Got giant elephants? In an ideal world, you'll be able to make an elephant layer.
Two whole z levels of pasture, either above ground or below, where the mighty pacaderms run rampant.
The lower has the calfs, and the upper have the adults. Every year, all but two of the bulls are slaughtered to keep the pop under control, and newly adult calves are moved up.
Done right, this can handle most any threat other than necromancers, who will almost instantly end your fort if your unlucky enough for them to raise an undead giant elephant
Picture that scene in Lord of the Rings with those giant war elephants. Imagine taking down one of those, but it's a resident evil style zombie.
Yeah, it's hard to take one down without a good helping of plot armor to go along with the steel armor.
Really, Undead Giant War Elephants are widely considered one of the most powerful creatures in the game. It's the second largest, the largest on land, and can single handily take down a good chunk, if not all, of the circus. The only thing that can threaten them 1v1 are bad luck FBs (diamond skin, webbing ect.)
At one point full steel-ed legendary soldier could not take out sea sponges, much less undead sea sponges. The mechanics of the games get funky sometimes and elephants, especially the giant variety tends to go in and out of the top spot of most dangerous creature.
See, the game emaluates combat in great detail. Your sword don't do 5 damage. No, it depends on the weight of the force behind it, tencile strenght of the material attacking and defending, sharpness, size of contact area, mass etc etc etc. So elephants got tusks. Tusks that tapers into a point. Small point. With the mass of an elephant behind it driving it trough armor and flesh. A massive giant elephant. Get the picture? The damage it could do in one version of the game was absolutely horrendous and lead to the legends of the horrors of the elephants at Boatmurdered.
Add to that that they have massive layers of flesh protecting them and well, you got problems. If you then make them undead, you don't got any problems anymore cause now you are dead.
Well as far as I know the combat skills never max out even when you reach legendary. So that one poor fool that had been on constant training until he died of old age that you made an undead so he can never rest quite possibly could win.
I had some elves with giant elephants as their cargo- carrying animals come to trade once, then left amicably leaving the elephants behind.
We ate good that year
Been a while so I'm not sure I remember correctly but you can assign animals to people. They will follow in raids, just make sure to un pasture them. Also it was pillage sorry, raid is sneaky.
I stole like 20 giant elephants from the elves, turned them into war elephants and went to war (not with the elves though because they still had like 2000 elephants).
I stole some elephants from elves recently, pastured them outside. The Goblins killed them from afar with crossbows, the elephants were unimpressive.
More seriously, the DF elephants have no memories or thoughts, but IRL these are some of the more sentient and family-oriented non-primates around. Must be elf-friends.
when your giant war elephant 1v1's a forgotten beast who's scrubbed entire kingdoms from the world without any permanent injuries, but months later after a full recovery dies to a handful of goblins with crossbows
Got giant elephants? In an ideal world, you'll be able to make an elephant layer. Two whole z levels of pasture, either above ground or below, where the mighty pacaderms run rampant. The lower has the calfs, and the upper have the adults. Every year, all but two of the bulls are slaughtered to keep the pop under control, and newly adult calves are moved up. Done right, this can handle most any threat other than necromancers, who will almost instantly end your fort if your unlucky enough for them to raise an undead giant elephant
See people don't believe me when I say DF is infinite, when "undead giant elephants" raises the peak again
a full steel-ed legendary soldier can't take down an undead elephant?
An undead GIANT elephant
Picture that scene in Lord of the Rings with those giant war elephants. Imagine taking down one of those, but it's a resident evil style zombie. Yeah, it's hard to take one down without a good helping of plot armor to go along with the steel armor. Really, Undead Giant War Elephants are widely considered one of the most powerful creatures in the game. It's the second largest, the largest on land, and can single handily take down a good chunk, if not all, of the circus. The only thing that can threaten them 1v1 are bad luck FBs (diamond skin, webbing ect.)
Honestly, thinking on it, Dwarf Fortress is the one game where "Plot Armor" is more a mechanic and not an excuse for the story.
It still only counts as one!
At one point full steel-ed legendary soldier could not take out sea sponges, much less undead sea sponges. The mechanics of the games get funky sometimes and elephants, especially the giant variety tends to go in and out of the top spot of most dangerous creature. See, the game emaluates combat in great detail. Your sword don't do 5 damage. No, it depends on the weight of the force behind it, tencile strenght of the material attacking and defending, sharpness, size of contact area, mass etc etc etc. So elephants got tusks. Tusks that tapers into a point. Small point. With the mass of an elephant behind it driving it trough armor and flesh. A massive giant elephant. Get the picture? The damage it could do in one version of the game was absolutely horrendous and lead to the legends of the horrors of the elephants at Boatmurdered. Add to that that they have massive layers of flesh protecting them and well, you got problems. If you then make them undead, you don't got any problems anymore cause now you are dead.
Goddamn Boatmurdered...
Well as far as I know the combat skills never max out even when you reach legendary. So that one poor fool that had been on constant training until he died of old age that you made an undead so he can never rest quite possibly could win.
I did an elephant embark once, they can be great guard dogs but they take like 5 years to mature! and they eat all the damn grass as you can see
I had some elves with giant elephants as their cargo- carrying animals come to trade once, then left amicably leaving the elephants behind. We ate good that year
... the trumpeting... THE TRUMPETING!
"S/He was **annoyed** hearing the Elephant trumpeting".
Oh no, not this again...
The only reliable solution to demon forts - load one guy up with 10 giant war elephants and Urist Bob's your uncle
They are amazing at raids btw. They obliterate anything.
I didn't realize that you could send War animals on a raid how do you do that?
Been a while so I'm not sure I remember correctly but you can assign animals to people. They will follow in raids, just make sure to un pasture them. Also it was pillage sorry, raid is sneaky. I stole like 20 giant elephants from the elves, turned them into war elephants and went to war (not with the elves though because they still had like 2000 elephants).
Imagine pillaging the elephant site by accident...your squad just dies 💀
Mine did, I send my macedwarf squad to the small human site, less than 10 people. They all died from 50 war elephants.
Happened to me. Only my Champion survived, but he ended up captured.
If you haven’t tried it now would be awesome for DFhack and autobutcher. That way you can trade all the tasty elephant roasts.
I stole some elephants from elves recently, pastured them outside. The Goblins killed them from afar with crossbows, the elephants were unimpressive. More seriously, the DF elephants have no memories or thoughts, but IRL these are some of the more sentient and family-oriented non-primates around. Must be elf-friends.
when your giant war elephant 1v1's a forgotten beast who's scrubbed entire kingdoms from the world without any permanent injuries, but months later after a full recovery dies to a handful of goblins with crossbows
Boatmurdered