I just came back from a 5 year pause. Lately I played "banished" and it reminded me of DF so I decided to take a look how it developed.
Interestingly, albeit I thought I'd have forgotten almost everything things quickly came back when playing the game. I started with getting a Lazy Newb Pack download, because I remembered 2008 I ended up modding DF with graphics playing with the Ini etc. so I looked for that. LNP is a nice addition that wasn't available then.
Looking for an embark side, I looked for a most mirthful place possibly away from goblins because well, I figured I forgot so much stuff I don't want to cope with nasty stuff while still trying to remember how to make stockpiles. I tried to find a peaceful place with a River, Clay, Sand, Metal, good amount of trees without an Aquifer (I never had played with one) and Fluxstone. Simply a good place as possible, I'm not yet looking for a startup challenge. Such ideal place was not available, so I accepted average wildlife, hand to let go of Fluxstone, and went for an Aquifer instead of River. I picked a place that was 1/3 covored with a biome with an Aquifer and 2/3 a jungle without, so I get it easy. Its kind of interesting what one remembers about a single thing like picking an embark side, while a newbie more or less has to pick one at random. It was also the first time ever I dared to play an Aquifer, even with the simplified condition of securing direct access to lower layers.
Landing on the side, I went for my usual thing, 3 tile wide tunnel into the mountain from a side, leave a 5x5 place for the Depot later and start building the stock pile around it. Especially in the beginning I make one hugh stockpile allowing everything but stones, corpses and refuse. Making the refuse stockpile at the entrance. Then a layer with the workshops, a layer for the meeting hall including offices and dining rooms, then skipping 4 layers (I only later learned that workshops no longer make noise, thats the stuff to unlearn) then several layers dormitory, beginning with one room with a few beds as common sleeping room. I quickly remembered my favorite design principle back then and went for it. My fortresses are usually a big hive with tons of 5x5 rooms. 5x5 for (almost) everything. For a workshop to a bed, etc. only exception the meeting hall. Connecting diagonally with up/down stairs in the interaction. Larger stockpiles simply spawn several rooms. These has the advantage that I can freely redesignate most rooms should I want to. The drawbacks is that is a little more spacious than necessary. Most dwarves are happy with smaller rooms. But hey, space is hardly a problem. And each room needs 4 doors to be seperated, but again, stone doors never were a scare ressource either.
So I started up doing usual stuff, making beds and barrels, caring for drinks, starting some farming etc. I quickly went nervous remembering the early deaths of fortress due to goblin suprises. After making basic stuff I decided to make tons of wooden spike balls. There were plenty of trees and I didn't have a metal industry running yet. I spiked my 3 tile way entry path full of spike ball traps (including a last line of defense with cage traps), then on one moment I accently pressed Shift-D when looking around, seeing my Depot is not accessible, but not due to tree overgrowth, but traps no longer a wagon passable. WTF! Googled around, and oh well, stuff to relearn for new versions. Read about the winding 3-path thing vs. the short trap path. Since I carved already a straight 3-path into the mouth of the mountain, I went for constructing a windy entrance with walls. At the end I went for a 3 level layered spiral that wasn't too spacious.
What I wondered, that I produced not much stone. Has this been turned lower? At first I thought it was simply because of the beginning miners, but even when they were legendary, they produced only 1 stone per 5 tiles or so digged out. This used to be almost 1 stone for 1 space back then. In 2008 I often ended up building some upper land fort, since tons of stones I didn't like to waste to the atom smasher. I like the idea of having ant-hill physics. two thirds of the construction underground while 1 third above ground for all the material digged out. However, I had to pre-mine sleeping rooms albeit not needed yet to get stones. Also my meeting hall turned out to get more and more big, big hall style. I'm not going to dig empty hugh layers without a usage of the space in mind tough. However I did not want to break caverns yet, I rembered it killing my FPS back then.
Two or three years came without any goblin coming up. Has the place been that peaceful? Anyway. One of my first mega projects has always been a big (dwarf-chinese) wall around the whole map as far I can place it. Not any land to waste to the wild life. (I had a 3x3 embark site) and I like having out door statue rooms and parties at the pool.Well soon after I started building the first pieces of the wall, goblin ambush! I suppose they might have been lingering already out there for a while, since they really sieged and did not come to my so carefully prepared trap-corridor. I create a burrow to keep my dwarves inside I waited, and waited. But they didn't came. Is actual sieging a new feature? I rembered having asked for it for more realism. However, when I looked at the goblins one of them was sitting on a toad in a pond without ramps. So it might be the leader stuck. Eventually I took my military dwarves, I had 5 armored and 5 mark dwarves and engaged. They hadn't trained for long so far. One of them died in the combat but then siege was broken. Since then they came regulary.
Then the next big fortress crisis came, a Titan, quite eraly in my opinion. A super-sized flying bug. I ordered all dwarves inside and had my military waiting behind the trap corridor - which had a L turn at the end, one thing I learned from 2008 so my soldiers don't run into it too early, I still had only spiked wooden balls, so this could looked dangerous. The ladybug shot pebbels from its mouth and started decimating my grazing outside animals big time killing animal after animal. Finally it went to the trap corridor, went through it unharmed. My military stormed onto it and a few ticks later it was gone! I don't know exactly what happened. I didn't see a body, but I have the titan on my deceased list. I also noted that I now had 3 legendary swordsfighters. I don't know if they trained so hard up then, or if the interaction with the ladybug boosted them big time in no time. Anyway. After that any goblins that came to my fort where no dangerous fighting problems anymore, my 3 heroes - I called them the three musketeers
made quickly goulash out everything that came , without getting a scratch themselves. And they had only bronze stuff, since that and gold was the only thing I got lots of.
I still had quite a lot of civilian deaths tough. That the issue about the big wall mega project while its being builded, ambushes keep killing my masons. Also my dwarves had the usual tendency to run into enemies doing stupid stuff, albeit I turned of any hunting. Had a few tantrums, two times even to fort-death-spiral. I know I am a bad player deny myself a lot of fun, but in that cases I tend to process-kill DF and revert to the last save and figuring out how to do better. Belittle me on that if you want to, but thats one of the cheats I allow myself. Afterwards I thought it would have been more sensible to dig a moat first one tile further outside and then start the wall on the inside, still gets masons shot, but it would have been a bit more of defense. By the way, Im too lazy to have military station orders and keep moving them and canceling them for drinks and reordering them, etc. and the more advanced stuff of the military interface is just way beyond me.
Anyway. Finally the big wall of goblin denial was finally finished. No more nasty ambushed on my civilians. Had a few 5 bronze spiked balls Traps filled with 10 balls each and a windy 3-wide entrance for the wagons this time carved under ground. Still having the constructed one at the earth mouth as well. Two lines of defense don't hurt. Still quite a bunch of goblins made it through the corridor, (have weapon traps been nerved a bit? and deservedly if) Anyway, military made the ketchup, the biggest issue were civilians running into anyway. By the way I was still putting everybody into burrow if something happened and everybody out of it when it was gone, a lot of clicking, didn't know of civilian alarms back then.
After having taken care of that a second dwarf has been found drained of blood. The first time, everything was so chaotic and busy, i couldn't care about some single dwarf awaking dead in bed. There where more dying to goblins. Anyway, after I googled a bit about bodies drained of blood, time to take care of the vampire. I'm not going to accept a third death from the vamp. As been told on the wiki, a way to check if a suspect is a vamp, ought to be nicknaming them and checking gods. So I nicknamed all dwarves with more than average skills. Nothing. Then i nicknamed all dwarves with a good relation ship. Still nothing. Then I nicknamed all dwarves, still nothing. This doesn't work! Or I understood something wrongly. Anyway. Since I'm got the bad habit of save scumming I decided to just drown the whole fort and the one dwarf standing ought to be the vampire. Well actually killing everybody suddendly turns out not to be that easy. Digging out a basin next to a pond, removing ramps and breaking it. Half of the fort survived! Same idea again, digging under the pond, raisind a bridge to lock (almost) everybody in. Digging upstairs, still a good part of the fort still made it out swimming up. Now writing this, the idea of (mis)using my aquiver didn't came to me then, so I decided for the next option, just keep watching the sleeping halls. The last two kills have been on top layer, so I suspect the third one will as well. A month later I cought my vampire in the act. Finally. I had nicknamed her "Linda". Interestingly she wasn't even one of my suspects. She had a military skill and some above average social skills, but otherwise there where many dwarves more skilled than her. Oh and in the time waiting for her kill all the other dwavers had taken a bed I setted up, I save scummed back to the moment I decided to deny the vampire a third skill and i didn't manage the fort at all just lurking for her to arrive. So I looked her up again. She didn't have a relationship to a god! What gave it away when looking at her description. She was the only dwarf that didn't have a happy thought about good booze or an unhappy one about the same booze all the time.
After reading a little about vampire I set up a little mini-fortress for here in the sand layers ( I no longer needed stone by now ) and decided I could use her immortality to level her up to a super-workshop user in all areas. Carefully I set up an airlock system - or better called vamplock - with two raising drawbridges and levels I could Pull from both sides. So inside, she could work for the rest of the fort forever. And she would be an ensurance for the whole fort should something bad happen to the other dwarves. I also put some important levels into her room. After a while I saw her social skills becoming very rusty. Noooo, I wanted to make her a super-dwarf, so I decided to experiment with barrows. I opened her mini fort, and putted everything into the barrow save the sleeping halls, the hospital and the barracks. Interestingly she respected the barrow and did not suck another dwarf. She could have a normal social life! Then the next idea, since she doesn't drink and sleep - which pesters me enourmously the broker does that when a caravan is waiting I replaced her as broker. This worked quite well. I also made her my bookkeeper. Why not level up one dwarf for bookkeeping that will never die out of old age? Especially now since bookkeep leveling isn't way that fast as it used to be. The rest of the time I trained her up as brewer. An immortal legendary brewer is what every dwarffortress should not miss. I noted that leveling took waaaay long. Is it that hard to train a dwarf from zero experience? Anyway I'm not in a rush.
While the fort was developing she was getting slower and slower until I decided I had to investigate that. Turns out to be alcohol withdrawel issue. Since one of the goals I developed during playing this fort was to make Super-Linda. I read up people putting on syndroms to remove the No-Drink tag. Fair enough if slowing down Superlinda is that a problem, I can let go of her not pausing due to not drinking and I was even ready to sacrifice another dwarf to her. Editing RAWs is okay for me here, since slow down to not drinking alcohol when unable to drink alcohol is a bug to me wanting a fix and not a cheat. Feeding her dwarves normally, doesn't speed her up either. However whenever I put on a syndrome on dwarf blood she died of old age whenever I loaded DF. Maybe its too later for her to get the NO_DRINK tag removed due to a syndrome without immediately getting her die of thirst and the due to old age message is just a bug? I got the idea to feed her a dwarf, then adding the syndrome and feeding her another. Yes, I can go for feeding two dwarves to Superlinda. When I tried that she really didn't die when loading the game with modified RAWs. But she soon turned into a were-skunk. WTF, is that due to my bad RAW hacking? Is that another ability of vamps just showing up? Or is she actually twice cursed, where the werebeast only shows up when i fixed the vamp thing? Well as soon she turned back she died of old age as well. I reverted all RAW changed and decided to let go of the idea of Superlinda
I still got her as legendary broker-bookkeeper-baroness. Yes, I tried how she perfomed as baroness, her mandates were always kind of doable, she likes querns and battleaxes, stones are no scarity and making battleaxes even increases metal storage. Later I discovered since caravans and diplomats arrive at the same time, this maybe wasn't the most brilliant idea, but I can cope with that. Now Superlinda is history and only a the most deadly librarian ever ( as Conan the Librarian
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZHoHaAYHq8 )
Further Linda facts. Whenever I drafted her and did not lock her up, she started murdering again. Also when putting up a civilian alert for the inside fortress, this also allows her to visit the sleeping chambers and restart dwarf drinking.
While my fort was growing the most successful industry turned out to be goblin killing. So much countless stuff they bring regulary. My FPS rate was going down to 80 and I didn't even breach caverns yet. The population cap is still the same frustrating thing as in 2008 the game ignoring the cap as hard cap to impose some ridiculous information flow mechanism between the fort and the mountainhome. Its an INI-File damm it, and not an ingame mechanic where I can tell my baroness to tell the diplomat not to send more people in summer. I don't get why the game can't simply respect that setting as an (almost) hard cap and not allow more pregnancies when its reached and not send 1 immigrant more than the cap. Anyway thats one of the frustrations that are still in the game as it was 5 years before. I read up what to do about FPS and decided to turn of Temperature. It does little for game experience - at least for me, I don't have harsh winters and ice anyway, yet it turned out to be a hugh FPS eater. I tried DFHacks fixes for containers but that didn't make much difference. Anyway without Temp. FPS is back at 100. BTW. I also cleaned the whole map with DFHack, not being able to order dwarves to clean outdoors, or blood simply decaying was always a source of frustration for me seing the upper area of my beautiful fort getting more and more bloody over time. DFHack fixes that, albeit with a bit of immersion jump. Well I just imagine a hugh rain came and washed it all away, albeit it hardly rained naturally.
My next project was to upgrade my military. Get markdwarf training running and get some adamantine stuff. Back in 2008 I always went for my army to be mostly markdwarfes, albeit its so elflike. Markdwarves shooted from distance without getting risks of injury and used to be most deadly anyway. Also meleewarves had the nasty habbit of hurting themselves in trainig while markdwarved trained safely. Man it took me many ingame months to finally have the dwarves pick up ammo and shoot at the archery target. So much stuff to figure out. Turned out to make a channel infront of the target to save ammo is no good. However, my experience with the famous three musketeers and the rest of the military in countless little skirmishes. Markdwarves suck nowadays compared to melee. Well not that bad design change anyway.
Okay time to nibble off some adamantine without breaching. Also get magma-smelters and forges running. And I even had breached cavern 1 yet! So time to get a hugh stairway down. This stair way goes not through my sleeping halls - I had some bad experiences with that way before
but when parallell to them ending up directly in the baracks. It seemed I directly went through cavern one without breaching it. And with 2 and 3 I got lucky enough to go down along a pillar where It wasn't too difficult to wall up the staircase immediately. Actually it was quite easy to get magma access. Breaching (and sealing off) the caverns had no big impact on FPS (yet) for me. I still was at the 100 cap - without temperature - So with my current computer this is way better than 2008 used to be.
While wondering if I should go for a pump stack, piston or magma track. I decided that having my magma stuff directly on the sea would be a) most easy b) immersion safe. I kinda dislike the idea of heating up the whole surface with magma that magically doesn't cool down to obsidian without water contact. I nibbled of some adamantine and while reading up about the new track stuff, i seen that adamantine minecarts had a >100% melting efficiency. So lets start making adamantine minecarts and melt them again. Since I can have countless of forges and smelters and have many bored dwarves by now, no problem getting big with the adamantine farm. Soon I encountered an issue with that farm, my dwarves keep creating more and more masterwork minecarts, and melting them down creates an unhappy thought. So much one of them got mad. So I read up and discovered that bolts are another option, and way more effective than that. Just need a bolt farm to split them up.
So next project bolt farm. I started with the wiki thing but decided I'd like to have it operated with an automated repeater on the door instead of a dwarf running up and down. The wiki said it should be doable with repeater as foot note. I created a circular track, the first track ever for me. Connected the roller to a zero-point-energy-wheel. I channeled the aquifer up to the edge of the map where I carved out fortifications first. Turns out the naive way doesn't work. The door of the pressure plate is just open way too long for the arrows passing through and hurting and eventually killing the goblin archery target. So I made two lines of doors and experimenting with track lengths both doors are open a tiny fraction. No arrows pass through and they safely land in the channel below. Bolt farm done. And a much better option for archery training than the archery ranges who frustratingly work so badly.
Anyway misusing the fact that some stuff has a melting efficiency > 100% kinda feels like cheating for me. Okay I do it, because there are other things it compensates for. But it doesn't feel fully right. Since I can't make a Superlinda for me and most of the fort is done, my current idea is to get a full set of masterwork adamantine stuff for an adventurer. So I can accept the cheap melting trick.
Also goblin sieges start to get more and more numerous. Also they start to spawn at the same time of the caravan and jump directly on it. Even before it can go the few steps into its mostly safe windy path. Coincidentally I read that one can raise bridges even beyond the map you-cannot-build-walls-here border So I prolonged the 3 way path directly to the map edge with bridges. Again this feels like a cheap trick to me. But on the other hand, I cannot do much about caravan and goblin spawning on top of each other as well.
FPS is going down again. Too much stuff. I put countless of stuff in the atom smasher. Which is kind of a lot of work for old clothes since I have to sort out masterworks otherwise my clothier gets mad. I opted for dumping clothes claiming it again, selling all the goblin stuff big time to the caravan, I don't care if they make >200% profit, I got sooo much stuff by now. And offering all the tattered stuff for free. Just to get safely rid of masterwork clothes.
And suddendly, the king has arrived! I didn't expect that, since my fort was only a city before. Hmm the escort comes, putting me over my 150 cap again. I was at 160 in between had a few deaths since then, but okay. i can accept the king wave going over the cap as the game needs that. However, the kind does not arrive. It just said a diI'plomat left unhappy!?!? There is also no king-body. No idea what happened. I'm mountainhome, but no king. Eh, I kinda remember not that bug but one game where my king came so hurt onto the map, he didn't make it alive into the fort. And nothing happened to him on the map. Thats also one of the kinda frustrating buggies.
And goblins keep coming and coming. Its so much stuff. I kinda lost the idea that this is goblin christmas, I get the idea its a new sinster plan of the gobins to kill my fort. Since only a few make it past the noglonged prolonged and glass-spikeball featured corridor and they don't stand a chance against my military they want to FPS-Kill the fort. And they are doing good with it. I started to designate everything to the atom smasher immediatly not worrying about melting anything or wearing some of the clothes for a few years. But they come and come. They put on shirt over shirt run into the fort, throw away limps, spit as many tooths as they can. All to kill my CPU.
Since invaders are no ingame challenge anymore, and I don't want any of their stuff anymore either way, and they only are a FPS issue, I decided to turn 'em off in the INI-File. I don't feel this as cheating, since I built up the fort while they were on and they are no issue anymore anyway. The only issue has become game technical. Now I thought alternatively I could make pressure plate actived front line atom-smashers instead of the trap corridor, so everything gets removed right away. pressure plate, so all the flipping bridges don't hurt FPS when they are not here. But anyway, the invaders stopped being fun or a challenge so no biggie hacking them out.
Overall DF is still an awesome game, I mean for no other game I would write a post as long as this!
Most of the changes have been for the better. Albeit I wonder that there has been quite some additions on complexities like tracks, while simple frustrations like beeworker hangs are still in back then as they are now. Masons getting in the way of themselves is worse than it was before - btw. I learned that the trick is not to restrict the area where they want to build the wall, but restrict the ramp leading upward to it. My biggest issue has been the "dwarfy" design interface - hugly complicated for little benefit. The default key mappings are incoherent, sometimes you use arrows. Sometimes you use * / keys, sometimes you use wasd sometimes you use some other arrow alternatives. There are different keys for constructing a thing than for building it, etc. I know, I know, I can remap it all. Sometimes I can search for stuff, but often I can't. The trade interface shows me only the first x characters, albeit there is tons more place on the screen. I have little sorting options. There has been a hugh improvment on the game due to DFHack (as far I get it, most of the aweomse new screens are infact DFHack). The new labor screen is awesome. Also I can filter on much stuff where I couldn't before. I even can use the mouse now and then for sensible stuff! Burrows autoexpanding when digging out new stuff. Awesome due to DFHack, DFHack still uses a different font and thus feels unnatural in the game - i think that it is that, and produces a lot of blackout glitches. Or whatever tool it is that LNB activated for me.
DF is an extremly cool game I suppose I will keep coming back and back time after time. Albeit I wonder how enormously masterwork it could be, if the interface had a major HCI-rehaul where a beginner can work through all stuff with the mouse (and still leave keyboard shortcuts for the pro) and look natively like stonesense. DFHack is on the right track on making some of the interface more sane.
Oh and if you found one of my countless spelling errors, you can keep them. I'm not going to proofread through this
