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Poll

What's your favorite method of defending your fort?

Spartan's way - Badass dwarven army
Trapper's way - Stone traps, weapon traps, and cages
Mechanic's way - Pressure plates, supports, and levers
Mason's way - A single row of walls blocking off your gates
Sniper's way - Hunters, marksdwarves, ballistae, and ranged weaponry
Beastmaster's way - War dogs, zerg swarm catsplosions, and giant badger army
Armok's way - Magma, and nothing else but a floodgate and lever to release it

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Author Topic: Preferred method of warfare?  (Read 7212 times)

noodle0117

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #30 on: July 20, 2011, 08:13:14 pm »

Strange how I'm the only one who chose mechanic's way.

Setting up large elaborate deathtraps can be time consuming, but they can also be extremely effective and even reusable (without the loss of dwarven lives) with proper planning
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franti

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #31 on: July 20, 2011, 08:19:32 pm »

1 Single trap. That's all:
Make a 25x5 channel, 15 z-levels deep. Build a 10x3 Bridge, and then leave a single wall to act as a pillar, then another 10x3 Bridge, and another pillar, and then a 3x3 bridge. Put a pressure plate on both pillars, and before the first bridge. link them all up to the big bridges. Link a lever up to the small one, colapse it when goblins get near, if they get near. Set all bridges to colapse.

Usually ends in shattered goblins. I like to put a couple bears and dogs down there to kill the wounded goblins: they almost never are capable of fighting back. Or a spike set-up, or a drowning pit. whatever works.

perhaps surround the pit with Fortifications so dwarves can take shots at the goblins who try to stay on the pillars.

This is sort of my signature: all fortresses are named FellBridge the X of X.
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Lagslayer

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #32 on: July 20, 2011, 08:34:29 pm »

Since I use danger rooms, the Spartan way is the only way to give them any sort of chance. Though, if I want to go after the HFS, I'll use the trapper method with weapon traps to deal with the goblins. Mass cage traps is boring and stone fall traps are largely ineffective. I want blood!

For the HFS, I go Spartan again. Normal traps don't work and upright spike hallways require your dwarves to pull a lever. Cave-ins and obsidianizing are only temporary fixes, rarely capable of eliminating the HFS on their own. And besides, the Spartan way makes for more epic battles.
« Last Edit: July 20, 2011, 08:37:30 pm by Lagslayer »
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Catastrophic lolcats

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #33 on: July 20, 2011, 08:58:09 pm »

I'm a trapper/sniper.

I enjoy narrow bridges across pits with marksdwarf putting pressure on anyone trying to cross. It seems a little less "cheaty" than using straight out traps or setting up a pit with weapon traps.

0++☺+++++☺++0
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║☺╬···╥···╬☺║
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Always fun to set up and use!
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DrKillPatient

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #34 on: July 20, 2011, 09:21:47 pm »

I'm currently looking into making the entrance to my fortress double as a pressurized magma cannon to flash-fry any undesirable entrants. Bringing the magma up will be hard though, I've never successfully done it before.
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jc6036

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #35 on: July 20, 2011, 09:29:17 pm »

The goblins walk through a medium sized hallway of alternating cage and buzzsaw traps, then I send in my mopup sword and hammer/spear squad. I like the reports of goblins losing like 2 limbs running through the gauntlet, only to have his head chopped off by a swordsdwarf : P
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Shotgun5559

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #36 on: July 20, 2011, 10:07:25 pm »

most of the time when i play DF, i play a .31.13 that i found on my laptop

my defense consists of letting humans in towns that i embark in fight gobolins while i'm safely locked away in my fort
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dwarfhoplite

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #37 on: July 21, 2011, 04:18:51 am »

Strange how I'm the only one who chose mechanic's way.

Setting up large elaborate deathtraps can be time consuming, but they can also be extremely effective and even reusable (without the loss of dwarven lives) with proper planning
Whats wrong with losing dwarven lives? I even equip my cannon fodder squads with copper to make them die easier. Sometimes they have too much time to live between sieges and become near legendary but copper armour will keep them wounded
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dwarfhoplite

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #38 on: July 25, 2011, 08:34:32 am »

I use walls and gate not to seal goblins outside but inside
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Lexx

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #39 on: July 25, 2011, 08:39:24 am »

I like a unit of the most veteran melee fighters in one squad with the militia commander. And a squad of the best marksdwarves. These elite are armed with the best items in the fort. Other squads are just proving grounds for the masses that are expendable. My forts tend to have many war animals. usually cave crocs, alligators, war dogs and generally whatever is dangerous I can catch and breed. Had some forts with war dragons. Their fire incinerated their fair share of my side as much as the enemy!
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Agent_Irons

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #40 on: July 25, 2011, 11:33:15 am »

I keep a squad of melee dwarves training in a weak danger room(one training spear per tile, I don't have any legendaries after about a year) and marksdwarves on hunting duty. I have an unprotected entrance to the crundle-infested caverns for live-fire training. After I modded crundle scale to be useful, I decorated essentially every item in the fortress with it. :P It drops in stacks of 5 to 10, and I have two legendary bone carvers.

I have a drowning trap(unused, but tested!), and I'm going to add in marksdwarf emplacements and an animal watchtower this afternoon.

Simply covering the map in buzzsaw traps is both boring and lame. My plan for my other fort is to use marksdwarf emplacements covering a long drawbridge over some spikes linked to a lever. Not too exploity, but almost impenetrable.
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Skorpion

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #41 on: July 25, 2011, 02:26:13 pm »

Mason mostly, but only to funnel invaders into the entrance to be spartaned.
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A tendon in the skull has been torn!
The Raven has been knocked unconcious!

Elves do it in trees. Humans do it in wooden structures. Dwarves? Dwarves do it underground. With magma.

LilGunmanX

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #42 on: July 25, 2011, 02:39:39 pm »

I usually do a little bit of everything except marksman, since I wasn't able to ever figure out how marksmen work properly. I am typical to build large, elaborate traps based on creativity. Magma? Screw that, I have exploding-beer hallways. My guards are Rutherers, and I'll usually keep a good amount of them in my main hallway. I like mass-breeding Elk Bird for their meat and bones. I also try to keep a GCS or hopefully two around so I can capture a forgotten beast and weaponize it. My favorite is when they have poison gas breath, so I can make a gas-chamber.

So sort of like beastmaster and trapper put together. I keep an able-bodied military of Dwarves outfitted with exotic weaponry as my main fighting force, supplemented by a few top-skill big game hunters.
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Patchy

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Re: Preferred method of warfare?
« Reply #43 on: July 25, 2011, 03:06:12 pm »

Trappers way with an eventual upgrade to mechanics way for an older fort. Afterall normal traps don't stop the trap immune, but repeating spike trap fields and auto-magmabath chambers do.
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