd also be missing out on a lot of other stuff that I like in the current version.
It's just no fun when you get only 13 invaders every year, and your militia can take all of them down rather quickly. Hell, ONE of your militia can take them all down quickly.
Wasn't in because that the in the previous versions, invaders were a bit like caravan guards (randomly generated just for that instant)? Because I sure miss that....
The solution is for Toady to make legendary dwarves weaker compared to regular trained goblins, and to introduce formations and dogpiling so individuals cannot easily defeat 10 foes at once.
I don't know. I just miss my 80 goblin sieges like the Dickens.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on April 18, 2015, 01:32:32 pm
Post by: Broseph Stalin on May 30, 2015, 12:41:22 pm
80 goblin sieges still happen sometimes. The problem is that even 80 goblins get whacked silly by 10 legendary dwarves, even in past versions. The solution is not for loads of goblins to come from nowhere, because those big armies still get killed easily much of the time, but for goblins to be a bit stronger relative to dwarves by adding siegecraft, tactics, formations, and generally making it a bit harder for 1 dwarf to kill 15 goblins. Sieges should follow this basic rule of combat: "if he does not think he can take you, and he is not cornered, he will not try". No sieging army should be so weak as to be crushed easily - at least not the second time.They happen entirely too infrequently. Making goblins stronger doesn't solve anything if there aren't goblins to be fought.
Post by: Robsoie on May 30, 2015, 02:27:07 pm
Though with how nearly never i saw sieges in df2014 it's probably not even worth testing with it as what's the point of having extremely powerfull enemies if they never really send any siege to you.
34.11 is still a great game if you want battles with your fortress mode, something lost to df2014 and that i really hope Toady will check before releasing the new version, it's just not fun making elaborated traps and defense when out of the undead, nothing come or nothing come in decent amount (my biggest goblin siege in df2014 was 8 goblins !) .
Nearly like playing with Invaders disabled.
Post by: NW_Kohaku on May 30, 2015, 05:36:03 pm
Post by: Putnam on May 31, 2015, 12:13:41 am
So much extra maths. Combat would bring the game to more of a chug than usual.
Months old, but that's actually not true. Here's the extra math:
Code: [Select]
(attackForce/IMPACT_YIELD)*IMPACT_STRAIN_AT_YIELDSo not much at all. Of course, this... actually doesn't work. It's a dumb abstraction that a good look at any stress/strain curve will tell you is not indicative of reality, due to necking, spalling etc. concerns. But since DF doesn't actually tell you any of that, you can use this abstraction.
Post by: Graknorke on May 31, 2015, 04:48:28 pm
Post by: Putnam on May 31, 2015, 04:52:10 pm
Post by: Graknorke on May 31, 2015, 04:56:47 pm
Post by: Sacasco on May 31, 2015, 05:02:42 pm
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on June 10, 2015, 12:27:52 pm
Post by: bcmpinc on June 21, 2015, 12:56:56 pm
Was it because I embarked on a pocket world with only 5 years history?
Was it because the goblin fortress has been 'abandoned' or is under siege? I've seen goblin's fight humans when I walk around there in adventure mode.
Was it because my fortress had become the mountain homes?
Was it because it is my second embark in that world and I retired the first one? Or because I embarked on a 2x2 area?
Post by: nimbus25 on June 21, 2015, 08:47:33 pm
Was it because I embarked on a pocket world with only 5 years history?
Was it because the goblin fortress has been 'abandoned' or is under siege? I've seen goblin's fight humans when I walk around there in adventure mode.
Was it because my fortress had become the mountain homes?
Was it because it is my second embark in that world and I retired the first one? Or because I embarked on a 2x2 area?
From what I've gathered from reading this thread, it's likely the 2nd. Seems like Goblins just don't care enough anymore to attack (plus a few bugs I think), plus if your civilization was getting sieged, would you lay siege to some random dorfs a few miles away?
Post by: Shonai_Dweller on June 23, 2015, 06:23:32 am
Quote
From what I've gathered from reading this thread, it's likely the 2nd. Seems like Goblins just don't care enough anymore to attack (plus a few bugs I think), plus if your civilization was getting sieged, would you lay siege to some random dorfs a few miles away?I don't think it's that goblins don't care enough. Check out the amount of sieges that take place every year. Goblins are well up for a fight with anyone except the player most of the time.
I imagine, (begins theorizing), that goblins think like this:
'Spies report a new fortress, let's crush them!'
'Excellent, how many are there?'
'Seven!'
'Gather a war party, we'll attack next Spring!'
'Um...ok.'
Next spring...'Right let's go Dwarf stomping!'
'Hmm...Seems like there's now 85 Dwarves at the fortress.'
'85! We should have gathered more troops, let's go stomp something smaller...'
Which of course doesn't effect AI run targets as their numbers don't change much.
ends random speculation
Post by: Shazbot on June 23, 2015, 10:15:31 am
I'm curious if rumors of your fortress's founding have to percolate through the world until you get attacked.
Post by: Naryar on June 26, 2015, 03:28:54 am
Yet i am a bit above 100 dwarves and the only attack i've had was a single forgotten beast, and a few kobold thieves. Also a war elephant thief. Normally I would have had at least three sieges by then.
WHY. WHY.
And undead and werewolves are stronger than ever, so that means either embark on an evil biome and get constantly harassed by undead especially when you can't defend yourself (including TPK's due to resurrecting biomes. Oh have you brought war dogs ? Enjoy that horde of zombie war dogs), get utterly destroyed by an undead siege (now them zombies have armor and weapons, i mean what the fuck ?) at year one or being forced to turtle if I foolishly embark next to a tower.
Meanwhile the only threat in standard biomes is
I'm gonna go back to 34.11 if this continues. Toady, fix that ASAP, everyone is getting annoyed with the utter lack of sieges.
And the worst thing is that modding seems to not do anything.
Post by: CyberianK on June 26, 2015, 03:57:28 am
Post by: Robsoie on June 26, 2015, 07:48:20 am
And indeed, the undead really need fixing, i wonder why Toady overpowered them that much, they were good enough as they were in 34.11
Post by: escondida on June 26, 2015, 10:09:45 am
I decided I will kill some Elves because I am bored to death by no goblins coming. There are forest retreats everywhere in my area so that should help right? Or do the other races also don't come and siege you?
You're thinking like a human. To offend the elves, you need to violate their ethics, not yours. Take a quick peek in entity_default.txt to see how they feel about murder, and then look at how they feel about killing plants. Then trade them some wooden goods a few times.
Personally, I find the humans to be a better target, though, because the only thing of value they bother to bring for trade--metal goods I can melt down--they also bring to war in the form of armor and weapons. Elves may be snooty, but if you want a tiger pit in your glacier embark, they're your best trading partners.
Post by: Chief10 on June 27, 2015, 10:54:12 am
Post by: Chief10 on June 27, 2015, 11:06:01 am
I still don't understand what the issue is. I simply embarked adjacent to a goblin fortress and I got about 60 goblins per siege, twice a year, every year. The only difference I've noticed from previous versions is that you have to be near goblin sites to get invaded, and that thieves and snatchers are non-existent.
I forgot to add my world is 2000 years old, which IS a significant difference from the worlds you guys are playing on
Post by: Robsoie on June 27, 2015, 11:47:33 am
I wonder if it's really linked to pop numbers, can you check how much goblins you have in the nearby goblin dark fortress ?
In case you don't know how to, go to legends,
Once you're at the legends menu, go to "Historical Maps" and with the cursor just check the name of the dark fortress that generate your 60 gobs sieges regularly.
Press ESC to go back to the legends menu then press P to export the information as a text file
Then open regionX-serieofnumbers-world_sites_and_pops.txt and look for the dark fortress name you checked, this will give you the list of population it has.
Usually i worldgen 200 years old worlds , that makes my goblin dark fortresses populated in between 4 and 8 thousands of gobs (and as much trolls), with this kind of number i usually never see any siege when embarking near to them or when there is one, it's incredibly tiny (my biggest DF2014 goblin siege has been 8 gobs !)
I'm curious to see how many gobs you will find in that dark fortress, if the difference between the kind of number i see and yours is very high it could give a hint at to why sieges rarely happen for most people.
Post by: Chief10 on June 27, 2015, 02:06:06 pm
Also I made some simple changes to improve the chances of sieges. On a "small region" in advance world gen I changed Population cap after civ creation to 25,000 (I think this was 10,000 originally) and Site Cap after civ creation to 290 (I think this was at 250).
I can no longer remember if I changed these, but in the raws, entity_default.txt for goblins I have: max starting civ number 130, max pop number 13000, max site pop number 140.
So yeah.. In retrospect I might get sieges so often because I fiddled with the goblin data.
Post by: Robsoie on June 27, 2015, 02:45:34 pm
For the DF2014 one, i removed the [MULTIPLE_LITTER_RARE] from the goblin entry and replaced it by [LITTERSIZE:10:20] so everytime a gob spawn their minigobs instead of 1 it will be between 10 and 20 minigobs
I worldgen-ed then on 200 years on a "smaller" region so distances may be much lower for army to decide to walk, and before embark i checked the dark fortress has a little more than 10000 gobs.
I embarked close enough, we'll see if despite being very high usually in my worlds, gobs pop need to be even more higher to get sieges coming. If i still don't see gobs, that's then not related to their site pop
Post by: Vattic on June 27, 2015, 03:04:09 pm
I still don't understand what the issue is. I simply embarked adjacent to a goblin fortress and I got about 60 goblins per siege, twice a year, every year. The only difference I've noticed from previous versions is that you have to be near goblin sites to get invaded, and that thieves and snatchers are non-existent.Some worlds they happily invade and in others they never/rarely seem to show up. My best guess is that the goblins have limited attention and will largely ignore your fort if they are busy raiding other places. There tend to be multiple dwarf, human, and elf civs beside your own that all may be drawing their attention. In other worlds they may already be attacking your civ before embark and so they also attack you reliably. It's unfortunately not so simple to check what each civ is up to before embark and things change in the time between world gen and embarking.
As for viewing your world's legends you want to make a copy of the region folder, name it something else, load it up, abandon your fort, and then check legends mode. You can only run one mode per world at a time (fort, adventure, or legends).
Post by: Robsoie on June 28, 2015, 07:46:45 am
Quote
8: Nakootak, "Tormentconfined", dark fortressAnd there was no more elf civ, so it was down to dwarves, humans and gobs only.
Owner: The Larval Nightmares, goblins
Parent Civ: The Vice of Trials, goblins
lord: Ases Juggledwrung, human
296 humans
17 dwarves
13 elves
1 pale taupe devil
10128 goblins
5100 trolls
76 human prisoners
16 elf prisoners
Looked like a nice dark fortress that would be completely unplayable if you visit it in adventure mode, but maybe good if sieges only happens when gobs pop skyrocket like that.
After 3 ingame years of building up my fortress and getting more than 100k wealth, i finally got a goblin siege, they sure took their time, but at least they came, that's some progress in comparison to my last forts in which no gobs ever tried
My military was ready, 20 dwarves (in 2 squads) that had by then some good sword, warhammer and marksdwarves skills from 3 years of training.
Let's see what the mighty evil legion of gobs throw at me ... 10 gobs and some animal guy that probably took the wrong direction when trying to get home
(http://i.imgur.com/qMu2Md7.gif)
Oh well, so much for expectations, at least it beat my previous "biggest DF2014 siege ever" that had 8 gobs.
I guess then that dark fortress pop or your own pop does not really matter, those 10 gobs as obvious as it was indeed stood no chances and those flying body parts just filled my underground refuse stockpile (i always worry about a stealth necromancer , i remember a nasty surprise i got in 34.11)
One of my dwarf went in trance mid fight and sliced the same poor gob 3 times , an arm, a leg and the neck that sailed in arc, losing its neck oddly didn't killed him on spot, he died from head getting smashed by another of my warriors.
Post by: Raikaria on June 28, 2015, 07:59:02 am
Better than nothing.
Post by: Robsoie on June 28, 2015, 08:21:53 am
But what i never had is baby snatcher in those years (there are several babies in the fort), and something else i never had, that in fact i never had in any of my df2014 are ambushes like there was in past versions.
Do they even exist in df2014 or was it removed ?
Post by: mobucks on June 28, 2015, 10:26:34 am
I keep playing, hoping that perhaps some day they will siege with very high numbers (I think the most I've seen at once is ~70) and a goblin general. There was a year or two that passed without sieging, but they came back thankfully and sieged twice in the past year.
Post by: nimbus25 on June 28, 2015, 02:19:17 pm
Oh yeah, and I wound up doing what Robosie did with the modding, except my litter size is 25-35 (I had extreme difficulty getting a stable goblin civ that was not spread over 30 different sites)
Pics:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Post by: Robsoie on June 29, 2015, 06:35:04 am
After the very small 10 gobs "siege" that my dwarves destroyed without problems in the 3rd year of my fortress, i am now entering the 6th year of that fort and there have been no goblin coming since that pseudo-siege, despite the 6 shiny artifacts i have by to attract attention by now :)
i had a forgotten beast spawning in the deepest cavern , near the adamantine vein i spotted there , but i had walled the entrance, as my test is about seeing if and when goblins siege happen.
That Forgotten beast became probably as bored as me and decided to attack a blind ogre and died to it, no idea if the blind ogre survived , as i don't see him or his corpse anywhere.
Anways, still waiting for goblins to come, my fort is getting more and more populated and so run unfortunately more slowly with all those migrants that come.
My military is full iron since a while, but without goblins to come , there's no real point.
I'll try to wait until year 9 if i manage to resist the boring and slow gameplay there is currently on my fort, if there's still no goblin, goodbye df2014 and back to 34.11
Post by: mobucks on June 29, 2015, 08:01:06 am
In my experience, for whatever reason, goblin populations typically are the highest of any civ after 50-200 years because wars. The above is a bit tedious but it should work for almost any world you gen.
Post by: Robsoie on June 29, 2015, 08:53:37 am
And on all the years my mountainhome liaison came, he only said "the world is the same as ever" and never mentionned any change of status regarding the situation, so the gobs should always be at war with us.
There's certainly something else involved , but i have no idea what it is at the moment (well, i'm sure it's just because it's bugged in df2014 as most people are experiencing the same anyways)
observations on that fort experiment :
- embarked close to a dark fortress with 10.000 gobs (due to increased litter in raw) on a 250 years smaller world, status was "WAR" in the embark with the gobs
- fortress is on its 6th year, 149 dwarves (a few died from their own stupidity, one died from a giant scorpion)
- 30 dwarves are in the military
- wealth/export is way past barony since 2 years, but never became one (probably yet another df bug) and is closing to county requirement by now (wealth is enough, only export isn't)
- 8 artifacts have been created, a 9th is ongoing.
- elf entity is extinct since before the creation of that fort
- in every of those 6 years , the liaison has only said "the world is the same as ever", never reporting any battle/conquest, despite we're at war with the gobs
- there have been several thiefs (kobolds) in every of those 6 years, none managed to fetch anything and ran away, a couple of them have been killed
- there have been 0 babysnatchers in every of those 6 years
- there have been 0 undead siege but it's because there was no tower in the nearby list when embarking
- there have been 0 ambush in every of those 6 years
- there have been 1 "siege" with only 10 gobs in the 3rd year
- a forgotten beast came some months after the failure of a goblin siege and was killed by a blind ogre
- in the caverns there are several amphibian people that are all "hostile", but are not attacking or being attacked by any dwarves or military walking or stationning right next to them (the infamous df2014 bug about morale and passivity i guess)
I'll wait a bit and retire to check the legends and see if there's something new that happens and wasn't mentionned by the liaison.
Post by: mobucks on June 29, 2015, 09:29:41 am
Pump that fortress wealth in the interim.
Post by: Robsoie on June 29, 2015, 09:54:48 am
I am just leaving things in the background (as the fort is self-sustening anyways), only checking from time to time if something paused the game to deal with it.
Coming close to the end of that 6th year, i got a 2nd forgotten beast coming in one of the cavern, but it's walled to avoid wasting my time and framerate while the focus of that experiment is goblins.
Hopefully i'll see some results, but it sure takes its time.
edit : oh another Forgotten Beast just arrived, there's now 2 roaming in the caverns, i wonder if they're going to fight each other, it just killed a cave crocodile that was close to where it spawned.
This one is entirely made of vomit, i guess she was called by the mountains and rivers of vomit my cave adapted dwarves made in the exterior.
Post by: Bearskie on June 29, 2015, 11:20:54 am
Interestingly, the invasions only begun around the 3rd year of the fort. Looking through legends, it soon becomes clear why is this the case: during that year, a neighbouring goblin civilization declared absolute war on the my civilization. Since then, yearly sieges, for 4 years now (each with its own intimidating name). Large sieges too, but frankly the legendary hammerlords of Cloisteredtangle are absolutely OP, and it barely takes a small squad to defeat the entire army.
Yet year 8 was eerily quiet. The yearly goblin invasion has come late. Legends indicate that the sieging goblins have been losing out in wars back home, but until the year is over, one cant say for sure whether the war has ended. If so, the dwarves are going to have to find other sources for their amusement. Into the deep dark they will go.
Post by: Robsoie on June 29, 2015, 12:07:45 pm
But i wonder what lead them for your case to be yearly and large, as since i play df2014 i have only had :
- no siege at all is coming despite proximity of goblins
- some very rare and always very small sieges
The only strong and numerous sieges that come in my forts are undead one if i embark near a tower, but gobs in my games are incredibly rare.
while in 34.11 i had regular goblin sieges, ambushes and sometime very large one.
What kind of world size are you using and how many years have you let your world being generated ?
Anyways, the 7th year just started and ... a goblin siege !
So after the silly 10 gobs only weak siege from the 3rd year, now that my fort is much bigger, much more wealthy and my military much stronger, what kind of legion the gobs are sending to me :
(http://i.imgur.com/46BQb7b.gif)
10 gobs again ... :(
I'll wait for next year to see if they come again, but so far it's still as disapointing as it has been in all my df2014 games.
Though 2 "sieges" (if one can call this a siege) in the same fort ? that's a premiere in my df2014 fortress games.
Post by: Robsoie on June 29, 2015, 12:25:55 pm
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Much much better, i never saw such a big siege in df2014 (though it's still far from my big 34.11 and previous sieges) , great.
So it looks like goblins real "siege" takes a lot more years to come than in previous version when you're close to an overpopulated goblin site.
In that experiment , despite the goblin overpopulation, its proximity , the WAR status, and my fort being wealthy, it took them 7 years to send me an actual army (the 3rd year siege isn't worth of being called such a thing, it's more like a 34.11 and previous ambush, minus the sneaking ambushes did).
Just for fun, the aftermath of the big battle between those 36 evil gobs and my brave 30 dwarves military
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I'll let the fort run one more year to see if they come again after their first real siege
Post by: Robsoie on June 29, 2015, 05:02:19 pm
And now ... there's another one ! a 2nd goblin siege on the same year in df2014 , can't believe it !
:D
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
what is happening ? so many fortresses in which gobs never came through many years and there i have
27 trolls , 57 gobs and 1 "troll hammerman" trying to destroy everything.
My wealth is at near 600k, but i had already run fortresses in df2014 in which i reached high wealth without any gobs coming, while it's known that gobs number usually follow your wealth, it's still puzzling at why they came this time, and why they only really came after 7 long boring years (well the mini siege of year 3 with the 10 gobs does not really count) and why they do not come in most of my long lived wealthy forts ?
For the fun, my military squads bravely faced the overwhelming numbers and ...
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
So i guess that conclude the experiment : " why in df2014 are goblins not coming in most forts and why are they sometime coming ? "
The conclusion is .... "i have no more idea now than i had before" :(
At least it's confirming the gobs number in an invasion are still linked to how high the wealth is.
Post by: Bearskie on June 29, 2015, 10:53:27 pm
Since you asked,
World size: Medium
Year: 132 (Generated at 125)
No mods, no tweaks, no DFhack.
Also, here's a screencap of the war that started it all. Only the highlighted ones are attacks on the fortress itself; the rest are other NPC forts.
(http://i.imgur.com/3QGX3Xx.png)
It should be noted that the Ruthlessness of Cruelty is tied for the second largest civilization in this world; they are also the largest goblin civ. Meanwhile the Guild of Pages is a coalition of fragmented dwarven forces (far smaller due to dwarves not doing very well in this world). So perhaps civilization size and positioning may play a role in whether invaders can muster up enough force for attacks on civs.
Post by: nimbus25 on June 29, 2015, 10:58:57 pm
Post by: Camulus on June 30, 2015, 03:56:29 am
I embarked near a tower, so they came in year 1 and 2, but absolutely fakol came from it.
No violence, every time they just turn tail and run.
Why?
Why me?
Why am I missing out on the terror and the bloodshed?
Post by: Camulus on July 01, 2015, 01:08:14 am
(http://puu.sh/iJ9Gr/5058518b92.png)
So the "siege" from at least one tower was logged, even though three attacks occurred. The message that pops up says "Invaders, drive them off!" and not ""The dead walk. Hide while you still can!", so perhaps there may be something to study there.
I guess I have to search for a related bug, forcing undead armies to leave the site immediately after entering.
Post by: Robsoie on July 01, 2015, 09:13:51 am
- undead are much more willing and quicker to decide to siege you (similar to 34.11) than goblins, that's great.
- most of the undead sieges had the necromancer exiting the map rather quickly, but his undead were staying forever (never had this problem in 34.11 in which necromancers go stealth around their troops)
- undead in df2014 are so silly overpowered (never understood why Toady did that, they were very balanced in 34.11) that you can't really get your army to fight them, you will have to use traps and walls to get rid of them, not much fun.
- i had one siege that had a mix of undead and living soldiers ( huh ? ) , and worse is that despite undead should attack anything living on sight, they were co-existing happily with the living soldiers, very bad bug probably linked to some faction and morale bug (reminding me of those "hostile" cavern animal people that never attack your nearby dwarves/military in df2014, or all the crap from adventure mode in which none really attack).
Post by: Camulus on July 01, 2015, 09:35:13 am
On a previous df2014 fort in which i embarked right next to a tower when i wanted to see if undead were as unwilling or very long to decide to siege as goblins, i observed a few things :
- undead are much more willing and quicker to decide to siege you (similar to 34.11) than goblins, that's great.
- most of the undead sieges had the necromancer exiting the map rather quickly, but his undead were staying forever
Hmmm yes I had this, but the undead left right along with the necromancer.
Haven't had time yet, but will play around with this problem.
Post by: nimbus25 on July 01, 2015, 09:41:53 am
(http://i59.tinypic.com/14a652.png)
Oh boy. 31 goblins and 9 trolls. Pretty impressive.
Post by: Robsoie on July 01, 2015, 10:35:32 am
Though they take a long time to really come, 7 years (though the 3rd year ridiculous small siege isn't really counting in my eyes) in my test despite they have their base right next to my fort very overpopulated and at war with us since all that time.
Now if only i could figure out why they came this time without coming in any of my previous df2014 fort. The only difference is that i had larger litter for the gobs, allowing them to overpopulate faster than usual their base without having to worldgen a thousand year old world.
But some people apparently had big sieges in df2014 without having to edit the gobs litter size, so i'm still puzzling at why gobs siege happen sometime (and take a long time to actually come in force) and why they don't happen most of the time.
Post by: Naryar on July 01, 2015, 01:20:12 pm
I assume it is due to my civ having 2 towns only and early on one of my starting seven claimed the position of king.
Which replaced a goblin king, which is always better.
Post by: Putnam on July 01, 2015, 01:28:24 pm
Quote from: http://www.bay12games.com/media/df_talk_19_transcript.html
Toady: ...The main thing dwarf mode gets this time around is this world continuation stuff with succession happening and your civilization not just dying out while you're playing, or whatever happens now with your guys walking on the screen and dying of old age, or I think I may have put in the thing where they just don't show up at all anymore, but you'll actually have that. You'll also be getting armies that are real. So, all the things that we're talking about with evil lieutenants and villains and all this stuff in adventure mode also applies to dwarf mode in terms of who's actually going to be showing up; you'll get people showing up with a story and a reason now, instead of just, like, the yearly goblin attack or whatever. Although, you still won't be able to respond, which is the big thing with the hill dwarves and army stuff we'll get to later.
Rainseeker: Now, will there sometimes be fortresses that never experience a goblin attack, for instance?
Toady: That is going to be something that's a lot more common now, so if you want to be a fortress that's a fortress, then you'd have to embark on the frontier, more of a border where you'd be harassed. It'll tell you about what you're getting into so you don't have to guess, but if you want to go the other direction and place yourself right in the middle of where the dwarves currently are then you're just not going to have those kinds of problems unless you invite them on yourself by digging downward, or whatever. So it'll be possible to have more control over your starting political situation, and you'll still have people to trade with that you can mess with, so if you really want to invite fighting with the elves or something like that and you want to keep squashing their caravans under drawbridges or whatever you want to do, then that'll still invite trouble, although it could be that the trouble you invite doesn't affect you specifically. If you start a war with the elves you might not be the closest settlement to the eleven border in which case you'd start a fight with one of your poor other dwarven civilizations, or whatever; you'd get the elves to attack one of your other sites.
Post by: nimbus25 on July 01, 2015, 01:54:22 pm
EDIT: 3 months after that, more sieges. Seem to be a regular thing now.
Post by: Robsoie on July 01, 2015, 05:45:57 pm
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140544.msg6345218#msg6345218
Quote
QuoteIn current version while megabeast/undead can still come, when playing Fortress mode goblin sieges (extremely) rarely happen and sometime not at all in dozen of years of fortress running. Will this be improved in the upcoming version ? or will all those multi-species mixing in fort will make goblin siege even less likely ?There was one pathing error that has been fixed for the next version that should improve the frequencies in some cases (some mountain embarks). We'll have to see where it goes from there. The species mixing doesn't change anything.
8th year summer in my fortress, and since the 2 sieges of the 7th year, there have been no gob coming to siege :(
My fort is much more wealthy than last year (non-stop legendary crafter working can do that), has more artifacts/named weapons , and piles of gobs/trolls remains in my self dug catacombs as a reminder that no living gob will manage to break our fort, only dead gobs will get in buried down there, i was expecting more sieges but nothing.
I had a human diplomat that came, the human had their civs in very bad shape in my world, i am surprised the gobs didn't finished them yet.
The thing is that this diplomat was a vampire that wasn't even hiding the fact he was one (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=15096.msg6344242#msg6344242).
No unholy monster will be allowed in dwarven homes, my military destroyed this beast.
Considering he was not a hidden vampire, it means the humans knew and were accomplice to that evil, they will certainly come now to try to avenge their master definitive death,, but they will know they have choosen to follow that beast very unwisely when they'll face my legendary full armored squads (8 years of training do that too).
Post by: Isaac23 on July 02, 2015, 08:53:38 am
Post by: Robsoie on July 02, 2015, 09:08:05 am
And speaking about wealth, still not understanding why my fort is only a barony, according to the requirements for county and duchy , i am way, way past those requirement in wealth and export
(http://i.imgur.com/Zh3mxuq.gif)
Despite that my fort is still a barony ... despite upgrade to county and duchy are automatic when requirement are met and liaison come, but liaison came several time without upgrading to nothing.
Oh well .. 9th year of that fort existence, probably the last as it's frankly boring to have so much of nothing coming despite they should, 34.11 sure has problems of its own, but at least you get sieges coming to you without all those uneventful years in between, so you don't get all those preparation and military training for nothing.
Post by: BoogieMan on July 02, 2015, 10:01:55 am
Post by: Detros on July 02, 2015, 10:27:49 am
Year 8 is finished on my fort and it was a completely boring one in regards to siege, neither goblins or humans came despite my wealth is now absurdly high, and liaison still mention that "world is the same as ever" and the civ screen confirm that goblins are still at war with us.
And speaking about wealth, still not understanding why my fort is only a barony, according to the requirements for county and duchy , i am way, way past those requirement in wealth and export
(http://i.imgur.com/Zh3mxuq.gif)
900k doesn't sound to me like "absurdly high" amount of wealth. I got the first siege at like 700k after 3 years (depends on the scarcity of gems and metals in your world, of course). Also, I think in DF2014 the bigger amount of wealth can only help in getting you siege when goblins are actually looking where to go, and then only when you also look how other nearby sites are wealthy. But when goblins are too decimated they just can't muster siege party for some time.
Post by: Robsoie on July 02, 2015, 10:49:16 am
For the goblin numbers being decimated, it's simply not happening, they're still overwhelming in numbers in comparison to the other species, this experiment was made with a goblin fort that had goblin edited to have very high litter (default goblin only have "rare multiple litter") the goblins are then extremely numerous on that smaller world (i retired the fort temporarly to check and the nearby dark fortress is still having more than 10000 gobs and 5000 trolls).
They just don't come and as posted before, it maybe linked to what Toady mentionned about an army path bug that is fixed only for the next version of DF
Post by: nimbus25 on July 02, 2015, 12:43:13 pm
Absurdly high wealth in the sense that it's 3 times the amount i should need to have a duchy.To be fair, I was around 1.8-1.9 million dwarfbucks created and 50k dwarfbucks exported (don't trade for much honestly) before I got a Baron, so it seems a little weird how it works. Another thing that should be looked into.
Post by: Robsoie on July 02, 2015, 01:00:40 pm
Post by: SyrusLD on July 02, 2015, 06:08:14 pm
No-one attacking you? No !!FUN!! to be had? Dwarves lifespans are getting too long and their lifes become dull and pointless? Nobles unable to perform heroic deeds expected from them?
...
Embark near a tower. It will solve all your problems.
Like, seriously. On my last fortress I was attacked by 2 necromancers and 20+ undead after only three months, I had barely set up the basics for the fortress, not expecting such an early attack. The second siege with another 2 necromancers and 50+ undead came before the elven caravan - so at the start of the second year.
I decided to start a new fortress in the same world after that, also to see how long it will last or how it will "develop" when the history generation takes over. I wasn't entirely convinced by the design I used either, though it appeared to be quite efficient - but hard to set up, lots of work to be put in it.
Sadly I didn't get to the population required for the goblin sieges to start, so I can't say anything about that.
Post by: Robsoie on July 02, 2015, 06:35:38 pm
If only goblins sieges were as reliable or the undead not overpowered in df2014
Post by: Naryar on July 03, 2015, 02:36:11 am
Like, seriously. On my last fortress I was attacked by 2 necromancers and 20+ undead after only three months, I had barely set up the basics for the fortress, not expecting such an early attack. The second siege with another 2 necromancers and 50+ undead came before the elven caravan - so at the start of the second year.
I decided to start a new fortress in the same world after that, also to see how long it will last or how it will "develop" when the history generation takes over. I wasn't entirely convinced by the design I used either, though it appeared to be quite efficient - but hard to set up, lots of work to be put in it.
That is not Fun. It just forces you to turtle, use overpowered traps, and see your first migrant waves get brutally killed.
A siege at the end of second year is fine. A siege at three months is just ridiculous.
Post by: Detros on July 03, 2015, 03:31:14 am
Game perspective aside, from the simulation one those enemies are there not to wait so you have time to prepare for them. But,yes, the difference between "near tower" (strong attacks soon) and "not near tower" (strong attacks usually nowhere soon) may often be too big.Like, seriously. On my last fortress I was attacked by 2 necromancers and 20+ undead after only three months, I had barely set up the basics for the fortress, not expecting such an early attack. The second siege with another 2 necromancers and 50+ undead came before the elven caravan - so at the start of the second year.
I decided to start a new fortress in the same world after that, also to see how long it will last or how it will "develop" when the history generation takes over. I wasn't entirely convinced by the design I used either, though it appeared to be quite efficient - but hard to set up, lots of work to be put in it.
That is not Fun. It just forces you to turtle, use overpowered traps, and see your first migrant waves get brutally killed.
A siege at the end of second year is fine. A siege at three months is just ridiculous.
Post by: Bearskie on July 03, 2015, 04:42:46 am
Post by: Naryar on July 03, 2015, 12:14:37 pm
As in, attack frequency is OK (aka: one attack per year) now instead of being insufferably low.
I seem to have messed up my Fortress Defense normal civ raws, though, because none of them are attacking.
Post by: Arek on July 03, 2015, 01:05:57 pm
Post by: SyrusLD on July 03, 2015, 01:34:48 pm
Yeah, I was being a bit sarcastic, having two considerably big sieges within pretty much "the first year" is just too much, unless you really want a challenge - or as you put it: it forces you to turtle immediatly. Depending on what you want to do it might be interesting, but for any "normal" fortress, it's just pointless to embark near a tower.Like, seriously. On my last fortress I was attacked by 2 necromancers and 20+ undead after only three months, I had barely set up the basics for the fortress, not expecting such an early attack. The second siege with another 2 necromancers and 50+ undead came before the elven caravan - so at the start of the second year.
I decided to start a new fortress in the same world after that, also to see how long it will last or how it will "develop" when the history generation takes over. I wasn't entirely convinced by the design I used either, though it appeared to be quite efficient - but hard to set up, lots of work to be put in it.
That is not Fun. It just forces you to turtle, use overpowered traps, and see your first migrant waves get brutally killed.
A siege at the end of second year is fine. A siege at three months is just ridiculous.
Still need to see if Goblin sieges pop up for my new fortress. (First have to start that though...haven't even embarked yet, though I know where I want to embark.)
It'll have a requirement of 50 dwarves for sieges to start, as well as having 3 Goblin entities near.
Post by: Detros on July 03, 2015, 03:06:11 pm
... having two considerably big sieges within pretty much "the first year" is just too much, unless you really want a challenge - or as you put it: it forces you to turtle immediatly. Depending on what you want to do it might be interesting, but for any "normal" fortress, it's just pointless to embark near a tower.IIRC there was discussed addition of an option on how many sieges should hit you and Today said this will be looked at during one of the next development runs, the one which should add some starting scenarios. I am now unable to find the direct link, though. Maybe somewhere in FotF (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140544)?
Post by: Robsoie on July 03, 2015, 05:05:44 pm
So one could tailor the entity behaviours regarding war and siege to their liking and adjust then the game to between peaceful and siege nightmare
Post by: nimbus25 on July 03, 2015, 08:31:29 pm
I wish Toady would implement some kind of aggressivity and playerfocus variable for the entities definitions, so you would be able to make an entity more or less peaceful (with the extreme being between "willing to send armies every month" to "nearly never send any army") and for when they're at war how much they're willing to focus their attention on player fort (extreme would be focus their army only on player forts or "nearly never go for player fort")So maybe like, [HASSIEGE:#], # being the time (in months) between every siege? So [HASSIEGE:12] would be once a year, [HASSIEGE:6] twice a year, [HASSIEGE:24] every other year, [HASSIEGE:0] never, etc.
So one could tailor the entity behaviours regarding war and siege to their liking and adjust then the game to between peaceful and siege nightmare
Post by: Putnam on July 03, 2015, 08:32:47 pm
Post by: Robsoie on July 03, 2015, 09:42:27 pm
[TEMPERATURE:NO]
[WEATHER:NO]
[ECONOMY:YES]
[INVADERS:NO]
[CAVEINS:NO]
[ARTIFACTS:YES]
And allow more control when modding new species and entities.
Post by: nimbus25 on July 03, 2015, 09:53:24 pm
Granted, Toady could (probably) find a different fix for this, but it's something that could appeal to modders if they really need it
Post by: §k on July 04, 2015, 01:22:42 am
I usually get siege very soon after population exceeds 80, but I've never seen a goblin ambush. I check civilization list now and then, so it's unlikely that they came and left undiscovered.
Post by: Putnam on July 04, 2015, 02:31:52 am
Post by: Naryar on July 04, 2015, 05:11:06 am
Post by: Robsoie on July 04, 2015, 10:38:57 am
Either it's just buggy or it's been removed, but i find no trace of such removal in the various 40.x release changelogs.
For several 40.x versions, sieges were even more bugged than they are (there's a pathing bug Toady identified in 40.24 and will be fixed for next version) currently and goblins were simply never coming at all, so it's possible gob ambushes were afflicted the same, assuming Toady didn't just removed them without telling in changelog of course, but never got any fix.
Post by: Chief10 on July 04, 2015, 12:43:55 pm
Post by: pisskop on July 09, 2015, 09:38:11 am
The first was 12 gobbos in 2 squads. This current one is 26 or so . . . even with a few recruits sprinkled in :X
And while we are relatively 'wealthy' (~400K) and have over 100 dwarves, we dont even have proper room set up for anyone who doesn require a special office. Dorms and winding tunnels that extend from top to bottom.
The gobbos are also going almost their max distance to get to me. And several juicy human settlements are nearby. And elven, but (worldgen) elves are beastly for my worlds, what with their magic to make elephants the number 1 killer of demons. LOL @ elves sending packs of enlarged and enraged suicide elephants at demons. They wreck quite a few gobbo civs that way.
Post by: Larix on July 09, 2015, 10:26:41 am
Quote
never saw a single goblin ambush in df2014
Either it's just buggy or it's been removed, but i find no trace of such removal in the various 40.x release changelogs.
Goblins don't have the [AMBUSHER] tag. That they previously sent ambushes in spite of lack of the tag might have been the bug.
The very first goblin siege is almost always a token "scout force" of maybe ten goblins. That's been so in DF2012 as well.
I have a fort in a very old world with no remaining civ apart from goblins (my fort is reviving the dwarven civ). That one just got its second siege, and the first sizable one - 28 gobbos. Not particularly big, but quite enough for my four capable militiadwarfs (one of which was off getting plastered while the battle took place).
Another fort got the second "siege" of a small ranger squad. The challenge there is not dying of boredom while they sit by the traps and can't decide whether to advance or piss off - for two months. The only really interesting attack was a visit from a nearby tower, with about forty units.
My experience is fairly mixed - there seem to be fewer and less linear hostile activity, but forts with no action are in the minority. Having a world with no "distractions" for the gobbos probably helps (i.e. no non-gobbo civs apart from yours).
Post by: sculleywr on July 09, 2015, 12:49:45 pm
My main way of culling populations is ignoring mandates.
Post by: Robsoie on July 09, 2015, 06:09:42 pm
- i used default 40.24 and modded only the goblins so instead of having
[MULTIPLE_LITTER_RARE]
they would have
[LITTERSIZE:10:20]
So pop wouldn't be a problem.
- my world was set on Smaller (to keep civs rather close and avoid some "can't come to you because you're too far problem that could affect army, who know) and went on more than 250 year of worldgen.
- apparently elven civs were no more (confirmed by no elves merchant ever coming)
- i embarked next to the goblin dark fortress that at the time had a little more than 10000 gobs (and +/- 5000 trolls) in order to not have too much path for the gobs to do
- at the time of embark the goblins were at war with my civ.
Then after embark, what happened with the goblins
- year 0 .. nothing
- year 1 .. nothing
- year 2 .. nothing
- year 3 .. goblin siege ! (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=145797.msg6334490#msg6334490) , though it was a very small one and my military that had been training for 3 years were good enough to destroy it.
- year 4 ... nothing
- year 5 ... nothing
- year 6 ... nothing
- year 7 ... goblin siege ! (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=145797.msg6338456#msg6338456) , a bigger one, the biggest i had observed in all my df2014 forts
- year 7 ... a few month later another goblin siege ! (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=145797.msg6339156#msg6339156), couldn't believe it, 2 sieges in the same year
- year 8 ... nothing, a "human" diplomat (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=15096.msg6344242#msg6344242) came, he was a vampire and so we destroyed him (hoping those human vampire lovers would come)
- year 9 ... nothing
- year 10 ... nothing until summer when i decided it was enough to close that experiment.
observation :
- at the time i decided to call it enough, the goblin civ was still at war with us, and they have been at war with us every years in my civ screen, and my liaison mentionned to me "everything is the same as ever" so no peace treaty or anything went in the way
- probably the fort i got the most legendary (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=15096.msg6338191#msg6338191) civilians and military (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=15096.msg6338998#msg6338998) i ever got in df2014, so many artifacts and normal works were getting done that it's not a surprise
- despite we annihilated their vampire diplomats, the human civ never came to siege us or complain.
- in the last 2 years my fortress was a duchy (it took oddly a long time for my barony to upgrade to county, but it very fast went to duchy)
- several forgotten beasts came, 2 of them died from battle with blind ogres in the lowest caverns and 1 die because i forgot to wall a hole (fortunately it was a non-syndrome giving one and my military that was full legendary at the time destroyed it), never bothered about them, they weren't part of my experimentation.
- a were-something came on the surface and was easily killed, i was worried about my guards getting bitten, but it didn't happen, i had enough other things (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=15096.msg6335998#msg6335998) to deal with
- by year 10 half the for civilians were depressed (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=15096.msg6340119#msg6340119) and even oblivious/haggard due to intense depression, apparently just carrying corpses of goblins into refuses stockpiles (i wanted to simulate some kind of catacombs) do this, and dwarven justice (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=15096.msg6340075#msg6340075) does not help.
- the last 3 years were slow as i was full of dwarves and my numerous stockpiles (i didn't wanted to quantum them) were full , probably contributing a lot in my getting bored as everything was taking a lot of time to be done.
- dwarves vomit a lot (cave adaptation) , a very very lot , my fortress entrance was nearly having rivers of vomits all around.
- "hostile" thingy-man tribes you find in the caverns are actually not hostile at all , you can dance around them and .. nothing will happen, your military does not attack them either, probably another bug.
Post by: pisskop on July 09, 2015, 06:20:58 pm
I taken to calling these new style invaders 'rainbow squads' because of how diverse they are.
Post by: Detros on July 10, 2015, 06:20:15 pm
- "hostile" thingy-man tribes you find in the caverns are actually not hostile at all , you can dance around them and .. nothing will happen, your military does not attack them either, probably another bug.
This was already reported. See issue 7369 (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=7369).
Post by: gchristopher on September 03, 2015, 02:15:08 pm
I'll embark in an area with kobold and goblin neighbors each time, and nobody every shows up? (I know I'm getting all the trivial stuff right, like fulfilling all the pop/wealth/etc requirements for the relevant civs.)
Maybe it's because I'm usually in an interesting evil biome? Are the undead killing off the ambush/snatcher and siege events?
I don't see how people are enjoying 40.24, the only visitors I ever see are more boring undead and (the very limited supply of) necromancers. The world may as well be goblin-free in this version.
Post by: darkflagrance on September 03, 2015, 03:53:42 pm
Does anyone have any suggestions for getting more ambushers/invaders? After dozen games in 40.X versions, I've written it off as boring and gone back to 34.11.
I'll embark in an area with kobold and goblin neighbors each time, and nobody every shows up? (I know I'm getting all the trivial stuff right, like fulfilling all the pop/wealth/etc requirements for the relevant civs.)
Maybe it's because I'm usually in an interesting evil biome? Are the undead killing off the ambush/snatcher and siege events?
I don't see how people are enjoying 40.24, the only visitors I ever see are more boring undead and (the very limited supply of) necromancers. The world may as well be goblin-free in this version.
You could try testing a mod that makes goblins more likely to siege your fort such as the Goblin Upgrade Mod (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=152788.0). Basically it makes goblins try to attack your fort sooner, and adds more goblin entities so that each goblin civ can try to attack your fort, rather than just one. It also makes sure late goblin sieges don't consist of mere recruits.
Post by: gchristopher on September 03, 2015, 04:41:38 pm
You could try testing a mod that makes goblins more likely to siege your fort such as the Goblin Upgrade Mod (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=152788.0). Basically it makes goblins try to attack your fort sooner, and adds more goblin entities so that each goblin civ can try to attack your fort, rather than just one. It also makes sure late goblin sieges don't consist of mere recruits.
Neat. I've tried lowering the progress triggers, and that doesn't help, since the invaders never reach the player fortress?
[LIKES_SITE:PLAYER_FORTRESS] is intriguing! I wasn't aware that was a tag option.
I wonder if/how adding all the duplicate entities really helps, though? The number of civs is capped at world gen, so is the goal just to skew the count to be more of the goblin-type entities? Wouldn't you still have the same basic distribution of evil civilizations available to attack, whether or not they were all based on the same entity, or several similar entity entries? There'd still be the same basic problem of them never reaching the fortress? (I'm just asking, I'd be happy to hear they help somehow!)
Post by: Putnam on September 03, 2015, 04:41:46 pm
I don't see how people are enjoying 40.24
there's more to the game than invasions and 0.40.01 was the version that introduced the feature that happens to be the entire point of the game?
I've said before: if you're seriously annoyed by that enough to switch versions and don't consider the world activation worth it, move to Gnomoria, because you may actually not get the point of this game.
Post by: Urlance Woolsbane on September 03, 2015, 05:16:34 pm
I don't see how people are enjoying 40.24I could point to a number of things, but I'll settle for two words: "Reanimating Biomes."
Zombies are especially dangerous in the current version, more powerful than even Toady wants them (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=140544.msg6481893#msg6481893). Maintaining a fort in with the threat of undeath is a very delicate balancing act. One mistake, and it can very easily be curtains for your dorfs. Not to mention the difficulty of ferrying in merchants and migrants or living without them. If that's not fun, I don't know what is.
Post by: Robsoie on September 03, 2015, 05:53:44 pm
After dozen games in 40.X versions, I've written it off as boring and gone back to 34.11.
The best solution is simply to go back to 34.11 in my opinion if you want a challenge that is not those one-punch kill undead, and even add multiple goblin entities in the raws to make nearly constant sieges.
But if you wish to try to keep going at 40.24 , a workaround to the lack of sieges (Toady mentionned there's an army pathing bug that is fixed only for the next version, regarding armies not coming in certain conditions) is to have everything else hostile to your embarks and willing to kill your dwarves, so basically you get the whole nature besieging you with the most intense desire being to destroy your dwarves.
It's not everyday you see those usually peaceful group of groundhogs suddenly rushing toward your dwarven settlement and try to savagely murder every single of your citizens.
That can make it for very silly fun fortresses, you can try the idea there :
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=152661.0
But in the creature_standard.txt included in this mini mod, remove the line
[CRAZED]
from the [CREATURE:DWARF] entry , as that entry , while interesting for adventure mode, would prevent dwarven fortresses to be playable (leading into immediate game over when tried).
Post by: omega_dwarf on September 03, 2015, 06:56:33 pm
Toady mentionned there's an army pathing bug that is fixed only for the next version, regarding armies not coming in certain conditions
Just want to emphasize this point. Salvation may be coming! Plus a whole lot of interesting fortress visitors, the dynamics of your dwarves running an inn, libraries, temples, etc. Have faith! It may only be a month or two from now that the game becomes enjoyable to play again.
Post by: gchristopher on September 03, 2015, 08:23:25 pm
there's more to the game than invasions and 0.40.01 was the version that introduced the feature that happens to be the entire point of the game?
Oh totally, agreed, running the world simulator after a game starts is great! (In theory) In practice, however, that aspect doesn't yet add too much to fortress-mode gameplay other than the hope that populations won't be exhausted. The lack of invaders is gameplay-breaking enough to fortress mode to at least justify a point release correcting whatever is causing it, instead of leaving the entire 40.X release experience working so poorly.
It matters most to me because I'd like to introduce DF to people who've played games like gnomoria, and snatchers/ambushers are a pretty critical part of the difficulty progression in DF. It's great that once you have a basic handle on food/booze/psychology, you're put under a little pressure to also defend yourself. Without them, you're left with options like:
But if you wish to try to keep going at 40.24 [....] have everything else hostile to your embarks and willing to kill your dwarves, so basically you get the whole nature besieging you with the most intense desire being to destroy your dwarves.
Yep! That's pretty much what I've been doing. Get the worst thralling weather you can find, plus reanimation for undead populations, and use dfhack to move every necromancer tower to within range! (Obviously a lot more if you want mods, but I prefer as close to vanilla as feasible, Modest Mod style.)
It's too bad that 40.X requires you to go to such extravagant (and possibly inconclusive) measures (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=148658.0) to get baddies to come towards your fortress, though. I remember Toadie mentioning changes to pathing, but I think some of the speedups have some severe downsides, especially on larger maps where arriving enemies may fail to even locate which part of the map the fortress is on.
Salvation may be coming! Plus a whole lot of interesting fortress visitors, the dynamics of your dwarves running an inn, libraries, temples, etc. Have faith! It may only be a month or two from now that the game becomes enjoyable to play again.
I hope so too!
Post by: MDFification on September 04, 2015, 04:05:52 pm
Post by: Bumber on September 05, 2015, 06:29:00 am
Honestly, I'll be happier when to found your fortress you have to actually lead a band of dwarves from the mountainhome to the site you're planing to build on. I feel like most players are embarking in regions where it's pretty darn infeasible for anything from actually inhabited areas to have pathed there, which is why they're getting fewer invaders (and probably when caravans physically move on the map they'll start getting fewer traders too). Forcing you to actually path to your fort in the first place would resolve that problem.Hopefully boats and tunnels will make certain areas more accessible. We've got the tunnels, but I don't think they do anything for armies/caravans yet.
Post by: Detros on September 05, 2015, 10:25:17 am
Yay, goblin siege on rogallos!Honestly, I'll be happier when to found your fortress you have to actually lead a band of dwarves from the mountainhome to the site you're planing to build on. I feel like most players are embarking in regions where it's pretty darn infeasible for anything from actually inhabited areas to have pathed there, which is why they're getting fewer invaders (and probably when caravans physically move on the map they'll start getting fewer traders too). Forcing you to actually path to your fort in the first place would resolve that problem.Hopefully boats and tunnels will make certain areas more accessible. We've got the tunnels, but I don't think they do anything for armies/caravans yet.
Post by: SyrusLD on September 06, 2015, 06:04:00 am
Having several entities of each race (in range) and having embarked not far off from civilization has left Violentlash always with a lot of attention from sieges.
The only thing is, these sieges have not been much danger to even a non-legendary military I'd say. It's always just the same goblin-troll combo with very rarely an even weaker recruit-only sieges popping up. Where're the feared weapon masters, where are the mounts...?
I have been trying to also befriend the elves...so far, after several times having smashing (and slashing) success at taking care of their diplomats and caravans, I still have not received a single siege from them.
Post by: omega_dwarf on September 06, 2015, 11:50:11 am
I've heard it mentioned that tougher terrain discourages sieges. Are goblins affected by the evil lands they usually live in? That would seem silly if Toady let that slip through - if goblin siege numbers were being reduced because they had to walk through their own evil homeland to get anywhere.
Post by: darkflagrance on September 08, 2015, 09:39:29 am
Post by: omega_dwarf on September 08, 2015, 10:03:55 am
It looks like PROGRESS_TRIGGER:1 (lowest possible) causes the earliest sieges to arrive about 3 or 6 years in, give or take a few. In comparison, goblins are PROGRESS_TRIGGER:3 for most things. I'm not sure whether their later progress trigger makes them arrive much, much later, but it would explain a lot.
How'd you find that? I thought those just corresponded to population and wealth levels. You can define what each of the progress triggers actually corresponds to in the raws, I think. I tried it once, to no avail.
Post by: Putnam on September 08, 2015, 05:32:28 pm
Post by: omega_dwarf on September 09, 2015, 09:41:43 am
Post by: darkflagrance on September 09, 2015, 10:28:46 am
It looks like PROGRESS_TRIGGER:1 (lowest possible) causes the earliest sieges to arrive about 3 or 6 years in, give or take a few. In comparison, goblins are PROGRESS_TRIGGER:3 for most things. I'm not sure whether their later progress trigger makes them arrive much, much later, but it would explain a lot.
How'd you find that? I thought those just corresponded to population and wealth levels. You can define what each of the progress triggers actually corresponds to in the raws, I think. I tried it once, to no avail.
Based on anecdotal evidence from my and others' forts, modded PROGRESS_TRIGGER:POPULATION:1 (or however it's spelled in the raws) enemies take 3-5 years to arrive. It's also possible the wealth or trade triggers are causing them to come, but as I said, it's very hard to figure out why and what causes this or can be done about it.
Post by: Chief10 on September 12, 2015, 05:44:51 pm
It looks like PROGRESS_TRIGGER:1 (lowest possible) causes the earliest sieges to arrive about 3 or 6 years in, give or take a few. In comparison, goblins are PROGRESS_TRIGGER:3 for most things. I'm not sure whether their later progress trigger makes them arrive much, much later, but it would explain a lot.
How'd you find that? I thought those just corresponded to population and wealth levels. You can define what each of the progress triggers actually corresponds to in the raws, I think. I tried it once, to no avail.
Based on anecdotal evidence from my and others' forts, modded PROGRESS_TRIGGER:POPULATION:1 (or however it's spelled in the raws) enemies take 3-5 years to arrive. It's also possible the wealth or trade triggers are causing them to come, but as I said, it's very hard to figure out why and what causes this or can be done about it.
I believe PROGRESS_TRIGGER:POPULATION:1 means sieges show up at 30 population.
Post by: iceball3 on September 29, 2015, 11:54:31 am
Post by: MantisMan on November 05, 2015, 11:22:33 pm
Hey, omega_dwarf, what are the results of your experiment?
Post by: omega_dwarf on November 06, 2015, 12:41:55 am
So no results yet, and there probably won't be for another five or more dwarf years.
Post by: pisskop on November 09, 2015, 11:45:33 am
My issue with them is that the cheese or stuff that was semi-cheesy is now completely effective, since there are no more 1000 goblin sieges. Minecarts, bridges, walls; all effective. Spiral traps, bridge drops, all too effective.
Especially the walls. People are complaining about how invaders can climb them; and indeed they do. But, they do so insmall groups and a squad stationed topside can trash the 1 or 2 that do at any one time.
Post by: Button on November 09, 2015, 02:31:51 pm
Especially the walls. People are complaining about how invaders can climb them; and indeed they do. But, they do so insmall groups and a squad stationed topside can trash the 1 or 2 that do at any one time.
I've literally never had an invader climb a wall to get at my dwarves. I've had my dwarves climb down to try to get at the invaders, but never the other way around.
Post by: TheFlame52 on November 09, 2015, 04:18:08 pm
I have, though, had invading zombies (only zombies) climb dirt walls into my fort. Man, that was a short succession fort. My turn lasted one month, we had a zombie invasion, we had no military, zombies climbed down into the courtyard, the only survivor was a child.Especially the walls. People are complaining about how invaders can climb them; and indeed they do. But, they do so insmall groups and a squad stationed topside can trash the 1 or 2 that do at any one time.I've literally never had an invader climb a wall to get at my dwarves. I've had my dwarves climb down to try to get at the invaders, but never the other way around.
Post by: jonsnow on November 09, 2015, 05:40:56 pm
For example, you'll have one invasion early and a bunch of wild life showing up your first year. Then pretty soon no wild life or invasions ever occur for as long as you play. I think it has something to do with the max unit amount this game tends to get completely bogged down when you have lots of pets/people. I usually try not to embark with animals because I believe there's some sort of internal count for how many units can be on the map.
Post by: Mike_B20 on November 09, 2015, 07:31:57 pm
it's a common problem with the current version of dwarf fortress that makes it nearly unplayable.
For example, you'll have one invasion early and a bunch of wild life showing up your first year. Then pretty soon no wild life or invasions ever occur for as long as you play. I think it has something to do with the max unit amount this game tends to get completely bogged down when you have lots of pets/people. I usually try not to embark with animals because I believe there's some sort of internal count for how many units can be on the map.
From what I've read elsewhere, the invaders also rely on natural population growth and recruitment in the current DF version, rather than armies just suddenly materializing out of nowhere; so, after a bad defeat it can take a LONG time for their army numbers to grow again.
This might also explain the size of subsequent sieges I've experienced; in my current game, the first siege was quite large(30), then there were a few very minor sieges(2 & 5 besiegers), followed by another sizeable siege several years later.
Post by: Urlance Woolsbane on November 09, 2015, 09:21:14 pm
From what I've read elsewhere, the invaders also rely on natural population growth and recruitment in the current DF version, rather than armies just suddenly materializing out of nowhere; so, after a bad defeat it can take a LONG time for their army numbers to grow again.I've had a thought: The problem isn't with the population per se, seeing as Dark Pits are usually so crowded as to cause significant lag. So it would seem to be with the lack of military goblins. Might modding goblins and trolls to be naturally proficient with weapons result in larger sieges?
This might also explain the size of subsequent sieges I've experienced; in my current game, the first siege was quite large(30), then there were a few very minor sieges(2 & 5 besiegers), followed by another sizeable siege several years later.
Post by: darkflagrance on November 17, 2015, 03:44:41 am
From what I've read elsewhere, the invaders also rely on natural population growth and recruitment in the current DF version, rather than armies just suddenly materializing out of nowhere; so, after a bad defeat it can take a LONG time for their army numbers to grow again.I've had a thought: The problem isn't with the population per se, seeing as Dark Pits are usually so crowded as to cause significant lag. So it would seem to be with the lack of military goblins. Might modding goblins and trolls to be naturally proficient with weapons result in larger sieges?
This might also explain the size of subsequent sieges I've experienced; in my current game, the first siege was quite large(30), then there were a few very minor sieges(2 & 5 besiegers), followed by another sizeable siege several years later.
I have noticed that given them natural skill in discipline and weapons doesn't make too much of difference in siege quality, sadly.
Post by: omega_dwarf on November 17, 2015, 06:25:34 pm
From what I've read elsewhere, the invaders also rely on natural population growth and recruitment in the current DF version, rather than armies just suddenly materializing out of nowhere; so, after a bad defeat it can take a LONG time for their army numbers to grow again.I've had a thought: The problem isn't with the population per se, seeing as Dark Pits are usually so crowded as to cause significant lag. So it would seem to be with the lack of military goblins. Might modding goblins and trolls to be naturally proficient with weapons result in larger sieges?
This might also explain the size of subsequent sieges I've experienced; in my current game, the first siege was quite large(30), then there were a few very minor sieges(2 & 5 besiegers), followed by another sizeable siege several years later.
I have noticed that given them natural skill in discipline and weapons doesn't make too much of difference in siege quality, sadly.
You could always replace the gobljn species with dragons/rocs/bronze colossi.
Post by: Chief10 on November 17, 2015, 06:52:10 pm
From what I've read elsewhere, the invaders also rely on natural population growth and recruitment in the current DF version, rather than armies just suddenly materializing out of nowhere; so, after a bad defeat it can take a LONG time for their army numbers to grow again.I've had a thought: The problem isn't with the population per se, seeing as Dark Pits are usually so crowded as to cause significant lag. So it would seem to be with the lack of military goblins. Might modding goblins and trolls to be naturally proficient with weapons result in larger sieges?
This might also explain the size of subsequent sieges I've experienced; in my current game, the first siege was quite large(30), then there were a few very minor sieges(2 & 5 besiegers), followed by another sizeable siege several years later.
I have noticed that given them natural skill in discipline and weapons doesn't make too much of difference in siege quality, sadly.
You could always replace the gobljn species with dragons/rocs/bronze colossi.
Is this simple/not-buggy to do?
Post by: Urlance Woolsbane on November 17, 2015, 09:06:09 pm
It should be simplicity itself. If you want them to equip weapons and armor, you'll have to go to a little more trouble, but only a little.From what I've read elsewhere, the invaders also rely on natural population growth and recruitment in the current DF version, rather than armies just suddenly materializing out of nowhere; so, after a bad defeat it can take a LONG time for their army numbers to grow again.I've had a thought: The problem isn't with the population per se, seeing as Dark Pits are usually so crowded as to cause significant lag. So it would seem to be with the lack of military goblins. Might modding goblins and trolls to be naturally proficient with weapons result in larger sieges?
This might also explain the size of subsequent sieges I've experienced; in my current game, the first siege was quite large(30), then there were a few very minor sieges(2 & 5 besiegers), followed by another sizeable siege several years later.
I have noticed that given them natural skill in discipline and weapons doesn't make too much of difference in siege quality, sadly.
You could always replace the gobljn species with dragons/rocs/bronze colossi.
Is this simple/not-buggy to do?
Post by: pisskop on November 17, 2015, 11:23:04 pm
suddenly minotaur baby nappers
Post by: Chief10 on November 18, 2015, 12:07:36 am
Is it as simple as changing [goblin] to [minotaur] in the raws under the category "evil"?
edit: Also, do you have to make the changes in multiple places?
Post by: Putnam on November 18, 2015, 01:20:45 am
Post by: Robsoie on December 02, 2015, 11:48:49 am
On my test fortress i got 2 sieges in the 2 first years,
the first was an undead siege
(http://i.imgur.com/SkHmzZ9.jpg)
and the second was a regular one.
(http://i.imgur.com/P2bMvRr.gif)
The problem is that in both case, the sieging army exited the map immediately when i unpaused without even moving inside of it.
Not sure if it's some bizarre game mechanic there or if it's another bug, so has anyone got a real siege in the 42.01 fortress so far ?
Post by: Speakafreak22 on December 02, 2015, 12:06:44 pm
So have anyone got a siege in 42.01 so far ?
On my test fortress i got 2 sieges in the 2 first years,
the first was an undead siege
-
and the second was a regular one.
-
The problem is that in both case, the sieging army exited the map immediately when i unpaused without even moving inside of it.
Not sure if it's some bizarre game mechanic there or if it's another bug, so has anyone got a real siege in the 42.01 fortress so far ?
This has happened to me in 2014 a few times so I don't think it's unique to this release. My guess is pathing issues, emotions, or leader issues.
Post by: Rince Wind on December 02, 2015, 12:07:52 pm
Post by: omega_dwarf on December 02, 2015, 12:25:34 pm
Or they were just on their way to another place and stumbled upon your fort by accident.
I thought this was generally the case with observations like that.
Post by: Robsoie on December 02, 2015, 12:31:21 pm
In the case i mention, there was no wandering a bit , it was immediate exiting when i unpaused after the siege announcement.
Post by: Untrustedlife on December 04, 2015, 12:22:10 pm
So have anyone got a siege in 42.01 so far ?
On my test fortress i got 2 sieges in the 2 first years,
the first was an undead siege
(http://i.imgur.com/SkHmzZ9.jpg)
and the second was a regular one.
(http://i.imgur.com/P2bMvRr.gif)
The problem is that in both case, the sieging army exited the map immediately when i unpaused without even moving inside of it.
Not sure if it's some bizarre game mechanic there or if it's another bug, so has anyone got a real siege in the 42.01 fortress so far ?
plenty of people, sieges are way more common now.
Post by: Urist Tilaturist on December 29, 2015, 08:47:58 am
Post by: Klitri on December 29, 2015, 12:10:43 pm
Post by: darkflagrance on December 29, 2015, 01:18:55 pm