Bay 12 Games Forum

I think other types of badgers steer clear of honey badgers due to the danger involved in associating with them ...

Its not me, but I suppose its possible it could be one of the newer versions of AmigaOS.

I second the vote for Varied.  Its a subtle difference, but I think it looks better.

How will this change affect punctuation in text?

Hi there,

I've been playing dwarf fortress for some time now without any problems (ok, lots of problems, but nothing the wiki and copious amounts of fun couldn't fix) But now I'm kinda stuck.

My Military consist of a full 10 dwarf squad, thats set to train all year long. They don't have any actual combat skills, but instead of sparring and getting any actual experience, they just sit on their asses all day and try to teach each other their dabbling fighting skills. I have used dwarf therapist to look at the xp levels, and after one year, there has maybe been a 10xp increase in dodging, despite them doing dodging and combat training all the time. Presumably because their teacher doesn't know **** about dodging either and just falls on his face alot. All their weapon skill remain at "dabbling", no matter what weapon I give them.

How do I transform my military from a bunch of loudmouths with no skills into the fighting machines that they (being dwarves) should be?

I haven't used a danger room yet, but still get decently trained troops in under a year.  It definitely sounds like you are running into the "we don't have everyone here to train" issue.  As other said, reduce the training number to fix that.

My recommendation is to make two squads of 5, set them to train with 5 members required, and provide them with at least a training weapon (if you don't have their "real" weapons ready) and wooden (or better) shield.  Do not wait until you have all the weapons/shields ready to start the squad training.  Sparring without a weapon will still give them useful skills, not to mention the fact that at the lowest skill levels they tend to do more demonstrations than sparring, while sparring tends to become more common once the weapon skill reaches 3 or more.

Within a season of steady training your military dwarves should go from zeros to at least 1 or 2 in weapon, shield, dodge, and possibly others.  If any of your dwarves have military skills (assuming you are drafting migrants for this) then the speed at which the group improves will increase.

The best results I've had were drafting eight the autumn migrants, and when the elven ambush arrived in mid-spring those eight ranged in weapon skill from 1 to 5, with 3 to 5 for armor and shield use.  Those eight killed 15 of the 16 elves with only bruises to show for it while armed with iron spears and shields, and whatever clothing they had arrived at the fortress in.  My results aren't normally that good (I start a lot of forts  ) but if the group is sparring at least through the winter, and have actual weapons when the fight starts, they are more than ready for thieves or elven ambushes when they first arrive.  Additional training just improves things and, as Girlinhat mentioned, once they hit about level 5 then actual live combat is the only effective way to level them further (without using a Danger Room, at least).

Badgers aren't a problem, since pigtail fiber cloth is (normally) enough to keep injuries down to bruises and a bit of dwarven paranoia.

The problem is when the Giant Badgers show up, and turn skilled axe dwarves into material for a squad of marksdwarves worth of ammunition.  My particular incident: Urist McWoodcutter is attacked, and her left lung is bruised, a major artery is severed, some nerves are severed ... Urist McWoodcutter has bleed to death.  Oh, and the Giant Badger now has a name, and proceeds to wander off the map.

In the older builds of Dwarf Fortress (before the 2010 release), I was doing this project to flatten out a glacial volcano. I did this by cutting through a mountain, then collapsing the layer by turning off the support holding it up (think that episode in Spongebob when Doodlebob erases one Z-layer of Spongebob's house). It worked until it crashed the program on the 6th attempt. I like how channeling works in the new build. It makes leveling terrain much more convenient.

I use upward ramps instead of channeling.  The idiot miners don't channel themselves into a cave-in that way (though they do occasionally cause others to "job canceled: cannot path to site" if the floor gets dug out from under them ).

To: The local humans,

Who's bright idea was it to have your law-giver show up, unescorted as a diplomat in the middle of a goblin attack?  There's like 30 goblins between my army and your law giver.  I'm afraid he's SOL.

P.S. If you decide to attack me for this, you soft-skins won't have any better luck than the greenskins and pointy ears.  Just a heads up.

The Administration (of Tallfires)

I'm guessing the humans didn't like Tallfires or their Law-Giver, and decided to try and solve both problems at once.

I think the biggest issue with maces vs. hammers is that maces aren't made for killing unless you're bashing people in the head; they're made for breaking bones. This helps incapacitating enemies, but unless it's specifically aiming for the head, it won't help much in killing them. Since there is no taking prisoners of war in DF (if your military engages, they will fight to death one way or the other), breaking your foe's kneecaps won't speed that process, and since dwarves focus on an enemy until it's dead or something else attacks, a quick death is preferable to a quick incapacitation.

If there was an option to let dwarves favor conscious enemies to unconscious ones, I believe maces would see more use.

With the newer versions (.20 or .22 and higher, iirc) the victor is more likely to go for a head shot if his opponent is down/unconscious (or if the attack comes up from behind an unsuspecting victim, as my militia commander did with her spear once -- stabs the elf in the head from behind, shattering the skull, jamming the skull through the brain, severing an artery, many nerves severed, etc etc).  This means a hammer or mace dwarf will tenderize pound on his victim, then go for the head once the target falls to the ground after succumbing to the pain.  The problem, still, is the 10 to 100 hits required to take the target down ...