Bay 12 Games Forum

I think I might make a change of plans with this one.  I've been working on it for real-life weeks now, and I'm starting to get sick of it.  My dwarves are dying off, I can't get any immigrants, and I don't want to deal with reclaiming it.

New plan.

I'm going to finish building the pyramid and make a bunch of crafts.  Then I'm going to abandon it and upload the save file.

I challenge everyone else to either explore it in adventure mode, OR reclaim it and fill the empty shell with something amazing.

What do you guys think?

I like the idea of switch-flipping mazes.  I don't want to do anything that requires the player to enable traps in the init file - I hate dealing with that stuff.  But at least a few floors can be mazes, I think.  I also plan to make it a challenge to get into the pyramid to begin with.  There will be no obvious entrance, just like the pyramids in Egypt; the player will have to find the secret underground tunnel.  And yes, it is in a yellow sand desert.

I also like the mosaic idea.  I have a few different colors to work with and I can put those to good use.  I have plenty of trees, so smelting bars of metal is possible.  I'm thinking a few floors can also be just big glorious halls full of statues and engravings.  Anyone who is talented at interior decorating, feel free to make me up some floor plans!  I'm terrible at it.

I dug down deeper and found some flint and more microcline.  I can keep digging for other metals later, I suppose.

Question: do belongings still scatter when you abandon now?  It would be nice to be able to keep everything inside the pyramid instead of having it go all over the place...  Once I'm done building I'm going to turn all of my remaining stone into crafts and instruments and toys and whatnot.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of immigration, I can't afford many deaths.  I had one early on, when I learned that a dwarf removing a floor ten levels above ground will stand directly on top of it while he removes it, thereby plummeting to his death.  That is the only death I've had.  I turned off artifacts and invasions so that I could focus on the construction.  I'm already 8 game years into it even without dealing with hardship.

quote:

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Originally posted by Torak:
<STRONG>

You don't understand what the hell you're doing if you think you don't need food stockpiles for, say, a kitchen. Unless you're without common sense, you'd need stockpiles to be even moderately efficient in any kind of production.</STRONG>

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No, THAT is rude.  If you don't have anything constructive or helpful to say, then please don't bother.  There is absolutely no cause to insult someone who is only asking a simple question.  This game is complicated and difficult to learn, so we all try to be supportive of each other.

What Sofaspud said.  It's very easy once you've done it once.  Also, a lot of things in this version are much easier.  Perhaps the most notable is farming.  You can farm almost anywhere now, without needing to irrigate!  Underground crops (the ones we're used to, that you can buy seeds for at the start) need to grow below the surface level.  They can grow on any surface other than bare stone.  The first few z-levels below ground are normally soil or sand, so you can farm there right from the start and not have to worry about food.

Surface plants are much cooler in this version, too.  You gather them like you always did, by collecting them from bushes outside.  But now you can plant the seeds you get from them in a farm plot on the surface!  Sand, soil, grass, anything but rock will work for farming, as long as it's not in a mountain biome.  Rule of thumb: if you can gather plants in an area, you can grow them there, too.

The new version is more than worth learning the new quirks, I promise.  Seriously.  Don't give up.  DO IT.

Ah, closure.

Thanks Eiba.  You may have even inspired me to return to my own stories...  I doubt they could live up to this one, but stories are still fun!  And this one was spectacular.

FOURTH WALL!  YOU'RE BREAKIN' THE FOURTH WALL!

Seriously, though, that's clever.  That'll teach those uppity dwarfs.

Tarrasque - As I was not there, I certainly can't tell you anything with 100% certainty (Asehujiko is completely correct of course).  I can tell you with as much certainty as possible that the Persians were not used to fighting against well-armed forces.  They were used to fighting against the typical forces of the day, which fought in a scattered way (like our dwarves) and used weak or no armor.  They had never encountered a phalanx, they had never seen armor and shields so strong, and their own equipment was weak in comparison though it was the best they had ever known.  In short, the idea that anyone could ever stand up to them was laughable - they couldn't conceive of something that could.  Morale played into it as well, they did have soldiers called "immortals" who apparently marched in silent formation which was very intimidating, and were great soldiers - but again, their weapons and armor were shoddy compared to the spartans' and they were easily taken down.

Thinking some more about this challenge game - if you're not looking to replicate Spartan society, but rather the movie 300, then it seems the important thing is the battle itself.  If you want to make their weapons and armor look like in the movie, that's up to you, though it's not really important as you're tweaking the raws anyway.  If you built a long narrow tunnel for your entrance and stationed your men in the middle of it, properly equipped, and waited for a seige, that would work - though you'd have to make sure you were horribly outnumbered.  Also, to make things most accurate, you should dig a 1-tile tunnel from some distance behind your troops to the entrance, but lock the door.  Midway through the battle, unlock the door and let the goblins through.