Cave dwellers

[Skyguard]

Is there any logic to cave dwellers attacks? I am at my forth fort and each one has new beat species living in the caves and I am always in a massive war with them. I lose good soldiers, civilians and gain fat stacks of nothing. What provokes them to attack?

[Skyguard]

Originally posted by yaxpax:

Apparently they are also triggered just by number of dwarfs that can access the cavern. I blocked every access to caverns via doors, and the moment I dig out a non-blocked hole into cavers invasion alert appears. I now need a small army to clear caverns from swallow men. Killing them group by group does not work: they soon invade again.

Stupid thing is that I cannot anyhow give access to the caves for monster slayers and block access for my own dwarfs. If I open the doors then entire fort decides to take a stroll. I am starting to hate this game for not having basic things like door filters.

The AI may be horrible, but the game makes amazing use of them all the same. They lie in ambushes in water, they drown your good soldiers.

[Saphels]

Originally posted by yaxpax:

Apparently they are also triggered just by number of dwarfs that can access the cavern. I blocked every access to caverns via doors, and the moment I dig out a non-blocked hole into cavers invasion alert appears. I now need a small army to clear caverns from swallow men. Killing them group by group does not work: they soon invade again.

Stupid thing is that I cannot anyhow give access to the caves for monster slayers and block access for my own dwarfs. If I open the doors then entire fort decides to take a stroll. I am starting to hate this game for not having basic things like door filters.

Have you tried to put no go zones?

[Grimbot]

Originally posted by Skyguard:

Originally posted by Bloop:

For now you could wall off the bit of cavern you need as nothing can break walls atm.
For a less gamey way of handling things try traps placed in choke points and burrows where dwarves should avoid.

That's the thing, I kinda want to go there. It's the largest part of the cave and I wanted to forage there for rock nuts. I dug a tunnel and then suddenly all hell broke loose. 50 of them spawned at a time, I've sent my 2 hero squads, the bloody beatmen started drowning them since they can't win in a straight fight. I won in the end and it wasn't this bad since, but I lost around 30 dwarves. It almost felt scripted.

I had a fort lost to above ground agitation, and I feared the same thing when I breached the caverns in my second fort. I prepped three decent squads to oversee the rapid building of a corridor between two pillars, built a bunch of blocks, and gave the command. The second we breached, fifty fish men emerged from the water. Immediately, dwarves ran out of the burrow to drink and fish and enjoy the spore-filled air. The last idiot with a salt rock block got stabbed in the face and dropped his block. Every mother in the military somehow got drawn into a fray outside the wall, and it took so long for someone to come replace the block that a tree grew there. And by the time the tree got cut down, I'd lost all of the mothers and their babies, for a total of fifteen dwarves.

So basically... Dwarf Fortress. I will say that agitation is broken, though. It never relents as far as I can tell. Next time I breach, I expect another fifty fish men.

[Blargg]

I think the agitation mechanic will be fine once it gets dissected by some dwarf scientists. It's definitely bare bones and would be great if Bay12 could add some value to elven caravans/diplomats by having them able to analyze and negotiate with savage wildlife on your behalf to manage their hostility.

For the time being, I would recommend a liberal utilization of walls, extensively-trapped hallways, and forbidden pathways.

[suejak]

I just lost my fort to cavern dwellers. Mine were reptile people. They weren't so bad at first - I just caught them in cage traps and whatnot - but apparently I should have made a ton more because their second invasion was two waves for about 20 or 30 total. We stopped them eventually but lost about 30 dorfs total.

And then the third invasion began. This one was about five waves. I think it must have been 40-50 warriors total invading my fort of 60. They had steel spears and just smashed through us. Absolute slaughter, I completely wiped.

This was my first difficult fort after three easy successes, so I was happy to really let the game walk over me.

[suejak]

For the record, my third fort has no fauna at all in the only cavern layer I've found (-100 z level by the magma sea), so no invasions there. I'm completely free to do whatever I want down there and have been building a massive 100 z-level minecart tunnel unharassed.

We'll get fallen beasts sometimes but they're easy so far.

[yaxpax]

Originally posted by Saphels:

Originally posted by yaxpax:

Apparently they are also triggered just by number of dwarfs that can access the cavern. I blocked every access to caverns via doors, and the moment I dig out a non-blocked hole into cavers invasion alert appears. I now need a small army to clear caverns from swallow men. Killing them group by group does not work: they soon invade again.

Stupid thing is that I cannot anyhow give access to the caves for monster slayers and block access for my own dwarfs. If I open the doors then entire fort decides to take a stroll. I am starting to hate this game for not having basic things like door filters.

Have you tried to put no go zones?

Do you mean traffic control? That barely makes any difference if dwarf has a reason to go there. I guess it could prevent wondering but since caverns are covered with weapons, armor and bodies there is always a reason to go there. I tried to forbid all items in all known layers but there is still somewhere somehow a dead dwarf they want to put into a tomb.

[Celgaming]

Many have said these already but:

• Wall off sections of the cavern you use.
  
• Don't be greedy down there so they don't get agitated.
  
• Build traps leading to your fort for invaders.
  
• Have a squad dedicated for defending underground areas doing patrols.
  
• Build smart. Make a caver fort. Have windows Xbow Dwarfs can shoot from.
  
• Wall off your farms.
  
• Wall off your fishing spot (assign it).

[nrusselluk]

one of the first things i do is set zone only fishing/drinking in the standing orders options.
and add one of each zone, in a safe area.

[lusterredux]

Seems like cave dwellers and fallen beasts are heavily bugged. The cave dweller sieges and maybe fallen beasts are also responsible for the somewhat common save loading errors. I've had instances where the cave dwellers would just instantly replace themselves as they're killed off, I'm talking dozens of waves in a row. They also tanked my FPS until I retreated my dwarves and closed off the caverns, which instantly fixed my FPS back to 100 even though they were all still there.

Anyway, just wait it out. It's widespread enough it'll be bugfixed sometime soon. Probably.

[Helios]

Originally posted by lusterredux:

Seems like cave dwellers and fallen beasts are heavily bugged. The cave dweller sieges and maybe fallen beasts are also responsible for the somewhat common save loading errors. I've had instances where the cave dwellers would just instantly replace themselves as they're killed off, I'm talking dozens of waves in a row. They also tanked my FPS until I retreated my dwarves and closed off the caverns, which instantly fixed my FPS back to 100 even though they were all still there.

Anyway, just wait it out. It's widespread enough it'll be bugfixed sometime soon. Probably.

i deactivated fallen beast for my save (megabeast attack) because i had trouble loading saves after new beast arrived .

[THEOTHERJESTER]

I'm at peace with the Olm men tribes in my caves which I didn't think was possible. They're not invaders and they just kind of walk around. I get that alert for the cavern dwellers but they never actually attack. I'm willing to bet that if the tribes of cavern dwellers are hostile, someone in your civ probably did something to cause it. Would be cool as hell if you could interact with them more and get like trading going with them. They should only have like really basic stuff for trade and like loads of leathers/fish/food etc. and not value cabinets, chests or anything else a civilized race would.

[Skyguard]

Originally posted by Celgaming:

Many have said these already but:

• Wall off sections of the cavern you use.
  
• Don't be greedy down there so they don't get agitated.
  
• Build traps leading to your fort for invaders.
  
• Have a squad dedicated for defending underground areas doing patrols.
  
• Build smart. Make a caver fort. Have windows Xbow Dwarfs can shoot from.
  
• Wall off your farms.
  
• Wall off your fishing spot (assign it).

I'd like to just wall everything off, but dwarves just climb over them and so do the enemies too.

[[x] ForJest]

Originally posted by suejak:

I just lost my fort to cavern dwellers. Mine were reptile people. They weren't so bad at first - I just caught them in cage traps and whatnot - but apparently I should have made a ton more because their second invasion was two waves for about 20 or 30 total. We stopped them eventually but lost about 30 dorfs total.

And then the third invasion began. This one was about five waves. I think it must have been 40-50 warriors total invading my fort of 60. They had steel spears and just smashed through us. Absolute slaughter, I completely wiped.

This was my first difficult fort after three easy successes, so I was happy to really let the game walk over me.

Every season my "Rodent Spearmen" are spawning in packs of 6. Each pack has 5-7 dwellers.

Each dweller is ambusher, waiting to be spotted. I was VERY surprised visiting first level cavern after year of absence - I have got 24 packs of agressive dwellers and lost one of my best Axe Lord to them.

Pros:
- constant source of steel sheilds and spears to help my metal industry.
- dwaven engineering to apply. To speedup derodentification of cave I began to train siege operators, as I been to kill 30-45 dwellers each season and 120-170 if I didn't visited cavern over a year.

Cons'
- Noticable FPS drop every season, many labor to collect new spears and making new weapon traps from them. At my estimate I will need 50 traps (500 spears) and one cat to automate caverns cleanup.
- too many corpses are getting lag everything - my storage tab, my FPS
- 120 constantly lurking entities are horrorible to FPS too.
- there is no more fauna spawns in cave lvl1. Every poor animal got killed instantly. Including forgotten beasts.

[Helios]

Originally posted by x ForJest:

Originally posted by suejak:

I just lost my fort to cavern dwellers. Mine were reptile people. They weren't so bad at first - I just caught them in cage traps and whatnot - but apparently I should have made a ton more because their second invasion was two waves for about 20 or 30 total. We stopped them eventually but lost about 30 dorfs total.

And then the third invasion began. This one was about five waves. I think it must have been 40-50 warriors total invading my fort of 60. They had steel spears and just smashed through us. Absolute slaughter, I completely wiped.

This was my first difficult fort after three easy successes, so I was happy to really let the game walk over me.

Every season my "Rodent Spearmen" are spawning in packs of 6. Each pack has 5-7 dwellers.

Each dweller is ambusher, waiting to be spotted. I was VERY surprised visiting first level cavern after year of absence - I have got 24 packs of agressive dwellers and lost one of my best Axe Lord to them.

Pros:
- constant source of steel sheilds and spears to help my metal industry.
- dwaven engineering to apply. To speedup derodentification of cave I began to train siege operators, as I been to kill 30-45 dwellers each season and 120-170 if I didn't visited cavern over a year.

Cons'
- Noticable FPS drop every season, many labor to collect new spears and making new weapon traps from them. At my estimate I will need 50 traps (500 spears) and one cat to automate caverns cleanup.
- too many corpses are getting lag everything - my storage tab, my FPS
- 120 constantly lurking entities are horrorible to FPS too.
- there is no more fauna spawns in cave lvl1. Every poor animal got killed instantly. Including forgotten beasts.

cat for noticing the anmbusher?