Been playing an orc fort that is going rather well.... so far. Thrashed a dozen invasions/ambushes, and killed one flying dragon megabeast (thought it was luck). Then I get this:
I did not have a good feeling seeing that wall of scary text. My fort is kept artificially small (60 cap at present) and my military is about a dozen, though they are pretty well trained by now. I have 4 Dragon Society uruks, 3 corsairs up on their melee but not started training guns yet, a couple other uruks and orcs melee trained and a sorceror. I hadn't done much with the latter beyond melee train him. Most were in full lamelar (this is a copper/zinc embark, so my metals source is Elfite/Dwarfite/Humanite and trading), though that is less and less an issue with their mastery of shields and professionalism with dodging and armor... their armor doesn't get scratched often. My raiding has gone decently well too... though took a lot of raids to get a dwarf captive to start getting me some ore beyond malachite and sphalerite.
Anyway, back to the excitement now that you have some context and I have built some suspense...
The wraith appeared on the far north edge and flew southwest staying outside my outer wall. So I sent my dragons up on one of the shooting platforms and stationed another squad (2 melee swordsmen) and the sorceror behind them at ground level, hoping to bait it into the walls and down where the melee troops could charge. I put two other squads of melee fighters near the central stairs down into my underground main fort.
The first dragon orc reached the platform and the wraith was about 10 distance west. She sent an arrow at it and it immediately charged her knocking her off the platform and stunning her briefly. (This report is from the wraith's POV, so the fall and stun aren't showing.)
She kept the wraith occupied trying to land a hit while another dragon shot at it. Then the sorceror walked up and tossed a couple debuffs then chopped it in half.
I have two more dreamwalkers that I clearly need to train and learn to use.
I think and oracle and a druid. Them ice cubes worry me about blue on blue issues. (get it?)
The sorceror was an embark orc (as was one dreamwalker). He's just running with his default class spells as far as I know. I did get him the sigil blade from a raid on a ruins site, but haven't tried setting him up with shard ammo so far. With my fort setup he may be able to be useful from the fighting platforms on the walls.
As usual, tweaking my gate setup. This one has worked pretty well so far. Of course, doesn't enter into things when the incoming nasties have wings...
The above is ground level, of course. There are 4 bridge "gates." The main external one is in far right with a dire wolf sentry behind fortifications. So far nothing has gotten past him unspotted. He usually spots ambushes before they enter the gate. Thieves get spotted right in front of the fortification.
The second gate is in the middle in front of the second wolf sentry. That's meant to break up large groups. There are no traps in the first section on the right so they don't get run off before I can catch a bunch (need that metal. meat, scalps and souls.) I could put some cage traps there, but if I trap a leader that can stall their forward progress and I want them deeper in before I slam the gate behind them.
There's a shooting platform two levels above the second gate. You can see those below in the 2 above ground level shot. I can position archers or mages there and they can see out to their full range both east and west... and outside the walls to boot.
The third gate is just left and north of the second one. It's a bypass gate I leave open when going out to loot. The fourth is just to its left and a space north. That one is the main inner gate the gets closed at the same time as the first one to trap the invasion in the gate kill zone. The third, bypass, gate is closed as soon as the sentries alert me of incoming. Oh, the levers are all in the underground main hall where there are usually loiterers.
The weapon traps in the second section chew up the incoming pretty well though. So far none have made it past without serious injuries. I have a couple saber cats to greet them, and move some melee squads up to clean up the leakers.
Mostly, though, the dragons shoot from the walls on the perimeter. That works great for breaking sieges, but means exposing grunts to potential ambushes, etc. I've lost a few diplomats and incoming immigrants to those, despite hustling some covering fire to help as fast as I can. I also had one weird case where some invaders spawned right in my covered edge wagon "safe" entry. Fortunately, it was just the edge of a clump and the trader guards wiped them out before I could even reach them.
That's the news from Lake Elf-be-gone, where all the orc children are above average biters.
Edit:
Hmm, I said "she" but it appears it was not the dragon I thought it was. My first duo are two females, then next is two males, but I had them combined into one squad at the time and I guess one male outhustled the other three.
