Bay 12 Games Forum

I don't even know how this happened. 
 
I was running a very good Fort this time. Everything was going smoothly. I had a bit of a problem getting drinks because I'm a perfectionist, but I got through it and everything was fine. Everyone was happy. I had three squads training year round. No metal, so they were still in the wood shield/training axe/bone helm phase of deployment, but some of them were legendary fighters and the like. Everything was fine. 
 
But then it wasn't. 
 
A werelizard came. Killed two civilians before my military could beat him to death. He wounded two soldiers. One recovered, apparently unaffected, but the other had contracted the disease. My Fort has a long hallway to traverse before getting into the base proper in the mountain, and my military trained near the entrance so they could hold off anything trying to get in. Well, right as a Hauler was walking by, the second soldier morphed intoa  werelizard and gutted him. My military descended upon him and after a brutal fight [legendary fighters, and all.] they downed him. Suddenly I had more dead civilians and wounded military. Then I noticed they kept fighting. Civilians began punching either other. A stoneworker and a brewer got into a fist fight in the hallway. An axedwarf and a farmer teamed up against an Axe Lord, who handed them their asses on a plate. My three doctors, undisturbed by the violence, would run in, grab the wounded, and haul them off to my hospital which was barely even functional at this point. As more and more combatants were transported, the fighting slowly migrated to the hospital. The majority of my military is now dead or dying, my civilians are either horrified, suffering from emotional shock, or are punching each other. The stoneworker and brewer from earlier both passed out, were dragged to the hospital in beds beside one another, woke up and went back to punching each other in the head. They've tired, and severely wounded, but refuse to give up their little feud. 
 
I don't even know how this happened, but I love it.

I may have broken my merchants. My current fortress is going to be made of iron, assuming I have enough on the map, so of course I need temporary shelter. I made this small and out of wood. On one side is a mountain, and the other a river. So, I placed a trade depot above and below my walled in area. Then the merchants came.

At first I was like cool, but then I noticed they came from two directions. The merchants went to the north depot, and the wagons moved towards the south. Then Kea Men came. I moved some things to the depot and waited for them to finish setting up. But the Kea kept making one of the merchants run around in terror. I removed some of my walls so the wagons could get to the north depot.

Then comes my problems. The wagons never moved, even once they had a clear 3x3 minimum path to the other depot. Annoyed, I decided to trade without the wagons. Then I noticed the north depot now said ''No merchants are trading.''

I checked my announcements, they never said they were leaving. I saw them there, and the wagons still unmoving. Then I got the announcement that they would be leaving soon, so I gave up. It was after I got the message that they left that I noticed it was bugged harder. They still stand in the depot, and the wagons havent moved. Somehow a trader is down south, but he too isn't moving. They're just standing around. I don't want them to go berserk and me have to kill them, and I certainly don't want all their garbage. Is there anything I can do to fix them?

[Nevermind. Deconstructing the second depot made them all pack up and leave without losing their stuff. Proooooobably should've tried that first.]

I haven't been playing much DF recently, only started two forts, and deleted both fairly quickly. I seem to suffer from the ability to make me forts completely self sustainable, and hardy. Either [1] The ambushes and invaders and stuff cleanly and quickly get liquified by my military, and any civilian losses are minimal/negligible, or [2] If something DOES happen to my military [unlikely.], then I have a system of defenses in place that lock my dwarves up nice and tight, with no reason to go outside anymore.

The last Fortress I made, I embarked on a major river. All my rivers had been 4 tiles wide, but I'd read they get bigger, so I searched until I found one. Well this one was... quite wide. Maybe 30-35 tiles wide. I built a large square platform over it, surrounded it with walls [no roof, so flyers could still get in. Intentional.] and had an above ground [....well, above water..] fortress. One of the corners was over the ground, dug down for fungus farms and storage. My military trained at both doors, the two bridge entrances on the north and south walls. Two squads of 10, fully equipped in iron [No flux stone on map. =[  ] and able to obliterate entire sieges. Various were-things, a minotaur, a forest titan, and zombies fell to my dwarves. It was too the point where I didn't even both to protect my civilians anymore. I didn't raise bridges or use my alarm burrows. No one went outside anymore, I had all the wood I'd need and I had 3 open 3x3 squares in the floor for fishing, which I don't think my fishermen even did anymore, successfully. If invaders of any flavor came in, be they kobold thieves, goblin snatchers, ambushers, or raiders, they always met a group of angry metal beards first and got the tradition dwarven hello.

I was wondering, if there a way to make it more difficult, aside from not using walls/bridges at all? I like to make traditional-dwarveny holds [Think... Mithril Hall, or Moria.] but nothing ever seems to be a threat. I think the closest was when a necromancer showed up, but I buzzsawed his troops with one group and hunted him down with the other. I lost maybe... one dwarf? A thresher who I don't even know why he was outside? One thing I'd like to do is crank up sieges. Have them... more often. Or more importantly, have them send more. My 20 beards can hack apart 40 goblins... but could they take 80? 100? 200? I'd also love to actually go to war with people. I steal exotic animals from elves then butcher them for laughs, but they never want to shoot at me. They just keep sending more. The humans seem uninterested in war with me, but from what I hear they just hang out at the edge of the map anyways. You know what would be cool? Siege engines. Units, like wagons, that attack walls. A moving catapult that they have to load with stones brought in on a wagon, and makes my wall go from a [Gabbro Wall] to [xGabbro Wallx] to [XGabbro WallX] to [XXGabbro WallXX] to destroyed, leaving behind a stone [or not, as per the way mining is done.] Once two or three holes open up, they pour in with like 500 dudes and just start massacreing everyone. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself with that number, but oh well. It gets boring waiting for the next siege. =[

Started a new fortress. Things in my previous one went.... awry. Anyways, I dig down some and find Kaolinite. I don't get this stone often for some reason, but i figured a dark red fortress is fine. I throw up a mason shop and tell them to crank out as many blocks as they can.

They promptly tell me to fuck off.

Tried twice, same results. I check the wiki, but it says nothing about not being able to chop this stuff into sections, so i'm confused. Why can I not make blocks out of kaolinite?

I recently downloaded DF for the Mac. GF's cats poured water on my PC so I'm having to make due with what I have. Other than not being able to backspace [to my ETERNAL frustration.], it's been fairly smooth. I started a fortress in the caverns, and have managed to capture four mole dogs [three male, one female] and two elk birds [one male, one female] and am saving them for breeding later. Figure why not, under ground fortress, under ground animals. Not like i have anything else to do. Well, i'm also placing flooring over the water edges in the cavern, so i can hopefully filter any pond grabbers or cave crocodiles into a narrow channel for capture. This takes a bit of building and deconstructing to get it perfect, and while doing so, I noticed something. Every time I deconstruct a floor or wall, ALL of my cages from my cage stockpile teleport to where ever the deconstructed material appears. So instead of say, one basalt block, what appears is one basalt block and six cages. Is this something I can fix, or..?

So, I'm trying to dig down to the circus so this fortress can go out ina  blaze of glory and I can get my barbarianing on. I found the Spire and was digging my way down through it, when suddenly my dwarves stopped. I can't figure out why. They have a clear path to te designations, there's nothing blocking them, no burrows, jobs turned on, equipment able [clearly, seeing as how i was able to get this far] but for some weird reason, they won't dig down any further. Could it have something to do with LNP? Begining to think this thing is more trouble than it';s worth.

So, I managed to randomly capture a necromancer during an undead siege. I safely locked him away while I dealt with his buddies, and now I want to make a 'Doomsday Device' with him. I've read on the wiki you can put them on restraints and they'll raise dead, so i built a 4 part hallway. A room for the necromancer, with bronze chain, bed, cabinet, and chest [for looks.], then a second room seperated by a bridge where I have a hatch above for dumping body parts in, then a third room also seperated by bridge where my military can muster and do training if they want. Though probably not since they got to Lords in less than a year. Which I still blame LNP for.

Anyways, everything is set up and ready to go, but.. I cannot assign the necromancer to the chain. I can assign the goblin snatcher I have captured, but not the necromancer. Is it maybe because he's a dwarf?