Bay 12 Games Forum

ONE: After last night's peasant rebellion, two suicidally depressed peasants hurled themselves into a channel I had running from the cave river to the outside river.  (Well, technically the outside river runs up to the mountainside and stops, and the cave river runs out to it, but that's a different story.)  Contrary to expected behavior, their objects and bodies remained wedged in the channel.  I drained the inside portion and recovered their gear, but the outside portion would not, of course, drain, and a huge number of pathfinding problem messages started to be issued.  Also, for whatever reason, my master metalsmith and one of my nobles went and got buckets and stood adjacent to one of the dead guys and, slightly downstream, his shoes... and did nothing.

Hoping to break this cycle, and probably somewhat sleep-deprived, I resolved to build a long bridge over the guy and his stuff, in the hopes that it would then bump it up to the top of the bridge and my guys could recover it.  When the bridge was completed, the game crashed, and the errorlog shows "BUILDPATH SAME SQUARE VIOLATION."  I *think* I've got a save of this one backed up.  Interestingly, however, it sort of worked -- at some point the bridge construction apparently bumped the body and his shoes up onto the surface, because his corpse wound up in the graveyard (and his shoes somewhere else.)  Cancelling the bridge just before it finished had the same effect and allowed me to keep playing.

TWO: Largely because all my farmers and fisherdwarves went mad and/or killed themselves, the next year has not been a happy one.  Starvation is rampant, and many dwarves are understandably upset.  Two of my three bridges have been destroyed.  The third and largest remains, however.  The destruction of the first had no noticeable impact, but after the second went down I started to get a swarm of pathfinding messages about the inability of those on the surface-side to get to food and drink on the deep-side; this, despite the existence of the third span.  A save and reload seems to have fixed some dwarves, but not all.  I've got a backup of this.

I'm not entirely sure what triggered it, whether it was the transition from winter to spring or the mayor hiking farming wages to 150% (though I would think that would make farmers happier, not angrier), or both; but both of those things happened, and then immediately I had several dwarves fall into a melancholy, a couple others fly into a berserk rage, and a few more go stark raving mad.  Without exception, these guys were farmers or fisherdwarves, and all of them were complaining about the lack of work last season.

Now, I normally have farmers tasked to do a lot of stuff, but their primary pursuit -- farming -- is essentially not an option during the winter.  Similarly, I guess the rivers and swamps all dried up for fish in the winter.  They still have hauling jobs, but I suppose these weren't sufficient for their needs.

Anyway, my thought was, perhaps farmers and fisherdwarves might be exempted from this seasonal lack-of-work thing if the season before was winter?

No, but seriously.  I've seen reference to this problem cropping up before, but never quite to the extent I have presently encountered.  What happened was this: I had a dwarf throw a tantrum and destroy my cave river bridge.  Pursuant to a long-standing plan, I have built everything of relevance on the far side of the cave river, including my stone supplies, all my food, and my well.  Almost immediately after the bridge was destroyed, I suffered a frogman attack.  While my crossbowman on the surface-side did banner work, what really killed them was the large serrated bronze disk trap just inside my first room (where the well is.)

Now, however, my fortress is almost completely paralyzed.  I (foolishly) attempted to place a new, larger bridge where the old one was; realizing that the stone involved might be on both sides of the river (somehow, despite my stone stores being on the deep side), I then attempted to install a smaller bridge crafted of moonstone off to one side.  I've never used moonstone for anything, so it should all be in my stone stores, and I have guys tasked to build it on the side where the stone is.  No problem there.

However, not only do the dwarves refuse to build either of the two bridges, they refuse to do anything else.  An increasing number want to drink, but they refuse to even enter the room where the well is.  There's a farmer standing in the doorway who won't take the one step to get there.  Granted, it's pretty bloody at the moment, but that doesn't seem to be worth dying for.  (Not that they will enter the room to clean it up, either.  )  The guys topside, of course, are starving to death because they can't get to the food stores.  I've got saves of all of this; saving and reloading doesn't appear to have changed anything.

That problem aside, the game is everything I'd hoped for and more.  Good on ya, Toady.  I'll kick you some bucks as soon as I'm, you know, gainfully employed.