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Dwarf Fortress => DF Dwarf Mode Discussion => Topic started by: AllThingsLive on December 20, 2011, 05:20:24 pm

Title: Best Military Setup?
Post by: AllThingsLive on December 20, 2011, 05:20:24 pm
Okay, so I'm no veteran to Dwarf Fortress. I've probably been playing for 6 months now and have made about 15 fortresses total.
Needless to say, the defense of my fortresses almost entirely exists off of cage traps, and I want to fix that.

I have 4 squads now. My best one so far is an axeman squad which has been training for about 4 years now, but the best soldier is merely adept while the majority of others are novices or adequate. So why are they taking so long to train? I have them train year round, 10 out 10 at a time, and they are just barely becoming axeman. How come? They're all suited in full masterwork steel armor and weaponry, but are progressing like slugs. What's the best schedule setup for effective training? Would it be detrimental to have, say, 2 spearmen, 3 hammermen, and 5 axemen in a squad, since they would train each other in skills that they aren't going to use?

What are the different perks of each weapon type?
Axes - Close quarters combat, hacking off limbs.
That's as far as my weapon knowledge goes.

What's a good way to crosstrain soldiers and how long does crosstraining take? It seems like having soldiers operate screw pumps or smooth walls on their off time are the best options, but how long do they need to do this to see results?

I have my dwarves execute disarmed invaders, but they don't get too much skill from it. I'm afraid of them doing it with training weapons however, because it would be a shame to train a dwarf all the way up, only to have him become attached to the wooden axe he so mercilessly smacked goblins with.

How effective are ballistae? Is training some dwarves up to legendary siege operators by having them fire catapults all day actually worth the loss in hauling potential? Also, what's a good setup so that the ballistae actually get a chance to fire on invaders and not get scared away too soon?

How effective are crossbows? I've yet to employ marksmen into my military, so I don't know how well they work.

What's the best way to hold back the evils of the caverns below? Have a barracks between the entrance to the cavern and your stairway?

How can you employ magma and water as methods of defense for your fortress? Could someone explain to me and the other Dabbling Dwarf Fortressers[V. Rusty] the intricacies of the almighty pressure plate?

What, in general, is the best fortress layout, in terms of above ground defenses? All I have is a 3z high wall surrounding my stairway to the fortress. There are 2 entrances, 3 wide each with cage traps and drawbridges defending each. My barracks are also out there.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That's it as far as my questions for the military go and typing them out has made me realize how many questions I have about the other aspects of your guys' fortresses. I'll save those for another topic.
Please share any knowledge you have on any of the preceding points. (Or knowledge on any other part of fortress defense that's been unmentioned thus far)
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: darkflagrance on December 20, 2011, 05:32:53 pm
Axes are pretty much the best melee weapon for dwarves. Spears might be marginally more useful against larger beasts such as dragons, but I've never really noticed any difference between a master axedwarf and a master speardwarf in killing large things. Swords are not really worth the compromise. You never really fight enemies who are well-enough armored to merit blunt weapons, as goblins don't wear full armor. If you can get daggers or whips, those have been reported to be quite excellent as well.

The main use of marksdwarves is to camp on high towers or behind fortifications and shoot the enemy without fear of being counterattacked. Deploying marksdwarves onto the field tends to be suicide because they will charge in anyway half the time.

I've never had any difficulty getting dwarves to drop weapons they grew attached to, nor any problems arising as a result.

Catapults are completely useless. Ballistae are slightly usable, but their operators have wretched accuracy, you might need to use a metal-headed projectile rather than a pure wood one, and their minimum range is huge because ballista operators are easily scared by goblins.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Telgin on December 20, 2011, 05:37:17 pm
Lots of questions there, so I'll just touch on a few as I don't have a lot of time.

Training takes a long time if the teachers are noobs.  Recent science was conducted that indicated that legendary teaching skill makes an unbelievable difference in how long it takes to train.  The end result is that your first few squads are going to take ages to train up this way, but as they get better at teaching the process goes faster.

Sparring trains faster than demonstrations.  There's no way to force dwarves to spar as far as I know, but people have suggested that putting them in smaller squads (3 or 4) encourages sparring, but I haven't tested this.  I believe there may be a minimum skill involved before dwarves will spar, but I'm not sure.

I would avoid mixing weapons in a squad, as they will indeed spend time teaching each other how to use weapons they have no business even using.

Crossbows can be very effective with high skilled marksdwarves.  I've had dwarves shoot titans and forgotten beasts dead before the melee dwarves even show up.  Siege weapons on the other hand suck unless you go through pain staking processes to funnel enemies into their lanes of fire.  I don't bother.

The perks of different weapons are a bit of a mystery still and there are superstitions surrounding them.  Supposedly, hammers and maces are good at disabling smaller (goblin-sized) enemies, and for jamming skulls through brains.  Axes are effective at lopping off limbs and thus disabling enemies before finishing them off.  Spears are supposedly very good at dealing with big things, since they can reach vital organs and cause lots of bleeding.  Swords combine an axe and a spear in that they can thrust and hack, but I would assume they're not as good at both jobs.

The real question is how much of that is true and how much effect it really has.  Supposedly blunt weapons are pretty good no matter what they're made of, except for candy, which sucks as a blunt weapon material.  Edged weapons need to be of at least the same grade as the armor they are up against, lest they become much less effective.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Loud Whispers on December 20, 2011, 05:53:33 pm
Don't forget to have them on active duty so they actually train :P (Easy mistake to overlook).
Though yeah, embarking with a teacher in the long term is a legit choice, and really worth it in the long term (if you can keep your teachers alive).
First off, I find having militia train with a decent teacher trains them faster than individual training or sparring, but once they've reached adept/skilled sparring quickly overtakes the xp gain.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Telgin on December 20, 2011, 05:57:46 pm
Quote from: Loud Whispers on December 20, 2011, 05:53:33 pm
Don't forget to have them on active duty so they actually train :P (Easy mistake to overlook).

^^ This.

I did this recently.  Many bad thoughts for Telgin when I realized what I did.

About two years of individual combat drills instead of training.

Actually, those few dwarves did end up with decent skill after that time, I wonder if it's better than demonstrating with a crappy teacher?  They'll never learn anything but weapon skills this way though, as far as I know.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: AllThingsLive on December 20, 2011, 06:10:42 pm
Ooh, good stuff so far! I do have my dwarves set to train, but I realized that the "Train, 10 minimum" isn't what I thought it was. That requires all 10 dwarves to be present for training to start, correct? That could be my issue. I'll have to split up some of my squads and try that sparring setup too.
And for my next fortress, I may try embarking with a proficient axedwarf-teacher.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Loud Whispers on December 20, 2011, 06:13:31 pm
Quote from: AllThingsLive on December 20, 2011, 06:10:42 pm
Ooh, good stuff so far! I do have my dwarves set to train, but I realized that the "Train, 10 minimum" isn't what I thought it was. That requires all 10 dwarves to be present for training to start, correct? That could be my issue. I'll have to split up some of my squads and try that sparring setup too.
And for my next fortress, I may try embarking with a proficient axedwarf-teacher.

I norm. choose a proficient teacher with a generic fighter skill that all can use, like fighter or dodger, unless I feel particularly mad and want to re-enact 300 urists :P
You'll want to have the schedule set for 1 less of the entire squad (if it's a full time army squad that is), and squads of 3 with the schedule set for 2 gives the largest chance for all of your dwarves to get a chance to spar. Sparring also keeps them happy :D
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: AllThingsLive on December 20, 2011, 06:26:01 pm
Exactly how important are skills like fighter, dodger, armor user, and shield user?
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Telgin on December 20, 2011, 06:33:45 pm
Nobody knows for sure, I think.

Dodger is very useful at high skill levels from what I understand, but remember that it can get dwarves in trouble (dodge into pond, eaten by carp).

Armor user is pretty useful in that it lets dwarves wearing heavy armor move faster.  I think at the highest level they move at normal speed even with a full suit of steel, which is handy.

Shield user is quite possibly more useful than dodger.  Shields can block just about everything, including dragon's breath.  And dwarves can bash with them, but I don't know if the skill is actually used for bashing.  I think not for some reason...

Fighter is the one I have no clue on.  My suspicion is that it affects all combat rolls in a lesser manner than the specific skill, but I'd rather not spread misinformation.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Loud Whispers on December 20, 2011, 06:35:24 pm
Quote from: AllThingsLive on December 20, 2011, 06:26:01 pm
Exactly how important are skills like fighter, dodger, armor user, and shield user?

Fighter is a general fighting skill (as the name implies), dodging is important too (for dodging stray bolts and what not), just be sure that your dwarves don't dodge into pits... Armor user and shield user, these are VERY important skills for live dwarves, and are used every time your Dwarf (attempts) to block a strike with his/her armour/shield. The Dwarf can also try blocking the strike with his weapon, and using that weapon skill.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Sphalerite on December 20, 2011, 06:46:52 pm
I prefer to have mixed squads of hammerdwarves and axedwarves.  Axedwarves are more useful at chopping off limbs, but I've found that when I read the combat report many of the actual kills come from hammerdwarves crushing the skulls of their targets.  Then again, I am using an experimental mod that includes (among other things) uranium refining.

I try to have at least a few marksdwarves.  It can be hard to keep enough training bolts on hand to train more than one or two of them properly, but sometimes you just need to kill something that you can't get within hand-to-hand combat range of.

Ballistae are amusing but mostly useless.  At best, you might be able to use one to inflict some minor harm on an invading group before engaging it with your primary military.  You can't defend your fortress with siege weapons alone.

Training against life targets gives a lot more experience than sparring or shooting at practice dummies.  I routinely catch ambush groups and wild animals in cage traps, then release them in the barracks while my soldiers are practicing.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Lungfish on December 20, 2011, 07:13:12 pm
Section 1: I feel your pain dude.
When they made the switch from the old military system to the new, I was dumbfounded. Used to be that dwarves would just train up and before you knew it you had an army of legendary wrestlers killing anything. Now there's so many options, it took me a long time before I was getting the most of it. Here's everything I do - would love feedback from lurking pros.

Section 2: schedule/barracks
You probably already got this down. Build a bed, armor stand, or weapon stand and make it a barracks. You also have to set your squad to train there. I also have them store their squad equipment and personal equipment there because just because (I don't know why).
Then you have to 's'chedule them, in the 'm'ilitary screen. It's been said that if you leave it to 10 out of 10 then they'll pretty much only wait to watch a demonstration as they're waiting for all 10 of them to be available and ready. I always set it for 5 out of 10 and have that squad train 2 months a year so as to avoid becoming enraged about a long patrol. Then you have to make that schedule active and make sure your squads are in that schedule.

Section 3: equipment
I usually have them use whatever melee weapons they want because they'll just grab whatever I have. If you set them to use swords and you don't have any, then they'll just level up their fighting/dodging/maybe wrestling.
For Marksdwarves, you have to assign 'f'mmunition, or they'll just level up their hammerdwarf skill, sparring with crossbows. They also need their squad assigned to an archery target building/barracks. Also make sure you have enough waterskins/flasks so they don't get super thirsty right at the beginning of a call to duty.

Section 4: placement
It's awesome to have your barracks close to your sensitive areas and "no entry" regions, like your back door. That way you have dwarves at the ready when something comes probing around and you can spot gremlins or goblin thieves when they're sneaking by. I also try and make their living quarters be close to their barracks to minimize wasted time going to sleep or storing an item. Make sure they all have doors - they like to hoard their plump helmuts and such, which often get funky and miasmal. Also, I have the Marksdwarves practicing between the fortified floor and the ammo dump - it's best to have the archery target in front of a wall that is behind a pit so you can collect bolts that missed the mark. As far as barracks size, I haven't heard that it effects anything except maybe social skills and friendships. And as far as your underground nether regions, I like to have a fortification connected with a high-quality door connected to a hallway that ends with a stairwell that merges all the caverns - frequently with a lot of cage traps to catch the small stuff. This gives my marksdwarves a chance to come down and chip away at a forgotten beast made of glass before it comes in and gives all my little guys cuts and infections.

Section 4: Patrols and 'defend burrows'
I've never used this, assign from laboriously defining the borrow of my entire fortress and restricting dwarves to it when I've got trouble. Seems like I should, and when the fortress gets big and beautiful and I'm getting attacked a lot, I get plenty of dwarves who are angry about long patrols. It would be much better to use this feature I guess because then you would have a few squads of 5 out of 10 dwarves ready to fight and in the right place.

Section 5: other training
Mining: improves strength - I always have 10 to 20 miners hollowing out a big part of the map around my fortress.
Pump Operating: Also strength, and they get strong pretty fast. I build 20 pumps and just have them go at it.
Using Dwarf Therapist, when I see a dwarf is legendary +5 in mining or pump operating, I assume they're crazy strong by then and I assign that task  to the next dwarf down.
Danger Room: dodging/blocking - Dodging is hella important I think. When I embark to reclaim a fortress, I put 5 points in dodging in order to avoid early injuries. Other than that, to train up dodging quick you need a danger room. I spent a long damn time trying to build one TWICE, and I messed up both times. I've heard speculation that you only need a 1 by 1 tile with wooden spears in order to train them up, but I thought it would be cool to have an entire 8 by 8 barracks connected to 4 pressure plates. Such a pain. Gotta set the plates to trigger on the right weight, and when you're assigning the upright spike trap to a pressure plate, it shows traps by order of their construction (and all traps that are not currently connected, whether or not they are assigned to be connected).
Hunting: Marksdwarvship, observe, ambush - This is pretty obvious. I always have 3 to 5 marksdwarves hunting above ground and in the caverns, which levels them up in crossbows way faster than if they're stone-crafting and only occasionally going to crossbow practice. For the purpose of training, I assign marksdwarves to hammerdwarf squads so they can train up in the melee use of their crossbow, which is occasionally necessary. Warning: don't do this for your troop commanded by the captain of the guard - if you accidentally don't have enough jails and a dwarf has to be beaten, you want them to be terrible at using their bone crossbows as melee weapons.

Does the use of training weapons actually matter at all?

Section 6: siege weapons
Unlike marksdwarves, ballistas won't hit things on the Z level below them. I hate this, and didn't know it for a long time. Never used catapults, but I imagine they're less accurate. Also of note, balistas will kill anything in their path, while stones launched from catapults have a friend/foe recognition system so you can have some constant catapulting with no fear.

Other Questions:
Is there a way to level up teaching/studenting other than training?
How do you really use the 'patrol route' thing?
When a dwarf "doesn't really care about anything anymore" will it really still not get an unhappy thought from their baby dieing after carrying it into battle?
Is there a value to having every barracks associated with their own squad? I never have more than three barracks, sometimes with as many as 10 squads assigned to the same armor stand.
If I mark "store squad equipment" should I also place weapon, armor, ammo stockpiles there? Or does it not matter.

Hope this is half as useful as it was fun to write.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Person on December 20, 2011, 07:19:25 pm
Whips and scourges are essentially lightsabers. High speed, sever pretty much anything. If you can get one out of a heavy metal, it'll be the best weapon you ever get. They can only be made in strange moods unfortunately, other than taking them from the goblins.
 
I prefer marksdwarf spam myself, but they tend to get annihilated by a single elite bowman, so keep some melee handy.
As for melee, I use mostly axes, a few spears and hammers. I've heard spears are great against Forgotten beasts/titans, even the ones made of good metals, so I'll probably be testing that soon.

Daggers are pretty good, but axes tend to do the same job better, them only coming with thieves is a slight problem, and training the dagger skill is unlikely to happen.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: AllThingsLive on December 20, 2011, 08:06:24 pm
Quote from: Person on December 20, 2011, 07:19:25 pm
Whips and scourges are essentially lightsabers. High speed, sever pretty much anything. If you can get one out of a heavy metal, it'll be the best weapon you ever get. They can only be made in strange moods unfortunately, other than taking them from the goblins.
I never even considered whips. So a silver whip would be the best?
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Loud Whispers on December 20, 2011, 08:27:15 pm
Quote from: AllThingsLive on December 20, 2011, 08:06:24 pm
Quote from: Person on December 20, 2011, 07:19:25 pm
Whips and scourges are essentially lightsabers. High speed, sever pretty much anything. If you can get one out of a heavy metal, it'll be the best weapon you ever get. They can only be made in strange moods unfortunately, other than taking them from the goblins.
I never even considered whips. So a silver whip would be the best?
Against armoured things, yes.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Sutremaine on December 20, 2011, 08:58:55 pm
An assortment of notes:

*The more efficient your setup, the higher you can set the minimum number of dwarves training. The less time your military spends walking around looking for a stockpile or a bed, the better. Waterskins remove two out of three trips to the drink stockpile and reduce drinking time to a single turn, which is a massive time-saver. I tend to stick with three dwarves and the default ten minimum, though for patrolling I set the minimum to 2 dwarves (and use more than one squad).

*Sparring happens more often as skill levels equalise and demonstrations become unecessary.

*I'm not sure about defence order (think it might be parry-shield-armour-dodge), but dodging trains much more quickly if it's the only option. If I don't foresee any danger from doing so, I have dwarves train weaponless. They build weapon skill very quickly when given the opportunity, and prefer weapon training to defensive training.

*Swimming trains agility, and also stops your dwarves from drowning if they go chasing aquatic opponents (and is one of the few skills you can encourage in children without trapping them in a small room full of angry cats for a decade). I've yet to find a perfect training pool design.

*Marksdwarves can carry shields, which are great defence against bolts. They'll need some learning time with an experienced dwarf though. In my latest fortress I got one of those immigrants highly skilled as both a civilian and a soldier, and after having her train up my existing soldiers she was returned to engraving duty. Once I get settled I'm going to use her for teaching the more useless migrants how not to be clumsy simpletons, using a simple shield / leather armour uniform to allow Shield User and Armour User gains from sparring. And if my proper military all end up getting killed, I won't have to start from scratch. Marksdwarf is also a valid skill for demonstrations, but it's not particularly quick to be demonstrated. I don't know about Archer, since the dwarf who taught Marksdwarf skill immigrated without any Archer skill.

*Caverns are usually explored early on and then walled up and ignored. If there's something in there I want dead, I deconstruct a wall that can only be built from the fortress side and either station the military by the gap or send them in. If you want to keep them open then put a barracks by the entrance, but for safety's sake it's better to have a small enclosure. The only dwarves who'll go wandering around in the caverns will be weavers, and they'll wander all over the place and get mauled unless you have the map edges constantly covered. You could give some combat-trained dwarves a crossbow and tell them to do the web-collecting, but anything big enough to knock over a dwarf will remain a threat.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Nan on December 20, 2011, 09:38:00 pm
Quote from: AllThingsLive on December 20, 2011, 05:20:24 pm
Would it be detrimental to have, say, 2 spearmen, 3 hammermen, and 5 axemen in a squad, since they would train each other in skills that they aren't going to use?
They wont do that. I tested it, and they only attend demonstrations for equipment they actually have equipped. However beware of wafflers. If you set the weapon to "individual choice" in the uniform (and have multiple types of weapons available in the fort) then the recruits will waffle endlessly over what weapon to use and will never gain any real skill in any of them. Assign them a specific weapon or weapon type. This isn't so much a problem with dorfs who already have high proficiency in a weapon skill.

However it's always best to train in squads of two, because that maximizes sparring. A squad of 2 dwarves, will soon be more powerful than a squad of 10 dwarves, because 2 ultra-legendary dwarves beat 10 average joe dwarves. Give it a try by embarking with 2 profecient weapon users, and let them train with each other - and no-one else - for the whole game. They will become like gods.

Quote
What are the different perks of each weapon type?
Axes - Cutting off limbs and heads.
Spears - Stabbing organs, also good for stabbing heads (when an enemy passes out from pain, the spear dwarf will immediately put out their lights with a spear through the head), good armor-piercing ability.
Swords - A decent compromise. While some don't like then, I've been nothing but happy with my sword dwarfs.
Hammers - A good choice if you only have copper or silver.
Maces - Better described as a meat tenderizer than an actual weapon. I had a mace dwarf bashing an ogre or something in the head, shattering the skull on every hit, but not actually killing the poor thing. Just pages and pages of the beast having it's skull shattered. Don't use these for real combat.
Picks - Effective at removing limbs and punching through armor. However the pick-warrior will always be called a wrestler since picks use the mining skill. This doesn't effect their combat-effectiveness though.

Quote
What's a good way to crosstrain soldiers and how long does crosstraining take?
Don't, the sole exception being training miners to use as pick-wielders. Dwarves gain attributes MUCH quicker by sparring in small squads than they ever could be cross-training.

However there's nothing wrong with having full squads of marksdwarves, who are kept permanently inactive (and without a place to train at) and allowed to haul and perform other duties. When you need them, or want to train them by shooting at live targets (which is highly effective), just station them and they automatically activate. When you cancel the station command they return to their civilian lives. But the cross-training wont be worth much at all, so just let them haul or otherwise help out.


Quote
What's the best way to hold back the evils of the caverns below? Have a barracks between the entrance to the cavern and your stairway?
If you're not going to seal off the caverns, then a barracks in the cavern or on the stairway is a good choice. However forgotten beasts will rape your militia if you don't have a plan for safely disposing of them - killing them isn't the problem, the problem is the syndromes will kill your dwarfs afterwards. One solution is to force FB's to meet your militia in a checkerboard pattern arena. The diagonals don't allow gasses to pass through, but do allow dwarves to attack diagonally. This will reduce the militia-rape from vapors and such.

Quote
How can you employ magma and water as methods of defense for your fortress? Could someone explain to me and the other Dabbling Dwarf Fortressers[V. Rusty] the intricacies of the almighty pressure plate?
I don't recommend fully automated drowning traps. That's asking for trouble. You can have a drowning chamber which automatically seals, but activate the water/lava using a manual lever.

The most foolproof way to use pressure plates to automatically seal entrances is to use retracting bridges over ramps. So the entrance should be a ramp going down. A retracting bridge is built which seals the hole. That retracting bridge should then be linked up to a pressure plate which is set to be triggered by friendlies, and to minimum weight. Create a 1x1 pasture on that pressure plate and pasture a single animal to it - anything which isn't too small will work. The animal will hold down the pressure plate, which will hold the retracting bridge open. When invaders come, the animal will either get spooked and run, or it will charge. In either case the pressure plate is then released and the bridges return to their default state - sealing the entrance.
There's a few reason to prefer this configuration:
1) A retracting bridge over a ramp/empty space cannot be blocked from closing.
2) A retracting bridge cannot accidentely squash friendlies.
3) The pressure plate with an animal on top functions as a "dead man's switch", the default state is lock-down. Absolutely anything capable of killing the animal or making it move will trigger lock-down.

You can also easily install this system to seal corridors automatically.

++++>║<+++++
++++>║<+++++
Have a set of ramps which goes under or over a wall built across the corridor.
Build a retracting bridge over one of the set of ramps.
Construct the "dead man's switch" pressure plate setup on whichever side you find most useful.

Automatically sealing stairwells is even easier. A retracting bridge can be built over up/down stairs, and will prevent anything going downstairs while closed - but the upstairs will always work.

My preference is to use these dead-man switch setups to lock the enemy outside with my seasoned military - the barracks are *outside* the locked down areas. Although rookies may be allowed to train deep in the safety of the fortress.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: AllThingsLive on December 20, 2011, 10:42:17 pm
Quote from: Sutremaine on December 20, 2011, 08:58:55 pm
*The more efficient your setup, the higher you can set the minimum number of dwarves training. The less time your military spends walking around looking for a stockpile or a bed, the better. Waterskins remove two out of three trips to the drink stockpile and reduce drinking time to a single turn, which is a massive time-saver. I tend to stick with three dwarves and the default ten minimum, though for patrolling I set the minimum to 2 dwarves (and use more than one squad).
*Sparring happens more often as skill levels equalise and demonstrations become unecessary.
*Caverns are usually explored early on and then walled up and ignored.
I always thought that waterskins held water and that you need flasks for alcohol. Great bit of information!
Can sparring occur between dwarves of different skill levels? Or do they just have to be with in a skill level or 2?
By walled up, do you mean a section of it is blocked off for the explicit use dwarves, or do you mean that all the sides of the cavern are walled, so that nothing can *spawn*?
And thanks for that trap plan, Nan!
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Loud Whispers on December 20, 2011, 10:43:45 pm
All Dwarves can spar with each other, but if they're total fresh recruits with no skill whatsoever, they'll be terrible at it.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Sutremaine on December 20, 2011, 10:59:31 pm
Quote from: AllThingsLive on December 20, 2011, 10:42:17 pm
By walled up, do you mean a section of it is blocked off for the explicit use dwarves, or do you mean that all the sides of the cavern are walled, so that nothing can *spawn*?
I construct what I would have dug out had the space not been there, and send out soldiers to reveal the whole of the caverns and prevent surprises later. Then the last bit of wall is put in place and the caverns become inaccessible.

Spider webs can be farmed by digging out some space in the areas the game considers cavern biome, and trees and shrubs can be farmed by digging out some subterranean soil. I rarely end up in places without trees or soil or trade, so I don't usually need the cavern resources.

Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: cvar on December 21, 2011, 05:39:28 am
I've started embarking with a dwarf who is a novice axedwarf, novice shielddwarf, novice teacher, novice organizer.  I'll grab a likely dwarf from one of the first immigrant waves to join his squad.  They then spar nearly nonstop and very very quickly skill up.  Once they've got quite a good skill base going I split the squad and add a dwarf to each of the two new ones.  My current fortress is on it's 3rd or 4th year and I have three axelords and one axedwarf (almost there!).  I'm going to split the squads one more time for a total of 4 squads and add 1-3 dwarves to each one just as soon as I get my metal industry up and running so that I can outfit them.

I use axes because axes are dwarfy.  The other posters have covered the pros and cons of each and certainly know their way around them.  You don't need to crosstrain dwarves anymore unless you want legendary pick users.  Crossbows for me tend to generate most of the kills as the hallway the goblins run down turns into a hailstorm of bolts.  But for marksdwarves I go for the quantity approach and tend to have multiple 10 man squads.

When I breached the caverns I immediately sealed it off with a wall.  I have no idea how to deal with it, though I suppose having legendary axedwarves training near your stairwell is probably the best choice.  Try to make sure they're blocking the only path.

I keep my entryway twisty.  It's normally a 3 wide tunnel with ramps that go down into the earth.  A turn before the ramp leads to the upper layers of my fort that is blocked off with doors and guard dogs.  My barracks is also close by.  The ramp goes down until I hit stone where I build a nice looking room with a trade depot and a big finished goods stockpile behind some locked doors.  I then line up my central stairwell and build around that.  So my fort technically has two entrances, but the ramp requires bypassing the tasty dogs and hasn't yet happened.

I didn't have a mountain to dig into on my current fort so the entrance is a 3 wide ramp that hooks west one z level down and drops into the earth.  The fort itself is behind a set of double doors with dogs in the hallway to find thieves.  I set my pasture to be around the ramps up top to serve as early ambush detectors until I have time to create a controlled entryway there.  Currently working on sorting my stone, a pump stack for magma forges and paving over my cistern since I didn't expect to hit the caverns and now I have trees growing in the damn thing.  :-[
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Loud Whispers on December 21, 2011, 11:21:14 am
Bah, the caverns are a lot safer than the surface.

Unless you find crundles. Or early FB's. Or if you mod antmen to breed millions of babies.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: AllThingsLive on December 21, 2011, 12:35:34 pm
Alright, well my last fortress crumbled to an end. I got sort of bored of it after reading all these great tips so I lined up all my dwarves via burrow, and then had one remaining siege operator launch ballista arrows into the line. Once most were at least injured, I had a mass cremating! One of the dwarves got REALLY burnt.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm going to see how the squads of 2 works out for me on this run.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: AllThingsLive on December 23, 2011, 12:40:02 am
Praise Armok, I've done it! I defeated a siege with nothing but dwarves! No drawbridge smashing, no drowning traps, no cages, just dwarves! It's the 3rd year or so and I have 2 axe lords, 2 hammer lords, and 3 spear almostlords! That sparring tip is brilliant, squads of two are the way to go!
As far as wounds go, one of the hammer lords got a small cut to his forearm and an axe lord got a bruised leg.
Thanks again for all the tips guys, this is really incredible to me!
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: rephikul on December 23, 2011, 03:47:50 am
Assuming cost is not an issue:

Vanilla / FD:
5 miners, as many crossbowmen as you can get, as many war animals as you can get.

IM:
As many bowmen as you can get.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Loud Whispers on December 23, 2011, 08:39:30 am
Quote from: AllThingsLive on December 23, 2011, 12:40:02 am
Praise Armok, I've done it! I defeated a siege with nothing but dwarves! No drawbridge smashing, no drowning traps, no cages, just dwarves! It's the 3rd year or so and I have 2 axe lords, 2 hammer lords, and 3 spear almostlords! That sparring tip is brilliant, squads of two are the way to go!
As far as wounds go, one of the hammer lords got a small cut to his forearm and an axe lord got a bruised leg.
Thanks again for all the tips guys, this is really incredible to me!

Congratz on your goblin smashing endeavours :D
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: AllThingsLive on December 28, 2011, 12:20:05 am
Well this seems to has brought up a new issue. My fortress has suddenly become very boring. My military takes on whole sieges without a single injury and demolishes forgotten beasts. So now what? Without any real threat besides the demons (which I really don't ever even encounter) playing Dwarf Fortress has become real boring real fast.
So, how can I spice things up a little, besides releasing demons?
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Nan on December 28, 2011, 01:47:37 am
Fortress Defense mod is a good choice if you're bored with gobbos and elves, and don't want to change other aspects of the game. It gives you more enemies to fight, earlier ones, and tougher ones, and that's about all it does.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: maksymka on December 28, 2011, 07:25:36 am
Dig for candies! Unleash the Clowns!
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Wannazzaki on December 28, 2011, 07:38:20 am
Quote from: maksymka on December 28, 2011, 07:25:36 am
Dig for candies! Unleash the Clowns!

And have the military carry back one nervous system rotting syndrome which makes misma belch from the vegitative dorfs orifices!

Gods i hate clowns
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: Loud Whispers on December 28, 2011, 11:53:58 am
But why? I love having an instant ragnarok button.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: AllThingsLive on December 28, 2011, 12:46:16 pm
Quote from: Nan on December 28, 2011, 01:47:37 am
Fortress Defense mod is a good choice if you're bored with gobbos and elves, and don't want to change other aspects of the game. It gives you more enemies to fight, earlier ones, and tougher ones, and that's about all it does.
Ooh that sounds like what I need. Does it increase the difficulty of all hostile creatures (like elephants, crundles, trolls, etc) or does it just introduce tougher enemies?
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: C27 on December 28, 2011, 05:34:28 pm
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is using picks as your primary weapon - since they use Mining to attack, it's pretty trivial to get very high skill, and they also seem to deal pretty decent damage. Plus, your military becomes very useful when not training/fighting.
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: knutor on December 28, 2011, 08:50:11 pm
I never squad up miners, hunters, or woodchoppers.  They are too busy, doing what they do.

A squad is setup to weave and another to gatherer wood.  To prevent a soft civilian dwarf from bumping into a nasty critter while outside the fort.  I give these guys layered leather, and all that bone/shell crap to wear.  No metal, cept for cap and bp.

I've found it better to NOT use barracks as a sleeping quarters; I don't even know why its up in there.  My troops are always armored.  I never make marksdwarfs, the AI is stupid.  Or I just haven't figured out the finer details of getting them plush up against the fortifications.. They always appear to shoot from a pisspoor angle.  So no ranged for ol'Knutor.

I prefer obsidian swords.  For their flexibility, while I'm dressing the troops up.  Or silver maces.  Maces hit slightly harder than hammers.  I see many FBs die to a Macelord.  Well indirectly, I wish there was a death msg in alert scroll, stinks having to bring up the dead unit list to find out if a fight is finished.

My danger room has just one spear in ea of its many traps, and I like to have it deep down in there, so I can mass pit into it.  I try to keep water only, for drinking and a well near danger room.  I also like to set some bars up, to prevent flying things from getting out of my pit.

I never go on the offensive, until I have a full squad in full armor.  Hope that helps you.

Sincerely,
Knutor
Title: Re: Best Military Setup?
Post by: krenshala on December 28, 2011, 10:35:11 pm
I also leave off the sleeping option for my barracks.  However, in line with what others posted about keeping non-training time at a minimum, I always put individual rooms for my militia right next to the barracks they are assigned to (usually with a meeting/dinning hall as the next thing in on the safer side of the hallway.