Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: How do I declare war on the Goblins?  (Read 3536 times)

MantisMan

  • Bay Watcher
  • Say what you mean, mean what you say.
    • View Profile
How do I declare war on the Goblins?
« on: September 05, 2017, 03:01:24 am »

I'm at a great embark so far. I have no aquifer, lots of iron, and plenty of soil and sand. The only problem is that there isn't enough war going on right now to fill my corpse stockpiles.

I'm neighboring civilizations with Goblins, Elves, and Humans, but the only war right now is between the Goblins and Elves.

There have been irregular Kobold thievery attempts, but only one Goblin snatcher attempt. I don't know how I can declare war on them...
Logged
How I usually build my fort.
We're all secretly mantises. Except that one guy. We're trolling the shit out of him.

KittyTac

  • Bay Watcher
  • Impending Catsplosion. [PREFSTRING:aloofness]
    • View Profile
Re: How do I declare war on the Goblins?
« Reply #1 on: September 05, 2017, 03:56:51 am »

I'm at a great embark so far. I have no aquifer, lots of iron, and plenty of soil and sand. The only problem is that there isn't enough war going on right now to fill my corpse stockpiles.

I'm neighboring civilizations with Goblins, Elves, and Humans, but the only war right now is between the Goblins and Elves.

There have been irregular Kobold thievery attempts, but only one Goblin snatcher attempt. I don't know how I can declare war on them...

You can't. Next update it's possible by raiding them, though.
Logged
Don't trust this toaster that much, it could be a villain in disguise.
Mostly phone-posting, sorry for any typos or autocorrect hijinks.

Shonai_Dweller

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: How do I declare war on the Goblins?
« Reply #2 on: September 05, 2017, 04:03:38 am »

You're not the head of a civilization, just a small outpost, why would you have the ability to declare war?

That aside, you're in luck. Goblins are naturally hostile to dwarves because they snatch children (not sure if that makes sense, but it's true). So they'll attack you when they feel like it, declaring war in the process automatically.

Unless you've modified goblin settings, they won't think about attacking you (besides child-theft and maybe the odd ambush, although ambushing seems to be broken) until your population reaches 80.

Even then, depending on how many resources they're throwing at the Elves they might be too worn down to attack you.

The next version is out soon. In that you still won't be able to declare war, but you will be able to provoke goblins (or anyone else, even other dwarf civs) to declaring war on you by harassing them with squads and stealing their stuff.

Again, that's a civ level decision, their civ will declare war on your civ. This should mean they'll attack you, but they might be busy attacking all your civ's other sites instead.

What you can do though is build lots of artifacts and a tavern. Spies will make reports on your artifacts and leaders hearing about your stuff may well come and 'ask' you for it. Theoretically this means their armies will come straight to you, ignoring all those elves and other rich sites in between you and them and the glory days of plentiful sieges will be with us again. Maybe.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2017, 04:30:09 am by Shonai_Dweller »
Logged

ChristianWeiseth

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: How do I declare war on the Goblins?
« Reply #3 on: September 05, 2017, 04:41:56 am »

If you have enhanced gameplay activated you could try cutting down or burning down all the trees in your area to provoke the elves, in addition to killing their diplomats/caravans. I also think Human civs can become hostile if you export enough wealth and launch sieges against you. As for goblins then I think they have wealth and exported wealth triggers as well as pop trigger which Shonai Dweller pointed out.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2017, 04:46:27 am by ChristianWeiseth »
Logged

PatrikLundell

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: How do I declare war on the Goblins?
« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2017, 04:55:12 am »

DF has only the pop siege trigger enabled by default: the wealth and export ones are disabled. However, these triggers can be changed in the save instance of entity_defaults.txt, and take effect as that save is loaded. However, as others have said, if they're otherwise engaged, they're probably in no hurry to attack you.
Also, if the closest gobbo site is a crummy 20 gobbo pit, you won't get much in the way of sieges from them, as they'll quickly run of of bodies to throw at you. As mentioned, the next version ought to allow you to work around that issue slightly by picking fights with others (but there's no guarantee I know of that they won't  send their punitive expeditions from a puny settlement as well).
Logged

Shonai_Dweller

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: How do I declare war on the Goblins?
« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2017, 06:39:07 am »

DF has only the pop siege trigger enabled by default: the wealth and export ones are disabled. However, these triggers can be changed in the save instance of entity_defaults.txt, and take effect as that save is loaded. However, as others have said, if they're otherwise engaged, they're probably in no hurry to attack you.
Also, if the closest gobbo site is a crummy 20 gobbo pit, you won't get much in the way of sieges from them, as they'll quickly run of of bodies to throw at you. As mentioned, the next version ought to allow you to work around that issue slightly by picking fights with others (but there's no guarantee I know of that they won't  send their punitive expeditions from a puny settlement as well).
Yeah, I think a lot of people have slightly too high expectations for squad caused war declarations. It's already confirmed that it's not your site, but your whole civ that will go to war. They'll probably still only attack you from the nearest available site (unless that's an as yet unannounced tweak).

Taverns filled with spies and hundreds of crafted and looted artifacts seems to be the way to go.

Still, having a concrete method for antagonizing humans, elves and rival dwarves can't be a bad thing.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2017, 06:42:10 am by Shonai_Dweller »
Logged

Fleeting Frames

  • Bay Watcher
  • Spooky cart at distance
    • View Profile
Re: How do I declare war on the Goblins?
« Reply #6 on: September 05, 2017, 10:19:19 am »

Maybe so, though from his dwarven experiment I assume you can antagonize additional gobbo/human/elven civs beyond just the initial three.

Shonai_Dweller

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: How do I declare war on the Goblins?
« Reply #7 on: September 05, 2017, 04:32:29 pm »

Maybe so, though from his dwarven experiment I assume you can antagonize additional gobbo/human/elven civs beyond just the initial three.
Initial 3?

You should be able to antagonize every civ your squads can reach. Oh what fun to be attacked by 3 human civs at once!

And how we'll laugh when they turn on each other before they ever reach your front gate...
Logged

PatrikLundell

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: How do I declare war on the Goblins?
« Reply #8 on: September 06, 2017, 02:56:56 am »

Maybe so, though from his dwarven experiment I assume you can antagonize additional gobbo/human/elven civs beyond just the initial three.
Initial 3?

You should be able to antagonize every civ your squads can reach. Oh what fun to be attacked by 3 human civs at once!

And how we'll laugh when they turn on each other before they ever reach your front gate...
You're confusing DF with the real world. That's where you have that kind of backstabbing. It's a fair bit left before DF manages to get that kind of scheming in (and it's apparently hard enough to get them to assemble an army with which to attack you properly, and I'd like to see that first).
Logged

Shonai_Dweller

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: How do I declare war on the Goblins?
« Reply #9 on: September 06, 2017, 05:08:30 am »

Maybe so, though from his dwarven experiment I assume you can antagonize additional gobbo/human/elven civs beyond just the initial three.
Initial 3?

You should be able to antagonize every civ your squads can reach. Oh what fun to be attacked by 3 human civs at once!

And how we'll laugh when they turn on each other before they ever reach your front gate...
You're confusing DF with the real world. That's where you have that kind of backstabbing. It's a fair bit left before DF manages to get that kind of scheming in (and it's apparently hard enough to get them to assemble an army with which to attack you properly, and I'd like to see that first).
I've been attacked by a few different civ's armies at once in Fortress Defence. It's not at all unusual.
It's not all that unreasonable to assume that two civs appearing at once who are already at war would start fighting each other. We've already seen visitors launching into each other the moment the goblins turn up as it is (since tweaked, but still).
Logged

PatrikLundell

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: How do I declare war on the Goblins?
« Reply #10 on: September 06, 2017, 07:36:33 am »

True. Well, it would be interesting if it happened that they attack each other, although it'll leave a mess to clean up afterwards.
Logged