Bay 12 Games Forum

... that's really awesome. You have a war vet who's fought against the humans during a siege and survived. I imagine this will  completely change how you view your dwarves... it may actually greatly change how community/succession forts are run now that the dwarves have pre-existing histories and feel more like they're living and breathing. Even if they're a dirty vampire that neither lives nor breathes.

Note: The word magic(k) has been used in so many different spellings under so many different names, most likely due to its roots in fiction and the supernatural, that any spelling is certainly valid for something as informal as an internet forum.

Anyhow, I think that some sort of shamanistic ritual would be great for improving some of the innate things that don't really improve otherwise, like patience, willpower, memory, etc. Pretty much you go to a small, randomly generated fantasy plane with cryptic instructions like "Follow the path of fading life" or "tread on the coals" where you follow a blood trail/burnt area to an eventual goal. If you "die" during the dream you can come out of the experience with reduced attributes or simply have to try again. Perhaps if the RNG is really mean during worldgen you'll occasionally be stalked by the spirit creatures hungry for the soul that was denied to them...

Another thing I'm really excited for is the "apprentice/master" relationship Zach had in once of his recent stories. The primary thing here is that it's hard to establish a relationship with someone right now. I don't think we could ever have joint quests with AI (just look at how badly it works in other games. The words "escort quest" make any RPGer shudder) but I think that having a mentor send you out to collect books, perform research (which will also factor into randomly generated planes of existance and the powers contained therein, something useful to know with other adventurers) and perhaps calm down (read: slaughter) a fearful mob of peasants that are distrustful of the unknown powers you meddle with. Perhaps if wizards are associated with a village you could either help the villagers in their battles or punish your slaves for not working faster or something. Think "YOU ARE WIZARD!" with less abject silliness. Or the same amount knowing Dwarf Fortress. Court wizards could also be incredibly interesting, especially if some of them are evil and influencing their kingdom; you could then change the whole world by killing off this wizard and changing a warlike kingdom into a completely different place.

TLDR: I'm really excited for the possibilities magic(k) will bring into the game. Maybe too excited. I could write ideas for pages, but I'll control myself and wait a bit to see what others think. 

Has anyone tried turning off dodging when taking on a necromancer tower? I'm not entirely sure, but it seems the biggest problems I had when trying was that I kept dodging into the middle of a huge group of zombies. So that may make it easier. Or infinitely harder. Who knows.

And yeah they're pretty strong, but when you walk into town cold, pale, and limping with one arm scarred up and missing fingers you REMEMBER that fight. And then you slaughter the town's guards, raise them, and proceed to take over a tower of your own.

I love this game.

Complete with self-destruct lever of course. Think along the lines of atlantis. Hell, you could make the whole thing out of green glass if you wanted since you sure have enough sand. Actually... you could technically make a structure of infinite size if you used green glass...

If there were as many variables to consider as there are in real life then I'd understand multiple tests, but when there's an overwhelming result indicating the same thing in an arena test it's usually going to happen all the time. But just to confirm I re-ran 10 more times with similar results with no fewer than 9 and no more than 13 shieldless humans surviving from each 15 on 15 battle.

If you could find a gap that was exactly 30 embark tiles long then you could do 2 16x2 embarks while still having one tile on land so that you could embark. Sometimes the game doesn't let you embark right on the coastline though, and the odds of coming across a gap that has even sides that encompass only a small bit of the 16x2 embark are pretty slim, but in theory any gap smaller than 31 embark tiles CAN be bridged if it's in the right place

There was a community fortress based on this kinda idea before the new version came out. Sadly it used fortress defense and only made it half way before it was overtaken. However in this case the gap was only so long, and the results were never seen through. Maybe after release five bridging gaps will actually have an impact on the world, but right now it DOES sound like an awesome project.

Just ran a quick group of tests of 15 on 15. Shields were wooden (mangrove I believe) to reduce speed decrease from weight. Featherwood would have been a better bet, but since there weren't many shield bashes in the logs and the weight is already pretty low I doubt that changing it would have made much of a difference anyway.

First test (No skill humans)
15 humans each with an iron two handed sword vs 15 humans each with an iron two handed sword and a shield.
Result: 12 survivors on the shieldless team.

Second test (Grandmaster fighter, dodger, swordsman and shield user for all combatants)
15 humans each with an iron two handed sword vs 15 humans each with an iron two handed sword and a shield
Result: 11 survivors on the shieldless team.

Even with a shield to block AND the skill to use it, it seems that there is no point to wielding multigrasp weapons with one hand

Edit: Reran the final test with featherwood shields and iron shields. Featherwood showed no change in results, iron ended with 14 shieldless, multigraspers alive.