Due to the interest I've seen in this, I decided to make a thread. May or may not bump it into the wiki under "fortress defense techniques".
So, the basic thing is, you're getting ambushed right? It sucks, another dead woodcutter and another filled coffin. Perhaps more, if you're unlucky. How do you fix this? Watchtowers! These run on three basic principles:
1) Certain animals do not eat.
2) Windows block arrows.
3) Building Destroyers cannot kill things on a different Z level.
Combine that together, and you get...
...Ignore the rest of my tower-under-construction. The first image is the view from above, and the second is one level down where you can see the windows and such. Since Stonesense doesn't do good with creatures right now, that ? is a peacock. Take my word on this.
Why is this awesome? It's a 3x3 structure, with only the 1x1 inside walkable. The important thing is that it's on stilts. I've chosen to do 4 stilts for aesthetics, but you could use just one central one if you're cheap. I've also paved the area around it for no reason at all. But! The stilts move it up, and keeps it out of range of melee and building destroyers. That means the windows are safe, and cannot be destroyed. Flying destroyers may or may not be able to destroy them, I haven't faced any of them yet and I've heard conflicting reports. It's important to use windows as well, as a good archer will shoot the creature anyways. I've lost a few this way, when I was using Fortifications, so I upgraded to windows. The roof is purely aesthetic as well, but I like it.
What you need: 4 units of sand, 10-22 units of stone/wood/etc (tunnel-tuber pictured here), and 1 non-grazing animal. Optionally, +1 building material and 1 hatch cover.
I built this tower by making stairs nearby, and then placing the animal via the Pen/Pasture zone, but I've previously done it using ropes as well, which is very nice if you use color-coded ropes or chains, so that you can tell "the animals on red chains are watchers". I placed the animal, then built the left-most window, because dwarves build from the left and you need to do this to avoid your dwarf getting locked in as well. I then deconstructed the stairs and left it there. Peafcocks like 15-30 years, so a newborn peacock in a tower may very well outlive your fort!
This can alternatively be done with stairs. By placing a down-stairs in the center tile, and a hatch over it, you can pasture the animal, or pin from above, and lock the hatch. Building destroyers cannot reach up to destroy a hatch, even with stairs, but some people consider this an exploit. You could also use windows entirely, and no walls, but the walls support the ceiling, and also the windows act a little weird in Stonesense without walls to connect to, but as I've said I'm big on aesthetics.
I generally build these 21-41 tiles away, in a grid (ie, hit Shift+Direction 2 or 4 times) and get somewhat patch coverage, but overall pretty good early detection. It's no replacement for a good army, but it's a good boost if you have the time to set them up.
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Topic: Animal-Powered Watchtower (Read 45594 times)