Bay 12 Games Forum

Not a cat, but a piglet. Last siege I had, a team of about fifteen crossbow goblins (including one Elite) spawned up right near my main entrance and proceeded to shoot the crap out of a stray piglet wandering around out there - giving me ample time to deploy my horrifyingly vicious military. However, once the bloodshed had ended I decided to check on the piglet and discovered that not only had he survived about twenty-five bolts to various parts of his body, he had passed out on one of my cage traps - thereby triggering it and saving himself from dying of blood loss etc.

So, yeah, a sixty goblin siege with a total casualty count of one wounded piglet. I'm starting to think that WALL OF KITTEN is the ultimate defence.

I have a site currently with tetrahedrite and bit. coal, throughout a layer of dolomite. Foothill of a mountain, shallow metals + flux on site finder. My last site had no fuel, no metal and barely any gems, though - it's definitely all scarce.

Forbid all soap not in the hospital, if you haven't already. For some reason soap bugs out when dorfs try to clean themselves with it in the day-to-day.

Is there some factor that might stop goblins from besieging me? In years 3, 4 and 5 I had a siege each year - but all I've had since then is one lousy ambush, in spite of my created wealth spiking from 2.2 to 8 million (blue magic). Could it be because the goblin war leader was killed in the last siege? Or because my exported wealth remains laughably low?

I've been experimenting heavily with 'organically' training my military, as I consider danger rooms to be cheese-tastic. After a (very) bumpy start, I have a 6 year old fortress with a 14-man military, of whom 10 are now legendary in their chosen weapons. The best advice I can give is not to try training people from zero skill, and also to avoid - wherever possible - having people with high teaching skills and/or leader-oriented personalities. Though it seems counterintuitive, once recruits have surpassed a basic skill threshold of around 3/3/3/3 (weapon, dodge, armor, shield) it's far more likely that they'll engage in sparring, and far more productive for them to do so. Pairing them with higher-skilled dwarves with little inclination towards teaching encourages more of this sparring, meaning that they'll progress - and thereby gain more skill during said sparring - more rapidly.

As an in-field example, I took a migrant with zero skill in Hammerdwarf but 'proficient' in the three others I just mentioned, and paired him with my Legendary +5 Macedwarf, who is only a novice teacher and has no personality traits conducive to teaching. In less than a year, my rookie has attained 9/6/6/7 (hammer, dodge, armor, shield). It's worth noting that my military is broken into 2-man squads, all set to train year-round. Having people off-duty for any period is wasteful and often interrupts training sessions partway through, and having more than two squad members active at a time seems to mean considerably less sparring occurs.

Finally, avoid pairing people with low but similar skill levels. Rather than, as I had anticipated, defaulting to sparring, they instead attempt to teach each other in negligible increments - frequently in completely worthless skills. A two-man squad, both 6/3/4/4 skill-wise, made zero level progeression in their combat skills over a year-long period. When I split them, pairing one with a Swordmaster and one with a Novice, both had marked increases in their gain rates (though, of course, the former fared better).

EDIT: A quick update, about two more months have passed and the newbie Hammerdwarf is now a Hammer Lord, 11/6/6/8

I was going to mod them to be usable, it's just I don't know what the values all mean to figure out if they're good or not.

I'm afraid I don't know much about modding, but I suspect that - if the properties follow with real-world counterparts - that traditional materials would be the best suited for armour, while for bludgeoning weapons either platinum, gold or lead would perform better than silver, owing to a higher density. For chopping and blocking, though, it's still steel/magic blue stuff all the way.

Shh, I'm playing a different game and you're making me want to play DF.

How long did it take for them to reach legendary? The longest I've managed training is 3 years with one of them having competent in armour/dodging/axedwarf/shield and the rest being downright noobs. After the three years the noobs were adequate in all those and fighting and the teacher was adequate in fighting and lvl 8 in the others (I think). After that half of them died and I lost track.

I'm thinking training the fighting is what took up the majority of time since they were all noobs. It may have also been wrestling.

I'm going to go set up my barracks now and pay unhealthy attention to it.

It took a little over four years for my first legendary, though he was a second year immigrant. It's worth mentioning, though, that he arrived with 'proficient' rank in Mace/Armor/Fighter/Shield/Dodger - but absolutely no skill as a teacher or student. Consequently, he pretty much went straight for sparring with my more experienced dwarves, who - having trained from zero in most of those - lacked the ability to teach him much of anything. Partly migrant luck; my highest embark dwarf is currently 11/4/12/4/6 in the aforementioned skills. I should mention that I'm population capped at 100, so no chance of any more hi-skill freebies.