Bay 12 Games Forum

So I was playing Dwarf Fortress yesterday and things were going along interestingly. I had my first Vampire in the fort, and upon discovery I locked them up in my dwarven prison. The murder sentence was only around 165 days, so that's kind of short, but life goes on.

The vampire had been in the prison for a few seasons and I was playing along. I got a note that a mandate had ended, and when I went to the noble page to see what was up, I noticed the dwarves had elected a new mayor.

The Vampire, still in prison, had been elected mayor.

This isn't terribly surprising; the Vampire's social skills are almost legendary while most of my fort barely even has social skills. I'm not terribly sure what to do about it, though. The Vampire was released at the end of their prison sentence, killed someone, and I put them right back in prison. Soon after that I assigned a new Hammerer, but it seems that once a sentence is given you can't change it. I guess I have to wait untill they're released and kill again. ^.^;;

But gosh, how can this even happen? High social skills or not, the vampire was isolated in the prison, only seeing dwarves that brought her water to drink. Not to mention she was a convicted murderer! You'd think that would keep you out of the election pool.

Anyways when I realized what had happened I laughed for a whole minute, so I thought everyone else would like to hear about it. Crazy, huh? I already submitted it to that mantis bug report thing. Hopefully this is a bug, and not a feature; I don't know if a mayor can do their duties in prison!

Sounds like they wanna join in with the guys shooting the targets.

In my last few forts I've noticed that my dwarves tend to leave most of the prepared food in the kitchen, letting it rot and stink up the joint. On my latest fort I decided to do a single cook order, and my cook made a stack of 9 plump helmet roast. And everybody left it there. At least five of my dwarves had food hauling turned on. Before long I got my first immigrant wave, and they all started doing the haul jobs that had stacked up, but none of them had done anything about the roasts. I took a look at the Jobs page and checked each individual job, and the job to put the plump helmet roasts into a stockpile didn't even appear on the list.

I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but it seems like it ought to at least appear on the list; or maybe something is preventing them from being hauled in the first place? I'm used to my dwarves taking a while to get to hauling what I want them to haul, but they almost always ignore food untill it rots. And often after it rots, they just leave it there instead of taking it to the garbage dump, despite my designating at least a couple peasants to trash only.

I'd only heard of these beasts in myths and legends, but I just embarked on a hill where I found some "Giant Cave Spider Silk Web" inside a bottomless pit.

It's pretty far down there. Can/will the spider climb out and devour the world? Can I build cage traps and lure it out of the chasm and train it to guard my fort? Will it eat the herd of Naked Mole Dogs that also spawned on the same layer? I just noticed there was more webbing on a higher z level. Is it possible there are two Giant Cave Spiders? Or more? Oh god what if there are invisible giant cave spiders in other parts of the map than the chasm? We are so screwed?

This is going to be fun.

It's a long job, it takes time. How long is forever?

It'll probably take long enough that you wouldn't want to sit there watching it. It's like boiling water. You can stand around in the kitchen waiting for something and it feels like forever, or you can get busy and realize the water's already done.

I started a new fort with the 39f version and so far it's been going great... except just now, when I had my first Goblin Ambush.

The first thing I do during a Goblin Ambush is set it so that my dwarves can't go outside, and as soon as the goblins get close to my gate I close the drawbridge. (if I close it any sooner the goblins just stand around and don't approach)

This time something very different happened. My dwarves started suspending and cancelling jobs all over my fortress, citing the 'forbidden area'. Normally they would cancel jobs outside of the fort, like building outdoor walls or roads, or chopping down wood or fishing. But this time it was including jobs all over the inside of my fort!

The fort I'm using right now has a different design than I normally use. It's square-shaped with five levels arranged around a core staircase. Each level has a cross-shaped five-square wide hallway, with four areas forming a square. The core staircase has a single pillar in the middle surrounded by eight staircases, which are surrounded by a single square of 'floor', then the cross-halls are bordered by a line of grates up to the 'top' of the fort, to let light in. My last couple forts had problems with cave adaptation so I thought I'd try this.

The grate/light thing was my first suspect, but there are a few other ways to get around my fort that didn't involve going through this staircase, and a few of the jobs warnings didn't make any sense at all. The top level of the staircase core has all twenty grates installed, already, and everywhere beneath them is marked as "Inside, Light, Above Ground"

My fort also features a front gate that is mostly made out of constructions. When I built it, I channeled away part of a hill to make a bold cliff face. I left 1 z-level of natural rock that was 13x11, and cut a 5 square wide hallway into the heart of my fort. I channeled away part of it, so that my archers on the walls could shoot both at targets outside the fort and at targets that make it over my drawbridge before I raise it. I had just finished adding a constructed roof to this gatehouse when the goblins attacked. I haven't finished adding fortifications, just a big floor floating over the gatehouse. Like with the core staircase, this is all marked as Inside, Light, Above Ground. When I set my orders to 'dwarves stay inside', my marksdwarves refused to go onto the U-shaped portion covered by the constructed floor, untill I set it to 'soldiers can go outside'.

So, it seems like 'above ground' means 'outside' but that doesn't explain everything that's going on. The middle three levels of my five-level fort are connected by a 'storage room' that is connected to my Trade Depot on the middle floor. The second floor from the top is connected to my farms, which are entirely underground with no constructions above them, and a straight route from most of my fort without going through any of the constructed areas, yet I got a lot of 'Cancelled Farming Job' messages.

In any case the whole thing is awfully chaotic. The one that stuck out most to me was a door construction job on the middle floor, at the mayor's house. The door was left on the staircase and the job was cancelled because of 'forbidden area', but then when I unsuspended the job, another dwarf went onto the stair case, grabbed the door, and cheerfully placed it, crossing the grates several times.

So, what in the world is going on? Is this a bug, or was I mistakenly thinking that constructed spaces count as inside, and my dwarves were too dumb to pathfind around the main stairs?

I'm working on a new fortress. Probably going to end badly, judging by the Giant Eagle soaring a few Z-levels over my starting seven...

I was keeping an eye on the unit screen to see what sort of critters were around. There was a single hyperspeed alligator to begin, but it left. Then a group of Slugmen and a group of Snailmen came. The slugmen are all hanging out in the forested area near where my dwarves are digging my basic fort, and my farmer is gathering food there for brewing. I was surprised that my farmer wasn't getting scared off by the slugmen.

Are not all humanoids violent to dwarves?