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[Reynard]

Aye, if you want sieges to be interesting, you have to lighten up the defensive posture a bit.

Or play on a map with elephants.

Me? I only build doors on my Fortress exits anymore to keep dwarves in, not gobbos out, and my entrance hall never has complete lines of traps. I scatter them, so they thin out the herd while still letting some pass. Keeps my military active but not overwhelmed.

Water/lava/steam/bridge defenses are just complete overkill at this point in the game.

[Ravendas]

quote:Originally posted by Tarrasque:
<STRONG>Anyone else like the lower bolt and arrow damage? Also, where do you to go change that?</STRONG>

dwarffortress\raw\objects\item_ammo.txt

Change the 100 lines to 50, and enjoy. I heard some people change piercing to blunt, but that just sounds silly. That makes it so it hurts, but it wont poke out eyes or brains or anything.

Just remember this affects you as well, so your hunters may not be quite as effective, nor will your marksdwarves be quite as topnotch. My hunters handle things just fine however, because I give them a little military training first, and I don't use marksdwarves because they make everything too easy.

[Shadowlord]

Unfortunately, tame elephants make terrible goblin defenses. Against a squad of melee goblins, about the same amount of goblins and elephants die. Against a squad of marksgoblins, the elephants just all die.

The main problem is that elephants completely ignore goblins until they're attacked. Big cats (jaguars, lions, etc) are much better in that regard, but still tend to not do well against marksgoblins.

Three sieges ago, the goblins attacked with a human caravan in the way. I lost four jaguars total before the goblins fled and/or died.

Two sieges ago, there was no caravan, and I lost around 20 jaguars, although almost enough goblins died to cause them to flee (once I placed a ballista out of scare range, a few (wooden) ballista bolts sent them running).

One siege ago, I just showered them with (wooden) ballista bolts until they ran. Much more efficient.

All in all, I prefer to kill as few goblins as possible to avoid needless goblin gear clutter, especially in the dangerous (elephant-infested) wilderness. I'm thinking about setting up a cage-trap-filled tunnel specifically for goblins to run through, but the problem is that the dwarves and pets will try to go out the same tunnel.

(I just magma'd all my goblin war prisoners in a room right next to the smelters - It helps that they don't resist being dragged from cage to cage, and that a single cage seems to be capable of holding 60+ goblins/elephants/whatever simultaneously (presumably in hammerspace))

[Gask]

The goblins are indeed boring, about the only way that I can have fun with them are to put 2 raising door bridges at either end of my gate hall to trap any that try to turn tail and run.  Then my military gets to mop them up.  Also I make my entry hall the entire length from the cliff to the u.g. river so I usually trap around 2 squads of runners each time  

I wish chasm/river attacks were more frequent and that there were pockets of natural creatures locked away within the rock.

[ August 18, 2007: Message edited by: Gask ]

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Okay, I had my second siege in 1061. This time, they used a better timing (for their purposes), and I made a few management mistakes (won't happen again), resulting in the death of 7 dwarves and 1 cat.

The trick they used was simple: They showed up directly with the dwarven caravan! After they slaughtered the merchants and their incompetent axedwarves, all the loot had my dwarves drooling and storming to the entrance area of the fortress. Because I wanted the siege quickly resolved and had hoped the goblins would go for the fortress and not for the merchants first, the door to the entrance area was unlocked (otherwise the goblins wouldn't have attacked the fortress) and so, I had a bunch of suicidal dwarves stuck in my entrance area (between the door and the traps).

Well, on the positive side, I have learned a lot about potential issues with my current defenses. And among the 12+ goblin corpses was a mace lord goblin and and elite crossbow goblin. (I think they must have some valuable equipment - my import value increased by 70,000!!)

Fortunately, I have enough food so that the fortress can survive the probably long cleaning-up.

Ah, here is the map:
http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-678-claspglides

Edit:
Argh! Because of the miasma, you can't see the entrance area. But basically, it has improved to six layers of weapon traps. The macelord actually reached the third layer.

Deathworks

[ August 22, 2007: Message edited by: Deathworks ]

[Misterstone]

As far as I am concerned, the only brutal thing about sieges is having to deal with the cleanup afterwards.... grrr I hate having to deal with my dwarves storing huge piles of soiled goblin pants.  I wish there was an incinerator workshop, so you could just burn up the dead gobbos clothing and all.  The free iron is kind of nice though.

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Well, I am actually quite curious about the goods in this siege. The goblin thieves last year had a glove with decorations showing goblins travelling and goblins laboring. I haven't sold that thing (value about 740), keeping it as a souvenir.

Deathworks

[Lightning4]

Yeah, I somehow came across a masterpiece leather bag decorated with dwarves surrounded by ratmen, and goblins and dwarves at war or something like that.
No idea where it came from, I'm assuming some random goblin dropped it... it fits their hatred of dwarves.

My fortress isn't too well defended with traps, just a simple grid of single bone/wood crossbow traps, but despite this, they really annihilate the goblins. I'm getting better with military management though, usually losing about one or two dwarves either due to lucky shots through fortifications, occasional meleers getting mortally shot, or far more commonly: idiocy, like how in my last siege, some random moron was standing around outside, refusing to come back in, despite being toggled out of the military, and fiddling with the "chase opponents" setting. Poor brave fool tried to defend the fortress against two squads of goblins at the same time. Wasn't pretty.

Though I'm concerned how I'll fair against the higher goblin sieges, since to this day I've never seen a troll or a beak dog, and no champions besides the ruler of the goblins, and hardly any weaponmasters.

[Tarrasque]

What exactly do those crossbow traps do? Do they shoot at goblins when they come close or what?

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Lightning4: Mmmhhhh, you are sure that the decorations weren't made by your own craftdwarves? If you tell them to decorate with bone or shell, they grap the first thing they get their greedy fingers on. I just had two bags filled with sand rendered useless that way. Of course, if you don't have any decorating going on, then it has to be the invaders.

Mmmhhh, I am a bit curious about the crossbow traps myself. I would assume they attack the invader who stepped on the trap, just like any other trap and in addition need to have their ammo refilled regularly. That is why I stick with my discs.

All in all, this was a rather nasty year for my dwarves with some incidents/accidents adding to the death toll. So, now my fortress is down to 32 dwarves from 45 before the siege and the incidents, although the dead nobles will probably be replaced to boost me to 36 dwarves again. Fortunately, my dwarves have been content lately, so I have only one child tantrumming because of the loss of his mother, and an unhappy broker bewailing the loss of a friend.

Deathworks

[Lightning4]

quote:Originally posted by Deathworks:
<STRONG>Hi!

Lightning4: Mmmhhhh, you are sure that the decorations weren't made by your own craftdwarves? If you tell them to decorate with bone or shell, they grap the first thing they get their greedy fingers on. I just had two bags filled with sand rendered useless that way. Of course, if you don't have any decorating going on, then it has to be the invaders.

Mmmhhh, I am a bit curious about the crossbow traps myself. I would assume they attack the invader who stepped on the trap, just like any other trap and in addition need to have their ammo refilled regularly. That is why I stick with my discs.

All in all, this was a rather nasty year for my dwarves with some incidents/accidents adding to the death toll. So, now my fortress is down to 32 dwarves from 45 before the siege and the incidents, although the dead nobles will probably be replaced to boost me to 36 dwarves again. Fortunately, my dwarves have been content lately, so I have only one child tantrumming because of the loss of his mother, and an unhappy broker bewailing the loss of a friend.

Deathworks</STRONG>

Positive. First, the bag is an import and tells me as such. Second, the decoration of the dwarf and the ratmen is in gold, and I have never used that material for decorating.
I have no idea how old the bag is, so the second decoration may be from my dwarves. But goblins is mentioned first, so I think it may be a goblin-made bag.

And to answer about crossbow traps:
Yes, they attack when the monster reaches that tile, but they only work like normal weapon traps. They don't fire multiple tiles away. They still have a benifit, they never jam, but they will periodically need to be reloaded with ammo.

[ August 23, 2007: Message edited by: Lightning4 ]

[Retales]

I just got my third goblin invasion (actually, I'm playing it right now), and now it's starting to look like real war. So far most of my military has been killed by the goblin machinegunners, and the rest of my dwarves (civilians) seem to be on suicide-mode. They just run one after another out into an arrowy death. God have mercy -_-

There's this thread on the suggestion forum: To War. By heavens, you really need to be able to designate a GTFO-zone, where the civilians arent allowed to go.

[EDIT] Well, I made it. My whole military got wiped out, along with a bunch of civilians. Man, what a mess... I'm not cleaning this up. No, wait... <_<

[ August 24, 2007: Message edited by: Retales ]

[Retales]

Oh man >_< . Just as I finished cleaning the last limbs and vomit from my fort entrance when... ANOTHER SIEGE!

This time I just put my all dwarves in the military and stationed them deeper into my fortress, and let the traps deal with the gobbos.

And it went pretty well. My Tax Collector noble caught a bolt! Triumph!

[Tormy]

quote:Originally posted by Retales:
<STRONG>I just got my third goblin invasion (actually, I'm playing it right now), and now it's starting to look like real war. So far most of my military has been killed by the goblin machinegunners, and the rest of my dwarves (civilians) seem to be on suicide-mode. They just run one after another out into an arrowy death. God have mercy -_-

There's this thread on the suggestion forum: To War. By heavens, you really need to be able to designate a GTFO-zone, where the civilians arent allowed to go.

[EDIT] Well, I made it. My whole military got wiped out, along with a bunch of civilians. Man, what a mess... I'm not cleaning this up. No, wait... <_<

[ August 24, 2007: Message edited by: Retales ]</STRONG>

Even without traps and defenses its very possible to beat all goblin sieges. Just make lot of marksdwarves, that is the key, since ranged weapons are totally overpowered in the game right now, yes the bows and xbows are acting like AK47 rifles sadly. Hopefully Toady will fix the overpowered ranged weaponry.

[Lightning4]

quote:
And it went pretty well. My Tax Collector noble caught a bolt! Triumph![/QB]

Ah, you lucky bastard. I try not to kill my nobles intentionally unless they really really piss me off, and not one single one of mine has even been close to a goblin siege. Instead, my 50 stupid civilians (including legendaries) all line up for a chance to become a pincushion. Damn my poorly designed entrance hall.

I did lose a gem-demanding governor to a cave river flood though!

[ August 25, 2007: Message edited by: Lightning4 ]