Bay 12 Games Forum

Imagine running a fort with a bunch of kidnapping murderers. Even if you had a sheriff, he'd be killing his fellow goblins at random, too. By second generation, you'd have about as many dwarves, elves and/or humans as goblins due to the abductions and goblin-on-goblin crime, which there doesn't seem to be any consequence for.

My very first artifact at this fort: "This is a lead bracelet. All craftsdwarfship is of the highest quality." Worth 3k. However, having a legendary metalcrafter within the first year of an embark loaded with native gold and silver ores is awesome; this guy's total output has exceeded the value of two pages worth of artifacts that followed. I could buy whole civilizations thanks to him.

But absolute lamest: "This is a cow bone toy hammer." Worth 1200. And it was a possessed mood, so the poor loser went back to grunt work ever more.

I knew I'd have to seal off my cavern floor eventually. Fortunately nothing crucial is there except the farming, so the brewers will have to go without their sweet pods and pigtails for awhile. I got invaded by a flying FB who's vapor causes death of bleeding within a minute. There's already a syndrome running around, fortunately non-lethal but it hits like the flu every season and illustrates how easily the whole population could be wiped out by one.

Time to carve fortifications and train marksdwarves. I could've done this in the first place, but the erosion patterns in this cavern don't leave many clear lines of fire, and even those leave pillars and ridges sneaky beasts can lurk around for cover.

EDIT: Since breath attacks don't expand on the z-axis, I was about to corner it in a tight stairwell and attack from above. That's when it switched tracks to fly up my hospital well. Yeah, I should've known, but at the time I didn't have any other choice for water, and changing it now would require tearing up a lot of infrastructure. It happened to flight into the invalid wing, filled with soldiers who were wearing lots of steel gear that I'd like to get back, incidentally. Luckily its breath only hit itself, but it tore everyone apart everyone except one guy who's been laid up for 12 years.

So now my population is down five useless cripples, but it also took out a Mace Lord and a promising wrestler.

I usually have the opposite problem -- less than 5% idlers, and those are the ones I want to remain on call and ready to roll on demand. If something's not getting done it's because there are too many dump item/store item jobs queued, and the best solution is just to chill out and let them get it done. If they run out of jobs, good, that means my stockpile organization is tight.

This might be worth trying. All dwarves, doing all jobs, all the time. The worst that could happen is fun.

Could also get everyone to train without weapons; they'll improve wrestling which in turn buffs up physical stats. Both mining and woodcutting do that too, but if they ever switch jobs, they'll either lose their weapon or take forever finding a place to park it, and then take another eternity finding another pick or axe to use. It's worse if they get attached to it, then they'll have to shelf it at home and track down that same one later.

231 days for violation of production order. As far as I know, there was so such ban in effect, and the named offender had been bedridden for over six years. The arresting officer didn't make any attempt to move him, so he still hasn't served any of his term.