Bay 12 Games Forum

I have turned invasions on after I started a fortress, and I now continue to play that fortress. Will it have any effect?

I'm going to tell a quick story. I put together what I thought was my best embark stats ever. All my dwarves were fully skilled, I had everything I needed, and I had 120 points left to spare. I thought I was a genius.

Then I get to the site, and find I forgot any kind of digging or cutting implements whatsoever. Abandon Fortress.

While I admit, I was probably in the wrong here, I wondered what sort of other mistakes could be made in embark. Perhaps warnings like this could be shown in the problems box:
You are not bringing any digging implements with you. It may be impossible to start a fortress without one
You are not bringing an anvil with you. Many players find the game harder without bringing one.
You are not bringing any seeds with you. You may be unable to feed your population.
And so on

The trouble is, though, that these warnings would have to be carefully chosen. Nobody wants to be inundated with that sort of thing before the game starts. Thus, I want to ask what might the most important things be in an embark? What deserves a warning, and how many should the player see at most?

PS: Has anybody made an embark profile creator with a better UI than Dwarf Fortress itself?

I hate ambushes. I really do. For my last fortress, I turned them off, but after a while it just got boring! And yet when I have ambushes, I usually have more Fun than I want. Same thing with sieges. (I only had one, but I got impatient after a while waiting in the fortress.)

My questions are these:
1. When should I form my first squad, and what sort of weapons should they be equipped with? When I equipped my squad with crossbows, they were often killed outright by ambushes.

2. When a siege arrives, how should I deal with it? Do I wait it out if possible, or can I attack?

3. How soon should I have an attack in mind when I'm designing and planning? Do I start day 1 by building a drawbridge and dry ditch immediately, or can it wait a year or two?

4. I'm looking for a way to implement a boulder that falls on top of something when it presses a pressure plate. Anybody know how effective that may/may not be, and if it is, designs for such a device?

This one is pretty simple. I'm sure that all of us have embarked before we had finished preparing at least once. At least, I'm sure that I do. Usually I do it right before I remember to name the fortress and group myself. My suggestion is to add a simple "Are you sure?" message before embark, possibly also showing a summary of relevant information.

A possible example:
Are you CERTAIN that you're ready to embark?
*These two lines are choices
No (Putting no on top would help me personally, but I'd be willing to concede on this)
Yes

Items you are bringing:
*LIST OF ITEMS*

Fortress Name: *FORTRESS NAME*
Group Name: *GROUP NAME*
Comments? Would this help you?

DOY! Had Dwarves set to ignore minerals!

Ok. This is really weird. When I start a new fortress, about 3 times out of five, the whole region is frozen and covered in snow. About five minutes later, the snow magically disappears. I didn't check what the temperature was where I am, but I'm pretty sure that its a temperate zone. All the lakes are still frozen, and the minimap for the region keeps flickering between green and white. What is going on?

EDIT: The lakes have now melted.

I don't feel that the Wiki really explains what the world generator parameters do. (Both standard, and advanced.) It may be that I'm new, and I'll probably figure this out as I go, but I feel that it doesn't really explain the difference between Beasts and Savagery. (I don't know what either are, sadly) so I was hoping someone could explain a few of the world generator parameters a bit better. Since I'm a freak, I aligned all this stuff in the code tags.

Size                    - Obvious. How many squares the world is wide and tall.
History                 - A bit less obvious. I know that longer history = bigger year and longer simulation, but what occurs during this simulation?
Number of Civilizations - How many civilizations does "Very Low" or "Medium" mean?
Maximum Number of Sites - Is this how many biomes the world will have? What is this?
Number of Beasts        - What counts as a "Beast"? Wolves? Elephants? Dragons? What does and does not fall into this category?
Natural Savagery        - Is this the number of evil biomes, or how aggressive the beasts are or what?

Thanks for your help!