First fortress (0.42.02)I followed the quickstart guide. I absolutely loved the "Losing is fun" slogan, how DF was described as never knowing how you are going to lose. That sounded just great. And so the game was on Pause at least 95% of the time, as I binged on the wiki, planned everything, micro-managed to lose as little time as possible. It might have been my first fortress, but I wouldn't go down without a fight! I played with the constant tension of expecting some blow that would wipe out all my efforts.
I played for 3 in-game years, and it was... strangely peaceful, way too quiet. I think the most epic battle I witnessed was a hunter clubbing a moose with his wooden crossbow for 18 pages. I then remembered the guide had made me pick a "Serene" environment... As I also learned to read the world map, I realized I had surrounded myself with other friendly dwarven fortresses!
Silly me, so it was my fault all along, I had picked the most peaceful starting location possible. All right, time for a new fortress!
Second fortress (0.42.03)After the totally uneventful first game, I sure was ready for some action! And so I generated about 60 world maps (in parallel, running 16 instances of DF to use all CPU cores), with Beasts and Savagery set at "Very high", and finally found what seemed like an impossible challenge: a crippled Dwarven civilization, a nice starting location right next to a cluster of 20 dark pits and 2 dark fortresses, without a single dwarven fortress nearby. Excellent!
Expecting a bloody struggle for survival, I approached this like a master Starcraft player would: seeking an optimal build, turtling in with traps (though I still have never seen a trap in action), rushing towards iron and steel, maintaining half of my population in military training. If the main entrance was too well defended, I thought perhaps they would dig through the soft soil of the top levels, emerging through the walls? I expected the first top level(s) might quickly fall to the enemy, and therefore designed various choke points further down. (I later learned they can't dig or even destroy walls, and that you can't order your military to disengage/retreat anyway)
As you may have guessed, nothing happened. Once, after two years, some werebeast appeared and managed to bruise a wood hauler before the 50-strong militia arrived (the beast's head was cut off on the first blow). But I'm right next door to the goblins! Where are they? They should be ambushing my wood cutters, harassing my workers, launching skirmishes, constantly probing my defenses, if not plainly dying at the fortress walls (goblins usually live short and violent lives).
I kept going, thinking that at least a higher wealth would attract even more powerful enemies. Greedy dragons? Envious extra-planar entities? Deities insulted by my earthly arrogance?
Two years later (total of 4 years), the wealth reached 15 millions, my fortress was named the capital and the monarch arrived. That's right, my little military outpost that has never seen battle, right in front of 20 dark pits and 2 dark fortresses, retired from all dwarven civilization, became the capital.
ConclusionHonestly, I feel cheated. The wiki is describing a game where the Fun is brutal, where it's only a matter of time before any fortress fell, no matter how well you think you were prepared. That sounded fantastic, amazing! A game where constantly losing is at the core of the game! Where we would struggle to improve our tactics just to get a little further each time! Where only the greatest DF Grand Masters could expect to sustain large and wealthy fortresses!
If there are no enemies or dangers, then it's impossible to lose, and Dwarf Fortress ends up being similar to The Sims. Where did that "Losing is fun" slogan come from? How do people lose?
Did I miss something? With all the mods out there, did I miss a setting to change the difficulty from "Very easy" to "Insane"? How should I generate a world giving me a real challenge for survival? (please don't tell me to just dig deeper, I would like to lose while struggling for survival, not for acting stupidly...)
I am seriously baffled with this. Please tell me it's not just The Sims with dwarves...
Some other observations:- When my wood hauler was bruised and resting, all my dwarves spammed "No Water Source" for weeks. Sure, it was winter and the river was frozen... But if the dwarves have the technology to manufacture steel, surely they have figured out how to melt ice and snow? Or was there a way to micro-manage a "put snow in bucket" job that I couldn't find?
- My military dwarves kept dropping food in their private rooms, which would rot and generate miasma.
- When I switched barracks for my 30 marksmen, they temporarily all came to the new library to drop their food on the floor. I immediately marked all of it for dumping, disabled general wood & mineral hauling, and yet my dwarves kept doing other things. Half of it rotted and generated a huge cloud of miasma.
- My outside watch tower/gate has been covered in vomit for two years. No one seems interested to clean it up, and it never goes away. Here's the second floor:
http://www.rayforce.net/df000.png- Apparently, bundles of fine prepared meals (roasts) outside a barrel are worth the square of the quantity? So a bundle of 50 fancy roasts is worth 2500 times a single fancy roast, but only 50 times when finally stored in a barrel.
And this isn't a chair, but here's a Lego table of about 8000 parts: