Bay 12 Games Forum

My very first proper fort (in the Steam version), a couple undead just wandered in before the first caravan had even visited us. I should note this wasn't even a scary biome it was just regular calm forest and I was unlucky I suppose. I drafted every dwarf I had to deal with it, but one of the undead was highly skilled and just tore through everyone.

Ever since then I've been sure to get a front door or better yet a drawbridge set up for every fortress as soon as I can manage it, just in case something shows up that is way too strong to handle. I don't think I've actually had a fort crumble since then, but nothing that dangerous has shown up that early either.

I like goblins, not as much as dwarves but I like them, and in defense of goblins: I think they should be war-like, brutish, short-lived and numerous. These elements are key to their appeal and make them enjoyable and valuable to their settings. You take away too many of these elements and you're just left with small people, you have diminished their identity and uniqueness. Make them immortal and now you have small elves with a slightly different set of grievances, which is almost what we have now.

It's perfectly noble to say people shouldn't be categorized and put in a box, recognizing that everyone deserves agency and freedom is critical in the real world, but fictional settings are only going to have a handful of fleshed-out characters. If it is unremarkable for characters to exist that go against the grain then that setting doesn't have a grain, then it's unremarkable and pointless. The setting and those characters start to lack an identity, there is no longer a 'norm' to rebel from or stand out from.

You can still have compelling stories without leaning on stereotypes and tropes, but when we're talking about a procedurally generated fantasy world, leaning into that a little helps a lot in providing recognizable touchstones. If I were a new player and I'm raring to play a dwarven fortress, and after a few hours of play realize my taverns are full of goblin bards and my civilization is led by some random elf.. well, there might be a period of confusion, but eventually with enough hours in I'd just accept the setting has a lot of random noise in it that doesn't change anything, signify anything, or really mean anything.

On the other hand if a goblin bard shows up and causes some sort of commotion among the commoners due to how unexpected that is, or if an elven queen takes charge and now the diplomats from a local elven enclave think they can push you around even more on the wood situation because they think they have an inroad with your monarch, now it becomes somewhat impactful, the world actually reacts to events going against the usual grain of the setting. When everybody's just people who can interchangeably fill any role in the setting and it's unremarked upon, we might as well just be Crusader Kings without mods.

I don't expect any of this to actually matter as far as the development of the game goes, clearly this would demand a reactivity that is a bit further along than the game will have for a long time, and there aren't any changes needed that are really high priority. I just had to say something, because I feel like there's been some misguided virtue signalling calling for a setting that is milquetoast, bland, and flat. It seems like a common sentiment around fantasy settings lately, and I find it really quite anthrocentric. Saying goblins want to be like people is implying they want to be people -like us-, and is no virtue at all when you pick it apart.

As an aside, and sorry to feed into the off-topic discussion even more, but  if people don't realize Warhammer is supposed to be edgy to the point of self parody... and to be fair, many Warhammer fans DON'T realize that... well I just hope they realize that. To be fair some of the writers who've made content for those settings probably don't realize it either.

When I do think about preparing my marksdwarves for melee, I do train with hammers and shields, but I don't actually aim to give them hammers when they are deployed. My intent is that they'll be better at bludgeoning with their crossbows and blocking with their shields if it comes to that.

A shield seems the most useful for their off-hand in either case because it can deflect arrows and block melee attacks, so putting them through some seasons of hammerdwarf training doubles as making sure they have blocking skill.

It feels to me like the main difficulty in Dwarf Fortress (or maybe just what remains once you learn how to play) comes from things that are just tricky, complicated or costly to deal with, an early example being werebeast attacks. Those start happening early enough you're unlikely to have enough competent ranged dwarves to take it out before it enters melee, it's finicky to track down who was bit once it becomes a scuffle, and if someone is bit once you've gone through the process of figuring out who is in fact now a werebeast, well, they're just a lost cause. Eventually I just started turning off werebeasts in worldgen and that was the fix for the issue, but I could see stuff like that causing a lot of frustration for new players in particular.

My point is sometimes losing is fun, sometimes it isn't, it's not an all or nothing proposition, and it's not so much a function of the numbers of the threat as it is the nature of that threat, whether or not you can do anything to plan for or deal with it.

For instance breaking into the circus but misjudging how many jugglers and clowns they had and watching them systematically work through your fortress bringing !joy! to all the boys and girls, that kind of losing is usually fun. Sieges, also a pretty good time one way or another. Things that happen over and over again at random and you can't really do anything about them though, not really fun after awhile, like for instance in versions where tantrums and loyalty cascades would happen a lot, not a fun way to go. I think the difference is whether there's something novel to experience and to learn from, if there's nothing to learn then you're just going to experience it again and again so the novelty wears off.

I'd also say the economy may need some work at some point. At first it's fine, you have to make some effort to get tradegoods flowing so you can get the things you still need after embark, but once you get chugging along you can just buy out every caravan effortlessly, though by then you don't even really need most of what they bring.. Perhaps craftdwarfship, decoration, and materials shouldn't have as large an effect on the value of things as they do, and the generation of certain things (food for example) could be toned down. If the wealth growth curve of fortresses were adjusted of course the breakpoints for when invasions and so on happen would also be adjusted I'm sure, maybe keep migrations where they are since giant migrant waves are a common complaint (although perhaps with the simplified labor assignment system this will be much less of an issue). I just think it might be cool if at some point I would feel the need to expand more industries as the fortress goes, not just the smelters and candy floss makers.

Last I heard-- and I don't know if the parabolic trajectory coding for minecarts and such changed this-- being higher up actually reduces your range.

So, make it Dwarfy. Channel a ramp (spacing and height totally up to you) all the way down around your fortifications to the level of your gate, and build your parapets one or two levels above the gate. Enemies will be higher up and therefore suffer the effects of height, whereas your entrenched dwarves will benefit.

Hammers can be especially good if you don't have iron but do have silver, since silver is excellent for blunt weapons. Quite good if you just don't have a whole lot of iron as well, since if you use silver for your bolts and hammers you can reserve all your iron/steel for armor.

These days I use a mixed military, because migrants can arrive with advanced weapon and combat skills that would take years to develop from scratch. So long as they're highly skilled with whatever weapon they're using, they're much more lethal than a rookie with the 'best' weapon.

Personally I do prefer axes myself. I usually set them to be lumberjacks, since they keep their armor and weapons while doing that job IIRC. This lets me benefit from the (usually) plentiful surface timber without worrying too much about ambushers.

I find setting up squad equipment so they use their 'individual choice' weapon isn't perfect, like a high macedwarf might end up wielding a spear instead. So I like to nickname or give a profession to my skilled combatant migrants that makes it clear what weapon they are good at. I'll often give a basic uniform of armor + leather cape, hood and robes to all my military, then add their best weapon type individually. When I have time I'll go ahead and make a weapon or rank-specific uniform (makes me wish for a 'clone' command for uniforms), but this lets me get the military up and training their best strengths with the least work.

I usually go into orders and have all Death Items set forbidden. I manually unforbid anything that I want my dwarves to stockpile, once the danger has passed.

Make sure there are plenty of idle dwarves to provide food and water while your military dwarves are recuperating. It seems to be a pretty low priority job, so wounded dwarves can dehydrate and die easily.