Bay 12 Games Forum

With economy turned off and no need to make coins, my dwarves don't store anything in chests, only cabinets. They do, indeed, reduce clutter around the fort when the dwarves store their owned items.

Yeah, I've heard of ambushes doing it as well. Could be, but once again- had plenty of previous ambushes that never had this effect.

Should also mention that the last fort was at capacity (200+ citizens, nobles up to King) and had been for a while so there wasn't any recent growth spurt.

Is it worth destroying items/stocks (in magma) to keep things moving along? Is it really effective?

Anything else I should watch out for/try to avoid in my next fort that may keep it from becoming unplayable?

The last two forts I've built (0.31.18 & 0.31.21) have become very mature, healthy forts but ultimately both hit the same problem- they'd suddenly be too slow to be playable.

I know that as a fortress gets bigger (more dwarves, more animals, more items, more mined/discovered tiles) things slow down- that's normal. I also experience frame rate tanking out when bodies of water freeze/thaw and that sort of major event- typical calculation/processor load stuff.

But in both of these games, things went from regular slow-ish-but-playable speeds to suddenly stop-and-go choking speed/stalling/hanging. It gets totally unplayable. And the weirdest thing is, it happens suddenly and I can't figure out what's triggering it.

Sometimes I can fix the slow down by reverting to an old save and the game might play fine for a while- even past the time when it slowed down before- but eventually they all come to a choppy halt.

The 0.31.21 fort was about 10 years old before it suddenly got too choppy to play. It was shortly after a goblin siege but no other major events/season change that it got all choppy. I'd recently reduced the stockpiles a lot by dumping items in magma so I don't think overstocking was the reason it slowed down.

Also it should be noted these are the only two forts I've played on this computer- Windows 7, Intel i3, 3Gb ram- maybe it's the system that contributes to the instability?

Do companion bowmen/crossbowmen ever reload? Any way to make it happen besides DFusion?

my dwarves dont throw parties anymore which wouldnt really matter but not a single dwarf in my fortress has decent social skills(and i have over 200 of them). theyre all relatively content and i have the right areas and they used to alot, but not for years now.

1.) Make sure you have a meeting hall designated from a table (typically your grand dining room, whatever). They'll probably throw parties, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll socialize. Statue gardens are also good party spots. Children like to throw parties so if you have a bunch running around and social places, it'll happen.

2.) Create a Zone that's 3x3 and designated it as a meeting area. The dwarves will pack onto it socializing will ensue.

3.) Idle them. No jobs = more time to socialize.

My crashes come a lot more simply than that- even a perfectly healthy and relatively clean dwarf can crash the game if they have a little bit of blood on them (at least I think it's the blood causing the crash). I also get crashes when examining tiles containing blood (just happened again...).

Follow up- In case anyone else is curious about whether this works-

The wading pool is SUPER effective at cleaning my dwarves. I converted a (constructed) waterfall in my main thoroughfare to a wading pool. It's uncontrolled flow off a brook so the level isn't a constant 3/7, but that seems to make no difference- blood is coming off in 1/7 pools. I had no idea how much blood was on my dwarves until it was being washed off of them...

At least one infant was contaminated after being exposed to the blood filled wading pool (at least I assume that's how it was exposed- I saw it in the pool) but otherwise incident of syndrome seems to be under control.

As an added/inadvertent bonus there's mist filling the vertical thoroughfare (up/down stairway for several z-levels) so everybody's too happy to worry about their dead kids The downside of the water running down the shaft is that it's carrying blood with it that may be contaminated.

Running 0.31.18

So a few seasons ago I lost a lot of soldiers after battling a forgotten beast. They bled out and finally suffocated. Then the syndrome/symptoms spread to a bunch of the population- I learned that anything not wearing shoes (pets, kids, nekkid dorfs) would contract the illness and eventually die (bleeding and puking more contagious fluids all over).

Eventually everything infected died and the blood was cleaned up (I gave in and used the dfcleanmap utility in order to lessen the spread). There have been long periods where no one shows symptoms or dies of symptoms.

But things continue to get infected by the syndrome from time to time. Particularly newborn animals (if I don't cage them in time), migrants, and anything without shoes (even shoeless dwarves who survived the initial outbreak).

So my questions...

1. What exactly was the cause originally? Forgotten beast poison breath/blood/something? What specifically gave my dwarfs the syndrome?

2. What continues to spread the disease if there's no blood on the floors of the fortress? What else should I look for as the cause of more infections? My refuse stockpile is outside the fortress and not in a common path- do bodies/parts spread venom?

3. How does one identify something carrying a syndrome that will get my dwarfs sick in the future? There's gotta be something in the fortress that's continuing to spread the syndrome- is it on the floor or what? How would I know?

And while we're at it- is there any to get my dwarves to wear shoes?! I made a ton of them but they still go barefoot!

I've been using Enable Magma Buildings through Tweak and I'm pretty sure I've run prior to a migration coming in but the Dungeon Master hasn't come. I already have magma furnaces, that's not the issue.

Reveal (also in Tweak) is how this problem came about in the first place. No underground water source/river on the map.