Bay 12 Games Forum

Could it perhaps be so that the water is pouring out of the map somewhere, but no new water is being added?

Also make sure you've set them to the "Active/Training" in the "alerts" menu in the "military" menu.

I'm also having trouble with the military. Generally i get the feeling they are training very slow no matter how many/few dwarves i have in one squad. Some of them also keep dropping and re-equipping their gear all the time instead of training, even though they are scheduled to train the whole year.

I also realized that each archery target needs its own room designated to it to be used, or my dwarves would just go to the room one at a time and only use one of the targets.

Oh cool they get nicknames for kills?
does it replace their first name? is the new name just randomized or does it relate to the actual kills?

Also, don't store the bolts in bins.
I think they leave the last stack of bolts in the bin, because i had three bins with one stack of 25 bolts in each. I even tried dumping the bolts and then forbidding them while being hauled away so that they were dropped. Then i made an ammo stockpile for only bolts with NO BINS ALLOWED and also produced alot more new bolts.
It seemed to work because the stockpile was half filled and after a while there were only three stacks left... guess which three stacks =/
seems i have to melt them and forge them again or something lol..

Quote from: Dahenk on August 09, 2010, 05:08:17 pm

I think the dwarves can only pick up ammo when it's not in a stockpile (a bug ofc), but they still don't seem to do it 100% of the time. I'm now trying to train them at my goblin death-pit (cage traps ftw ) cause i belive they get more xp from moving targets =)

I think if the ammo is in a bin, then the dwarves wont pick it up.  I just lay a huge ammo stockpile and set the available bins to zero.  ...

Hm ok I'll try that...

Warning: Long boring rant ahead

This turned out to be a huge rant instead of a 'simple preventable mistake'.
I guess i just wanted to share the story of my fortress somewhere but i think it ended up a rather boring read =/

My first fort after the major patch in april was in the .12 version (last week). I always tend to want my starting areas to have extremly high cliffs + mountains on one side, and a big flat grass/wood area on the other side. Found a perfect place! It even had a smaller mountain right infront of the cliffs of the big mountain and i realized i wanted my entrance inside that mountain with stairs up about 10 levels and then a bridge into the main mountain.

PICTURE:

But I knew it would take too much time to dig all of this out before i could start my food production etc. and I should probably do a 'workers hall' where my dwarves can live while i dig out the main fortress.
This turned out to take alot of time aswell and suddenly i had 25 new immigrants to take care of in a small mini-fortress designed for less than 10 dwarves. I always panic when i get 25 new dwarves and i tried getting an army going and all of this took my focus away from the soon to be epic main fortress.
I finally started digging out the entrance but the design ended up rather bad imo beacuse i was stressed a little and wanted the main fortress up and running so i could start exploring the new features of the patch.

Then BAM. 20+ more immigrants.. holy hell what do they all come from? and why are they even coming here?
Anyway I had gotten some parts of the main fortress up and running and the bridge between the mountain was built so the dwarves were running between the worker's area and the main fort all the time right out in the open.
This is when the first goblin ambush appears... DAMNIT IM SCREWED. I had like 4 dwarves with training weapons.
Being new to the military system and having only 2 cage traps i sent my tiny squad straight into battle. They decided to do the "one-at-a-time" strategy where three of them wait in the fortress while the first run to take on the assault alone. "They'll never expect that!"
He actually got legendary fighter.. seconds before dying..

Managed to fend of the ambush with the usual emergency-tactic.. swarming them with the whole fortress... (I've killed dragons with it =P. which is a rather cool story itself)
about 10 dwarves died, aparently good friends to some people, who thought that clearly the only way to deal with the situation was to go insane, destroy the chairs and tables in my dining room and beating other dwarves to death before getting killed themselves, leaving their children depressed, who then dies of thirst...
You know... the classic Tantrum Spiral™ has begun.
After some time i had only the last migration wave was alive, with a few of the old dwarves unconcious in the hospital beds.
Aparently the newest dwarves didn't care about the rest of the fortress dwarves since they were just 'content' with the whole thing. I guess they hadn't made any real friends yet.

Now i thought i really had to move in to the main fortress and get some defenses up before...... another ambush occurs. GOT DAMNIT!
no military, no cage traps... screw it I'll swarm them right of the bat. I guess the 7-ish goblins really didn't see it coming when about 20 civilian dwarves ran out from the cave launching fearlessly at the ambush because NONE of my dwarves died and all except one goblin was slaughtered. The swarming tactic worked better than i expected.
Ok now it's REALLY time to move in to the main-fortress. destroyed all buildings and stockpiles in the old fortress and moved in everything, got about 7 military dwarves and some new cage traps in the new entrance...

Another immigration wave with 23 dwarves arrive and shortly after a new ambush. This time i thought i had enough military. Sent them all out and watched them get butchered and not killing any goblin... WTF?? ok so now there's only about 40 dwarves left in the fortress.. SWARM!! ... ..  BLOODBATH... i guess they learned my tactic. There was now about 60 dwarven corpses outside my entrance..
The goblins then gleefully entered the hospital in the old fortress and butchered the unconcious dwarves that barely survived the earlier attacks..
All i had left was 2 children and 102348 animals crowded into one single dining hall, waiting for a report from the surface.

Abandoned fortress when the whole goblin squad except 2 were caught in cage traps (i guess the leader got caught cause the other 2 just stood there, killing kittens who dared entered the fortress)


Sooooooo my mistake could have been prevented by alot of things:
-Alot more cage traps in the worker fortress entrance.
-Alot more anything in the worker fortress entrance
-Skipping the whole worker fortress all in all and just dig the main fortress right of the bat, ignoring the entrance-mountain (there were ramps everywhere so nothing stopped them from climbing the cliffside)
-Waiting for the goblins to get caught in cage traps instead of sending the whole fortress out to fight them...

It hurt to abandon the fortress cause i knew it would be so hard to find a similar area again.

I am trying my best to get the military working in this fort but its a bitch. I can find like 4 different places where i can tell my dwarves to train, but which one actually makes them do it? My main defense is masses of cage traps in the entrance but they work very well. Got about 15 goblins waiting to be dropped into my new marksdwarf-trainer-pit =D
Speaking of marksdwarves that's a whole chapter in itself. Getting them to pick up bolts instead of furiously bashing eachother with the crossbows and hanging around refusing orders seems very hard.

For my first time ever in DF i struck adamantium!! (probably because of the new patch =P) using my best armorsmiths/weaponsmiths to forge some of it.
So i finally get a full set of adamantium armor and a battle axe and i tell one of my dwarves specifically to use this and that weapon/armor item. What happens is he keeps running between the armor/weapon stockpile and the waterskin stockpile dumping all his items, then picking them up, then dumping them again etc. How the hell am i supposed to get a decent military force up and running when they just run back and forth with all their gear instead of training?!? Frustrating to say the least.

I am also just about to tap in to the world of burrows to see how that works. I think a good idea for your "Battle-burrow" is to make sure there are food and drinks avalible inside the burrow area, or they'll die of thirst/hunger if the burrow is activated for too long. Maybe I'll build a panic-room area that can be blocked off from the rest of the fortress in case things go bad.

BTW it seems FB's can't be cage trapped? I'm rather sure that the one I tried to capture couldn't fly but he skipped past 5 cage traps anyway.
Well i guess...

...o crap a goblin siege... I guess they somehow heard about the stories of the dreaded goblin pit where bolts are lodged deep in goblin eyes (i was so tempted to send in a melee dwarf into the pit when it happened just to have him twist it around in the wound, but I couldn't be arsed at the time )

might report back later o_O