Bay 12 Games Forum

Thanks for clarifying what the should have done, i guess next time I'll try making them a non-egg layer for a generation or two, but i prefer not to have to change anything.

I actually just abandoned this fort because there was very little left to see. Got to hell, there was no candy or clowns in sight, not even one!, so i walled it off, and put a picnic table there. Also all the races seem to be extinct except goblins, so no more caravans, immigrants or anything. Just constant sieges of Goblins, Beak Dogs and Ogres.

I captured some beak dog invaders, and modded them as tamable. I know they are still dangerous, so I pitted them after taming, in a room with some nest boxes, waited a long time but no eggs.

Am i doing something wrong here, or do I need to mod them as a non-egg layer to get them to breed?

I have 8 3x5 farm plots packed into an 11x11 room with stairs in the middle down to a food stockpile. Usually the left half are above-ground (channelled from above) and the right  half are regular dug out below ground farms, but they are all side-by-side like a single farm. Also, i put accomodation for the farmers right next to the farm (with food drink and bedrooms), and a 1x1 seed stockpile right on the stairs. I burrow the farmers so they can only go to these rooms, ensuring they are ultra-efficient. To be honest, this produces way too much food and drink (with a brewer or two).

I usually have the below-ground farm as the first thing my miner creates, so my 1 or 2 planters can get going. I'm careful not to dig out the part which will become channelled, so as to avoid cave-ins.

Unlike some other posters, I basically don't worry about animals or hunting, just farming. It's a matter of personal style/taste basically. Once you get the hang of it, you'll rue the "foodsplosion".

Yes, my military does go and get arrows when I send them out to a station. The problem is when they run out, they refuse to move. I can send them to station right on top of the ammo stockpile, and they will just stand in the fortification instead and wait for death, rather than go get more arrow. As a side note, my military will actually return to the last spot I stationed them, after I release them from their station command. They will run and get food/water/sleep, then dash back to the last spot I ever stationed them.

You're doing something terribly wrong with your defensive wall design if you're marksdwarves ever get shot at !! They should be invulnerable.

Quote from: blue emu on April 17, 2011, 02:46:29 am

Have you tried installing lever-controlled raising drawbridges right in front of (ie: outside) your fortifications?... the idea would be to shut off the Marksdwarves sight of the enemy, once they run out of ammo, so that they won't be mesmerized by having an enemy in line-of-site. They should then go get bolts, and return to station... after which you open the "shutters" again.

That's a good idea. I just have to make sure not to kill any of my less intelligent dwarves when I close up the bridge.

Thanks!

Here's a really good idea - dig a trench in front of the fortifications, ensuring NOBODY can shoot your guys EVER. Between the trench and the fortifications, build the "shutters" (long, thin raising bridges). Put the shutters in first, 1 space from (i.e right next to) the fortifications, then the trench 2 spaces from from the fortifications. Nobody, friend or foe, should be able to path to the shutter area now (link up the lever before you dig the trench).

BTW you keep saying marksdwarves "on top of fortified area". They should not be on top of a wall in the open, they should be behind "Fortification" constructions instead of walls (b-C-F). These are like walls, but you can shoot through them if you are standing right next to them. A good set-up is to have a double-wall of these around your secure area with a space for walking eg a typical section would look like :-
#.#
#.#
#.#
#.#

 # = Fortifications
. = Floor
Marksdwarves will be able to shoot out the right or left of this tunnel, make sure this is a level aboveground, or has trenches on either side, otherwise goblin archers can shoot through it too. Put a roof on this as well to ensure total safety. Surround your courtyard with these, and you can capture a siege in your courtyard and take them out execution style. Just make sure the entrance to the tunnel is not in the courtyard.

A network of these constructed tunnels can span over your whole site, and you can use the military orders to have the marksdwarves patrolling constantly

Though many people talk of milking elves, I think it only works on domestic-type creatures.

Well, domesticated/trainable dwarves works (hunting dwarves, wardwarves, they appear in the animal list an can be slaughtered, and can be bought as pets or from caravans) I haven't tried milkable elves yet, that may be next. I currently have a world where all pack-animals are dwarves (my wagon pullers were "stray peasant (tame)" for example).

EDIT : Just did a worldgen with [PET][COMMON_DOMESTIC] on elves, bought some pet elves, and tried milking (copied milking tags from donkey raws). No luck here until i removed the [INTELLIGENT] tag from elves in the save game, then elf milk and elf cheese were produced.

@Starver : interesting, i had no idea they added a FOR command to bat files, been a long time since i bothered with them.

But the question is how to auto-close DF once worldgen's done, as Ledi suggested.

I can't see how to do that with the bat file FOR loop, but with VBS I could probably rig it up with AutoHotKey to spam a mouse click (or Enter key or something) every few seconds on the DF window, which would close it once worldgen is complete. EDIT: Actually this could work with just having AutoHotKey in the background, whichever script you use. I think AutoHotKey has some sort of Window-detect feature, so the script only runs when it detects the right type of window.

I was playing with just_embark and embarked on an all-ocean area. The thing embarked me in hell, but right over an eerie glowing pit, and a few metres away is the biggest clown-fest i've personally ever seen!! This has given me the idea for an "escape from hell" fort which will require many reclaim efforts.

The only problem is there's nothing to stand on, so whenI unpause everyone dies. I could use dfliquids for obsidian walls, unfortunately the dwarves always start at the NW of the map on the very lowest level (even if it put a wall there and reclaim), so this only encases them in obsidian (unharmed though).

Any way/means/tool I can create a piece of floor here?


EDIT : I sorted the issue by downloading "Tweak" and getting Tile Edit working

In my last fort : terrfying biome, badgers, giant badgers and badgermen + zombie versions of all of them, 7-8 reclaims, the last 3 reclaim attempts were 100% military dwarfs (a beserk dwarf from one wave killed 3/7 reclaim dwarves within a few seconds of embark one time) . I had about 70 dead dwarves by the time this outpost was secure, a big graveyard and 5 ghosts still running around. Did slabs for 3 of the remaining ghosts, but the same problem with last two names not appearing in the list.

I used the stock menu to find the remaining corpses, they were drowned in a river which had frozen over, so I mined the ice out, and this fixed the problem.

The same thing you said about claiming a coffin, the problem being your dwarves can't path to the corpse, so you have to locate it and create a path.