Is there a way to stop gnomes from attacking everything?

[Liru]

Literally the only thing that could've saved by kingdom was the 9 nomads that arrived, I set every single squad to avoid combat, they all ran up a hill, saw a bear then all walked into it 1 by 1 and died, I didn't mark the bear to be attacked by any squad (I checked), all gnomes should avoid combat, the bear was miles away, I have no clue what happened.

But anyway, that's 4 hours of my life gone due to suicidal AI.

[Wraith_Magus]

You should have the following settings:

1. Put all gnomes in a squad to control their behavior. I have a bunch of "Civ Squad ##" squads for civilians.

2. Have a position (I call mine "noncombatant") with all boxes unchecked besides "retreat if bleeding". "Survival Instinct" is a good perk. I have a "nudist" uniform for civvies, but if you're absolutely drowning in hides, feel free to set up all your civvies in leather.

3. Have a formation ("Civilian Squad" for me) for all your noncombatants, and have only "avoid enemies" checked. Do not leave "defend gnomes" checked, that sends them berserk.

In a pinch, you can force a retreat by having an extra position set to equip something like wooden shields, and have "retreat to equip" checked, and stockpile some wood shileds. You can set any individual to go pick up a shield using that. (And wood isn't that rare, so you shouldn't run out of that stuff).

[Liru]

Originally posted by wraith_magus:

You should have the following settings:

1. Put all gnomes in a squad to control their behavior. I have a bunch of "Civ Squad ##" squads for civilians.

2. Have a position (I call mine "noncombatant") with all boxes unchecked besides "retreat if bleeding". "Survival Instinct" is a good perk. I have a "nudist" uniform for civvies, but if you're absolutely drowning in hides, feel free to set up all your civvies in leather.

3. Have a formation ("Civilian Squad" for me) for all your noncombatants, and have only "avoid enemies" checked. Do not leave "defend gnomes" checked, that sends them berserk.

In a pinch, you can force a retreat by having an extra position set to equip something like wooden shields, and have "retreat to equip" checked, and stockpile some wood shileds. You can set any individual to go pick up a shield using that. (And wood isn't that rare, so you shouldn't run out of that stuff).

Thing is, these were supposed to be fighters, I basically spent 10 minutes setting them up to only attack this one zombie, I made sure they weren't defending gnomes, they'd avoid combat with any unmarked NPCs and they'd attack marked NPCs. As soon as they spotted the bear they went for it, I quickly opened the military tab, the bear wasn't marked to be attacked, so I had no choice other than to watch my only chance of survival all walk up to punch this bear 1 by 1.

[Wraith_Magus]

Originally posted by Liru:

Thing is, these were supposed to be fighters, I basically spent 10 minutes setting them up to only attack this one zombie, I made sure they weren't defending gnomes, they'd avoid combat with any unmarked NPCs and they'd attack marked NPCs. As soon as they spotted the bear they went for it, I quickly opened the military tab, the bear wasn't marked to be attacked, so I had no choice other than to watch my only chance of survival all walk up to punch this bear 1 by 1.

If by "punch" you mean you were going to send in unarmored gnomes against zombies, you were probably going to die an even more horrid death against that zombie, anyway...

Anyway, military gnomes will attack anything they see, themselves. If you don't want them to attack anything they see, you need "avoid enemies" set on.

If you want your gnomes to survive, you will also want to make sure they're armed and armored. Bears are Godless Killing Machines, and will murder unarmored gnomes. If you have "Way of the Gnome" set up, you might be able to beat a honey badger if you gang up on it, but that's about it. Use the hides you get from this to make leather armor, which is as effective against bludgeoning weapons as copper armor is against slashing weapons.

Also, for survival's sake, set up some stockpiles with a few bandages sitting out anywhere you might have fights (especially your "main gate") and set everyone to "retreat if bleeding" - they will run to the nearest bandage stockpile to instantly heal themselves to full by touching the magic bandages so long as they don't have major organ damage (that takes a hospital).

Furthermore, TRAIN YOUR FREAKIN' GNOMES!!

You will need at least two "training formations": One with all nudists set to "Way of the Gnome", or maybe one slot to carrying a tower shield, and one with gnomes dual-wielding stone/wood versions of the weapons they will use in real combat. The practice weapons setup should have no armor - it just reduces your dodge chance. Leave them in this until it's time for real combat. Armor just slows you down, and let them do chores with their practice weapons.

You should set your military gnomes to have two professions - "!Warrior Jobs" and "!Mech Only". !Warrior Jobs (the ! makes the gnomes who have that job appear at the top of the "Assign" tab, as it is alphabetically before any letter) should have jobs like farming and mining and mechanic. !Mech Only should have nothing but mechanic, and otherwise idle. Set them to !Mech Only when you know another goblin attack will come soon, and you want them to rest up, so they won't be asleep when the goblins come. Sounding an alarm is Mechanics, so leave that one active.

I set a training schedule of 2 of the 3 slots for each squad, with squads in rotation as to who is taking breaks, and leaving the training fields at my gates. (Crossbow/Musket squads in elevated positions where they can pick off attackers as they charge your gates. Make the entrance have a ditch so that the only entrance is over a snaking path that gives you more shots at them as they charge, and use a few stone doors to further slow the enemy down. Remember, walls block LOS, but fences and ditches don't.)

Make sure that EVERY military gnome gets in at least some Way of the Gnome training. WotG attacks 5 times as fast, which gives you 5 times the dodge training. If you have a naked-but-for-tower-shield gnome, they will gain *crazy* shield skill from being attacked by a WotG gnome. Train your squads alternatingly between a weapon and WotG, and have at least a couple WotG "sensei" units who are permanent trainers. (When they get 200 fighting and 100 dodge skill, training with those characters will make any new recruit's skill levels FLY upwards, since watching them bleeds experience.) You will need squads of at least 3 for optimal training (there's usually at least one on break, and you need at least 2 to train). Set any weapon trainers to "frenzy", except for tower shields, which should be "guard".

Train weapons with dual-wielded stone axes or whatever weapon you're training. Remember that shields are deadly on offense as well as defense. My main squad is a pair of leather, shield, and axe, an armor, axe, and shield, armor, hammer and shield, and a armor and tower shield squad with "Shield Wall" set as a formation perk, and the shielder set to "taunt".

Skills of 50+ (which train much faster with units already trained with WotG), with bronze-tier equipment, and you'll be chopping limbs off goblins and bears left and right.

[Arryu]

Just wondering if you had "defend gnomes" selected. If so then they will attack any enemy they see.

if your gnomes were unarmored, wraith is right, you probably would have been overfun with zombies asyour gnomes got infected, died, and reanimated as more zombies.

If you're using unarmed gnomes make sure you have the "way of the gnome" perk, as the bonus to dodge is essential.

[Liru]

Originally posted by Arryu:

Just wondering if you had "defend gnomes" selected. If so then they will attack any enemy they see.

if your gnomes were unarmored, wraith is right, you probably would have been overfun with zombies asyour gnomes got infected, died, and reanimated as more zombies.

If you're using unarmed gnomes make sure you have the "way of the gnome" perk, as the bonus to dodge is essential.

Only thing that was checked on that window was avoid enemies. And yeah, probably would have died, the whole thing was a mess from the start, I made a profession just for a gnome to make badages and he would still rather idle, everything was set up right, but in the end everyone bled to death in the hospital and my gnomes couldn't be bothered to move the corpses to the graveyard island.

Again, I spent 10 minutes setting this up, I made sure that these gnomes would attack the zombie (which was at this point biting my emus) and nobody but that zombie, all 9 of them were part of a squad and the bear wasn't even marked to be attacked and it was well out of the way.

I'm just turning zombies off for future maps, I basically had a zombie with no arms or legs go through 3 gnomes somehow, which turned 2 of my tanks into zombies which pretty much did it for me.

[Wraith_Magus]

You don't want to have anyone set to bandage, you just have bandages in a stockpile that is accessable. Soldiers bandage themselves. If you are talking about doctors, they only work after a gnome with organ injuries actually gets to a bed. This usually doesn't happen if they are merely bleeding, since they just bandage themselves, then go back to the fight. It only happens if someone breaks their leg or puts out an eye. (Apparently, magic bandages heal a squished eyeball...)

Marking someone for attack merely brings gnomes who can't see the target in to attack the target. If they see a target, they attack a target.

Remember, you can't just look at the "position" page, you need to look at the "formation" page, and its perks, as well.

In general, you shouldn't need to turn zombies off if you're doing things correctly. I haven't even seen a zombie yet, and I have them turned on, and have a military that severs limbs with each swing of the axe. You don't want to just mine willy-nilly, you need to light the path with torches. And torches take 2 trees to create, so you're going to want to have a good lumber industry going before you go mining.

Take it slow, and train up a military on wood and stone weapons before worrying about anything but copper/bronze. You can generally survive purely upon the metal ore you can get in trade, anyway. The faster you go, the more dangerous enemies you face before you're ready for them.

Games like these, it's all about preparation. If you're not prepared, you're screwed, if you are prepared, there isn't even a threat to you at all.

[Liru]

Again, I spent 10 minutes setting it up, I looked at every tab in immense detail, I made sure that they all avoided enemies unless they were specifically marked. The bear was not marked, they shouldn't have gone out of their way to attack it, yet they did, in another world I have the exact same military setup and they obey orders, this has not happened again but I can't figure out what I did differently.

And I didn't set a gnome to bandage other gnomes, I set a gnome to create bandages, which he didn't do, the workshops weren't assigned and they weren't suspended, I had fibre to last for years and his profession included everything that was needed to make bandages, he just stood there instead as everyone else bled to death.

[Wraith_Magus]

It still sounds like you had "defend gnomes" checked in the formations tab.

As for the weaver not making bandages, just as a double-check, make sure you have both a loom and a tailor built, and weaving and tailoring enabled as labors, and "workshop" set as a higher priority on that gnome than any other enabled labor, that they don't have other workshop labors that might distract them enabled, the tailor workshop has a higher priority than the loom, as well as craft bandages to 40 or some number set, and that you didn't uncheck "Accept Generated Jobs" in either workshop.

[Vermillion Cardinal]

It's also possible that your weaver somehow got upset. He could've been attacked, affected by getting near the battle while attempting to haul corpses, or affected by the presence of gnome corpses. Upset gnomes will not work until they get happier, which of course is fatal when everyone's bleeding and you don't have bandages. If this was the case then assigning someone else may have helped.

If your troops were still distant enough from the bear I would've suggested creating temporary guard points in the opposite direction (or near the zombie) and assigning your squads there. Unless it's a bug wherein they've become fixated on the bear (which I doubt; others have reported gnomes rushing to fight bears but it usually turns out that something else caused the issue, like bears getting surprised when they encounter gnomes around corners) your gnomes will stay there and hopefully stay out of the bear encounter as well once the designation is removed.

[Liru]

Sounds like a huge pain, but I guess I'll take note for the future. The issue was, the bear was on top of a hill, a gnome got to the top, spotted the bear then chased after it down the hill.

As for the bandage thing, that also sounds like a huge pain, I rarely ever get any gnomads that are good at farming so it's either down to having a tiny little field for cotton etc. or putting miners onto farm duty. I'm trying my best to keep ~100 bandages stocked up but it's taxing.

Another issue is that sometimes gnomes can't walk so they bleed out, I've allowed farmers to be medics, but I'm not quite sure how it works, how would I heal a gnome that can't walk?

[Wraith_Magus]

Don't worry about what skills gnomads are good at unless it's a really hard-to-train skill (like weaponsmith or armor). You will never, ever, ever run out of farming experience to go around, (and you can always just plow another field and sell the strawberries or whatever if need be, and "suspend" the farm when it's no longer useful,) and farming is a good job for off-duty soldiers, since it trains Nimbleness, which helps raise dodge, shield block rate, and attack rate and accuracy. My soldier who's from the starting seven has 80 in farming, and started with only 10 or so, and has spent 2/3rds of his time on soldier training.

In general, there is no "potential" for being a good farmer, and I tend to like "training" people by making them farmers so that they gain more nimbleness (which translates into speed - good for training haulers up).

Otherwise, a good trick for making a gnome "disengage" is to set them to "retreat to get equipment" and then changing their position/uniform so that there's something they want to run off to go grab. Gnomes will go after a guard post if they haven't seen an enemy, but once they have seen an enemy, they will pursue and fight unless they have a preset retreat order. (You can stockpile a few stone axes/wood shields for cheap things that a gnome will go dash for. Set up a stockpile with crates at a high priority so haulers will put all your dropped gear back. If a hauler wants to charge into battle, use the "clean up" command to set other things to clean to be higher priority, then switch their hauling labor off to make them drop their job, and then reset their profession so they'll go back to hauling before you forget to reset their job.)

Also, keep in mind sometimes, it's best to just cut your losses.

If a zombie is wrecking your yaks, and you don't have the capacity to fight it, just wall off your fort, and wait for some goblins to come along and fight it for you. Control of the terrain is your ultimate trump card. Always force the enemy to fight on your terms. If you're having trouble getting things together, seal it off, regroup your military, and don't tear down the wall until you've got a wall of armored gnomes ready to fight.