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Author Topic: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?  (Read 3209 times)

M.G. Ridgeview

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How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« on: March 05, 2018, 09:02:13 am »

I've gotten pretty good at building up a decent fortress within a reasonable amount of time, but I take awhile to get around to my military.  I like to have the infrastructure first to give my dwarfs proper arms and armor, but it can take awhile to do.  I usually have to count on being lucky enough to form and equip my squads before the fortress is attacked.  Oftentimes, I wait too long and the fortress is besieged before I've got some decently equipped and trained squads to defend.

So my main question is, what are some things I can do to get a small squad up and running maybe within a couple hours of play time after starting my fortress?
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TheBeardyMan

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2018, 09:20:41 am »

You don't need steel weapons and armour to start training. In my latest fortress, I embarked with enough leather to make 6 full suits of leather armour, and I had a squad of 3 swordsdwarves training with leather armour and wooden shields and training weapons in early autumn of the first year.
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anewaname

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2018, 09:55:13 am »

I seem to always do something like this...

Month 1 or 2:
Put most of the starting dwarfs in a squad (all but the woodcutter and miners). Give each a wood shield and wood axe. This is the "emergency response squad" for chasing down predators like crocodiles or giant olms. The shield allows them to block many attacks and the wood axes hit hard enough against unarmored opponents. The key thing is to bring the squad in together so there is more than one dwarf in the fight. Since these are crafter dwarfs, their squad is taken out of use as soon as enough migrants arrive.

Month 10 to 12:
A replacement "emergency response squad" is formed from migrants and given metal weapons and any armor that I can make in that fort. This squad is used for all future "go kill them" orders and eventually becomes the elite squad.
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M.G. Ridgeview

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #3 on: March 05, 2018, 09:58:12 am »

Thanks for the replies.  Hadn't thought of bringing leather to make armor with to start, I'll try that next game.
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FengL0ng

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2018, 10:28:20 am »

Hey Ridgeview!
I like to take two proficient spear dwarves as my starting dwarves and let them start training right after the first few buildings are set up, so maybe 15 minutes into the game.
I also like to minimize my starting equipment by taking bituminous coal and malachite with me and smelt/forge all tools and armour I need in place. I also take about 60 rock blocks with me to immediately build a small fort around my wagon with a 1-tile entrance and a bridge as roofing. Once my smith has axe, pick and spears ready he's set to make mechanisms and my carpenter makes a few wooden balls. This way I have a defendable position with a trapped entrance within 25 minutes at the latest.
When I started my last fort in the tropics the region was housed by a human pikeman that took shelter in a leather tent. Since I was at war with humans he immediately ran for my embark location trying to kill my dwarves. Since I had two speardwarves with two wooden training weapons ready before I even build the first workshop I could fend him off with minor injuries.
A second option is taking one or two wardogs with you on embark. This saved me from a were-elephant once.
Since I opt for a main team of three miners, a smith/mechanic, a grower, a potasher, a carpenter and three masons (10 dwarves) I have a full squad of speardwarves training once I reach 25 dwarves, so about when the third to fourth migrand wave arrives.
I've gotten pretty paranoid since were-beasts got me multiple times in the first year after embarking. One even ripped my commander in full copper armor to pieces before getting mangled.

Since I'm not good at managing a lot of dwarves I dump about half of them in squads after I got my core team assembled.

EDIT: Traps don't seem to work against werebeasts I just read, since they avoid traps. Nothing a nice metal piercing with a long wooden extension can't fix, though.
« Last Edit: March 05, 2018, 10:46:28 am by FengL0ng »
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M.G. Ridgeview

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #5 on: March 05, 2018, 02:17:12 pm »

I also like to minimize my starting equipment by taking bituminous coal and malachite with me and smelt/forge all tools and armour I need in place. I also take about 60 rock blocks with me to immediately build a small fort around my wagon with a 1-tile entrance and a bridge as roofing.

I like that idea, do you know/remember roughly how many points that costs?
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FengL0ng

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #6 on: March 05, 2018, 05:26:50 pm »

To smelt everything up I need:
1 Anvil -> 100pts
10 Tetrahedrite Ore -> 90pts
1 Coke -> 10pts
10 Bituminous Coal -> 60pts?

I use the Coke to burn the first stack of bituminous coal, which yields a net gain of 7 coke I think.
The 100 blocks I take should be 600pts. Usually I take Rutile, because I like purple : D
Those 10 Tetrahedrite yield 30 copper and 10 silver, I think. So enough to smelt the mechanisms
for the trap, spears, shields, mail shirts, gauntlets, high boots and helmets. I'll add breastplates
later. Oh and a battle axe and one or two picks. If you can get Malachite take Malachite, but I
usually don't get lucky with that.
The rest of the points are skills and food. So you can get a full start for your tool and armour pro-
duction with roughly 260pts. And you will have fuel for days.
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Triaxx2

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #7 on: March 05, 2018, 10:17:16 pm »

There's also always the wagon drop trick, which requires just enough blocks to floor over the 5x5 hole you leave digging out under the wagon and channeling around it. Wagon falls and 'dies' then you floor over the hole, and you only need to defend a single door. As long as you have everything you need to keep the starting dwarves alive until migrants arrive, you don't need a military to start with.
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Leonidas

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #8 on: March 06, 2018, 01:04:32 am »

I used to race to get my soldiers training ASAP. Then I realized that it's easier to keep your wealth down until you're ready to fight.
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #9 on: March 06, 2018, 03:48:57 am »

I used to race to get my soldiers training ASAP. Then I realized that it's easier to keep your wealth down until you're ready to fight.
Careful with that thinking. Goblin siege triggers are for population only, their wealth triggers are disabled (in vanilla DF).
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Leonidas

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2018, 03:56:20 am »

Goblin siege triggers are for population only, their wealth triggers are disabled (in vanilla DF).
Really? The wiki still says, under Wealth, that sieges, ambushes, and megabeasts are all driven by wealth. If it's wrong, that's a major error.
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #11 on: March 06, 2018, 04:08:09 am »

Goblin siege triggers are for population only, their wealth triggers are disabled (in vanilla DF).
Really? The wiki still says, under Wealth, that sieges, ambushes, and megabeasts are all driven by wealth. If it's wrong, that's a major error.
Yes. It's wrong. Lots of things on the wiki are out of date apparently. There are wealth triggers, but since 40.x (at least, I didn't play earlier versions much) goblins haven't had them set on. They (like humans and elves) only have the population trigger on, set to 3 (pop 80).

Megabeasts I believe have their wealth triggers set (not at home, don't have a copy of vanilla raws to hand so not 100% sure of that).

--edit

Oh, they're on github. Yeah, looks like giants have wealth set to 5000 (for created wealth and exported wealth) as well as a population 50 trigger.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2018, 04:17:28 am by Shonai_Dweller »
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Leonidas

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #12 on: March 06, 2018, 05:08:41 am »

I hope you'll fix the wiki.
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Shonai_Dweller

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #13 on: March 06, 2018, 08:54:35 am »

I hope you'll fix the wiki.
Keep hoping. Seems like an utterly thankless task.
Might be inspired to one day.

--edit
Having read the offending paragraph now, I'm not sure what you'd do with it anyway besides deleting the whole thing. It describes a version of the game that doesn't exist any more which is already explained in numerous other places regarding world activation. DF is an incomplete ever evolving game. I suggest reading the plain text raws that come with each version of the game to see what's happening mechanically.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2018, 03:56:12 pm by Shonai_Dweller »
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Colonel Sanders Lite

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Re: How Quickly Can You Raise a Military in Your DF Games?
« Reply #14 on: March 06, 2018, 04:06:40 pm »

Goblin siege triggers are for population only, their wealth triggers are disabled (in vanilla DF).
Really? The wiki still says, under Wealth, that sieges, ambushes, and megabeasts are all driven by wealth. If it's wrong, that's a major error.
Yes. It's wrong. Lots of things on the wiki are out of date apparently.

Yeah, this is just the nature of having years of information and lore available for a game that's always changing and evolving.

You should be somewhat skeptical of *anything* you read about DF unless it explicitly states that it applies specifically in the version that you're interested in.

Even then, if you get information from an old beard, you need to be alert to the possibility that the information is no longer accurate and is just being carried over based on the bias that is formed by having played older editions.
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