Bay 12 Games Forum

I know I've seen a 3-way sparing match at least once with my dwarves, so that info may be outdated.

Given that all animals give 1 skin when butchered, it mostly comes down to which domestic animal matures to the point of producing a skin fastest. If this was the only consideration, cats would be the obvious choice, but they like to adopt dwarves and make themselves unslaughterable, so they're out. After that, dogs mature at about the same rate, and give birth at a similar rate.

I think the deal behind the "Dwarves using combat-enabled bolts for training" bug is that they'll carry any bolts that are assigned for either task, and they'll train with whatever ammo they have on them, which includes the combat ones.

Next time you set up a new fortress, check out the right side of the item selection menu when you're preparing, you can select animals to bring along with you that way. A fairly simple thief-detection system involves brining 2 dogs and 2 ropes along. You build the ropes into restraints that the dogs are tied to, the dogs acting as a watch for thieves (diagram copied from another thread on this topic)


# = wall
+ = floor
$ = restraint

+++++++
##+++##
##+++##
##+++##
##++++$
##+++++
##++++$
#######

3-wide hallway allows wagons in (though that's not relevant in this version of the game), dogs positioned where those restraints are are nearly guaranteed to spot any stealthed units. In the case of thieves, they should turn tail and run. In the case of and ambush, well...it buys time for your military to get there.

Quote from: G-Flex on December 23, 2010, 09:39:44 am

Quote from: Untelligent on December 23, 2010, 02:28:42 am

Great for making bins and barrels if you're low on wood.

I disagree. Gold is the heaviest material you're likely to find by far (except platinum), so why build things out of it whose purpose is to be lugged around? It'll just slow down your haulers.

There are practical applications for this. I've intentionally used gold bins to store lightweight items to prevent them from scattering when the fort is abandoned, so that I can come in with an adventurer and find things easily.

Lead is better to use for that purpose though.

Quote from: Thatdude on August 29, 2010, 04:07:12 pm

UristmcClothier cancels construct pigtail bag: Needs 1000 cloth items

I'm no clothes maker, but even I think that's a bit excessive (glitch much?)

yeah, was gonna post that, i have another funny one.
Oh well, screen shot for proof.


... Damn Dwarf world record attempt breakers...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This isn't really a glitch. The game keeps track of materials in units larger than we use to refer to them, when you forge an iron bar for example, the game treats it as 50 units of iron bar. thread and silk are 1000 to one unit we see. This doesn't apply much yet except that the hospital is able to use individual units of thread.

To the original question, keep in mind that thieves and ambushers cannot fly (to my knowledge). As such, a perimeter wall around a good chunk of land surrounding your fortress can help control their appearance. Wall off a large enough area for gathering wood and plants, with a drawbridge entrance that's closed most of the year, opening for migrants and caravans. Behind that, you have various guard animals, so when the bridge is down, and that's the only way for thieves to path in, they're sure to be spotted.