Bay 12 Games Forum

Next update has more to do with adventure mode I think - it's focused on developing towns, their inhabitants and industries, the sewers/catacombs beneath them, and various unpleasant critters that can live therein.

Some of the new creatures/syndromes will spill over into fortress mode - supposedly you can get invaded by a necromancer that can literally raise the dead, or a werewolf that can bite dwarves and pass werewolf-ism onto them, and so on. All the town changes might affect what traders bring as well.

But anyway, it doesn't sound like there will be any difference in how basic fortress mode stuff works, just changes to the world outside the fortress and how it interacts with you, i.e. invaders/wild creatures/traders. Which is definitely awesome in its own way, but not the kind of thing you worry much about in a noob tutorial.

Quote from: Mushroo on August 09, 2011, 11:21:08 am

Build vertical. It is quicker to go up/down a flight of stairs than a 20-tile hallway.

What if your dwarf trips and falls, say, down 50 flights of stairs?

You know I've heard that's possible, but I've never seen it happen. And I always build my forts around up/down stairs going down 50+ z-levels, I've even had dwarves fighting off invaders on the stairwells, never seen a falling injury on them.

The only time I get falling injuries is when open space is involved, i.e. when I get taken by a mood and replace my stairwell with a fancy spiral ramp that circles an open shaft. Which, by the way, makes for hilariously Fun combat. Picture your civilians happily hauling things around your ramp, entirely unaware that a siege is being fought off 10 or 20 levels higher.. until a goblin goes splat at the bottom, miraculously survives, and attempts to chase your haulers one or two steps at a time, in between giving in to the pain of his 7 broken bones.

I really like the giant ants, myself. And giant beetles, and wild land striders - and the new giant badgers from vanilla, for that matter.

Too many unspeakable horrors of the overground have gone the way of Elephants and Carp and Undeads: pacified until they run in fear from your plant gatherers, or nerfed until a kitten can slaughter them. The surface needs some danger.

I can always find something to stuff into a tower, pretty similar to what has already been posted, I guess: anything military-related that doesn't encourage civilians to wander around the tower, they remain "safely" underground. Depending on how high it gets I fill it with:

Level 1 (ground level): ballistae!
Level 2-3: Marksdwarves. Lots of marksdwarves. Also ammo storage.
Level 4-6: Barracks, archery range, ammo/armor/weapon storage.
Level 7+ (rarely get this far): tombs, military officer quarters/offices, whatever seems appropriate to the military theme.

I don't build them much higher than that, I tend to prefer above-ground fortresses of several 2-5ish level towers linked by walkable walls and such, I rarely build one huge tower more than 5 levels (designating those things level-by-level is just a pain).

Land Striders, Wolly Mammoths, and Elephants can all carry a great deal. Land Striders are the major one, though.

So Mammoths are still Wolly in your version, eh? Sorry, I have to laugh every time I see that typo

Also, beware wild Land Striders: they're huge and very deadly, they're like the Elephants of the Boatmurdered era reborn. You even gave them horns. I had an embark last week wiped out within minutes by a single zombie land strider, it wasn't pretty.

Toady is beholden to no man and spends every day doing the thing he loves. Presidents and Kings can't say that about themselves. Toady doesn't need any lectures from dim-witted libertarian retreads about how he ought to be spending his life.

Hey now, hold on a second. I hate to get involved in this thread, but some errors (probably innocent, but an error nonetheless) beg correction.

The core of all Libertarianism is individual liberty (it's kinda where the name comes from, you know?). According to a Libertarian who actually understands their philosophy, no one - usually the government, but this also includes our friend Sean - has the right to tell you how to live your personal life or carry out your business, so long as doing so does not infringe on someone else's right to do the same. This belief is usually interpreted to support pure capitalism (i.e. the Libertarians tend to think that the government should not run the postal service, or get involved in business at all via things like subsidies). There is however no rational way it can be interpreted to support a crazy who thinks it's morally wrong to run your business a certain way he doesn't approve of, a way that harms no one even if it isn't strictly capitalistic, that impingement on personal liberty is in fact the very opposite of Libertarianism.

Now, I am aware the internet abounds in people who willfully misinterpret politics/religion/philosophy/etc. to lend credibility to whatever personal opinion they want to spread, it's easy to associate such a person with whatever belief system they abuse, so don't take this personally - I'm just trying to clear up a misconception. And I'm honestly not trying to support Libertarianism in particular either - I'd give you a similar post if you tried to associate Socialism with this guy, which would be an error of equal magnitude, although for entirely different reasons. It would be an insult to any political party or philosophy to associate it with this guy, but as Larry Niven said: "There is no cause so right that one cannot find a fool following it."

You ruined the one-line posts, good job.

Please. I never stoop to one-line posts. [Fake edit: crap.]