Bay 12 Games Forum

OK. So I booted but my Faerie Fort mod, and embarked on the shores of a Haunted ocean with a Haunted forest behind me. That's not important. The zombie deer don't want no aggro and the ocean seems to produce only jellyfish.

This being a Faerie fort, I could embark with cougars (you ALWAYS get cougars. They can live anywhere. They're the dwarves of the cat world. Except for being, you know, big.). So I did, 2 cougars and 2 cats.

We also got a muskox and a 2-hump camel as draft animals. Both female.

In the first year or so, because of the absence of non-undead game, we were sort of short of leather. I ordered some more animals off the fey liason and bought the jaguar the Elves bought me.

Then some migrants turned up. They had a breeding pair of Elk as pets.

Then the muskox and camel both dropped calves. How does this happen?

Then the traders came back with more cougars, another jaguar, another muskox, and a solitary leopard.

And in the meantime, the original pair of cougars had been busy.

Then we got young elk fawns.

Then we got more young camels and muskoxen.

And the cats are being remarkably invisible.

SO. Heading towards the end of year 3, my 44 Faerie are outnumbered by the animals. I've butchered surplus males and a few extremely surplus females (sparing the young) and every unattached cat I could find, but we still have over 50 animals. Cougars are the biggest group. The Muskoxen and Camels next, then there's the still small but growing family of elk. The Jaguars, thank god, are both male and the leopard is lonely. I feeling the situation slipping away from me.

This being Faerie mod, the cougars are trainable (but that's not as helpful as it sounds. War animals have a hard enough time keeping up with Dwarves and Faerie/Elves are a lot faster) I'm sure I could have no problems giving a War Cougar bodyguard to every founder and woodcutter, but I'm sure the novelty will wear off with time. The Leopard and Jaguars SHOULD be trainable, but don't seem to be. I think it's because they were bought off the Elves and have those brown wounds to organs.

 This is pretty cool. But I'm a little bit scared. It's much harder to control this sort of thing than a simple catsplosion, because you have to maintain a breeding group from each separate species. Plus, all these things are valuable meat/leather animals. We SHOULD capitalize on this.

 I never planned for this place to become a goddamn ranch.

Well, not WITHOUT metal, but I decided to start a Faerie Fort on Phyllite and Schist, meaning not much chance of anything useful out of the earth. It's an Untamed Wilds freezing Taiga with 2-level aquifer (otherwise no water) surrounded by a terrifying tundra, and Rysith's Orcs loaded.

We got through the aquifer by the end of the first spring, and in the process made sure that we could farm on the surface even in a freezing biome, something I was only 95% sure of. Our mining confirmed my worst fears; we have nothing in this area but zinc, meaning nothing useful. Even some tetrahydrite would have made all the difference in the world.

Thanks to not taking an anvil, we had plenty of wood and "soft" craftfey skills (stonecrafting, boneworking, leatherworking) plus a nice set of animals; two breeding pairs of elk, 2  cougars, and two cats. In addition to this we got a mule and a muskox as draft animals. We ate the mule and kept the muskox around until a mate could be provided (this eventually happened, but that's not imporant right now). I'd packed some rhesus marque leather along, so after the necessities of life (and a bloody big perimeter ditch) were provided we settled down to making leather armour, shields, and wooden bows.

On previous games with the Orcs, I'd defended myself earlier on by using a large perimeter ditch (later backed by a fortified wall) with a single drawbridged entrance flanked by fortifications. Outside this channels create a 3-wide entrance corridor which is loaded with weapon traps, and flanking channels are set up to make the orcs approach in a more predictable fashion (making their marksorcs unlikely to approach close enough to fire through).


*=channel
I=wall
#=fortification
x=traps
B=bridge, channel underneath.

                          *I
                          *I
***************#
                         *#
                         *#
   *************#
   xxxx                B
   xxxx                B
   xxxx                B
   *************#
                         *#
                         *#
***************#
                         *I
                         *I
Please excuse wonky lines. Problem here is that in previous games I'd had sharpenable rock and glass to use as trap components, here all I had was wood. I produced lots of spiked wooden balls to fill the traps, not knowing if they'd be effective at all against the big, brawny Orcs. To my surprise they actually wound up doing the job rather nicely, sometimes completely destroying an orc wrestler's body (about 3 weapons to a trap, often with a joker like a couple of (large copper daggers)) but that's not important right now.

 First Orc attack, in the second summer, was beaten off really easily. The orc warband of Stabbers (spears and Pikes)  and wrestlers got split up rather badly by undead wildlife crossing the tundra and reached the gate in dribs and drabs. We had eight champions and elite wrestlers in leather holding a mixture of wooden bows and assorted melee weapons bought from the first caravan (such as a bronze battle-axe), backed up by a trembling mob of miners (all founders) woodcutters drafted to hold the gate. Disappointingly, only the Orc vangard (all but one wrestlers) were bought down by traps and dabbling bowwork before the others called it a day. Our loot consisted of one shield, a pike, and a set of stout chain to melt down.

 The second orc attack of the following autumn was a near-disaster. In fact, it WAS a disaster.

 I hadn't realised just how close my front gate (facing west) was to the edge of the local area, I had a couple of woodcutters and a hauler out working when an Orc stabber group appeared right on top of them and cut them off from the gate. A second mob of markorcs appeared more distantly to the north. I took too long to realise the plight of the woodcutters and by the time I realised I was actually going to have to order a charge, it was too late. We put the stabbers to bloody rout, but their swordmaster leader managed to chase down and kill the woodcutters and my axewielding-wrestler was left wounded in no-man's-land with the markorcs approaching fast.

 My next decision was really stupid. I should note that the axewielder had done very good work the previous season cutting down Skuskoxen that had been harassing my migrants and I didn't want to lose him. I gave the civilians clearance to go outside, in the hope that one of them would recover the wounded soldier first.

 Of course they ignored him and all ran into the teeth of the markorcs to try to...what? I'm still not sure. The Markorcs, B-movie heavies that they are, aren't great shots but they sure are persistent. They can't miss all the time. I have to charge again.

 Of course, half my military are still checking out new ammunition, and in any case they don't have the shield training to take charge into the teeth of  arrow fire in ones and twos. Charging in like this costs me 2 champions, 2 elite wrestlers, and four civilians including a founding mechanic, though we certainly do take down some of the enemy (including that prat of a swordmaster). I desperately order a fall back to the gate and discover I'm now down to 2 bow-wielding champions able-bodied, plus a third seriously wounded who is now fallen in a ditch. It looks like make or break time.

 To my amazement, one of my surviving champions, against orders, decides he'll take his stand standing in the middle of the gate uncovered by the fortifications. He's totally in the open and exchanging fire with an entire warband, pine arrows against iron. He's had minimal bow training and his accuracy is not impressive, but something about the sight of him standing there really bothers the remaining marksorcs, and the siege is broken. They never hit him. Definitely a Fey moment.

 In total here, we lost 2 champions (plus one badly wounded), 3 elite wrestlers, and 7 civilians. A hard loss, for a fort that only had 38 population to start with.

 Orc losses were a swordmaster, 8 marksorcs, 5 stabbers, and about 15 wrestlers. Not enough. The close area edge made it too easy for them to escape. We captured a number of decent bows and quivers and some iron arrows, some shields and spears, a scimitar and the usual rubbish.

 Mentioning the arrows brings up the REAL problem with playing without useful ore in your local area, it's not trading and melting, scrimping and saving, to get decent armour on your military. That's actually kind of fun. It's NICE to have every -iron chain mail- represent a real achievement rather than a  result of basic management. Similarly, it's not having to rely on trade and capture for your weapons (except bows), that too, is rather fun and lets you fool around with things you normally wouldn't bother with.

 The real problem is ammunition. You have to micromanage your ammo stocks quite carefully to cut a balance between having your bow-wielders shoot off all your ammunition in practice and leaving enough to let them train at all. A lot of the iron obtained from melting down the orc equipment got used to make more arrows, just to give me a safety net. Leading to the question, why is the same "military metals" criteria imposed on ammunition as on anything else? I mean, I can see why swords or armour shouldn't be made out of zinc, but why not arrows? Arrows only have to work once.

 After the battle, I carried out a drastic cutdown on the civilian sector and drafted a whole bunch of people. This led to people training with the captured scimitar, with an (-iron long sword-) I'd got off the humans, with a copper morning star, with a couple of (iron spears), you get the idea. The next bunch of migrants in spring got the same treatment.

 To prevent the orcs spawning a short distance to the west and surprising us again, we dug a channel along that local area edge, stopping a fair distance to the north and to the south of our perimeter. Orcs that spawn there in future will have a bit of a walkaround.

 By the time of the next attack (third summer) we had 2 (functional) champions with bows and a degree of bow practice, 8 elite wrestlers (2 bows, 6 assorted melee weapons) and 6 wrestlers (handed bows at the last minute). The bow-champions and the meleeists had chain mail of some description. The attack involved 2 Orc Carver (Axeorc) warbands and 2 Mauler (maceorc) bands.

 One Carver warband got split by the western edge channel, and aside from beating up on some Skelks accomplished nothing, since they couldn't figure out how to advance as a team with the ditch bisecting their path, but the others closed handsomely. My best archers were off duty at the time of the attack, so much of the early part of the action was dominated by the wrestlers-holding-bows, whose slow fire decimated the first mauler warband (one of these guys, an ex-ranger, got titles). Eventually enough orcs turned up to rush the traps. Each trap killed an orc (and bow fire killed more), but the leaders got past. One of these guys was shot by a wrestler, the other two fell in the ditch, where they were shot (by wrestlers). Eventually my guys with actual bow training turned up, and decimated the enemy. My meleeists are constantly trying to get to grips, but I keep reigning them back. Only one gets a kill. They're too frail to risk just yet.

 My copper-morning-star person gets to swap her weapon for an (iron mace). I think that's progress.

 Now we have to replace the ammunition before autumn.


 

 





                           

I've unloaded the mod to DFFD.

http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=725

Feel free to try it out and give some feedback.

{EDIT: Oh, that's right. See the "Faerie Fortress" thread somewhere below to see what this is about}

I've started a little challenge game to keep myself amused when I'm not playing Fogcrystal. The rules are:

1, starting area must have aquifer, magma, and usable sand.

2, No serene, mirthful, calm. (I wanted something evil, but no such area met the requirements above, so I had to settle for wilderness).

3, No rock mining except for obsidian. It is permissible to dig through something else to get to the obsidian, but all such stones created must be forbidden and any items made out of them must be dumped. Understand? No rock except obsidian. No rooms in rock that aren't obsidian.

4, You may bring 20 stones of any rock type to do initial construction. I bought Olivine.

5, No metal weapons, other than ammunition, to be made. Captured weapons or those obtained through trade are fair.

6, Other items (armour, well-chains) may be built out of any metal you may optain through trade, capture, or other non-mining methods. Captured armour may be melted down. You may trade for metal armour or metal anything else.

7, Everything that doesn't have to be metal to be built out of your starting stone, obsidian, wood, or glass (soap is permissible). Needless to say, bone, shell, and leather may be used for armour, weapons, or ammunition as applicable.
 

I'm through till first autumn. Getting the glass furnaces set up took a few false starts, as I kept channeling into the aquifer and causing a burst of steam when the magma hit it, but I eventually found a way through, and am spamming green glass production to make tables, chairs, doors, and walls. I'm going to turn the channel I made into the aquifer into my well source when I can get a chain (which will probably mean getting an anvil first).

 The dwarven caravan was a complete wash because of some trees in the way of the trade depot, so they turned up on camels and we couldn't trade our obsidian mechanisms. We ultimately traded a few obsidian crafts for a barrel of booze. We could have afforded more, but they couldn't carry it away. We still got migrants.

Sound interesting?

I've got a nice little fort just starting up on a Haunted grassland with zombies, a brook, a few trees, magma, sand, and even sedimentary rock.

Awesome.

Anyway it's the first winter and we have the bridge down while waiting for the liason to leave, we get rushed very slowly by six zombie rehesus marques. I draft everyone and we rush up to defend our watchkitten.

It's a very easy fight. The first Zonkey gets caught in a cage trap and the rest get picked to shreds. But now I have a real problem. The guys won't do anything because they're afraid of the caged undead monkey. They won't reload the trap, they won't carry the cage away, they won't pick up the bodies. I actually had one guy stuck outside because he rushed outside in terror and was too scared to approach the gate again. I had to re-draft him.

How do I get rid of this thing? I can't haul the cage away and I can't kill it. I can't open the cage because there's no way to attach a mechanism. Is there a solution to this?

EDIT: Found the problem. It's not the caged one at all. There's a free one stuck in the perimeter ditch. I can sort that out.


EDIT2: Sorted. Only I just saw my mechanic load a stone-fall trap with Cinnabar. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to break somebody's skull with a rock that causes mercury poisoning as well.

[apologies to anyone who's read this when I posted it in Modding by mistake]

So I decide, since nobody's given my community fort any nice bumps, I'll play something different for a few hours.

 So I embark on a black sand haunted desert on obsidian, not far from a brook. I have a sneaking suspicion it'll take a while to get metalworking going, so I skip the anvil, bring a selection of decent craftsdwarves, lots of wood and leather, and extra animals and picks.

 So we disembark and discover the brook is alive (or not) with zombie fish. Zurgeon, Zike, Zamprey, and Longnose Zar. All of which start crawling very slowly towards us.

 I have a panic attack and dig a channel around us, and we're safe for the moment.

 We almost die of thirst in the first few weeks because a Zar managed to come too close to the wagon. We'd been digging storeroom space and hadn't unloaded anything, so all our equipment and supplies couldn't be reached because the dwarves were too scared to approach. We managed to sucker the thing away by building a bridge on the opposite side on the perimeter, letting it shuffle around to use it, and dismantling it before it gets there.

 I waste some wood on a crossbow and some bolts, and let my expedition leader (who likes crossbows) deal with any other crawling zombies that comes close. By very carefully collecting the bones afterwards (and with some help from the dwarven caravan, that killed quite a few on the way in.) we're able to make a few other crossbows and some more ammuntion. We have spring migrants now. All got through safely except for a ranger and hunter, who INSISTED on picking a fight with a herd of zombie camels. Recovering their gear (couldn't afford to waste two iron crossbows plus steel bolts) led us into a pitched battle against two zurgeon, a zike, and a zamprey, which we won with the loss of a basically dead (mangled lung) war dog. Elves haven't turned up yet.

 Out of interest, the Zamprey are invisible on this map because they are the same colour and icon as the sand. It's not that Lampreys aren't horriying enough without being stealthy zombies. Oddly, they're sea lamprey.

 ANyway, very exciting, but a few questions. I had to tap the brook to get a water source (no well, no chain, no anvil, but it's still a water source). I believe that undead can destroy floodgates and these things can swim, so I put some bars (made of Charcoal!) in front of the floodgate, will it hold them?

 Actually, after the first five minutes I've seen only live fish in the brook. The zombies have all taken to the sand. They aren't likely to randomly move down the narrow tunnel, so hopefully it's a moot point.

 And now, the MAIN question. I've noticed with Igneous Extrusive layers that you tend to get a massive preponderance of one type of ore in them. My first couple of forts with magma got lucky, and had mostly hematite. The next couple got copper. This time I've really spit the dummy and got cinnabar (not actually an ore, but apparently generated as one). Not that it matters, since the dwarven caravan only bought a 3000* steel anvil not really in our price range even with obsidian crafts.

 As anyone else noticed this about extrusive layers? Because I've naver seen it mentioned and it's kind of a really major thing. If we find iron and magma we'll probably be OK, otherwise it's going to be "Stone Age of the Living Dead"

 Any suggestions on where to go for the magma? The biome where I am is Obisidian over Andesite I believe. Common sense tells me that obsidian should be over the pipe and we should dig down to the andesite before looking for it.
I'm also thinking that this obsidian layer is going to be a total dud when it comes to metals, and we should look in the andesite or the felsite to the north.

Here we go again.

1, I'm currently trying to keep a useless pack of nobles with impossible fetishes happy. I have no prison or fortress guard, so they can hand out punishments all they like and nothing will get done. Obviously, this will make them MORE unhappy, and lead to more and harder mandates, so I want to coddle them as much as possible without, of course, putting any actually useful dwarf to inconvenience. If I appoint a Royal Guard, will they act like fortress guards and start punishing people? Or will they just follow the nobles around and make them feel all secure and protected?

2, I've got shops. They're all owned by the mayor (who is also manager, bookkeeper, et cetera) and he's got them all for sale. Are shops automatically owned by the broker when built?

3, I generated a world yesterday, and on scrolling through the Dwarven civs one of them had a couple of tiles show up with the goblin fortress icon, albeit in blue. Another had a couple of tiles using the elf retreat (small) icon. Are these actually half-dwarf, half something else?