Bay 12 Games Forum

I'd kill her mercifully before your dwarves tear her apart with their bare hands.

Dwarves are like elephants, they never forget.

Yes. Every time I see the idlers go into double digits, in fact.

Try having them go into triple digits.

Well...I definitely bit off more than I could chew with this megaproject.

I have a volcano, sand, trees, and an aquifer.

I had 53 (I think) levels of mountain to work with.  Here's the plan:

1.  Dig out and collapse 20 z-levels simultaneously.
2.  Flood the bottom level with magma, then turn it all into obsidian
3.  Do this for all 20 z-levels so I have a massive hunk of obsidian
4.  Carve out an entire dwarven city with these features
A castle made entirely of steel with magma falling down/over the walls
A natural looking river that winds along an edge of the city with organic looking farmlands edging it.
Stalagmites, Stalactites, and columns that are fully engraved both inside and outside that feel organic and serve as many dwarves homes.
All other many of fantastic things.
5.  Next, level off the top levels of the map so that I have approximately 30 z levels to work with.
6.  Flood the first couple z levels of the world with magma so that I have a massive lake of magma
7.  Build a frame about 5 levels above this lake
8.  Fill the frame up with magma and make a couple layers of obsidian.
9.  Construct a massive above ground city with these features
A massive clear glass tower surrounded by a water moat with 4 waterfalls from the top into the moat coming out of each side.
A temple made of engraved obsidian with flying buttresses and magmafalls between each buttresses
A natural winding river with a gigantic waterfall.
A system that pumps magma into the chunk of obsidian all this rests on that would dump magma out of holes periodically into the magma lake.

Essentially any visitors would enter the map and see a gigantic block with magma pouring out everywhere.  They would cross the lake along a bridge and enter through a carved mouth with magma pouring out of the eyes.  It would look hellish but the fortress would have extravagant things.

I worked on this project for 31 dwarf years.  My population was 393 dwarves.  I dug out 5 full z-levels on a 6x6 map.  I would have took it to completion had the next update not been so close to being released.  I'm going to do this still, on the next release.

Who was the original expedition leader?

Give it to that dwarf and let them lord their possessions over everyone else.  You can never have too many berserk nobles.

I got a version of this too, it's a bit messier but a whole helluva lot less pumps and it's easy to trap the whole siegers:

http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1664-itsatrap

Quote from: Gergination on March 04, 2010, 06:01:23 am

Definitely learn to think vertical.  I plan out my fortress around a central 3x3 staircase and try and keep things symmetrical and blocky.  It might not be super creative (that comes later in Megaprojects) but it helps keep things under control.

Thanks for that, but do you dig into the mountain or dig straight down? Also how wide are your corridors? Finally, do you dig a smaller fort first?

Generally, I find a good spot and dig straight down, build walls and stuff around the entrance up top.  I usually just have place my dig designator in the center of the staircase, hit shift+right two times, shift+up two times, then designate shift+down 4, shift+left 4 times.  This is for storage and workshops.  My living quarters are generally the same size, but I only dig out 1 tile wide halls and then make 4 rooms in each quadrant of the square.

I've been thinking of expanding any and all halls to 3 tiles to alleviate traffic and FPS woes.

Definitely learn to think vertical.  I plan out my fortress around a central 3x3 staircase and try and keep things symmetrical and blocky.  It might not be super creative (that comes later in Megaprojects) but it helps keep things under control.

Is this in any way related to dwarves being ecstatic after watching their baby get it's arms ripped off by a giant eagle?