Bay 12 Games Forum

Certainly!  Or rather, certainly not, I don't mind.

The other day there was a question on the Dwarf Mode board about whether new civs are ever generated, or if existing civs split.  The answer was, of course, no, they don't, they are generated at worldgen and can only go extinct.  But of course, this is silly.  Real world governments have civil wars and secessionist movements and such reasonably often, and  it occurred to me that this would be a perfect starting scenario.

You are a group of malcontent dwarves that have decided to break ties with the mountainhomes and start a new glorious dwarven empire.  This might give you a good reason to start a fortress in, say, a terrifying glacier.  Since you will, in all likelihood, be at war with your parent civ by default, it pays to make your fortress remote and inaccessible.  This would tie in well with another suggestion currently on the front page: fortress visibility.  You could defiantly put your rebel flag on your large and prominent ramparts, get regular migrant waves (malcontent dwarves from all over that have heard of your rebellion), regular traders from civs that are willing to offend the mountainhomes, but get assaulted by the full might of the mountainhomes fairly quickly.  Or you could set out in secret, and carve a hidden fortress for your underground resistance, and get only a few migrants, from members of your movement that couldn't make it in the original party, but few other migrants and traders, and less risk of dwarven invasion until you come out into the open or are revealed by your carelessness (maybe occasional dwarven scouts could enter the map to try to find your fortress, especially if you are making a name for yourself?).

I think this would be a good, plausible starting scenario for what many players want: a hard mode.  A good excuse to embark in a remote and hostile environment, and a strong military opponent with a sound motivation to throw their best at a new fortress.  Dwarves are the only race with steel, and would pose more of a threat than your typical goblin siege, and it would make more sense for the mountainhomes to do its best to crush a rebellion in the early stages than for a goblin civ to throw army after army into the meatgrinder that is a well set up fortress.

This would also tie in well with another current suggestion, by making it plausible that your fortress is the central authority of an expansionistic new empire.

Dwarves would also make plausible digging enemies, if that is ever implemented.  One of the main reasons not to implement it (other than pathfinding headaches) is that many players will be deeply offended if the game messes up the stuff they built.  This would provide a good non init file way to opt out of digging enemies: just don't start a war with the dwarves.

Did your tower have a roof?  I have been using exactly that design for the battlements of my curtain wall (fortification at z+1, with a moat so walls are at least 2 Z tall before fortifications), with the same design with a roof on my inner tower, 1 or more Zs higher.

Like this

        ___
       F_ _F
    F_  0 0  _F
__   0__0 0__0   __   
 |___0  0 0  0___|
The only problems I've ever had is a zombie elf spearman once was on the drawbridge over the moat when it closed (killing two of my best militia dwarves by punting them into the oncoming horde).  He ended up on top of the fortification, despite it not being walkable (I paused to find him in the air and one stepped through it), where he proceeded to murder my entire 7-8 dwarf marksdwarf squad by biting and shaking, and wrestling off the battlements into the interior courtyard.

However, yes, height hurts marksdwarf range, and has no direct advantage.  However, it is likely that you have walls around any secure above ground area, and it can be convenient to put marksdwarves on top of them.  I like to have less secure outer walls with battlements for some above ground farming, pasture area, trade depot (often separately sealable), and maybe some trees for gathering and emergency wood, if I remembered to leave any.  Inside that I have a secure tower, absolutely impenetrably sealable with bridges and/or hatches, with no possible access even for fliers.  This has separate battlements to fire upon the semisecure courtyard, in case of more gifted climbers than I planned for/fliers/tardy main drawbridge lever pulling/whatever.

One thing to keep in mind if you have high walls with fortifications, especially if they jut out, is that you can't fire at the base of the walls.  It helps to make towers periodically along walls that stick out from the wall, so you can fire at the base of the wall.  Much like in a real castle. Moats also help, but sometimes enemies end up in the moat.  Filling it with magma would help, but is a pain.  Upright spear traps linked to a lever in the fortress work well.

Stockpile links are your closest ally in this war against dwarven stupidity.

Yes.  I always make a quantum stockpile and another for ore, linked to the masons and smelters, to force them to choose adjacent materials (you must also link a bar stockpile with fuel for smelters, unless you have magma).  Leaving complex tasks like figuring out which boulder is closest to the shop up to your dwarves is a recipe for disaster.  Don't ever let them try to think, they have bad ideas.

I got a werepanda, which killed 21 out of 46 dwarves and infected 3.  I isolated them, and upon transformation they attacked each other, leaving only one survivor.  I guess that nixes my plans for a werepanda army, as they could not be put into combat together.

I think I've read about this issue before, but I don't think this is how it worked in previous versions.  Is this a bug, or new intended behavior?

Remember to use an 1x3 reservoir for each pump, not 1x1. Otherwise it really fries your FPS.

Basically, pumps create tiles at output and remove them at input.  If magma is created or removed, however briefly, adjacent to stone, the game has to recalculate temperatures.  If the magma is created/removed adjacent only to other magma, no calculations are necessary.  Basically, you must leave the magma/stone interface stationary, only moving magma that is adjacent to other magma.

Pumpstacks are a pain.  If you really really want an on demand infinite surface magma tap, go for it.  For other situations, consider minecarts: either carried carts for small quantities for shops, or an actual track magma lifter for medium to large quantities (output limited by cistern size and track design/number of carts).

Huh, I'm an idiot.  Over the years I have perfected the art of custom stockpiling for quality management, not realizing it's a built in feature.