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[darkflagrance]

And are the results supposed to show something about tigermen?

I want to make sure that they are broken. Your verdict is the most reliable since you made them in the first place and know the concept more then anyone else.

When you made the initial complaint, I quickly ran a swift test using my normal embark conditions in vanilla+fortress defense.

Made slight use of a danger room = moderately proficient (none legendary, most with only good weapon and fighter skill) dwarves.
Made iron armor from brought hematite and wood.

Due to aquifer, I could only use the flux and iron I brought and was forced to rely on charcoal for fuel. I only managed to get out three steel battleaxes and some random pieces of armor. Most of the weapons and armor were iron instead to conserve metal.

I got hit by beak wolves and stranglers early, and drove them off with no losses. I fought an initial tigerman siege and lost one squad of three untrained recruits whom I ordered in by accident, but the four warriors with training took no losses from combat (the freaking commander dove into a pond to kill a tigerman and drowned, then started haunting the fort  ).

The second tigerman siege hit with three squads at the same time as a bunch of furies. I killed all the furies with the loss of only my exposed cows and a wrestler who took a dive into an unramped pool (I can't wait till next DF version when all ponds will automatically have ramps  ), then by accident two of my dagger dwarves peeled off to charge the entire tigerman siege and were massacred. I massed my remaining eleven dwarves (armed with whatever random weapons I pulled off the caravan) and backed them up with random conscripted civilians. The eleven axedwarves charged the enemy who were mounted on giant badgers and promptly scattered. Due to my careless planning, this unfortunately exposed all my civilian archers, who were trampled to death. However, two of my axedwarves returned and held the entrance, killing the four or so mounted tigermen hanging out there and scaring away anyone else who tried to penetrate. The rest of my soldiers pursued the tigerman troops, killing as many as possible. Often the tigermen would run away in clumps from a single dwarf, only to pounce on him in a mass when he was isolated. Nonetheless, I survived with only three deaths and broke the siege. Most of the deaths were due to stupidity and poor choice of battlefield. Assuming that you go all out to get metal, bringing iron to guarantee weapons, buying all steel stuff from caravans, digging to magma, and turning the weapons of your slain enemies into more armor for your forces with magma-powered melting and forging, you will only get stronger over time.

I don't consider them broken under these conditions in vanilla. However, it might be that you disagree with the tactics I prefer to use. If that is the case, feel free to change tigermen as you like. As I said above, if your mod substantially changes game difficulty or similar conditions and tigermen don't fit well into it, alter then as necessary.

[rephikul]

I use similar tactics but used bronze because it's much cheaper to bring 60+ unit of tin ore and copper is guaranteed on any maps. "danger room" is not possible in my mod tho. In my most successful fort, I managed to snipe the squad leader of the first siege quickly and dodged an entire siege. In the second siege, I have managed 10 novice sworddwarves with full bronze armor and steel short sword, 20 other recruits only with spear or hammer and a shield. Stationed on the 2nd floor are 10 markdwarves. ONE squad of tigermen with copper halberd and shield charged through the entrance and killed all of that.

[Shintaro Fago]

How viable is all-crossbow and no traps strategy? I'm tempted to try this one out.

[rephikul]

in vanilla setting, crossbows triump everything including jotuns. due to the lack of armors on limbs.

[kerlc]

is it just me, or is DFFD down?

[darkflagrance]

is it just me, or is DFFD down?

Just uploaded something to it, so it should be up now.

[Prologue]

Been wondering this for a while now, how many of you guys use a danger room when playing this mod?

[NonconsensualSurgery]

Been wondering this for a while now, how many of you guys use a danger room when playing this mod?

I tried it without danger rooms and all civilizations enabled. I only had one solid military victory in the history of the fort.

Things did not go well. The militia of Airletters had been crushed at every turn and I was down to two mostly able-bodied squads of ten that had only mediocre skills because no one lived long enough to hit legendary. They trained on captured invaders and even forgotten beasts but it just wasn't enough. They'd lose someone every battle and that dwarf would be replaced by someone with no combat skills.

I gave up on using melee for most engagements. I gave up on marksdwarves as the first line of defense because I couldn't make enough bolts to keep up and elite bowmen would slaughter them anyway. Everyone hid behind a reciprocating spike field, a drowning trap and what was supposed to be a steam generator. The steam generator was the undoing of Airletters. It was the end; Jotunar and blendecs were bumping into foolishly, desperately placed weapon traps around the steam vent and raining down into the guts of my engineering sector.

The Jotun and their kin lined up outside the last masterwork security door keeping them out of the engineering workshop/lever room and began breaking it down. On the other side, I assembled all surviving dogs in front of swordsdwarves in front of marksdwarves and waited.

The Jotun came through and turned the first wave of war dogs into chunky salsa, but while they were doing that the barely trained marksdwarves managed to chip enough bones that most of the Jotun fell over from pain. The swordsdwarves and even more dogs dogpiled them, slashing and biting repeatedly at their giant helmeted skulls without anyone being able to reach the brain (all the speardwarves were dead at this point in the short history of Airletters). The mayor, who had been conscripted on the basis of being one of the last able-bodied dwarves, managed to punch a blood cyclops in the head so hard its brain was torn and then began tantruming because his dog had just exploded right in front of him. Slowly, the giants and their blendec/beakwolf assistance was crumbling.

One of the Eldjotun ran through the melee and headed for the central stairwell. The marksdwarves, who only had a couple of bolts each when the Jotunar kicked down the door, began running out of ammo and trying to bite and bash the giant to death while all the dedicated melee was distracted - with success! Just imagine this huge giant being bitten to death by a swarm of tiny dwarves. With the last Jotun dead, satisfactory victory was declared. The only casualties were a couple of dogs, the mayor's sanity and a raw recruit who somehow had his arm ripped off by a beakwolf before he bit and stabbed it to death.

... then I tried to clear a couple of parboiled tigermen out of the steam generator drains. They fought like, well, scalded cornered cats. I thought I could take cats after having battled Jotunar and blendecs, but they turned more dogs into salsa and then took on my melee one at a time in the narrow corridors. One of my starting seven, the proficient biter and teacher I'd brought with me who had trained half the fortress in biting, was among the dead.

With almost every single dwarf in the fortress missing at least an arm, the militia deprived of its leader and the source of its incredible biting prowess, the plans for a steam generator unsalvageable and the tantruming mayor replaced by an annoying armless lye maker who demanded giant cave spider silk items when there hadn't been a trade caravan in five years, I decided to order one last glorious charge at the blendecs blocking the entrance and call it quits.

This mod is awesome. Impossibly hard, but awesome.

[darkflagrance]

Vanilla training, relying on the default training sessions and barracks stuff, is unbearably slow compared to danger room. However, in a recent fort, I was able to get a pair of legendary swordmaster/elite axe dwarf, in addition to an army that could reliably butcher hellfire imps, goblins, tigermen and frogmen, by the third year.

Some caveats: the dwarves had student 3, which probably majorly boosted the rate of skill acquisition. However, I had easy access to steel, silver, and copper, and I could probably have held out for a quite a few more years, even against the most powerful enemies.

Plus, I'd rather have my fort eventually die to the toughest enemies than of fps anyway.

[Meph]

I usually train on wildlife. As soon as one group of animals is eridaced, a new one appears. Trains a lot faster then barraks/demonstrations, and is not as cheaty as a danger room. slight injuries might occur though.

@darkflagrance: got your PM, thanks.

@rephikul: how did you disable danger rooms ? Removing training spears ?

[Nan]

Been wondering this for a while now, how many of you guys use a danger room when playing this mod?

I don't use a danger room. I do however embark with 4 or 6 out of the starting seven as career military dwarves. Proficient Weapon User + Proficient teacher works well. I add skilled in combat immigrants to the melee squad, and nearly all other dwarves get armed with a crossbow but don't actually train except by shooting at wildlife.

Against weak sieges I just use the "big dwarf ball" approach to wipe the map clean.

When powerful sieges come, I station my marksdwarves on a de-ramped hill, or a tower - or in a pinch - even in a deramped hole (it works just as well as a hill), and station my melee underground, at the entrance. So the enemy soldiers who make it through the hail of crossbow bolts to the fortress entrance, get brutally slaughtered by the melee dwarves. And once the siege's strength is basically broken, I have my melee squads erupt up and execute all the wounded enemies - which massively saves on bolts.

Combined arms is almost essential for the toughest enemies. Marksdwarves are excellent against massed enemies, because they can also be massed very cheaply, but they have the disadvantages of running out of bolts, and being exceedingly fragile at melee range, it can also basically be summarized that marksdwarves are good at removing enemies from combat, but are bad at actually killing them - melee dwarves are necessary to execute enemies and provide a meat shield.

Melee dwarves are extremely expensive to train and equip to the point of being effective in combat (I can easily use 80% of my embark points on my military), but they have extremely good defensive abilities and excel at killing. The main disadvantage is they are extremely hard to replace and easily crippled by stronger enemies, this is why they should always be used with covering fire from marksdwarves.

[darkflagrance]

I also make extensive use of the combined arms doctrine. Although marksdwarves are at least half of a powerful military, in vanilla they are extremely easy to kit out: a good bowyer or weaponsmith can make high quality weapons out of any material not fit for melee combat, and bolts can be produced from readily available bone, while some of the best quality bolts are made from metals like copper and silver generally unfit for melee use. The marksdwarves can then be recruited from the most useless migrants each season and trained with the melee dwarves acting as meatshield against live sieges. It is much harder to get the melee component of the army up and running. My principle with regard to melee combat is that quality > quantity. Quantity only leads to tantrum spirals. Quality is my legendary swordsmaster killing an entire tigerman squad that I trapped in a tunnel single-handed. If you don't use danger rooms, you should always make sure that each veteran is training an apprentice to whom he passes down his skills in peacetime. Have the best soldiers train each other in squads of two in the initial years, embarking with at least a couple of skilled soldiers, and add to these any military recruits that arrive. Not allowing your population to grow quickly while preparing as fast as possible also delays the sieges until your preparations are complete.

Another thing is that often my military forts ignore most of the economic content of the game. Common industries in my military forts are reprocessing invader equipment (sewing images onto cloth, melting and reforging enemy equipment into serrated discs, bolt decorations and bolts) and prepared meals. Useless migrants are distracted with hauling/dumping busywork and held as reserve for any parts of the military that need refilling.

There are also quite a few quirks of dwarf AI to overcome. The first is the tendency of marksdwarves to, having run out of bolts, charge into the enemy suicidally. Having them somewhere where they can't easily run into the enemy force is necessary. The second is the tendency of a couple of keen observers among the melee dwarves to charge in by themselves while their comrades stand around with crossed-eyes. You need to be able to choose a battleground where you can mass your soldiers and prevent enemies from luring them into traps.

Many mounted enemies will also employ hit and run strategies that can be highly effective, as they will pull apart a tight formation of melee dwarves and gang up on them when they are isolated. Fighting the enemy in underground tunnels or chambers where they have no room to flee, and even sealing off the exit so that they have nowhere to run helps a lot under these circumstances.

[schismatise]

Hi!

So i've been playing with Fortress Defense alot lately, it really makes the game for me. My experience is similar to alot of the recent posts - i embark with 2 soldiers, level 5 teacher and weapon skill, i break squads into smaller groups for extra sparring and make good use of my teachers, i station marksdwarves on small hills while my melee dwarves fight below, i don't use traps or danger rooms, etc etc. Some forts i don't use any walls or doors whatsoever, and just station everyone at the top of my staircase, but things usually get too chaotic with the way that dwarves love to chase enemies and ignore station commands, especially when some enemies find themselves on incredibly cowardly mounts ><

I'm still adjusting things to find the optimum difficulty - inevitable defeat at the hands of what i consider to be realistic and nearly-possible sieges, before FPS becomes an issue. For example, i turned off war elephants because it doesn't make sense to me that an animal is clad in steel but has no rider. Does someone just slap some steel on an elephant and then kick it up the ass to send it off to battle? But to counter-balance, i try to embark in areas with plenty of the civ's that i haven't turned off, preferably with my civilization at war with at least one of them.

Anyway, to that end, i have a couple of questions:

1) I've noticed that while most enemies are stated to use a particular type of weapons-grade metal, all of my enemies arrive with a random assortment of all weapons-grade metals. I seem to recall reading somewhere (about kobolds, i think maybe) that when an invader doesn't have access to the metal they've been assigned, they will just use anything, so that they have something rather than nothing. Is there any way i can get around this issue to better balance the sieges and remove some of the "RNG" factor (Hammer Lord with a silver maul = uhoh, Swordmaster with a silver sword = lols)? Mods i'm using include FD, Phoebus graphics, and some custom milling/brewing reactions, nothing else. I've played on worlds generated to year 5 and to year 125, no apparent difference in enemy metals.

2) Being that i turn off some of the civs, would it be possible to mod the other civs to attack more often - ie. Every season, instead of just eg. spring/winter? I noticed the readme gave this information, but not how to change it. (see edit below)

3) Further on that point, would it be possible to make certain civs only attack within a certain timeframe - eg. within the first 5 years of a fort, and never again after that? I love having a squad of beak wolves show up in early winter, but 5 squads of them showing up 5 years later is 1) obselete by now due to my dwarves skill/equipment 2) less fps due to pathing and mass item clutter 3) annoying because my dwarves chase them all over the place and wind up out of position and 4) somewhat unrealistic if you think of dark stranglers and beak wolves as scavengers similar to kobolds (which i like to).

4) Finally, bit of a random question but considering the nature of this mod i thought you might know - is it possible to mod the game or a world in some way to literally turn on war between 2 civilizations? I love the vanilla feel of the game and don't like to change things too much - i would love to be constantly sieged by humans and/or elves, but my attempts at slaughtering caravans have yielded no results, and i've yet to gen a world in which the dwarves were at war with the humans or elves.

If you can't be assed answering some/any of that, don't worry - if i really care, i'll probably figure it out myself

Thanks again, this mod is seriously epic win.

Edit: Ok, i think i found the answer to my second question - in the entity files, the ACTIVE_SEASON setting, right? Now my question is: if i change this (or other settings) in both the main raws and the data save raws, will it take immediate effect, or will i have to gen a new world? Also, any further information you could give me on civ settings relevant to !!Fun!! would be appreciated - like the PROGRESS_TRIGGER_ setting for example

Edit 2: Heh, right after i post this, top of the page there's a "when do i have to gen a new world" thread. Incase anyone was wondering - entity changes require new world.

[rephikul]

For 4) you can change the ethic of the civs so they have the maximum amount of arguments and have a high chance of being at war with each other. Nothing is guaranteed, tho.

[darkflagrance]

Does someone just slap some steel on an elephant and then kick it up the ass to send it off to battle?

Rule of cool 

1) I've noticed that while most enemies are stated to use a particular type of weapons-grade metal, all of my enemies arrive with a random assortment of all weapons-grade metals. I seem to recall reading somewhere (about kobolds, i think maybe) that when an invader doesn't have access to the metal they've been assigned, they will just use anything, so that they have something rather than nothing. Is there any way i can get around this issue to better balance the sieges and remove some of the "RNG" factor (Hammer Lord with a silver maul = uhoh, Swordmaster with a silver sword = lols)? Mods i'm using include FD, Phoebus graphics, and some custom milling/brewing reactions, nothing else. I've played on worlds generated to year 5 and to year 125, no apparent difference in enemy metals.

It depends. Some enemies (Blendecs, Nagas, Hellfire Imps) are expected to use the same variety of copper/bronze/iron/silver that goblins do (Imps might have steel access)). Other civilizations have their weapon materials specified in the raws via custom reactions. Ferric Elves use Silver and Iron. Tigermen use only copper. Warwolves use only iron. I think that races with steel enabled actually pick instead from all weapons grade metals.

Also: races pick materials for their weapons apparently at random from the available pool. The best you can do is only allow a civ access to slashing weapons and materials with a good edge, or to blunt weapons and silver/copper. A more complex mod might have something like Crucible Iron and Crucible Bronze that can only be made into weapons and Hardened Copper or something that could only be made into armor, and use custom reactions to do something like have a race armed with Crucible Silver mauls and Hardened Iron armor.

2) Being that i turn off some of the civs, would it be possible to mod the other civs to attack more often - ie. Every season, instead of just eg. spring/winter? I noticed the readme gave this information, but not how to change it.

For each civilization's entity, find tags that look like this:
   [ACTIVE_SEASON:SPRING]
   [ACTIVE_SEASON:WINTER]
These will vary depending on the civ.

Replace them with:
   [ACTIVE_SEASON:SPRING]
   [ACTIVE_SEASON:SUMMER]
   [ACTIVE_SEASON:AUTUMN]
   [ACTIVE_SEASON:WINTER]

You can change this even while a game is in progress. You just need to save and quit and then reload the game.

3) Further on that point, would it be possible to make certain civs only attack within a certain timeframe - eg. within the first 5 years of a fort, and never again after that? I love having a squad of beak wolves show up in early winter, but 5 squads of them showing up 5 years later is 1) obselete by now due to my dwarves skill/equipment 2) less fps due to pathing and mass item clutter and 3) annoying because my dwarves chase them all over the place and wind up out of position.

Similar to above: if you remove all of an entity's ACTIVE_SEASON tags, it will never attack you again.

4) Finally, bit of a random question but considering the nature of this mod i thought you might know - is it possible to mod the game or a world in some way to literally turn on war between 2 civilizations? I love the vanilla feel of the game and don't like to change things too much - i would love to be constantly sieged by humans and/or elves, but my attempts at slaughtering caravans have yielded no results, and i've yet to gen a world in which the dwarves were at war with the humans or elves.

Go into the entry of the creature (i.e. creature_standard -> CREATURE:HUMAN)
Find a tag that says INTELLIGENT
Delete it and replace it with CAN_LEARN
This will create automatically hostile races. I can't remember for sure whether you need to regenerate the world for this or not though.

Thanks again, this mod is seriously epic win.

Glad you enjoy it 

Edit 2: Heh, right after i post this, top of the page there's a "when do i have to gen a new world" thread. Incase anyone was wondering - entity changes require new world.

The sticky lies!!!!!!! I edit entities while a fort is in progress all the time to "customize" and "enhance" my experience 

PROGRESS_TRIGGER_<category> and ACTIVE_SEASON can be changed even while a game is in action. Don't think there's anything else that can be changed though.