Bay 12 Games Forum

Yes, but then you have penguins...

Yes.  Having more idea of the lifestyle and family occasions of the Blowgunner Clan two caverns down than of my own fortress was interesting, and I imagined the number of dwarves not working was related to then sitting down to watch the next episode of the sage, Dallas style...

Especially their tragic climax as they were slaughtered by an unknown FB.  It was like watching someone else play a separate game down there...

He tapped the goblin on the shoulder, and when he turned around, cut his nose off.

Quite a few forts ago, I noticed a swordsdwarf who had never killed a goblin, but always sliced their noses off.  When I saw that about half of the stuff in my refuse pile was "So-and-so's nose", and nearly all my caged goblins were missing their noses, I realised something was getting out of hand.

And I cursed the fact that you couldn't craft with them - "This masterful crown menaces with lead and goblin noses..."

A mason, with child, managed to wall herself into a small space while I was coping with massive flooding issues.

Didn't realise until "Urist McStupid has died of thirst" flashed up.

Looked, and found the baby was alive, but thirsty and a little depressed, so I let them out.  Baby spent about half a year crawling to the well, and died of thirst about 10 steps from it.  And then the other dwarves didn't bother burying the dead baby for another few months.

You'd think having to step over the rotting corpse of an infant every time you go to have a glass of water would trigger something, but no, not really...

I let the little suckers pick up what they want, as they are expected to face down obscenely powerful things at times for no or little payment.

I object if they pick up copper things, or wooden, but they seem to be happy to trade in less satisfactory weapons for better ones, or at least steel.

A few forts ago, got a number of lashers, and with some dead goblins lashers, they appropriated their weapons, and were pretty awesome agianst all and sundry...

Inksquid.

Fort entrance into a straight cliff running E/W with another straight cliff to the W, running N/S. 

Aside from bridges across the walls to the N and E, the only other entrance is a little two step wide gully that I mined with four cage traps.  First goblin ambush happened quite late - second winter? - and avoided the bridges of death, piling into this gully.  If the dwarven caravan hadn't been leaving just then, and the decoy kittens weren't running, it would have been bad.

So I now have two bridges, four cage traps, two weapon traps, and my first magma weapon guarding the gully.  The magma tap is simple, embarrassingly so - just a straight channel from the volcano to a floodgate that lets lava flow down the gully.  First (and only, so far) use melted 8 goblins, so I was happy.

Tried it again on a siege that hung around the side of the map, despite my fort being open and accessible, but they got bored and left before I could get the plumbing sorted out, and having random channels of lava through your fort can be a little annoying when laying things out.

Also had 8 goblin lashers jump out next to Ushat, my High Master Hunter/Armourer/Mason (strange mix but it works).  Well, he's dead, I thought, activating the emergency burrow.  Nope.  Keeping only one step away from them, he killed two, incapacitated three more and scared off the rest with his *Bronze Crossbow*.  My militia arrived just in time to kill the unconscious ones. 

Ushat's getting a better room...

My second ever fort, I had a statue of a dwarf making a statue of a terrified goblin being crushed by a drawbridge.  I think it was also encrusted with pictures of either kittens or plump helmets, in rose quartz. It made my brain hurt for a bit, then I sorted it out.

I imagined it like a flowing tableau rather than a simple statue, and I put it next to the goblin stockpile, to show them what was waiting for them...

What does ANY of this have to do with "I still don't like killing babies..."?

Result of my first danger room setup, as the only dwarves having babies on that fort were in the militia.

Thanks for the advice - I'll work on the sacrificial training, but in my examples, the squad was attacking as a group...