Bay 12 Games Forum

Building destroyers cannot attack "up". Making the enemies have to path upwards through a floor hatch to get in effectively stops  anything. Just lock the hatch like a door to stop your own guys using it during a siege.

I just had a bunch of trolls, who destroyed a floor hatch from below (it was on top of my execution tower, and they were standing right under it, on stairs), so the above statement is not true. Maybe they wouldn't be able to destroy it if there were no stairs, but then the floor hatch wouldn't be very useful for my guys too.

And what about supports? Trolls who attack me don't target supports, which forced me to devise different baiting traps.

Stormfeather gave u the basics on the stockpiles. "Stone" (subset "metal") is the input for smelting and "Bar"s are the output. I think the best advice is to try and use a specific forge for a specific metal, whenever practical, and have a very small stockpile for the input (i like 2x3), restricted to ONLY that type of ore. I have a bigger Bars stockpile set to take only metal bars (plus coke and charcoal bars). If you don't restrict the bars stockpile near the forges, haulers waste time and space filling it with all sorts of things like stone blocks and bars of soap.

Did you 'b'uild the cages to get them there. If so, use 'q' on them, then 'x' to remove. They'll be moved to an animal stockpile which has 'empty cages' allowed. I make a stockpile JUST for empty cages, near the trap area, and disallow empties on every other animal pile.

My favourite method for dealing with caged Goblins is pretty standard, you know most of this already I think but i'll lay it out anyway.

I have a Goblin-only Animal stockpile, with hatches over a pit, basically as shown below, but bigger, the idea is that each goblin cage is next to a hatch, and this way they're dragged straight from the cage trap to the pitting area with no building or levers required. Channel the holes first, before creating the stockpile, then define the pit to cover at least all the holes, and add hatches to the holes. Important : ensure this is the only stockpile which accepts Goblins. If you hit page-up about 5 times in the list of possible caged animals, you find the Goblins entry, btw.

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GGGGGG G=goblin cage stockpile square
GHGGHG H=basic hatch
GGGGGG
GGGGGG
GHGGHG
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BTW, NEVER skimp on the pit hatches, I did and regretted it, as half my dorfs got scared and trapped themselves on the pitting level, while I waited in vain for my 8 marksdwarves to finish off maybe 80+ pitted Goblins out of 140 total (this was two or three sieges worth of Goblins, i was starting to have a wood & cage shortage, frequent sieges, and was in a hurry). I only avoid mass-starvation / dehydration by creating squads out of off ALL my 160 dwarves, and ordering them downstairs, then putting an alert on and ensuring that the pitting level was a no-go zone. Result of being in a hurry : A huge waste of time.

I do the d-b-d thing to mark all cages for dumping, then use the 'k' cursor and click 'd' on each cage so as not to dump the cage itself.

Then, I station close-combat troops in the middle of the cages, and below there's the pit, with at least 1 wall made of fortifications, and marksdwarves lined up to shoot any pitted Goblins (they have to be in a thin tunnel next to the fortifications, or use traffic designations to encourage them to stay near it, otherwise they don't shoot).

Once all items are dumped from the cages, and the troops ready, I order all Goblins pitted. The melee troops kill anything which escapes, and the marksdwarves kill the pitted ones at their leisure (can take a while). The cage stockpile above the pit only accepts Goblins, so once they are pitted, a dorf automatically hauls each empty cage to my empties pile.

I find this system to the the quickest and best of all i've tried, and it's good for training troops too.

Hm, I've just tried that, and it doesn't seem to be working for me. When I pit a goblin over an uncovered hole then there's no problem - he falls down. But when I pit that goblin over a hatched hole - then he stands on it for a moment and then runs away, sometimes scaring civilians who were trying to pit other goblins at the same time. Military has to kill him. It happens to every goblin, no exceptions. I think I will link the hatches to a lever, maybe that will help. Good I haven't tried it with a cyclops.

EDIT: It was my bad, I had pen zones and pit zones overlapping, and had my dwarves trying to pasture goblins. And mechanized do not help, of course.

Wow, what do you people fight with so much military? Who works for them, creating GDP, while they burn through your resources? It's worse percentage of military personnel than North Korea has 

And how long does dwarven pregnancy last, by the way? I had a children born on the day of bloody battle, and wonder whether this is a coincidence or not, to be born just after someone died. I haven't changed the limits though. I don't believe in coincidence, especially not in this game.

Hello
I have some newbish questions, this is a rather long list, but I grouped them together because while not all of them are related, they are all quite specific. This is my first fortress (but not first embark) and it is 3rd year. Game version is 0.31.25. Maybe someone with experience in such matters would feel inclined to shed some light on these? Thanks

1. When embarking, I had no choice of iron anvil, only steel one. I had to forfeit it, because my starting points pool was only 70, and steel anvil freed additional 300 points. Fortunately, the first caravan brought steel anvils. But not iron one. Also their liaison offers only steel anvils every year. Is it possible that my civilization doesn't use iron anvils? That would be undwarfish. Or is it a bug?

2. My civilization list displays 4 civilizations, batmen, dwarves, elves and goblins. All of them have green "P" next to them. I thought that means "Peace", but after three ambushes from goblins it is still there. What does that "P" mean?

3. My dwarven civilization listed no important leaders for over two years. I've read it may mean the civilization was wiped out, but I'm getting a migrant wave every season, and recently got my third caravan from them. Also, their liaison is listed as a leader now, after third coming. Is it possible that they had a revolution or anarchy, and have no kings?

4. After I noticed that the batmen killed the first Forgotten Beast, I used dfreveal to learn their number and status. It turned out one of them is friendly, and all others are hostile. Is it (still) possible to have any fruitful agreement with them? Also, do beasts like cave crocodiles and giant cave spiders reappear after some time? Because the batmen wiped them all.

5. Waiting for my first contact with goblins I built an execution tower, with wings and holes over river, murky pool, grass and stone, on different floors. For experiments. I threw a turkey chick to the ground - it was heavily wounded, but tried to return to my fort and after a moment was trapped in a cage trap nearby. It was still tame, thus friendly.  Does that mean that my dwarves can be trapped by my cages if wounded or otherwise?

6. I threw another chick to the river - it ran to the bank, and spent three days there vomiting and bleeding, but not drowning. After three days it felt better and climbed out and ran to my fort. But there is no single ramp in that river - how could it climb out? Does that mean that my dwarves can also survive long submerging and eventually climb out? What about gobbos? Or are turkeys special in some ways?

7. I was unable to assign my first prisoner to a pit on execution tower (it was a bug, the prisoner wasn't assignable or visible even on the list of the chain it was chained with, and I could assign other prisoners, but they were not disarmed yet) so decided to kill her with my military, to let them train. I was monitoring the fight closely using "." key and Dwarf Therapist. They finally killed her, militia captain used his steel shield for killing blow, but turns out they didn't get any XP points! Not in fighter, not in shield user, not in nothing. The shield lists the kill though. Why is that? In regular combat they were gaining much experience with every blow and shot. But not there. Is it because the prisoner was chained?

8. I've built a dwarven reactor to power my closed-circuit waterfall in hospital. It was working very well (after I figured out the power has to be redirected through middle segment of waterwheel, seems dwarven engineers are more stupid than ancient Chinese) for many months, until I decided to stop filling the reactor with water, using buckets. After some time the water level was so low the reactor stopped working. I asked a dwarf to fill it, but he refused citing "dangerous environment". What danger could lurk under a reactor which lost most of its working water, I was wondering? The basement under reactor and floor nearby was contaminated with goblin blood, probably my doctor washed his patient using a well in the hospital, or the blood was washed from one of the dwarves in the mist creating area and taken to the well with flow (because the well is connected to the circulation of waterfall) and another dwarf took that water to fill a reactor. I was finally able to move the contamination further, using a master pump operator, who risked his life to partially decontaminate broken reactor with a pump. Anyway, my question is: why does the contamination persist? I've read somewhere, that pumps will destroy contaminants? If not, how to clean them? I decided the new generation reactors will have better safety measures, with cisterns to fill them quickly and other to empty contaminated water, but I have no room or time for rebuilding that particular reactor.

9. The well mentioned above is built over an channel with flowing water (when reactor works it flows anyway) and has a deeper hole beneath, so there is a 7/7 water always on the bottom, and 3/7 to 7/7 above it, depending on the current level in the waterfall circuit. I've read, that water deeper than 7/7 means the well will give non-stagnant water. But the water dwarves pull out in the bucket is always stagnant. Not a big deal, but I'd prefer it clean, because hospital patients drink it sometimes. Is it because I used water from murky pool to fill the system and it is inherently "stagnant", or is there a trick to do it properly?

10. Mentioning hospital, how to force dwarves to stack it properly? There is only one bar of soap (of five allowed), and I still have another 4 in the general stockpile, months after designation. The same goes with crutches. But the stupid dwarves overfilled it with cloth and thread, it's 90000/75000 of thread and 210000/50000 (!) of cloth and going up. It seems there is a bug, because obviously they don't care about levels I decided and feel obliged to fill it with all crap they can lay their hands on, forgetting about truly important things.

11. And last thing, questions about thieves and ambushes. I've never encountered thieves. I have no children, but I have some valuable things, like masterpieces of large, serrated steel discs, and artifact hatch cover worth over 50 thousands. I have animals in many places, including entry area, is it possible the thieves feel discouraged by them? I had three ambushes in the last two seasons, so goblins must know about existence of my fort. Or there are no goblin thieves? First thing every ambush party does is to kill the animals near entry, and then many of grazers. They seem to ignore dwarves who shoot them, until the chosen animal is killed. Unfortunately, goblins are much speedier than my animals and dwarves, and more agile. They are able to turn on spot, while it takes 5-10 tiles for a dwarf to turn around and start running in the proper direction. Is it possible than my dwarves are too fat? Oh, and why some of the attackers stay uphill and only observe the battle, and then run away? Are they spies of sort? They are listed as normal axemen or hammermen. If they run, will return return with stronger force, or is their escape non essential?

My military dwarves are so lazy and dirty, that they often don't go to store things in their room but drop the backpack on any general stockpile. All my dwarves have their personal rooms, but some of them don't bother with going there every time they need to sleep - they sometimes sleep on the floor. Maybe they're too tired? On more than one occasion I saw a dwarf dropping its booze soaked body on the floor just one or two tiles from the bed. I also saw a dwarf, who left his piece of meat on top of a coffer, but not inside (there were 4 more inside), one month latter it sat on the coffer and started eating another piece of meat - while miasma from the old one filled his room. He wasn't happy, but finished the new piece.  Maybe if they were forced to wear uniform even off-duty they wouldn't junk so much.