how to attract more invaders to your fort?

[Oi Meu Chapa]

It's a funny question, but I have a chronic problem with my fortresses, I'm personally a big fan of combat and I create multiple militia squads and try whenever possible to equip them with steel

but what almost always happens is that I have 3-4 squads and when siege occurs, I see 7 idiot goblin and that's it.

So I wonder, is there any way to... make the situation worse?

Or is it just waiting and praying for things to get more chaotic?


I also have a second question, I wanted to create a fortress on the surface in order to be entirely military, but I'm worried that creating a fortress on the surface might "completely prevent an invasion" because I know that invaders apparently can't break through walls.

[Fel]

More wealth, more exported wealth and more population usually increase the scale of the sieges.
My forts with about 120-150 dwarves tend to get sieges with 20+ goblins at once for example.

Weirdly enough, the old massive scale attacks were apparently a bug, even if they did make things a lot more challenging.

That being said, you can definitely get some larger and also stronger groups to attack you.
For starters, if you have a bunch of artifacts, you will have goblins show up with a real army (with proper skills and equipment) demanding that you deliver them the artifact they chose.
If you deny their request or take too long, they will just attack and can be dangerous even to trained dwarves.

If you send missions to attack enemy sites, they will in turn send their army to attack you, again with larger groups as well as skills and equipment to match.


Even if you don't use traps, you will eventually come to a point where goblins themselves are not a threat anymore as more dwarves get combat skills to legendary and beyond, on top of getting steel masterwork armor and weapons).
The caverns can offer some resistance through forgotten beasts that should pop out regularly.
You can also trigger a war with other civilisations by attacking them.
Humans or dwarves can often prove to be relatively dangerous, elves can either be monsters (especially if they have strong animals and/or have high skills/stats) or weaklings (if their skills and stats are not up to par, their wooden equipment makes them sub-par).
Necromancer towers can make for decent enemies as well for a while, especially since undeads don't get tired.

Last but not least, if you feel that everything is too weak to contend with your military, you can always open HFS and try to use your military to stop the clowns, although usually the result is your dwarves dying while barely making a dent on their numbers.



On the topic of the above-ground fortress, you can always leave the main gate open at all times or even "simulate" them finding some natural caverns (dug by you obviously) or secret passages leading to various sensitive parts of your fort.
Another way would be to change how you approach the idea a bit and make it more like a big village with a military encampment, not having walls surrounding the whole place but instead relying on patrols and maybe a few choke points.

[Oi Meu Chapa]

Originally posted by Fel:

More wealth, more exported wealth and more population usually increase the scale of the sieges.
My forts with about 120-150 dwarves tend to get sieges with 20+ goblins at once for example.

Weirdly enough, the old massive scale attacks were apparently a bug, even if they did make things a lot more challenging.

That being said, you can definitely get some larger and also stronger groups to attack you.
For starters, if you have a bunch of artifacts, you will have goblins show up with a real army (with proper skills and equipment) demanding that you deliver them the artifact they chose.
If you deny their request or take too long, they will just attack and can be dangerous even to trained dwarves.

If you send missions to attack enemy sites, they will in turn send their army to attack you, again with larger groups as well as skills and equipment to match.


Even if you don't use traps, you will eventually come to a point where goblins themselves are not a threat anymore as more dwarves get combat skills to legendary and beyond, on top of getting steel masterwork armor and weapons).
The caverns can offer some resistance through forgotten beasts that should pop out regularly.
You can also trigger a war with other civilisations by attacking them.
Humans or dwarves can often prove to be relatively dangerous, elves can either be monsters (especially if they have strong animals and/or have high skills/stats) or weaklings (if their skills and stats are not up to par, their wooden equipment makes them sub-par).
Necromancer towers can make for decent enemies as well for a while, especially since undeads don't get tired.

Last but not least, if you feel that everything is too weak to contend with your military, you can always open HFS and try to use your military to stop the clowns, although usually the result is your dwarves dying while barely making a dent on their numbers.



On the topic of the above-ground fortress, you can always leave the main gate open at all times or even "simulate" them finding some natural caverns (dug by you obviously) or secret passages leading to various sensitive parts of your fort.
Another way would be to change how you approach the idea a bit and make it more like a big village with a military encampment, not having walls surrounding the whole place but instead relying on patrols and maybe a few choke points.

Thanks for the reply.

I don't know exactly what was happening with my fort, but I only started receiving attacks when I had 300+ dwarves, but as I said, it was just a few poorly armed goblins.

Maybe the problem is that in this fortress at least I didn't allow any public places, so there was no tavern open to the world, etc., so maybe that's why I received attacks so late, I'm relatively new to the game, so I may have underestimated the impact of the information being spread.

I also continually used pillaging missions in the goblin bases in the hope of provoking a proportional response.

It may be relevant, but the map I was on was only 100 years old, so is it a lack of population? Even though I embarked with a fort somewhat close to a dark fortress with +3000 goblins.

In the end, 5 years passed in my fort, and only 2 interesting things happened, one of my dwarfs was seriously injured by a lucky shot from a goblin archer.

and a dragon attacked me when most of my dwarfs were attacking goblin bases and I only had 10 dwarven defenders... incredibly I only lost 3 even attacking on the grass because I was curious how chaotic it would be but in the end the dragon was killed.

After that I gave up on the save without understanding what was actually happening.

I had also embarked somewhat close to a necromancer tower but the necromancer never attacked me (I was not in the evil biome)

Also about forgotten beasts, only 2 appeared during my entire save, besides a cyclops and the dragon, except for the dragon everyone was killed without injuries which ended up being kind of bizarre for me because when I confronted my dwarves they were quite low in combat skill.

About the wealth of the fort, I had embarked near the Dark Fortress, as I tried to create a steel, weapons and armor industry as soon as possible, so almost all my wealth in my fort came from artifacts, (I had approximately 10 at the end of the save) because I thought I would have a headache with this save related to invasions, it ended up being one of the most peaceful saves bizarrely.

But in general almost all the wealth in my fort came from military and wealth, being approximately 300k (I don't know if that's a lot or not)

I didn't try to attack neutral civilizations, because in the save I was expecting that boarding near a dark fortress would cause a large invasion... but it didn't happen.

I didn't open HFS because even though I was doing terribly well in the save, I was well aware that I would be obliterated, as I already dealt with a clown alone and it was a nightmare in another save.

My initial idea in this save was to embark near the goblin and create a military fort with half of my population being militia, but apparently the goblins in this save were strangely hippie


and yes, trying to create a "human village" with dwarves seems interesting, but personally I'm quite excited for the DF combat update, one of the things I really miss here is enemy miners or anything that breaches a wall

[Fel]

Things can vary widely from one fort to the next, sometimes even in the same world, so it can be hard to give definite answers.

What I can tell you is that most of my forts forbid visitors and I stop my world gen at 50 or 100 years as well, so it shouldn't be the only cause at least.

You mentionned two forgotten beasts but followed up talking about mega beasts instead, so I'm not sure if you are mixing up the two or if you got two of each.
Forgotten beasts are randomly generated creatures that roam the cavern layers, opening and exploring the three caverns usually give you regular warnings about them showing up (and fighting each others if several are in the same cavern).

[Oi Meu Chapa]

Originally posted by Fel:

Things can vary widely from one fort to the next, sometimes even in the same world, so it can be hard to give definite answers.

What I can tell you is that most of my forts forbid visitors and I stop my world gen at 50 or 100 years as well, so it shouldn't be the only cause at least.

You mentionned two forgotten beasts but followed up talking about mega beasts instead, so I'm not sure if you are mixing up the two or if you got two of each.
Forgotten beasts are randomly generated creatures that roam the cavern layers, opening and exploring the three caverns usually give you regular warnings about them showing up (and fighting each others if several are in the same cavern).

probably the confusion about the text is because of the way I'm writing

my English is quite weak, so I'm actively using Google Translate and some mistakes can happen.

but to be clearer with text, during my entire save, only 2 forgotten beasts appeared in the cave, 1 cyclops on the surface, 1 dragon on the surface and 3 or 4 goblin sieges with less than 10 goblins, after that I gave up on the save and deleted it

[Climhazzard]

I've had a lot of forts like that. Though my current fort started sending sieges of 50+ goblins very early in it's life cycle.

[Oi Meu Chapa]

Originally posted by Climhazzard:

I've had a lot of forts like that. Though my current fort started sending sieges of 50+ goblins very early in it's life cycle.

Personally, I like maps like this, constant pressure in the game forces you to constantly adapt and improvise, until you eventually fall.

Generally I play more for the challenge than trying to build "mega projects" or crazy things like that because I find the construction system quite problematic because it is micro intensive.

for example, the fortress that I had 300 dorf I had to make 300 individual bedrooms, it was one of the slowest and most uninteresting things I did.

[amade]

In my current fortress, I've been regularly getting 150+ gobbo sieges, until it escalated into 150+ gobbos on beak dog mounts. Haven't gotten trolls or other beasts yet to accompany them. Regular raids and pillaging on their sites have reduced their annual siege strength to a dozen or two bowmen lately. Elves are picking up the slack, but they're still at the dozen or so ambushing bowmen stage. Looking forward to when they bring their mounts and elephants, which might be devastating.

I also accidentally stumbled onto a settlement with a seemingly small population of ~60 gobbos that turned out to have 100s of cave dragons, maneras, trolls and other assorted beasties in it that decimated my pillaging party.

[Oi Meu Chapa]

Originally posted by amade:

In my current fortress, I've been regularly getting 150+ gobbo sieges, until it escalated into 150+ gobbos on beak dog mounts. Haven't gotten trolls or other beasts yet to accompany them. Regular raids and pillaging on their sites have reduced their annual siege strength to a dozen or two bowmen lately. Elves are picking up the slack, but they're still at the dozen or so ambushing bowmen stage. Looking forward to when they bring their mounts and elephants, which might be devastating.

I also accidentally stumbled onto a settlement with a seemingly small population of ~60 gobbos that turned out to have 100s of cave dragons, maneras, trolls and other assorted beasties in it that decimated my pillaging party.

looks "Fun", And how is this fort going? What do you usually do to deal with such large invasions? And how many dwarves do you usually lose?

[amade]

Since I don't go heavy on traps and have an open fortress layout, I usually lose 2 or 3 elite dorfs on these kind of sieges, not including any civilian visitors that got caught coming/going at the wrong time.

Casualties mount up higher if I mishandle my stationing orders, the primary cause of death being over-exertion when they have to fight non-stop. I have to be careful where I position my squads to ensure enemy forces can be split along a wide front.

Traps, especially amusing ones, are mostly used to hobble the enemy rather than inflict mass casualties. I also have war grizzly bears that I keep in sealed bunkers that are released via levers to cause havoc in the flanks/rear. In a few years, I'll have war giant grizzly bears and cave dragons to add to the mix.

I also have a trapped fire-breathing FB which is giving me mixed results. Its accuracy is pretty bad and it has a low rate of fire. It also happens to be a coward which was a major disappointment.

[Oi Meu Chapa]

Originally posted by amade:

Since I don't go heavy on traps and have an open fortress layout, I usually lose 2 or 3 elite dorfs on these kind of sieges, not including any civilian visitors that got caught coming/going at the wrong time.

Casualties mount up higher if I mishandle my stationing orders, the primary cause of death being over-exertion when they have to fight non-stop. I have to be careful where I position my squads to ensure enemy forces can be split along a wide front.

Traps, especially amusing ones, are mostly used to hobble the enemy rather than inflict mass casualties. I also have war grizzly bears that I keep in sealed bunkers that are released via levers to cause havoc in the flanks/rear. In a few years, I'll have war giant grizzly bears and cave dragons to add to the mix.

I also have a trapped fire-breathing FB which is giving me mixed results. Its accuracy is pretty bad and it has a low rate of fire. It also happens to be a coward which was a major disappointment.

I've never dealt with lava transport, but I was thinking, how viable is it to create a magma-based device to set the entire map on fire and burn enemy spam?

like that magma doom device from boatmurdered.

I don't know what your fortress looks like, but just put some stone floors at the entrance and where the defending dwarves are and let it burn.

It would probably be an fps killer, but it seems like a hilarious idea to deal with.

[amade]

I've played with a magma shotgun[www.bay12forums.com] (minecarts loaded with magma and other stuff used as projectiles) in an older fortress in the pre-steam version. There are countless ways to commit mass murder in DF, but I prefer to let my dorfs vent some steam instead of letting machines do the killing. My current embark is on a volcano, so flooding the map with magma should I feel like it would not be a difficult task.

[amade]

Speak of the devil, I just had almost a hundred elves on war tigers, leopards and horses ambush me. Thankfully, no elephants. Only casualty (so far) was a visiting Count who got ripped to shreds by a war tiger, and now I'm trying to mop up the scattered survivors because their mounts are panicking after the massacre.

[Oi Meu Chapa]

Originally posted by amade:

Speak of the devil, I just had almost a hundred elves on war tigers, leopards and horses ambush me. Thankfully, no elephants. Only casualty (so far) was a visiting Count who got ripped to shreds by a war tiger, and now I'm trying to mop up the scattered survivors because their mounts are panicking after the massacre.

Is there any penalty for losing one visitor or one visiting noble during a siege?

[Fel]

The civilisation the visitor is a member of will take note of it as a negative against yours, but nowhere near as bad as if you actively killed the visitor yourself.

[Oi Meu Chapa]

Originally posted by amade:

I've played with a magma shotgun[www.bay12forums.com] (minecarts loaded with magma and other stuff used as projectiles) in an older fortress in the pre-steam version. There are countless ways to commit mass murder in DF, but I prefer to let my dorfs vent some steam instead of letting machines do the killing. My current embark is on a volcano, so flooding the map with magma should I feel like it would not be a difficult task.

Originally posted by amade:

I've played with a magma shotgun[www.bay12forums.com] (minecarts loaded with magma and other stuff used as projectiles) in an older fortress in the pre-steam version. There are countless ways to commit mass murder in DF, but I prefer to let my dorfs vent some steam instead of letting machines do the killing. My current embark is on a volcano, so flooding the map with magma should I feel like it would not be a difficult task.

I want to try to do things like that but considering my competence it's easier for me to burn all my fortress and create a boatmurdered 2: electric boogalo, than actually making good use of it.

I also have a certain fear of entering into unusual projects because I end up getting involved in something too complex that would take 5 hours to finish