Bay 12 Games Forum

Listen to the people who tell you to use traps. Until you completely understand how the military works (took me 3 fortresses to understand what i do, which isnt nearly everything) traps are your best friend and usually more effective than your military can possibly be.

I read the stories about Boatmurdered, Headshoots and Syrupleaf (i think that was the last one) and i REALLY wanted to have a super military capable of knocking things 40 tiles and completely destroying in 10-1 battles. Unfortunately that wont happen very often in these versions, though they can be pretty damn good.

It looks like his hand was beat up by a wooden spike. Put on some gauntlets and a mail shirt. I think that covers your arms entirely.

Also, making shields out of adamantine isnt necessary. They can not be pierced (i think), so stick to masterwork bronze for the best shield defense to weight ratio... I think.

Recently got ambushed by 5 goblin marksmen and an axeman. Lost a legendary glassmaker/hunter, my main engineer and another hunter. My militia commander dodged into the river and drowned.

I wanted to see if i could minimize losses so i shut down DF and got ready. This time it was a siege of goblin axemen. About 20 of them swarmed down the hill and ran right for my pit trap. I raised the bridge and waited, only to have them turn around. I had forgotten about the path into the caverns i dug, but they had no trouble finding it. The military decided they were hungry at this point and most of them ran into my kitchen, leaving the recruits to get massacred. Restart.

Ambush by goblin swordsmen. ONE OF THEM killed and maimed my entire squad, leaving the rest of the fort to fend for themselves. Miners are pretty good warriors by the way. Oh well, restart.

Ambush again, but instead of the axeman its a maceman. Glassmaker dies in the exact same spot as the first time. Hunter dies in the exact same spot as the first time. I lose a planter this time instead of the engineer, but he dies in pretty much the same spot. My commander dodged into the river and drowned... again.


Through all this testing i discovered that my swordsdwarf (one of my initial 7) is a master of murder. She kills more goblins alone than everyone else combined. And she dismembers them almost completely too.

Lost my expedition leader to infection after a 2 z level fall caused him to break most of his bones. Well there goes my main miner.

Whips act like super hammers.

Topic title says it all. They are trying to get down into my pit so they can get to the cavern, but for some reason they cant path there. Any way to fix this? Maybe dig straight down into the cavern?

Your best bet for keeping an animal alive depends on the animal. There are size and eating reasons for some situations just plain being bad. Designating a massive pasture, which would resolve any food problems, leads to issues when you start throwing a ton of animals in there to eat that massive allotment of grass. However, designating individual pastures designed to only be big enough for one animal to survive on the grass, and at least one tile from any other pasture, ensures no conflict will occur.

You don't even need a chain, which is actually less efficient than designating small pastures, because pastured animals never leave the zone anyway (at least in my experience, I've yet to have a pastured animal be attacked to see whether or not it runs out) and zones require no materials.

They do. They will flood into your fort when attacked. Mine ran to my dining room, which was the only area i had set up as a meeting hall at the time.