Bay 12 Games Forum

Siege Operators are officially civilians, so nervous wounds won't stop them firing. Letting the goblins get too close to them will, that's the downside of siege weapons.

I'd just get some cats, personally. You're denying your dwarves one of the four basic food groups - cat biscuits.

Yea, dwarf military AI is buggy at best. Dwarves will listen to to their commander if they don't already have an order from another commander given prior to being reassigned to the new unit. Otherwise, you have to remove the previous order or they'll be total assholes and won't follow the new ones.

Someone should probably cross-post this in the bug reports forum, if it isn't already there (which chances are it is).

If I could make a few suggestions then.

First, getting farming started is very fast, unless they attacked you the first season. I usually get them by the fourth season, enough time to build a wall (if it's not, I magic them away with DwarfCompanion), dig some channels, or build a small military. Embark with some leather, designate a hunter, or bring a breeding pair of animals, leather armor is incredibly easy to make. If you really can't be bothered to deal with it, bring along the armor premade. It's much more expensive, but takes some of the hassle out of it.

Second, it sounds like you embarked with untrained miners. That's the only reason I can think of for it taking you so long to get your farming and housing going. Farms should go up within the first season, worst case second if you have to muddy stone. Housing can go up before or after, but usually I have beds made while the rest of the fortress is being mined out. Don't worry so much about your dwarves tantruming, many fortresses only have designated sleeping quarters for nobles and have all the commoners sleep in a giant barracks, and their dwarves are perfectly fine. Hell, my dwarves usually sleep in the dirt for two or three seasons, and they're fine.

Third, if you're not going to use walls, pits, or traps (orcs are [trAPIMMUNE] but not immune to things like atom smashers or spikes) you will definitely need a trained military. Orcs are not for the faint of heart, they're pretty brutal enemies, a truly dwarvish challenge. Unskilled marksdwarves are only useful for taking sucker-shots at melee enemies from behind walls. As for your ammo question, I believe dwarves will default to the highest grade of ammo when put on active duty, meaning steel over iron over bronze/bismuth bronze over copper over wood/bone. They refuse to train with metal bolts, so only the cheap ammo will be used.

Sounds like you just had a small number of mistakes adding up. Losing is fun though, no better way to learn.

I've noticed that hauling food is a frustratingly low priority task. Getting dwarves to haul prepared meals away from a kitchen is like pulling teeth, and even with dedicated refuse haulers indoor butcher's shops usually produce miasma until the chunks rot away. Always butcher outside, dwarves, for some reason, hate cleaning up.

Channel a mote around it. That should be nice and quick.

I've done that before and still had the imps light the world on fire. Exposed magma pipes suck.

A rope reed thong, with an image sewn into it with... wait for it... pig tail cloth. Two pieces of undyed cloth in an artifact, yea, the value sucked. On the bright side, it was a fey mood, so now my legendary clothier likes to sew images of his rope reed thong into everything (he sewed an image of the thong into the thong, that's how obsessed he is with it).

Later I got two floodgates, both from posessions. They're both fairly valuable though, so I set them in my dining hall. Kinda out of place, but it almost doubled the rooms value - a fair task considering my legendary mason (trained, not mooded) filled the room with masterwork furniture.