Bay 12 Games Forum

If you install one big waterfall and put niches with beds around it, assign those beds to the nobles and then chuck them down the waterfall, past their beds, to their deaths, does it count?

Also, there are absolutely no benefit to having an big empty hall. The empty will have no use at all... And you'd just see 3  floors of empty space.

An extra high hall means you can have more crossbows aimed at the creatures traversing said hall. A hypothetical fortress defended by a large number of crossbowdwarves could trap the enemies in a killing ground. Staggered rows of fortifications could give many crossbowdwarves a great view of the killing ground, like stadium seating but with audience participation. The same thing could be done with a long gauntlet instead of a killing ground.

Only in DF do you get discussions of how to genocide babies and children because they take up resources, slaughter merpeople for their bones, eat raw kitten meat, and set carefree, happy elves on fire.

Is someone keeping track of all these?

Let's be fair, economic streamlining through the murder of children has been around at least since The Sims, though that was the refuge of those who didn't know how much money they could make by forcing the children to grind for grades and then employing them in a painting sweatshop.

The game consistently crashes with this error:

Oh, they're all orc bait.

Even if you reclaimed with dozens of stout military dwarves, my money would still be on the goblins. It's worth a try, though, especially if the other option is to ditch it.

Here are proposed scenarios that will allow us to live through the goblins without it being too cheap:
1.The goblins are intimidated by the traps, and they'd rather not come in. A (staged by the player) hunting accident shows that the goblins would rather catch one dwarf and leave, so the leader has a terrible idea. A dwarven sacrifice is sent out to roam the wilderness (accomplished through the enabling of the hunting labor) and eventually trips an ambush. The ambushers kill the dwarf, loiter and eventually leave. Once they leave the map, the player must send out an additional sacrifice. This can be achieved by throwing in a little metagame and closing the gates whenever a sacrifice is outside, opening them once the goblins go away and closing them again once the new sacrifice comes out. To make sure the deaths hurt, dwarves must be chosen without viewing their relationships, and the sacrifice party size might have to be increased.
2. An attempt is made to fool the goblins by building an emergency fortress/whole new fortress under the new one. As soon as goblins show up, the door to the new fortress must be shut, and anything left outside will be consumed by the goblins. The goblins remain unaware of the new fortress as long as it doesn't make any contact with the surface. The survivors build up their forces in the new fortress, and prepare to reestablish contact with the surface. To keep things fair and obey the rule of cool, the dwarves may not breach the surface by digging, they have to send the newly assembled forces through the abandoned fortress, scanning the old rooms for hidden goblins and eventually seeing daylight for the first time in years.

Building an above-ground fortress is demanding. Building a secure above-ground fortress without cheap traps is difficult. Building an above-ground fortress secured against zombie gorillas, skeletal fish and  quite-alive-thank-you-very-much orcs should be something worthy of a community fortress.

Here is my proposed site:
Game: DF with Dig Deeper
Embark zone: Volcano, Tropical Moist Broadleaf Forest, Tropical Ocean, all sinister
Guidelines: Above-ground construction encouraged, sealing the fortress forbidden, trivial traps (stone fall, weapon, cage) strongly discouraged, mass trading of stone objects discouraged

Feel free to claim and equip a dwarf, claim a succession slot or both.