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Topics - sketchesofpayne

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DF Dwarf Mode Discussion / Observing how the simulation reacts to multiple retired forts over time

« on: July 07, 2022, 01:45:34 pm »

Defini Etha: The Dimensions of Prophecy

In a small world I've, so far, made a series of five dwarf fortresses that I ran for about 10 years each. I'm doing different things with each to see how the world responds and how they change after I retire them.

Looking through Legends Mode, the goblins were situated between the humans and elves who stomped the goblins into the ground early on and then proceeded to fight each other ever since then. There are still goblins in the world, but they're all living in other civilizations or as bandits. I decided to revive the goblin civilization and made them 'site controllable.' There was a huge forested swamp biome in the east where no one had settled, so my head canon was that secret villages of goblins survived deep in the swamps.

I had my starting seven goblins, plus two migrant waves for a total of 17. After that there were no more. The leader of the civ is still living with one other goblin in a camp (the civ's sole remaining site before I started building a new one). I ran the fort for 58 years before deciding to move on. In that time there were 65 births for a total of 82 goblins by the end. There were only four goblin females having children, and one of them had thirty-eight of them. What's more impressive is she was stricken with melancholy in year ten of the fort after not being able to sleep for too long. She just sort of wandered around for forty-eight years, having kids every so often.

The place was really built like a human settlement on the shore of a bay where three rivers emptied into the ocean. It rained all the friggin' time and we had to do a mass tree clearing every season, otherwise the place became completely overgrown. I played with invasions turned off, because without a mayor, militia captain, etc I can't form military squads. I don't know if positions like manager or bookkeeper can be added to the goblin civ post-worldgen?

On retiring I checked in with my older forts. In those 58 years a lot of my dwarves died of old age. When you unretire a fort, everyone who died of old age is just laying dead on the ground. All of the livestock died of old age and wasn't replenished in one fort. In another fort it looks like visitors and migrants brought new animals with them. It would be nice if herds didn't just die out over time. I was alarmed when Legends showed that 159 entities had died at the site, only to discover it was referring to all the sheep, dogs, and turkeys.

A mercenary who was in the tavern at another previous fort went on a killing spree a year after I retired it and killed 27 before being taken out.

Various people in other nations "claimed (artifact) from afar." I assume that means they sent people to claim or steal them.

I've been trying to figure out why some of my forts dwindle in population after retirement while others gain population. I think it mostly correlates to how many Hillocks are associated with your fort.

One fort was retired after a titan arrived. Another was retired while demons were rampaging through it. Post-retirement the simulation doesn't seem to care and just lists them as "outcasts" in the site populations. I was hoping to see them cause some havoc, but the simulation seems to just ignore them. I want to see if abandoning the fort with demons does anything different from retiring it.

The world only has one vampire who is a dwarf that profaned a temple by knocking over a statue in my fort. The fort was retired with the vampire locked in a chapel worshiping the god of death. Post retirement she's still in the same fort and... she got married recently. Curious if that leads to anything in the future. There are no werebeasts in the world. I'll see if one appears on its own, or maybe get a dwarf cursed, or maybe play an adventurer and get them cursed. Then see how far it spreads.

There are three necromancers. One necromancer, she had a son who became leader of a human civ. The son later died of old age. After several other leaders took the position and died of old age, the necromancer became the new leader. Seems like a rare case where the parent becomes leader of the civ after their child does. And this happened post-worldgen while I was running my forts.

There aren't any expertly written books in the world yet. Everything is still amateurish. I'm thinking of making a fort of scholars and trying to crank out some substantial writing.

At the moment I'm making a second goblin fort to try and grow the population. The goblins in the previous fort are continuing to have kids and they're up to 94 population now. I was worried they might get wiped out in an invasion after I'd spent so many hours growing the fort. Luckily the humans and elves are still busy fighting each other and the dwarves are just chilling out in their mountain halls.

I know there are certain things that only happen during worldgen. My goal is to poke and prod and see what I can make happen post-worldgen. If you think of something I should try out let me know.

DF Suggestions / Mark items for Decoration the same way you mark items for Melting

« on: November 23, 2018, 05:31:37 pm »

I've finally tackled decorating items these past few months. By default items are decorated based on proximity to the workshop. While assigning stockpiles to workshops basically works it is a hassle to set up and manage.

Pondering this issue I figured the best solution, aside from a more detailed decoration job order, would be to mark items for decoration in the same way items are marked for melting, dumping, and forbidding.

For instance, go into the stocks screen and mark a dozen steel helmets for decoration. Set a job for 'Stud with gold' 12/12.

Mark a bunch of furniture for decoration. Jeweler's Shop 'encrust furniture with green zircon' 'r'epeat. The shop will go until you get the message that the job has been canceled for lack of an item to be decorated.

DF Adventure Mode Discussion / Mad overlords in the wilderness

« on: November 13, 2018, 12:27:49 am »

Wandering through forests and jungles and investigation the white asterisks. On five occasions I have encountered a 'human overlord' standing naked, unarmed, and mad as a hatter in the middle of nowhere. They attack me on sight and do not respond to talking. Sometimes they have a tent set up.

I looked all of them up in legends viewer. Each of them had an ordinary life in some hamlet, then there is an entry where [person] became overlord of [group] in [year].

I look at the group; [group] claimed/conquered [site] in 489. In 513 [person] became overlord of [group]. [group] abandoned [site] in 529.

There are never any entries for either the person or the group after that. Would there be an entry if the group was attacked or disbanded/destroyed? The years vary, but it looks like they all abandoned their site in the last ten years. So are they dispossessed leaders that have lost their minds?

If this keeps happening I'm going to call my sword "Killedoverlords the End of Madness" or something like that.

DF Suggestions / Current food preferences, production, and sourcing

« on: November 13, 2018, 12:11:56 am »

Food production systems and options need to be more robust or the food preferences need to be less specific.

I've been reading about solutions to the "decent meals" need. The granularity and absurdity of food preferences seems ludicrous. Sorry if this reads like a rant. I've just had a lot of different thoughts about this issue bubbling away on my brain-pan.

In dwarf fortress someone's favorite food is something like 'river otter intestines' served as a biscuit, stew, or roast. I'm not even sure how you get a "river otter intestine biscuit" whose sole ingredient is two pieces of river otter intestines. The method of preparation and composition of the food is often more important than what animal part or what exact species of plant is involved. Fried, baked, boiled, roasted, smoked, fermented.

And for that matter, why in the world do dwarves not make some kind of sausage? Or porridge? Pickled vegetables? Salted meat? Vinegar?

You know what a really Dwarf Fortress-y solution would be? Random generated cuisine types. Where each cuisine would come from a civilization. It would have one to three meats associated with it, one or two grains, two to four spices or vegetables, and a preparation type. In the kitchen you would have "make basic meal" or "make [cuisine] meal." This way, as long as you can access several of the associated ingredients you could satisfy all the dwarves in you fortress whose preference is that cuisine. There could be 10-30 cuisines in a given world, instead of the myriad of body parts and plants we have now.

Instead of Urist McPickyEater preferring 'cheetah liver' he should have a preference like 'burrito' which would require [meat] [flour] [leaf vegetable] [bean] [cheese]. So you could make it from musk ox liver, millet flour, lettuce, red bean, goat cheese. Or you could make it from chicken heart, wheat flour, cabbage, broad bean, cow cheese.

Stew [meat] [tuber] [stem]. Elk bird lung, potato, celery. Cave fish, long yam, rhubarb. Lion sweetbread, purple yam, leek.

Fruit Pastry [flour] [egg] [fruit]. Finger millet flour, turkey egg, blueberry. Single-grain wheat flour, chicken egg, custard-apple.

I know this is probably not easy to implement. In the meantime can we at least limit preferences to an animal rather than animal part? Ideally dwarves should prefer food they may have actually come in contact with at some point. Besides, in adventure mode pretty much no one has prepared meals at all!