Bay 12 Games Forum

How come the goblins aren't rushing your fortress?  Is this how sieges work now?  In 0.23 if you locked them out, they'd just mill around, but if there was a path inside, they'd rush for it.  I didn't like mass traps so I would design a chokepoint and let the goblins come to my troops, helps take away some of the advantage of their arrows.  Also, keeping food and drink near my stationed soldiers meant more of them at their posts.  As you've discovered, trying to meet them out on the field is fraught with difficulties.  The best (and even then not much) protection vs arrows and bolts are shields.  Use your best metals and your best armorsmith to make the shields and make sure every soldier is always training with one equipped.

Also, fort guards as mentioned are mostly useless.  They might get lucky and get the jump on a kobold one day; and more soldiers sparring in the barracks means more practice partners for your professional military.  However, if you have some permanently injured invalids lying around anywhere, you can give them an honorary post in the fort guard.  If you don't have enough guards it gives the Mayor(?), Captain, Baroness some bad thoughts.

EDIT:  And ditch the waterskins.  Lack of booze will upset your troops, make them less productive (less sparring), and filling a waterskin is in many ways a more disruptive job than just going for a drink.  If you have soldiers deployed on the field, you could make them a little remote booze only stockpile and use the Soldiers sleep on ground order to keep them from retiring to their bedrooms.

[ November 27, 2007: Message edited by: slMagnvox ]

I think it depends on the neighboring goblin Civ.  Some have might trolls and some won't.  The goblin civs are generated like the dwarven civs, so they'll have their own set of metals, leathers, cloths, slave trolls or beak dogs and so on.

More specifically, Abandon Fortress literally abandons your fortress.  The state of your game world will be updated and the next time you play, your abandoned fort will be present on the world map (and can be interacted with in Reclaim mode, but I don't know exactly how that works in new version) or can be visited in adventure mode.

Don't worry too much about trying to quit w/o saving, or reverting to earlier saves.  Just plow through, dead dwarves, miasma, failed constructions and all.  If things get too unplayable, then consider rolling a new fort and applying what you learned ruining your last fort in keeping this next one functioning longer.  Your strategy will really evolve as you play your first dozen games so don't get hung up trying to make every fort perfect.

Stockpiling was always a delicate art, and the new version (0.27) adds some new subtleties that have been confusing me too.  I have played both the newest _33c and _33b and I don't think alot has changed between these latest releases.

One new twist is a barrels only Furniture pile will take food or drink barrels provided they aren't claimed by another pile.  Look in your Furniture pile and you'll see the food barrels in it aren't #Numbered as if they were claimed by a Food pile.

If you build a Food pile after all your barrels are in the Furniture pile, they might not get taken out ..  I've noticed  jobs won't be generated to stockpile an item if it is already on a valid stockpile.  Something to do with the Additional Options and allowing Plant/Animal and Non Plant/Animal.

I took a couple cats one fort and they were killing lizards on my food stockpiles.  And the remains weren't generating jobs to bring them out to the Refuse pile.  A dead lizard on any other tile would generate a job and get carried out to the Refuse pile.

Does anyone know the exact function of the Allow Plant/Animal .. Non Plant/Animal settings?  Is wood plant/animal or non?

I'm not a 0.27 vet, but I think a pump is a solution ..

From screw pump @ the DF Wiki: Pumps can not push water up additional Z-levels. That is, if you direct the output of a screw pump into a 1-square space surrounded by walls, the water will not "overflow" the walls.

If the well is on z level 2, level 1 would have a small resevoir fed by a pump and level 0 would be the source water being pumped from.  The well water would remain constant as fed by the pump and we'll both get to figure out how the hell to build a waterwheel to power the thing.

I asked this same question a while back, about some base iron chain mail I had decorated with some gold or something by a Legendary Metal Crafter.  The answer I got, and I think is accurate, is that the chain mail was still a basic iron chain mail.  Since I've played some adventure mode, shopping for iron long swords has seemed to confirm this.  An <<iron>> may not be better than an +iron long sword+ from a utility standpoint.  Read the item description for the object in question, the description will still maintain the original item's quality level:

This is a well crafted willow catapult part.  It has been decorated with rings of exceptional wolf bone.

Thus, the original quality level is maintained and when you read <<willow>> only decorations are -=exceptional=-.  And as far as seige engines go, I don't know much about ballista, but catapults WILL NEVER hit ANYTHING.  I don't care if all three pieces are masterworks and the operator an Ultra-Mighty Legendary, catapults are purely decorative.  Nice decorations, and fun to have around, but decorations none-the-less.

[ February 06, 2007: Message edited by: slMagnvox ]