Bay 12 Games Forum

Just recently got back into dwarf fortress and this is the first place I have stopped by. Glad to see this mod is still alive and kicking!

Quote from: XxPhogxX on March 31, 2012, 04:23:40 pm

I think I might have a bug to report. I am finding it incredibly difficult to generate a world. The settings I am using are large world size, short history, very high civilizations, very high sites, very high beasts, high savagery, and everywhere mineral occurrence. The thing that repeatedly is happening is that the world will get up to the point where the civilizations are all placed and then it starts over. I let the generator run for about an hour and eventually got an error report about "farming civilizations" and how the world cannot generate because there aren't enough of them for some reason. Also,I am using the 34.07 Phoebus pack.

Hello Phog that is a problem i have been having since the new 0.34 DF update and have been trying to fix.The major problem is farm space for civs in worldgen and the only way around it that i have found is using less civilizations, i use high civs with high sites with the rest on medium and it works most of the time.This is a known problem with the new 0.34 update with civilization farming space being an issue.I have spent a long time tinkering with the raws but the only thing that seemed to make any difference is worldgen parameters.

I am almost 100% certain this has to do with savagery. I can gen max sized worlds with max civs provided that savagery is low-ish. I think savage creatures reduce the effective area for settling in world gen and cause that problem.

mrtspence, do you have any plans to expand your Chaos Warriors with daemonic possession? I think it'd be nice addition and would help set them apart from the rest of the races.

I absolutely do. I'm just very busy with school lately, so its been hard to find the time to learn and implement the new interaction system. And I agree that it would fit in really well with all of the human sacrifice and complex reaction chains.

I think this mod just creates a whole new scale of warfare. There are just so many warring races that ones without allies likely get wiped out fast. Chaos warriors and Norse and Dark Elves all get along really well, so they tend to all make it through. Orcs just may need to be tweaked so they can find some buddies. Or just increase all their starting pop sizes and the like.

Been enjoying this mod as much as ever.

Have to ask though, is it intentional that Beakwolves use mounts?

I currently have a siege where there is about a dozen beakwolves on giant wrens and another dozen using war grizzly bear mounts. They also brought like ten war tigers too. Certainly makes them a lot nastier when you have to fight flying enemies so early!

Well, have had the delight of a fortress that has actually been almost impossible to maintain thanks to this mod and the Fortress Defense mod.

Running a warriors of chaos embark into a terrifying rocky wasteland. It rains skyre skaven blood constantly there--the entire map is covered in pools of it. There is a river that literally runs red with blood sometimes. Khorne has been pleased with the decision to settle this region.

The first year went swimmingly--I breached the aquifer within the first two months and began constructing my above-ground fortress. Only stockpiles and mining will go underground, the children of chaos refuse to cower in burrows.

The first few waves of migrants brought some interesting pets--including a pair of Asur dragons.

With the migrants came waves of enemies--thankfully held off by the incoming caravans (dark elves, norsemen, and of course the home civilization of chaos trade).

The trouble began early in the second year. A juggernaut of khorne megabeast showed up with a wave of 20 migrants, murdering all of them. It ran amok and butchered a dark elf caravan--but becoming badly wounded in the process (the dark elves possess murderously good aim with their crossbows). The gigantic beast lay stricken on the ground, its rage keeping it conscious through the immense pain it must have been suffering. A group of citizens decided to handle the problem on their own initiative. Around a dozen chaos warriors surrounded the monster and began pummeling it with their firsts to little effect. It was joined by my ramshackle military--a champion of Nurgle with my woodcutter's axe. However, before the execution could be delivered, one of the Asur dragons showed up and decided to chip in.

The flames were my undoing. The dragon blasted the wounded juggernaut with fire--and all of the brave souls that were trying to kill it

With around a fifth of my fort killed in an instant, and my drawbridge ruined (apparently dragon fire can wreck my granite drawbridge), the melted corpses were left to rot.

Enraged Chaos warriors don't make for friendly ghosts. Added to the nonstop tantrums from the devastating loss to my fort was around 5 murderous and sadistic ghosts. There would be dozens of corpses found contorted in fear over the coming years.

The sieges have been unending. Dark stranglers, beakwolves, brettonians, high elves, wood elves, and juggernauts have been slaughtering all migrants and the unlucky few citizens caught outside the safety of the slowly-rising walls.

Once again, a damnable dragon decided to devastate my fortress. A mantis man decided to suicidally fly down through the still-constructing ceiling and assail a baby. An Asur dragon seized the moment, belching out clouds of fire that annihilated a third of my main level. All of my workshops, my newly-reconstructed bridge, and 8 good children of chaos were ruined. The dragon was slaughtered, its meat sustaining my fortress in lieu of the crops it destroyed.

The tantrum spiral was horrific. A champion of khorne went berserk and threw himself upon a cultist mother and baby. He ripped her lower leg off with his goddamned teeth and then punched the baby's head in. A handful of nearby chaos warriors and a war hydra joined the fray. The second Asur dragon burned them all to death in an instant. The second and last dragon was put to the knife. Its succulent meat was little consolation to those whose family members were reduced to smoking husks.

The tantrums continued. My thriving fortress of just over 50 men stabilized at around 15. Ghosts took that number down to 12 before the deadliest of them could be laid to rest. Thankfully a champion of Khorne vampire was killed by a band of Brettonians, bringing the number to 11. I hadn't suspected him at first, but his death left a pile of +chaos human earrings+. That fool was wearing like ten crowns and thirty-something necklaces and earrings made from the bones of chaos humans...

 I have only just been able to put the ceiling on my second level, so the dining room and dormitory have only just gone down. The last remaining chaos warrior has just gone berserk with my fort's best weapon (a bronze axe liberated off the mutilated corpse of a druchii) and hacked the foot off of my incursion leader, sending him hurtling off of the top level of my fort. His feeble cultist body was maimed from the 3 story fall, leaving him broken on the ground outside of my fort. A band of marauding asrai have kept my gates shut.

And that is where my fort currently is. I haven't had the time to make a proper graveyard; dozens of corpses lie under the hot sun, left to rot.  No migrant has come in nearly a year. I fear that this excursion will soon come to an end.

I look forward to actually being forced to reclaim a fort for the first time in months. Thanks so much, everyone! This mod is especially awesome in this new release. Been so much fun.

Awesome work with the testing, Stronghammer. This is really cool stuff!

If I may make a constructive critique:

From the sounds of it, the testing occurs on either a 1v1 or 2v2 or 3v3 etc. basis. As in there is an equal number of goblins as there are creatures being tested. The issue with this is that if there is any appreciable difference in deadliness, the even moderately deadlier creature will win virtually every time. This is because, if numbers are even, the goblins cannot hope to overcome said disadvantage. As it is right now, I would completely want mounted brettonians/champions/chaos warriors to beat equal numbers of goblins every time (although I can't see cultists, which are smaller than humans and much more fragile and weak winning so much)--all that is being measured right now is if a creature is actually deadlier than a goblin, not how much deadlier than a goblin they are.

Another issue would be the lack of weaponry or armour (although I understand that is a huge pain). When creatures get bigger, they become rapidly more difficult to kill without weapons and size becomes an even bigger factor than it normally would be.

Not having skills means that some of my Chaos stuff (which start out will skill) will have an insane advantage that would not exist in "da real world", as most enemies (especially sieges) tend to have developed skills. Although the skills thing probably isn't needed to be changed in the testing.

My suggestion is to continuously increase the ratio of goblins:X (X being the tested creature). Once the goblins win 10 fights in a row (running something like 50 sims before changing the ratio), we know the critical number of goblins to reliably beat that kind of creature. This would give us an idea of about how dangerous that creature actually is, with goblins as an easy reference point. I call this the Critical Goblin Horde Index, or CGHI, and am hoping to be nominated for the Nobel peace prize with it.

For example, I ran a quick simulation with dwarves and goblins. When CGHI ratio was 1:1 (5 goblins to 5 dwarves), the goblins won half the time (just like you found). As soon as I increased the CGHI ratio to 2:1 (10 goblins to 5 dwarves), the dwarves lost immediately, making the CGHI rating for a dwarf 2 (as it takes 2 goblins for every one dwarf to beat that dwarf virtually every time).

I will begin doing some testing like this with basic weapons being used (although the weapons will essentially add a whole other variable, it will greatly reduce the amplifying effect size has). This new test type will be called the Weapon-Adjusted Critical Goblin Horde Index (WACGHI). I'm sure to get that nomination now!

A further test type could be to adjust for armour, and then another for skill, and then another for all of them together. This would be the most accurate way to actually gauge the power of a creature instead of seeing if it is simply stronger than a goblin by an appreciable margin.



PRELIMINARY TESTING (others feel free to use this means of testing):

Equipment used:

-Iron shortswords for all subjects

Skills:

-All subjects boosted to Proficient Fighter if they were not already.

Subjects:

-5 Brettonians, Mounted:


Initial testing results:

Subjects easily dispatched 5, 10, and 15 goblins, sustaining some injuries throughout. Further rounds of testing will commence.


Initial Conclusion:

Mounted Brettonians possess a Skill-and-Equipment-Adjusted Critical Goblin Horde Index of at least 3.



Interesting New Results:

As soon as the CGHI ratio was increased from 3 to 4 (20 goblins to 5 brettonians), the Brettonians were killed in every fight, with goblins taking moderate (under 50%) casualties. Fine tuning will now occur to find the precise number.



Revised Information:

Spacing seems to be critical.

My initial test with 20 goblins (resulting in a decisive goblin victory) was conflicting with a new result using 20 goblins wherein the mounted knights won with moderate-severe casualties. In the initial test, the knights were spaced a single tile apart, in the more recent ones, they were shoulder to shoulder. In both tests, goblins were 7 tiles away shoulder to shoulder. It is possible that fighting shoulder to shoulder is greatly advantageous. Further testing ongoing to test this spacing hypothesis.

CONFIRMED:

Spacing is enormously important. Over 5 fights with the spacing of the brettonians tweaked each time, their spacing has proved integral in their victory over 20 goblins. In some cases, when placed far from allies, a knight would be quickly overwhelmed and killed, allowing his killers to proceed to gang up on other knights, rapidly killing them. Goblins were able to achieve quick victories when the brettonians were spread more than a tile or two apart but would lose when the brettonians were fighting shoulder to shoulder. All further testing must take place with all participants shoulder to shoulder to eliminate that variable. Distance between the two lines will remain at 7 spaces.

I am also considering a change in how the goblins are spaced. Brettonians continue to win fights when the goblins are even up to 25 in number. I could observe that the brettonians would quickly kill the goblins immediately in front of them whilst the goblin's flanks attempted to wheel around. This is fascinating.

I will be conducting experiments with spacing now between goblins to determine which formation is optimal.