Bay 12 Games Forum

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Zonudil, "Helmlanterns", a generated city of 262 citizens composed of 4 races, Vulps (fox people), Equids (centaurs), Humans and Goblins.  I wanted to share this for anyone else who also wants to try a multi-race city: 

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5_Jm8L6GFwcMjR2NkQ3VjBuMk0&authuser=0 

The story so far:  When I started playing, Zonudil was capital and only city of the Vulpen civ The Portals of Coal.  I embarked far to the south to establish the fortresses of Abirrakust and then Vutokushat.  I quickly realized that the capital could not send any migrants and the initial waves were too few to reproduce.  Then suddenly, our expedition leader was made king, and we received word that Zonudil had been conquered by the Human civ, The Kingdoms of Scaling.  We thought the city was destroyed and sent a small group of 7 to reclaim the site of Zonudil.  Surprised were we to discover that over 200 citizens were still alive and Hostile to our settlers.  The settlers abandoned their initial attempt and decided to regroup with better supplies, but when I came back, it was set to Unretire instead of Reclaim and all the citizens of Zonudil were peaceful to the The Portals of Coal again. 

If you haven't figured it out, this is a modded game.  Vulps are pretty close to dwarves, with trancing, cave adaptation and alcohol dependency.  But Vulps are more lenient with slavery, which is probably how all these other people got here and why the humans are at war. 



I have not officially reclaimed Zonudil in the save file so that you can choose whether to explore it in Fortress mode or Adventure mode or check the Legends first.  If you do choose to reclaim in Fortress Mode, note that you will face several challenges.  Zonudil has 262 mouths to feed, but no farms or crops except for what the initial reclaim team brought, scavenged and seized from a hapless caravan.  The only water is a frozen brook, and since Zonudil is in the tundra, I have no idea when or if it ever thaws.  If you can sort that out, I'm pretty sure The Portals of Coal are still at war with The Kingdoms of Scaling, and since you've already got 262 citizens, you're probably going to be faced with an ambush or siege very quickly, and the randomly generated Zonudil is not very defense oriented.  The Portal of Coal does not have any domesticated pack animals, so you will not receive any caravans from your own civ, but that's probably irrelevant since you're essentially extinct. 

The good news is that 262 is a lot of manpower to get things done.  The Zonudilese have already discovered and walled off some caverns and discovered magma.  Zonudil is mostly vertical, so it doesn't take up very much of the map.  You could just ignore the generated structure and build your own on the other side of the map, if you wanted to.  But your better bet is probably to build some defensive structures into the default depot box structure, which even has a ceiling already. 

I poked around a little bit, but I haven't really tried to play Zonudil yet.  I noticed that you cannot assign labors to the non-Vulp citizens, but several of them are already Masons or Carpenters or whatever and at least have those labors enabled, and they all have hauling enabled.  You cannot assign non-Vulps to military squads, but you can assign them to Noble positions, including squad commander positions.  However, Humans and Equids(centaurs) will not fit into Vulpen-made armor, so perhaps military service is not best for them anyways.  You could try playing with LNP's Automatic Job Assignments turned on and see if that allows the non-Vulp peasants to perform labors. 



Enjoy. 

I've had Fun trying to go straight for the magma.  You make a quick camp on the surface, then try to dig down to magma sea immediately.  Your main entrance should open up to the 3rd cavern layer, so you've got ... Stairs to Surface -> 3rd Cavern -> Fortress.  Ideally you would pick some place with sand or clay so that the magma is immediately useful.  Most of the time, if you've got sand or clay on the surface, your caverns will have sand or clay floors, so you don't even have to commute for that.  For extra fun, embark somewhere with no water or trees so you HAVE TO dig to survive in the first place. 

So far, all of my magma fortresses have been destroyed very quickly by forgotten beasts. 

Latest fortress fell quite suddenly when I breached the first level of caverns early on. The troglodytes weren't a threat, but the web-spitting forgotten beast made out of mud destroyed my military with little effort. Attempts to reclaim met similar fates. Side note: no thieves or snatchers ever showed up. This has been happening fairly consistently for me. Could it be because I set the beasts and savagery to maximum in the presets? I had goblins on my civilization list, but no kobolds, but I'm not sure if kobolds are supposed to show up on the civilization list as I've never seen them there.

You could try living on the surface.  You'll eventually get titans and dragons but those are generally not as bad as the worst forgotten beasts.  (I've only seen one Titan, so I don't know if they are always friendlier than FBs)  You can dig a little bit, but don't specifically try to reach the caverns.  This keeps the FBs out and lets you build a strong fortress first. 

A lot of people are wondering where the baby snatchers are.  Kobolds show up on the civilization list after you've seen one, but I don't think they show up on the neighbor list at embark. 

Assuming your map has soil, just dig out a big square in a soil layer and create a Gather Plants activity zone.  Pig Tails will eventually grow there and your dwarves will automatically collect them.  If you don't have soil, or don't want to use it, you can fill any room with water to make mud and underground crops will grow there. 

Yes, I like the idea of mob football, wrestling, and boxing, but though drinking games certainly fit with dwarves, the ones in this game seem to be a bit desensitised to alcohol. Rap offs sound great, too. About the uniforms, I agree that you wouldn't want them to be unbalanced. Maybe just make them play naked?

Actually, if the game was violent, which I think we're going for, you could decide what armor level dwarfs should wear while playing.  Helmets?  Shoulder, Shin Guards?  Full Body Armor?  Cloth? Leather?  Bronze?  Steel?  Adamantine?  Like military squads, dwarves would grab whatever armor they can, and if they can't find enough, they just play in their street clothes.  In that case, I guess you'd set the uniform for the entire league and not for the team specifically.  Maybe on a game-by-game basis. 

That way, if you want a bloody conflict, you can make your players go nude with metal bats, or if you want to play safe, you can assign steel armor and feather wood bats. 

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=148613.msg6045263

Cloth rags seem to be the original material of choice. 

It sounds like he accidently dropped the entire food barrel into the "roast" while carrying it.  "Oops!  That was too much.  I guess I'll just a little more-oops, too much again!"

I'm wondering about adding some mild super powers to fighting in Dwarf Fortress. 

Advanced Techniques - Dwarves can gain advanced maneuvers by practicing a lot.  A civilian might throw a sloppy punch that can land anywhere, a trained grappler can land a skull-shattering blow to the temple.  Striking, grappling and weapon attacks could all benefit.  I know that's mostly how it works already, but I think there's room to add a little more flair.  Knee strikes, head butts, neck chops, disarming strikes, pressure point blows.  These could even be cultural, i.e. Dwarf Thai use knee strikes, while Dwarf Japanese use karate chops, etc. 

Training Machines - Punching bags, mechanical moving targets, weights to lift, etc.  Would need to be balanced against sparring, for example, training machines could require a lot of expensive parts, but increase the training more than sparring, or machines could improve base stats, strength, agility, toughness, while sparring improves technique, sword skill, armor skill, etc. 

Berzerking - Like the Martial Trance or Prone to Rage, but something you train you to do.  A dabbling Rager can rage 2% of the time, a Legendary Rager can rage 100% of the time and get better benefits to raging.  Maybe something that dwarves can only discover "by accident", for example, there's no way to train to rage until your dwarf enters a Martial Trance in combat, but after that, the dwarf can try to do it on purpose and teach others to do it. 

Enchanted Weapons - Artifact weapons could have more elaborate bonuses.  Myth, fantasy and video game are filled with ideas: swords that flame, staffs that grow, throwing weapons that magically return, weapons that fight on their own, and so forth.  I think a lot of players express disappointment when their blacksmith makes an artifact lay pewter axe or something like that and it's not even as good as goblinite.  Besides producing them yourself, invaders could occasionally bring enchanted weapons, either handed down by gods and demons, or stolen from other civs.  If the tavern upgrade brings heroes to your fortress, extra heroic weapons could bring enchanted weapons with them.  Weapons could also gain their enchantments after creation, but I'm not sure how.  Maybe the religion system could be one source. 

Rare Genius - The idea that certain individuals are natural geniuses who can unlock a full potential that no one else can touch.  Son Goku, Chuck Norris, HollisticDetective, etc.  These geniuses are well beyond the physical capabilities of other dwarfs.  They are one-dwarf-armies, capable of beating down an entire siege single-handed, ripping out the heart of a forgotten beast or suplexing a bronze colossus.  The genius cannot be taught, nor can they teach what they do to non-geniuses, it just comes naturally to them. 

Ancient Master - The opposite of a genius, the ancient master has gained knowledge through years, maybe centuries, of study and training.  He can teach others, though they must dedicate themselves and train as hard for as long as the ancient master has to get to the same level.  Among other benefits, masters could unlock a bodily secret that prevents them from aging, so that they can keep studying beyond a normal lifespan.  i.e. Master Roshi from DBZ is like 700 years old.  Besides people as masters, there could be fighting manuals or ancient scrolls that instruct new warriors. 

Ninja - Warriors with intense training or the necessary gadgets can perform feats like climbing walls, jumping huge distances, walking on water, using camouflage, etc.  Rare Geniuses and Ancient Masters might be able to go farther, pass through walls, become invisible, fly, breath water, etc. 

Qigong - The apparently totally for real kung fu technique of temporarily hardening your body to deflect wounds:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iwyTJuDGiA  In Dwarf Fortress, this might give martial artists the ability to turn their tissues into stone, bronze or steel, at the instant an attack connects. 

Auras - A staple of eastern martial arts, the idea that sufficiently trained martial artists can detect powerful or evil auras from other martial artists.  In some interpretations, auras are an extension of animal danger instinct, the ability to detect that something is capable of doing you harm.  Martial artist can sharpen this danger sense to get more information out of it, physical or mental or spiritual training increases someone's danger level, aura specialists can hide their auras to avoid detection or heighten their auras to psyche out strong opponents or completely avoid weaker ones. 

This - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iwyTJuDGiA

EDIT:  4/26: Added some things.