Bay 12 Games Forum

309. You actually can level up your military to maximum by killing boars over and over again.
310. Don't be intimidated by the ratio of idlers to working Dwarves. Dwarves aren't the most demanding creatures in the world, and they're yours to command them to do what you want them to do. Just remember to feed and booze them and they'll be okay; don't feel like you need to spend over half of your game-time staring at Dwarf Therapist to remedy inefficiency.
311. On the topic of #310: Seriously, remember to booze them.
312. Gas-breathing FBs make for an excellent and creative way to both dispose of animals and prisoners, assuming you know how to cage them.
313. If you actually do try to cage a Gas-breathing FB, you are likely to lose your GCS appx. 1/3rd of the time using a simple method.

Quote from: Levi on February 22, 2012, 11:43:35 am

Well, its not 100%, but this works pretty well:

Code: [Select]

###################
PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
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#:  Wall
P:  Pit, 10ish Z-Levels Deep
T:  Wood training spear traps.

Put this as the entrance of your fortress(with a ceiling over it in case of flyers).  The Wood spear traps don't do much for damage, but enemies will dodge them and fall into the pits of death.  Since Caravans are friendly, they won't trigger the traps and will make it through just fine.

This style of trapped entrance works great in an evil region with zombiefication.  Anything that falls down into the corpse pit and survives gets torn up by all who preceded them.

Forcing the enemies to dodge into a gutter on either side of your entrance... I like that! The only problems I foresee with it are that, aside from the fact that the wooden spear traps would also hit your caravans, there is also the big issue that, after awhile, the zombified creatures and body parts would start to build up in your gutters and eventually overthrow your fortress by way of framerate. May I suggest you fill the gutters with magma? Or, if you're feeling really bold, you could hollow out the entire area underneath your trapped path, and then create a deep gap between that area, where your undead will be rendered harmless by the distance, and another, on which you can station your marksdwarves, or train up your hunters. Use bone or wooden bolts, and you'll have an endless supply of practice, while yet keeping your framerate low. Once you've built up too much a surplus of undead, you can flood that area with magma from the sides, and it will all drain helplessly into the gap between that area and your marksdwarves.

FOOOO=MMMMM
XXXXXX=MMMMM
XXXXXX=MMMMM
XXXXXX=MMMMM
FOOOO=MMMMM

X = Floor, with trapped area directly above.
O = Floor, with the pitfall directly above.
F = Floodgate, built into the side-wall, behind which lies a store of magma.
= = A very deep gap, at the bottom of which should be a series of pumps, to re-circulate the magma back up to the magma-stores. Alternatively, you could have some fun with it and drain it into your caverns, to kill whatever nasties might be hiding down there.
M = Floor, on which you should station your marksdwarves.

Creativity is fun.

Concerning zombified birds and other flying creatures which have become zombies: I think that, no matter how much they might be rotten, they can still fly. I had over 155 Giant Mosquito Corpses on my screen at the same time, and not one of them was without flight or movement. Similarly, I've had entire flocks of undead ravens, undead Peregrine falcon folk, and all other flying undead creatures under the sun on my map at some point in large enough numbers.

While those worlds are long-deleted, I did check the status on a few of those creatures, and found that they were all rotten beyond hope. Some less so than others, but mostly they were all rotten to the point where anything they had in terms of wings should have been unusable. This was not the case.

Of course, I'm sure you didn't need me to tell you that, but I thought my input might serve to confirm the fact a little bit. And, while I am here, I will also impart a few other tidbits of information, which might be of some importance considering the subject matter:

1 - Zombified birds (and other reanimated creatures of flight) can be grounded.
2 - Bolts are largely ineffective against undead.

So, if you were thinking of shooting them out of the air and hacking them up, that won't work.

Been playing in 40d for a long time.  Have it modded to cover most of the stuff I find annoying, etc, etc.

So, for those of you who still remember 40d, how's the switch?  Have most of the nasty bugs/problems (like being unable to spar, and stat/skill rust being crazy fast) been dealt with?

Anybody up to making a "here's what to watch out for" list for me?

I'm not actually a 40d player myself, but I think I can help answer some of your questions based upon what I've actually heard about 40d and people's experiences with it.

The "nasty bugs" which you mentioned... skill rust being too fast, and an inability to spar... those have both been fixed a long time ago. However... [WARNING: OPINION INCOMING] the military system that is in place right now is a complete and utter clusterfuck, it is in desperate need of revision, and yes, bugs are still present. As opposed to being unable to spar, your dwarves now have an extremely low rate of skill-gain; even if they train the whole year, they'll barely improve. I find, and am often told so, that having them go on live hunts is preferable, but what with the recent changes to certain environments (see: Terrifying), having your dwarves leave the fortress at all could prove utterly fatal. Concerning military, I think that you're probably much better off in an earlier version of the game before everything was made convoluted.

HOWEVER, I will say that I have always, absolutely loved this game since I started playing it in the early versions of 3D, and the new update seriously kicks major fucking ass. As long as you can figure out the military system, prepare for an utterly mind-blowing experience and lots of FUN, especially if you're playing an evil biome. Because I feel that doing a straight evil embark is suicide with how the game is right now, I usually play on a half-and-half (terrifying on one side, untamed on the other), and build on the untamed half.

I'd recommend migrant laborers to move it into a pre-constructed room. Put a retractable bridge over the room and drop prisoners in through that or a hatch. Maybe you could use water to wash out the goblin corpses, since the cage will be so heavy that water won't move it, and then you could harvest their goblinite.

Yes.  Your embark site has a limited population created when you embark.  Creatures with the [PET] tag can breed, even in the wild, but this is slow, and if you kill them all off the population will never recover.

The problem with hunters in an older fort is not so much ambushes as the inevitable extinction of all wildlife.  Unless you very deliberately limit hunting to match the limited reproduction rate of wild animals, you'll run out of stuff you can hunt within a decade.

See this? This is bullshit, especially on large worlds. It is completely unfeasible for a single fort, let alone a single dwarf, to completely hunt all wildlife in a single biome to extinction when the hunters aren't even leaving the confines of their embark spot. Maybe in caverns would a cap like this be appropriate, even if it did decrease the fun in playing that fortress, but on the surface world!? Absurd isn't even an appropriate word for it. This "feature" hugely de-values the fun of playing an older fortress, and also playing with hunters in general.

Somebody really needs to address this problem to Toady...

What is often excluded from explanations about building in this game (unfortunately) is that there are actually two types of "building" in this game. The first type is the kind you would expect, namely the on-site creation of buildings or other structures (wells, levers, etc...) from pre-existing parts. That is to say that if I wanted to build a workshop, I could place one anywhere I want and my dwarves can build it once they have all the necessry materials... almost like laying out a blueprint, and then constructing it from basic materials.

The other kind of building is the kind that you are talking about, and really is not so much "building" as it is "item placement." An armor stand, for instance, must be built before it is placed because it has some particular form of construction. Let's say that I wanted to put a metal weapon rack in my mayor's room-- surely it would be less intelligent of me to lug an anvil to and from the mayor's room merely for the sake of forging the rack right there! I would lack a furnace too, among other necessary things, so it would make much more sense for me to create the rack in the workshop of a local metalsmith and then drag it there than to forge it on-site.

Believe me when I say that this is never, ever explained by anybody and that I had to figure it out for myself. I had the same problem. Best of luck to you, OP.