My squad got wiped in two seconds ...

[Hurricane]

Right at the end of my second winter, I had a full squad who trained for a year.
They were equipped with full iron plate armor and a weapon of their choice.

Four or five undead came and wiped them out almost instantly.

So what, my option is to keep hiding?

[McFuzz]

There should be nothing in that post that would warrant a wipe to only 5 undead. I have a squad of 5, and they took out the same amount of undead in the same amount of time.

I'd be interested to know if they were actually wearing their armor properly, shielded, and what quality and type those 'individual choice' weapons were.

Soldier dwarves tend to be violently overpowered right now. If they were training and equipped, they should've taken that no problem.

[The Hat]

There is always a certain amount of randomness and undead are especially hard to put down with piercing weapons. Blunt weapons are the best as they don't bleed out, and this helps stop reanimating body parts.

I don't have much experience using traps against them but I would guess stone fall traps are a good option to crush them.

https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Undead

As per the wiki it says Flails are the best, with Maces coming in next and Hammers third. I wasn't aware of flails being used so that is interesting if a bit specialized for anything but a large fort. Discipline is apparently very important too.

Its good practice to have a hammer or mace squad in bigger fortresses anyway, for when you get heavily armored opponents or say a titan made out of metal. That's not really viable early on so just go with some traps, non pet war dogs are also a cheap replenishing source of ammunition to throw at enemies before (or when) the dwarves engage, just keep a few breeding pairs separate.

[RetroJL]

Originally posted by Hurricane:

Right at the end of my second winter, I had a full squad who trained for a year.
They were equipped with full iron plate armor and a weapon of their choice.

Four or five undead came and wiped them out almost instantly.

So what, my option is to keep hiding?

What weapons are you using? Axedwarves don't fare well against the undead. Chopping off an undeads arm just gives your dwarves another target to deal with when the arm attacks you as well.

If undead are a concern for your fort it's worth training up a hammerdwarf squad to smash em to paste.

[Hurricane]

I've read a bit about undead ...
So I'm guessing the tutorial had the great idea to spawn me next to a Necromancer tower.
Wonderful.

And not being able to go out, I've dig down ... until I found an expensive set of caverns full of troglodites. I think it's over for this one (my dwarves are also starving)

I would love to post a screenshot but the steam overlay doesn't work.
Basically, they are a set of : iron breastplate, helm, greaves, buckler, copper mace/iron axe/iron spear/iron sword. (Just checked their equipment)

One of the opponents is a swallow ghoul, talented everything + expert macedwarf (I don't know where the others are, it's the first one I've found.)

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Hurricane:

Right at the end of my second winter, I had a full squad who trained for a year.
They were equipped with full iron plate armor and a weapon of their choice.

Four or five undead came and wiped them out almost instantly.

So what, my option is to keep hiding?

Could it be the traits?

I had one dwarf in my last game that was great, all the others were trash, so I didn't even recruit them, but this one guy was like this: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/136306488254791681/1053140156049268836/image.png

Strong, Highj Knesthetic Sense, Good Spatial Sense, Agile.

As a result, even as an untrained rookie with average quality steel armor and a steel short sword he managed to protect my fortress from many threats basically by himself, killing giant frogs, crocodyles, tens of dozens of troglodytes, bat women, etc...

Almost never took any hits.

[McFuzz]

Originally posted by Hurricane:

I've read a bit about undead ...
So I'm guessing the tutorial had the great idea to spawn me next to a Necromancer tower.
Wonderful.

And not being able to go out, I've dig down ... until I found an expensive set of caverns full of troglodites. I think it's over for this one (my dwarves are also starving)

I would love to post a screenshot but the steam overlay doesn't work.
Basically, they are a set of : iron breastplate, helm, greaves, buckler, copper mace/iron axe/iron spear/iron sword. (Just checked their equipment)

No boots, makes their feet quite vulnerable. No mail shirt makes their necks and arms vulnerable. No leggings makes parts of their legs vulnerable. Bucklers are too small and often-times too weak.

Would upgrade them dwarves to a fuller set of armour, and get them a bigger shield; and get rid of that copper mace.

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Originally posted by Hurricane:

Right at the end of my second winter, I had a full squad who trained for a year.
They were equipped with full iron plate armor and a weapon of their choice.

Four or five undead came and wiped them out almost instantly.

So what, my option is to keep hiding?

Could it be the traits?

I had one dwarf in my last game that was great, all the others were trash, so I didn't even recruit them, but this one guy was like this: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/136306488254791681/1053140156049268836/image.png

Strong, Highj Knesthetic Sense, Good Spatial Sense, Agile.

As a result, even as an untrained rookie with average quality steel armor and a steel short sword he managed to protect my fortress from many threats basically by himself, killing giant frogs, crocodyles, tens of dozens of troglodytes, bat women, etc...

Almost never took any hits.

I've only chosen the ones who had a weapon affinity, the rest I've ignored.
I'm not sure what else is important.

[McFuzz]

Originally posted by VoiD:

Could it be the traits?

I had one dwarf in my last game that was great, all the others were trash, so I didn't even recruit them, but this one guy was like this: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/136306488254791681/1053140156049268836/image.png

Strong, Highj Knesthetic Sense, Good Spatial Sense, Agile.

As a result, even as an untrained rookie with average quality steel armor and a steel short sword he managed to protect my fortress from many threats basically by himself, killing giant frogs, crocodyles, tens of dozens of troglodytes, bat women, etc...

Almost never took any hits.

I don't always agree with VoiD but I agree with this whole-heartedly. Your dwarves just might not be good fit for the military. Kinesthetic sense is especially important because it effects dodging and combat with multiple opponents.

[McFuzz]

Originally posted by Hurricane:

I've only chosen the ones who had a weapon affinity, the rest I've ignored.
I'm not sure what else is important.

Ah. Yep. Well it's kind of annoying to pick them based on traits, but important for a good military. On that first dwarf screen it says up the top right their standout physical and mental attributes.

Strong/Tough/Agile, how quick they are to fatigue, kinesthetic sense/spatial sense, are the most important for combat. Everything else can be trained.
These improve, but I believe I read that they can only be trained to an upper cap per dwarf, based on their starting attributes. So a starting tough dwarf will always be tougher than a starting flimsy one.

[RetroJL]

Originally posted by Frank McFuzz:

Originally posted by Hurricane:

I've only chosen the ones who had a weapon affinity, the rest I've ignored.
I'm not sure what else is important.

Ah. Yep. Well it's kind of annoying to pick them based on traits, but important for a good military. On that first dwarf screen it says up the top right their standout physical and mental attributes.

Strong/Tough/Agile, how quick they are to fatigue, kinesthetic sense/spatial sense, are the most important for combat. Everything else can be trained.
These improve, but I believe I read that they can only be trained to an upper cap per dwarf, based on their starting attributes. So a starting tough dwarf will always be tougher than a starting flimsy one.

It's a good tradition to start off potential recruits as haulers. Builds up those raw stats before they start training.

[AlP]

Their attributes don't make such a big difference that an entire squad would be wiped out by some undead.

[Basterbane]

Were those generic zombies or necromancer experiments?

[Catteus Of Mars]

sometimes get unlucky and when the first dorf went down rest were fighting outnumbered.... things go bad real quick from there.

[RetroJL]

Originally posted by AlP:

Their attributes don't make such a big difference that an entire squad would be wiped out by some undead.

You would be surprised, he could have lost half the squad to a body-less head that managed to bite every dwarf in their unarmored ankles. And if they didn't have the raw attributes to dodge that.....

[AlP]

Originally posted by Retro:

Originally posted by AlP:

Their attributes don't make such a big difference that an entire squad would be wiped out by some undead.

You would be surprised, he could have lost half the squad to a body-less head that managed to bite every dwarf in their unarmored ankles. And if they didn't have the raw attributes to dodge that.....

I've done extensive !!science!! on attributes, and it always comes down to "it doesn't matter, unless the difference is quite extreme". Any random dwarf is quite capable.