Bay 12 Games Forum

I get the impression that I am not alone; I have started several forts in the new version, and none of them have been visited by goblins at all, even in rich forts that last many years. There are more than enough kobolds and necromancers to go around, but those are not really very entertaining, what with zombies being invincible killing machines and kobolds being kobolds.

Presumably, the troubles come from the new world army movements, but the question is, has anyone had a fortress in the new version that has been attacked by an appreciable number of goblins, and if so, do we know anything about how? I have heard that the placement of the fort matters a great deal now, to the point that even if the goblins are on your neighbors list and at war with you, you might never see them.

GDP per capita is a reasonably accurate way of estimating the quality of life of the average person/dwarf in a country/fortress. While some dwarves may be more equal than others (), overall, it's a pretty good way to measure.

To find the GDP per capita in your fortress, take your fort's created wealth (on the z status screen) and divide it by the population (also on the z status screen).

In one of my latest forts, Crystalcobalt, a rather thick aquifer combined with a small labor force is halting progress. Meanwhile, the dwarves that are lucky enough to have bedrooms have the typical 3x1 cram style, and the dining hall is just a few wooden chairs in the sand. Aside from that, there are only a few workshops, farms, stockpiles and a trade depot. The surroundings are terrifying, but mysteriously, corpses don't come back to life. However, all of outside is soaked in human blood, which often rains. The only thing the dwarves of Crystalcobalt have that may make any dwarf jealous is an automatic mist generator located at the front entrance, which doesn't do much for their GDP per capita score, which is 25497☼ divided among 35 dwarves, or 728☼ per capita (dirt poor).

Tell me about yours!

Here is my tale:

I wanted to build a bridge across a particularly narrow part of the ocean to connect two continents. On embark I brought nothing. Immediately the dwarves were living off of picked plants and fish and various other things they could come by. As soon as possible, wood was chopped for the bridge, and construction was begun.

All was going nicely, and the caravan arrived. However, it brought no wood, and we had cut down all the wood on our side of the ocean... We got some picks, however, which we unwisely did not use to dig out a shelter. Instead, we resolved to dig a tunnel to the other side and chop its wood.

Shortly along the tunnel's excavation the miners ran into damp stone! T'was an aquifer! Entirely decided on our course of action, we were determined to continue our digs in the direction we had begun. However, we were not so adamant as to avoid safety measures: we spent a great deal of time excavating drain canals to direct water from the aquifer to the caverns.

But alas, meanwhile, unhappiness was rising. There was nowhere to eat, sleep or party, and the dwarves' morale was suffering. One day as stone was being hauled out of the tunnels, two workers were crippled by boulders falling from above. One quickly fell berserk and went on a (crippled) rampage, killing several key project directors in their sleep. This is where it snapped. This land, henceforth was cursed...

Unhappiness did nothing but grow exponentially as needs were neglected and drainage canals expanded. One by one each member of the fortress fell to insanity, until only two remained...

The aquifer had been breached and was successfully draining into the caverns, which filled at an alarming rate, but none too much for the drainage canals that were so carefully excavated by the miners, few as they had become.

Only one miner was left, though; he dug and dug, improving drainage systems and attempting to cut through more of the aquifer, every day fighting through rapidly flowing water and mud as the expedition leader hauled corpses of the dead away to where they would be less disturbing. The dead, however, were not restful...

One day as the miner was hard at work, a ghost unexpectedly charged him in the tunnels and ripped a leg clean off of him. He never left that spot, and remained only to die of thirst in the mud, a most disgraceful and depressing death.

Only the expedition leader remained. He himself was forced to pick up the pick and continue the work, never expecting to see another of his kin for the rest of his days, doomed to die in these accursed tunnels at this accursed site, but one day, the unimaginable happened: migrants had arrived.

They helped our expedition leader to clean up some of the mess, and proceeded to assist in carving out some basic necessities that had been neglected for far too long here in Bridgeconstructs.

As the quality of life slowly rose, more work was continuing on the tunnels, with the new population behind the picks. But the caverns were filled ever deeper with runoff water, and a strange slowness was strongly felt by all around.

It was finally deemed that it would be impossible to continue work on the tunnel, due to this strange slowness as well as the maddening flows of water and mud that the miners could not bear nor dig through, and a new plan was erected.

The new plan was to attempt to dig a drainage system into the caverns to drain the enormous amount of water, believed to be the cause of the strange slowness absorbing the land. Work on this was slow, as all things had become in this land. After an agonizingly long wait, though, it was completed. Upon being opened to the caverns, the drainage system immediately flash flooded, killing several miners and various other people working in the drains at the time.

Initially, results were promising: large portions of the caverns were drying up and there was a general decrease in the water level. It did not continue for long; or perhaps it did: nobody knows, as the land had transcended time, and all who entered never came back. Time had slowed to a crawl in this land, scientists theorize. The cause is believed to be the infamous FPS fallout.

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Here's the save:
http://dffd.wimbli.com/file.php?id=6478

Any ideas for how to reduce the "FPS fallout"? I'm pretty sure it's due to all of the water in the caverns. Running for me at about ~7 FPS...

Like most forts, mine gets its water from an external source, a cavern lake. I've lost a fortress once when a titan got in through the river, where I sourced my water, that was totally inaccessible except by swimming. Problem is, most forgotten beasts/titans can swim, so one could really say that your water source is often the weakest point in your defense. Additionally, if you happen to get the water to your fortress with a pump stack (such as in my case), then you run the risk of having it destroyed.

So, my question is, how can I protect my pump stack from these guys? My military is very capable of killing forgotten beasts and has already killed several. I do have a fortification blocking the entrance of creatures, but that only works if the water is shallow enough, and it rarely is, except when the water system is for whatever reason filling/being stressed by some device that uses obscene amounts of water.

(Yeah, yeah, I should be inflicting unfortunate accidents upon my nobles. This is a special case, yet it shouldn't be too important to the discussion. )

So, as the title suggests, my nobles have private wine cellars, filled with their favorite kind of wine, placed conveniently in their rooms. The problem is that lowly commoners continuously leech out the wine!

How can I limit access to the wine cellars to the nobles? Currently, the wine cellars are just in the nobles' offices, but that can be changed, say, to their dining rooms or an empty room specifically for the purpose if need be. I think the real challenge would be making it so the lowly commoners can fill the wine cellar, but not drink from it.

Burrows would be rather inconvenient, so I wanted to ask the great, intelligent and !!SCIENTIFIC!! DF community about this problem before trying that.

Thanks!

title says most of it.

I plan to make my first pump stack! It will go 100 stories, from the caverns, to the fortress. I would like to know what precautions to take if I want to make it so the same pump stack can pump both water and magma, as well as any other tips you may have so I don't have too much Fun.

I'm trying to make a totally isolated fortress to find true Dwarven peace and harmony.


So I embarked on a deserted, isolated island. I even checked the civilizations screen on embark, and there was only Dwarves. Great! I know how these work: you get two migrant waves, and that's it. But what did puzzle me is this.. I got a trader caravan. Both in the first year, and again, now, in the second. I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to have gotten any, being totally isolated; this is bothering me.

How can I experience true Dwarven peace and harmony if I have profit-oriented bozos bothering me every year? What's worse, they tend to go berserk, and then they come back as violent ghosts. Already, an important member of the fortress has had her leg torn off by one such ghost, and now walks slowly around the fortress with a crutch, at significantly reduced efficiency.

The point is this: How can I stop these profit-oriented bozos from coming each year? I have not gotten any migrants but the first two waves, and I'm not getting any other traders, which is good, but I'm still getting these! 

I'm curious. The page is missing from the wiki in the DF2012 namespace, and it was broken in 0.31.xx. If anyone knows, they should also add the page to the wiki.