Bay 12 Games Forum

To be honest, I've never fully understood why people think DF has such a steep learning curve. When you get down to it, fortress basics are no more complex than similar games like Dungeon Keeper or Stronghold 2. In all such games, as in DF, you build different workshops and buildings to produce different goods or effects. You build walls and traps, etc. I believe this confusion is entirely a result of people psyching themselves out due to the text-based interface. I can think of a number of graphical games that have more build options, and tech trees to boot, that nobody complains are confusing to learn.

The only significant difference is that those games have graphics and icon-based menus, while DF is text. Does having to select a bowyer through a text menu make it somehow more complex and confusing than selecting a bowyer with a mouse click on an icon?

Apparently for some people it does.


I think the difficulty with a "tutorial fortress" is twofold:

  1> fortress layout and specialty is highly variable and depends entirely on a given player's style. There's no one right way to build a fortress.

  2> simply looking at a pre-existing fortress won't teach you what anything does, particularily when it comes to designs that exist to keep dwarves happier. I fail to understand how seeing a mason's shop, for example, is going to tell you anything that you couldn't have figured out by simply reading the name, "mason's shop."

If you want to look at existing maps, they can be downloaded. And there's always the map archive. The bet way to get better at any game is simply to play it.
 
The only way a tutorial mode would be useful would be if it had a series of objectives, like most tutorials in games, wherein completing various tasks leads you on the path to a successful start, perhaps culminating in a siege.

Edit: in-game dwarfopedia would help immensely, although at the moment the game develops too rapidly for that to be terribly purposeful. The wiki is a newb's best friend.

There needs to be a way to tell dwarves to keep ranks or stand their ground.
 
Large battles are won on the strength of positioning and deployment. Our undisciplined bearded friends will break ranks and rush heedlessly into death rather than maintaining tactical formations, turning an easy victory into a shameful rout. A classic example is when an enemy approaching your line could have been flanked or encircled or subjected to coordinated action between squads -- and easily defeated -- but instead faces a rag-tag band of soldiers who enthusiastically plunge willy-nilly into danger. Even a ranged squad on a turret overhead, in defensive position to repel invaders, will abandon their posts and wade into a mass of enemies.
 
If squads would stand their ground, or at least only attack within N tiles of their "station marker" this would dramatically improve combat performance.