Oh hell no. I've restarted at least a dozen times trying to refine an opening strat.
What I'm doing now is trying to cordon/wall off enough outside territory for future agricultural needs. I'm surviving the goblin attacks so far by filling a squad with five gnomes, keeping them unarmed and using "the way of the gnome" perk. I then park a training center right at my gate so an goblins that show up are attacked immediately.
One error I made on this game: if you're going to use that kind of strat, it's not desirable to have done any foraging/digging/felling outside what will become your border, or gnomes will leave the gate to try to grab stuff a lot.
It was a bit shaky towards the end of summer (I was down to five gnomes), but I got ten new ones at the start of fall, so I might be OK. Or I could die horribly come winter.
yeah. how hard the game is,is largely on you and how much you want to exploit, or what you consider exploiting.
I think using a small map, and a walling off the entire thing, wont allow spawns still.
Forcing a shut down, not a save +exit, doesn't save. Just close the window. Or even use a save mod, to load as you want.
Training dummies are in pairs. they duel.
Walling in. Its not really cheating, its building a wall. duh. how useful it is, depends on the game settings. If you have monsters grow over time, its not super effective, as you will have a sea of death waiting for you when you do open. haha. Making opening up, before you have mech walls, pitfalls for real traps to deal with a large force, very dangerous.
Traps. Blade traps, spike traps kindof suck. dont bother.
hatches, and mech walls are the real traps. have a pressure plate, that seals off the corridor, when anyone enters. if its friendly, you can have a switch, you can order to be pulled to let them out. if not, let them starve, or have a firing range that can shoot them. Drowning/crushing is always fun too.
yaks. monsters will kill them. And they will buy more time. you can make a corridor. place a pasture(needs to be outside) like halfway. and a few doors at the end. Again, a firing range, or just sending your troops in now, while the monsters were attacking yaks. or allowing time for your engis to run up and flip a switch for mech walls.
Stick everything into a militia squad. Assign militia perk, so they will work. Assign avoid combat. (can also be exploiting with scout perk)
Doing this, will force everyone to not run into a fight to pick up loot, or reset blade traps in the middle of a horde.
Way of the gnome is really strong early. Combat balance in general has issues. Ranged isnt that great. hammers are better then anything else. many DW hammers. hammers shatter armor, and exoskeletons. swords cut cuasing bleeding. which can be deflected by armor, and do little vs mants.
Mants. Every other day or so past a point, a mant scout will spawn. if you see this scout and kill it. A worker army wont spawn. if you do not kill it, and it lasts a day, the worker army will spawn and attack. The number that spawn are directly related to your food/drink resources.
I hit a bug in this version. Felling axes, and mining picks are vanishing. cant mine or cut logs.
