Bay 12 Games Forum

And i'm back after the third shortest fort i've ever started failed.

Decided to embark into a "Haunted" area.

Started out with a few buzzards, was fine, they killed a dog and ran.

Then three harpies popped up and killed a guy, i organized the miners into a pretend military and they tore them up.

Then 12 beak dogs spawned and steamrolled me.

Not going to a haunted place again :/

Trying an embark i found right next to(but not sharing a square with) a goblin encampment/fort/whatever they are.

Another fort with absolutely nothing attacking outside a few thieves here and there. Apparently i don't even rate master thieves, just regular ones.

I'm gonna go make a fort in an absolutely terrible spot just to see if something will attack me there.

So, i'm finding more often than not, I either hit an embark where i never see anything or i get obliterated so fast i barely had a chance to defend.

Lately, i had come up with something i could throw together pretty quick, however it got kind of boring because it seemed kind of invincible and it make everything kind of boring.

Sooo, i was wondering what some of you guys were throwing together at first to defend until you can get a military organized and geared/trained. would prefer something that doesn't just throw out a ton of cage traps, but i'm mostly just curious in general.

Well, I show up, do the usual dig 10 levels deep, hit cavern at 7. Otherwise everything is going fine. I thought i walled it all off, but apparently there was an open spot left in one area, so all my dwarves are up on the surface and on z -1 moving food in and a GCS bursts in and rips a guy to shreds.

I get the miners together and they tear it apart surprisingly fast, but the damage is already done. Everyone goes from "meh" to "oh god this sucks", someone goes berserk and kills someone else before getting killed, so on and so forth, i gave up when i had two severly wounded guys taking turns tantruming and destroying stuff.

I just had one get to 135 dwarves and >5M created wealth before it saw its first ambushers, one group of 5. :/ That was it, i gave up after that and abandoned.(that and it was running 6 fps >.<)

Hit R and go down the list looking for noble's names, they should all be in red.

Being new to DF myself coming into .31.12, i have to say the military is easily the most frustrating part.


I probably spent a week of on again off again attempts with it, having 10 man squads of dwarves getting maimed and killed by single ambushes of 4-6 because all their skills were dabbling because they won't train, or would wear 5 weapons and 3 shields and wrestle with everything, or even when they do train the skill gain is so minimal that it'd likely take 50 in game years for a dwarf to hit legendary with a combat skill.

After totally giving up on the military and just refusing to even touch it, i eventually managed to put together some strategies that would properly defend, at least against early sieges.

It was probably a month later i happened to come over to this forum to answer some question that i couldn't figure out with the wiki, and i happened to see the two methods more experienced people were using to train a military. Was only after that that it was even functional.

Even still, they're constantly equipping other people's stuff, equipping several weapons in the same hand(but using none of them), ignoring massive quality upgrades sometimes and other times running like a bat out of hell to go grab something that increases the quality by maybe 1 tops, only equipping one gauntlet or boot while leaving a bare or just clothed hand/foot. All of these problems *could* be solved by equipping specific gear on each individual dwarf, however there is no indication(and as far as i know, no way to indicate) as to what gear has already been equipped, and the list of gear seems to shuffle within it's quality in relation to...something...the dwarf's position, or what is/isn't equipped, or something? I don't know, but if you have, say...5 masterwork Battle axes, and 5 dwarves to equip them on, only two or three will actually end up with them, the others will have had theirs taken away and will have to pick from the 5 again with no indication which is which, and the list constantly shifts.

Soooo, long story short, either the miltary needs huge fixes, or at the very least minor fixes and a big flashing !!warning!! that it is for advanced players only.

Awesome.

Now, not only can you kill your nobles, but you can also kill theirs.