The current AI is doing a poor job of stopping foxes, particularly in large settlements.
Foxes have been raiding my chicken coops year-round, and it seems no fence is capable of stopping them. Furthermore, villagers and guards tend to ignore the threat entirely, and even when I set a pack of 8 to 12 dogs on them, the dogs consistently fail to secure the kill, allowing the foxes to slip away every time. (they always lose on 1v1 battle )
The detection range of the dogs and the combat effectiveness of the dogs need to be rebalanced to address this constant raiding issue
I named the cat, can you name the dogs?
Yes, both can be named.
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I built a cattery, came with one cat, bought three more, bred to six, and I have no food, six cats eat more meat than 200 people. I suggest moving the animal kennels to T3 and after livestock is enabled.
I got rid of the cattery, presumably let the cats go stray, now I keep getting messages of cats dying due to lack of food but also of cats being killed in combat. Combat against what? I have no rats, so unless people are killing cats for food I donāt know whatās happening.
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Just got half my chickens killed by a fox, hunters wouldnāt attack the fox and herders just stood there.
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If youāre on non-Pacifist then wolves and bears.
Agreed that the foxes are vicious. Iām losing chickens at a prodigous rate, despite solid dog coverage - and my dogs are getting beaten (and occasionally killed) by the foxes as well. Those are some OP foxes!
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Stone fencing is no deterrent nor is a palisade gate. Built a tower, guards didnāt shoot, and did not attack when directed. Iām starting to think chickens are a bad idea. A possible good idea is a gate I can close manually.
ā-crops eaten by animals.ā How? All the fields are fenced off. Wait, whatās that? WTF, itās a ****en BEAVER! Just how many animals are in this game, and why can they go through gates?
I saw in the Amenities build a spot for a dog kennel, perhaps a kennel has to be located where you want your dogs to work? (Iām not in a position to test that, yet.)
Iāve placed a dog house near each of my crop fields and livestock pens and I rarely lose any animals and no crops have been eaten. There is a circle that shows the coverage area for each doghouse.
However, I get very frequent notifications about animal attacks. Most of the time it is a fox attack, but sometimes it is a bear attacking a villager.
Unfortunately it is the same āanimal attackā message so no way to tell other than opening the notification. It would be nice to have a different notification message for livestock attacks. With the frequency of fox attacks it gets annoying having to constantly click to see if it is a fox, which I can ignore, or a bear attacking a villager, which I cannot.
Once I got enough dogs ā Iām at around 40 - they started performing a bit better. Iāve done double-overlapping doghouses covering everywhere thereās livestock, and placed a few doghouses around outside my city walls to cover entrances. Not really sure where the sneaky foxes are coming from.
At this point, dogs are getting into fights but mostly surviving/retreating, and Iām down to losing just a few chickens a year, instead of the entire coops that were getting wiped out pre-dog.
Theyāre cute, too.
Is this the kennel or the full doghouse? What is the food acquisition like? Previously I had cats and they took all the food and my villagers starved.
The kennel only breeds the dogs and each kennel houses up to 12 dogs. The kennel is the āproductionā building. Two dogs will eventually breed enough pups to fill the kennel.
While cats will wander around looking for rats, a dog needs a doghouse near the location you wish them to protect. Each doghouse has one dog and they are assigned automatically from the kennel.
You will need to protect crop fields from groundhogs and livestock (so far just chickens) from foxes. If you have more dogs than doghouses the extra dogs will be assigned to accompany a hunter. I donāt know any way to assign dogs to specific doghouses or to specific hunters.
Like cats, dogs require meat, fish, dried meat or dried fish. You will need to have enough surplus generated to cover the additional usage. Iāve gotten a message a few times about not having enough dog food, but itās been a transport problem not a production problem. I try to keep my food production at a minimum of 5 and Iāve never had any starvation of dogs or villagers.
P.S.-You can name a dog by clicking on the dog and then clicking in the box at the tops that says āDogā and typing in the name.
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I found most of this, you have to have a doghouse built before a dog is automatically assigned to it, you canāt assign one manually. The dogs are chasing off foxes but not killing them, even with a three to one advantage, and they donāt pursue beyond the doghouse range circle.
Iāve had to build extra cattle and goat barns as well as the tech tree to accommodate the need for meat, and the handlers will roam out far to Hunters and get meat directly from there, and storage facilities placed nearby which stock only meat products but donāt get filled. Hunterās are upgraded and most have traps set at four, which depletes my iron stocks, so my tech tree is being researched for deep mines. And Iām in Pacifist mode on Highlands.
And naming the animals is fruitless, I canāt read the tiny letters because the colour contrast isnāt strong enough. For a darker green use white, for a lighter green use black. Do not use yellow or red.
Another thing, when I click on a fox or groundhog (not a beaver) it doesnāt get highlighted in red like a wolf, boar or bear, I want that. I click on the box and get taken to the fox but itās not highlighted.
Pacifist on Plains, not Highlands, and at Vanquisher level.
I think dogs that are guarding hunters should be fed by the hunter out of the meat they produce. If the hunter has no meat to feed them, the kennel is the secondary source of food.
Iām good with that Corporal. Hunters would often dress the kill and leave the rest for the dogs and scavengers.