Bay 12 Games Forum

Sorry; no update for another day or two, and in related news there is an unexpected drawback to the goblin eradication procedure as described above. Namely, it eliminates every goblin in the world rather than just those on the map. I feel that this is too great a consequence for the benefit gained, and thus have reverted to the save from before I implemented the change. Plus, I figured out why we were so high on food. Someone made the dwarves not need to eat or drink and never returned them to normal. I fixed that too, though I very much suspect that I will regret it. As for the goblins, since they are ignoring my trap and doing what they always have been, I've decided to just wall them in and forget about them for now. Maybe I'll dig a pit underneath them and drop them a few z-levels if I can find the space.

NO.

The goblins are behaving oddly. I've been experimenting with a backup file, and they seem to do nothing unless approached, at which point they either deal with the attacker and return to their post in front of the barracks or start a massive death rampage again. Odd. I am requesting permission to get rid of them by cheating, on the grounds that this behavior is probably a bug, a group of goblins appears to have left the map somehow, and that the goblins' presence, while not detrimental to the fortress itself since avoiding them is a trivial matter once you build walls around them, it is detrimental to the gameplay due to added micromanagement and huge frame drops. My method will be to cause them to explode in a puff of pink smoke, after which I will return the raws to normal. I will either not do this, do this immediately, or do this after waiting a while to see what happens, depending on what you decide. The longest so far I have waited is about seven months of in game time without them doing anything before some dog wandered over to them and drew them to the fortress.

I do not understand your request. Are you saying I should leave the front of the barracks open so that goblins go through it, and hook up a pressure plate or something to make water flood it when that happens?

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16 Galena: I've ordered everyone inside, and everyone seems to have complied except for one marksdwarf, who fell defending the entrance against the goblins. I'm trying to wall off all entrences to our fort, with little success. Fortunately, none of the goblins have crossbows, and inside our fortress their webs hinder them as much as they do us. Our Cave Crawlers are proving a valuable asset.



17 Galena: They've managed to take down several dogs, a woodcrafter, an armorsmith, and one of the human bowmen. We might not make it out of this.



...

17 Galena: Our military just arrived on the scene. They're almost completely untrained, but they managed to take the goblins by surprise, and despite heavy losses drove back the first wave.



Our walls are being constructed at an unacceptably slow rate.

18 Galena: We did it. But...



There is one other flaw in our defense. The barracks. Doors in front of it, but since they have trolls...

19 Galena: We cannot, due to an oversight in construction, block off the doors entirely. In a last attempt to wall it off, we have a child dismantling the floor and a single marksdwarf defending him.



This... will not end well.



20 Galena: The mayor seems to have decided to make a last stand against the trolls, giving us more time to wal off the baracks. I never liked the guy but...



It seems he was kind of decent.

21 Galena: To put a final cap on this tragedy, one of our good miners somehow got outside.



Our casualties number somewhere between 20 and 30, including the mayor, three children, and all but three soldiers. We have lost both Cave Crawlers, a Cougar, several dogs and all our livestock. For some reason, morale is higher than it should be. For now the most the trolls can do is topple our workshops and coffins, which someone built outside for some stupid reason, rather than, say, doing useful things like setting up a drawbridgs. Of course, I am as much to blame for that as they are, too slow to act, not good enough to see this coming.

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Gah... I was so stupid. Not only should I have made fortress defense first priority, rather than working on projects, but I should have been able to reduce casualties further if I had been more on the ball about where I built walls. Perhaps a third of the military was an unnecessary sacrifice. Strange how no one is tantruming though. This has set back my project a bit, though not enough that I won't still be able to finish the framework. I'm planning on getting rid of these goblins with a cave in trap, but I'm not sure how effective it will be, since I probably can't gather all of them together at once. Then I will build drawbridges, like I should have done back at the beginning.

What it sounds like. Post the best thing a baby has ever done in your fortress.

I've actually got two. One is better, but I have picture evidence for the other.

First, a baby in my fort killed a forgotten beast, after being dropped by its mother and left for dead. This was in large part due to luck, as the forgotten beast was a giant termite and wasted time spewing deadly dust which, as it turned out, caused mild headaches for a few seconds. And the baby died soon afterward, thanks to blood loss from severed legs. But still, a baby killed a forgotten beast.

The other happened during a siege. I normally take dwarves with babies out of the military, but I don't always catch them and they often get carried into battles without my knowledge. One time this happened:



Yes, the baby punched the troll. My military definitely needs this baby.

Sorry for the very long delay. I've had a busier week than expected.

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14 Felsite: Fortunately, the goblins seem to be in disarray. Unfortunately, the dwarves are as well.



I've ordered all doors locked except for the one leading through the cage-trapped hallway. With any luck, those few idiots outside will find their way in.

16 Felsite: We have rallied!



Most of those who had been outside have found their way back in, two of the goblins are prisoner with two more approaching the cage traps, and the last is currently in combat with one of our recruits. The casualties so far are one stonecrafter and a cat. With luck, they shall not grow.

17 Felsite: Alas, it was not to be.



Still, the remaining goblins are captured, with no further casualties. Work proceeds as normal.

18 Felsite: We have visitors!



Unfortunately, we do not have much in the way of trade goods. I've noticed a strangely huge number of doors lying around, and have ordered most of them hauled to the depot. This should speed up coffin production as well.

19 Felsite: I have been informed that, for some reason, we cannot trade doors. I have ordered our excess clothing brought to the depot instead. I must wonder, why do we have so many wooden trinkets lying around? They are no use to us. It is a shame we cannot push them off on the elves.

26 Felsite: We managed to get rid of those clothes in exchange for some more cages and some chests and sand bags. I decided not to get any food, as we have an amazing surplus considering. I've begun construction of a pitting system in the barracks, which will be useful for training and freeing up some cages. The goblin prisoners refuse to talk about anything anyway. In that respect they are much like the immigrantss. I have been making inquiries as to what it is that is happening back in the mountainhomes, but So far all that I have discovered is that one of them had been an escaped prisoner who managed to escape to here. They look oddly familiar, for some reason.

16 Hematite: The elves left, very pleased with themselves for some reason. Once the masons are done with the coffins and move on to floor hatches, the pitting system will be complete. Meanwhile, the pump stack and roof for the barracks have been slowly nearing completion. As of yet it is difficult to say whether or not my dining room will be complete before the year ends, but I am certain that the barracks at least will be finished.

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I've got nothing much else to do over this weekend, so I should be able to at least get another season out of the way. As of now I really don't need a job creation program, so I've suspended all cavern work, though it would be great to take these and use them as luxury dwarf suites, with statues and chests and stuff. We could have a dining room per floor, I'd flood part of it and place a farm plot so there would be no worries about food, and it could be a little collection of pod-colonies. A very neat idea. I'm keeping the steel production going, but I still say that, as far as military strength goes, just the fact that the goblins shoot web makes it pretty much an automatic loss for us if it ever comes to fighting. I'm not doing anything about it right now, there being too much other stuff to do, and since I'm planning to wall off the few areas which are open to the outside at the moment and set up that one drawbridge, I'm not worried about sieges. I recommend that someone, as has been suggested already, pave that long pathway with weapon and cage traps. In alternating rows, so that the goblins milling around their captured commander wander through the spikey axe blades over and over again. Long term solution of course is a flooding mechanism, but that's way ahead of us at the moment.
Also, I'm modifying your story a bit to fit into what I've been building up to, Master. Instead of being dragged back here by the guards, you escaped the guards and ended up here by accident.

Again, sorry for the long delay.

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Granite 1: Well, so much for retirement. Once again I have been chosen to lead this fortress. Though after what has happened these past months, I can't say I balme them.



We've taken heavy losses. That dwarf that looks like Rick died a while back, not sure exactly when. Our other miner's gotten a lot better, but I'm training up one of our cheesemakers just in case. And to speed up any projects I work on in the future.



I've been watching what that new overseer had been up to, and I'm kind of interested in these rooms he's been building out in the caverns. There's not much point to them yet, but if you put some decent furniture inside they would be great for bedrooms, as they are incredibly easy to seal off from the outside. I'll have to look into this once they are closer to being complete.



First things first though... I'm just going to throw masons at this problem until it goes away. I've suspended the construction of everything except the edge of the floor, so with luck that will be the next thing that gets done and we won't have to waste time tearing down the walls to escape. Once the floor and walls here are finished, I'll set up some scaffolding on the outside and roof over the place. With any luck, that won't take long, and I can restart work on my magnum opus.



I've begun digging out a reservoir. Once this is emptied, I'm planning on constructing a set of raised platforms above ground and building some windmills to power it.

Granite 2: It has come to my attention that we are suffering from a lack of wood.



As we seem to have clear-cut the trees in the area, the only solution for the time being is to explore the caverns. I've begun construction of a passageway down to one of the more isolated areas, in the hope that it will be safer and easier to block off. To help prevent this from being a problem in the future, I've also begun plans for a mushroom nursery underground, but I shall wait to put them into practice until the miners are finished with the reservoir.

3 Granite:

It seems that there are a few things that I had not been told about.



also, for some reason, we have a berserk child locked in his room, and there's a mason who seems to have been locked behind a floodgate for a month or two without anyone noticing. And, the reason that no trees are being cut down is not, in fact that they were clear cut, but that our only woodcutters are either trapped on the barracks or stuck on military duty, since for some reason every single one of the recruits has been ordered to full time training. I've put a stop to that, and maybe things will start moving faster now.

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I don't think any project except for yours has actually been completed, though the Master's is coming along and I'm very close to finishing mine. (name here)'s is of such a scale that I can't really tell if I'll finish or not; I might get it done, but I could just as easily not, depending on how things play out. I probably won't have time to finish my secondary project, namely the water reservoir, but I'll definitely get a huge chunk of it out of the way. I'll probably update again tomorrow, but maybe not until Sunday.

Alright, I'll get started then. Expect an update in the next few days.

Ouch... please tell me you at least got the drawbridge set up.