Bay 12 Games Forum

On the other hand a two dwarf squad would be doing a lot more sparring as well, which at least used to level skills up way faster than demonstrations which happen in larger squads. A three dwarf squad with a minimum of two set to train might be better though, since one of them can rest while the other two spar. Giving everyone in squad the same weapon might speed the process up as well, since no speardwarf has to waste time on axe demonstrations, for example.

Training soldiers quickly is not that big of a deal nowadays though, since training is much faster, invasions take longer to come, there are no ambushes (by goblins at least) and sieges aren't that powerful either (in my experience at least) so there's a lot of time to get legendary soldiers clad in full steel and iron before anything too big comes your way.

Unless it's zombies. Never seen one, but I've heard they're nasty.

Compared to pretty much everything seen so far in here and in other threads, my goals are are almost embarrassingly simple:

- Become a mountainhome and get royalty to live there
- Dig deep and find a way do something useful with magma
- Dig deeper and mine candy
- Get farms, clothing industry and other more complicated industries really running
- Get more complex schedules for military work
- Do something useful with animals
- Design, build and test a Skrillex Storm machine

I've dabbled with most of these but not really managed to make them work that well, and I don't have enough time in my hands to actually play the game as much as I want.

Do they have any skills? I've seen this as well, but mostly only with dwarves with no skills. I'm guessing that in such a situation Dwarf Therapist looks for suitability in unskilled professions based on values, attributes and personality traits, where dwarves' tendencies for empathy and respect for law makes them near-perfect for roles of nurse and lawdwarf.

Cavern-dwelling civilizations capable of sieges and ambushes. Different kinds of sentient "natives" in the style of animal men on the surface. Also, more active animal men in the caverns (and surface).

Several kinds of ghosts who act differently depending on how they came to be. Poltergeists that mess with levers and furniture in the fort, ones who just don't understand they're dead and wander around living their daily lives until they find their slabs, Murder victims who won't go away until the perpetrators are punished... The list goes on. Ways of dealing with them could vary.

I'm on my fourth year of my current fortress. Autumn came, and with it both liaison and the caravan. Liaison goes on to have a meeting with my mayor and caravan heads straight to the depot. Everything is going normal so far, so I order some junk to be hauled for trading and go on to take care of other things.

Suddenly I get an announcement of a puppy being killed. Then another one. This happens around the same time my quarantined wereskinks transform, so I go looking if I accidentally managed to leave one loose. There are no wereskinks to be seen. Instead, I see caravan guards shooting at my animals, all the while their wagons keep on moving towards the depot. I order my military to station on the courtyard just in case there's trouble to be had, and sure enough they engage the merchants as soon as they see them. Wagons roll to the depot, then leave immediately, and caravan guards keep fighting my military until they die. The guards, that is. My weaponlords won't go down that that easily. Meanwhile, the liaison elevates my fortress into a duchy, makes a trade agreement like usually, and leaves without any trouble.

What exactly could be the cause of this? I've had a couple of sieges whose remains haven't been completely cleaned out yet, so the area around the main entrance is littered with corpses. I also saw a werebeast corpse in my courtyard, but it belonged to my former militia commander who was slain a couple of months earlier, so I doubt that has anything to do with it. Other than that, there wasn't anything out of the ordinary going on. No one was tantruming, no invasions were going on and no hostile wildlife was anywhere to be seen. I'm using the latest version of the game, in case that's any help.

I tend to give names to my starting seven, mostly so I can see how they fare and distinguish them from migrants and those born in the fortress. I usually name them after some dwarfs I remember from literature and games, except when I have some other cool theme in mind.

For the other dwarfs I only give nicknames if they have done something that catches my attention, in which case I name them after the thing they did. I like to make those names into something one could reasonably expect those dwarfs to be called, whether jokingly or as a semi-official title. For example, the hammerdwarf who killed a roc got named 'Rocslayer', while my mayor got the nickname 'Scepterfan' for prohibiting the export of... well, make a guess. Other than that, all the dwarfs get to keep their names, and I never bother renaming fortresses either. It would be a sore thumb in legends.

Squads will always get renamed, though. Random names are far too non-indicative for effective command. They are all named [Ordinal number] [Combat Role].

Quote from: Dwarf4Explosives on December 11, 2014, 05:24:00 am

I meant telepathy in the "can view things at a distance" way. I know telepathy isn't really the right word for it, but I can't remember what the correct word is.

Television ("far-looking")? ;p

Clairvoyance?