Bay 12 Games Forum

So, whenever I pick this game up again, it's always the same thing ending the fun.

It's the fact that dwarven military is largely not funtional and you have to rely on traps/walling in to defend against sieges.

Things that are particularly irritating:

 - Archers of any kind not picking up ammunition before going to battle, despite abundance
 - Archers never reloading once they run out of ammunition - instead charging the enemy
 - Dwarves leaving their stations and charging recklessly as soon as they have line of sight - makes the "Station" and "Defend Burrow" command rather pointless
 - Dwarves stationing several tiles away from where they should be stationed, often on different Z-levels, and therefore different floors with no line of sight
 - Dwarves leaving their station using ridiculous path finding, including climbing past your set up defenses - had a squad of archers climb down an impenetrable fortress to charge the invaders
 -Dwarves sparring rather than fighting the enemy that's standing 2 tiles next to them

Add to all that the amount of time and effort it takes to set up a military under the current system, it's just not worth it - and without it the game is pretty dull.

I feel like this should be a priority for development, since it's what makes the game either agonizing or incredibly boring after a certain point.
ALl the new features are nice and all, but if the game becomes unplayable after year 2, what's the point of it?

I have some serious problem with my Marksdwarves - they just refuse to equip ammo.

- They do have quivers equipped
- There are plenty of unused bolts of all sorts
- I tried ammo stockpiles with/without bins
- Hunters currently have zero arrows assigned, but I tried all kinds of different numbers before
- All my marksdwarves have the 'Ranger' job assignment, being hunters when off duty
- They do pickup bolts when they are off duty, even shooting at enemies.
- They do not train during their training duty, although they have archery targets/barracks assigned.
- I tried stationing, guarding burrows and patrol routes, nothing works.

I'm playing v34.05 currently.

I'd be really thankful for some kind of solution or even workaround

Edit: Another really weird thing, perhaps unrelated - whenever I order my dwarves to move to a certain position and then send them back to civilian duty, they will sometimes come back to that position and hang around there for a while. They never carry any ammo when I positio them, but when they come back they sometimes carry some and just tur enemies into pincushions.