Bay 12 Games Forum

Constructions, then Art, then Happiness, then Military, then Efficiency, then Wealth. I'm roleplaying the mayor/Duke, and trying to make everything that happens make some kind of logical sense (HA!). So the most important thing is the fortress itself (megaproject, frickin' awesome castle occupying nearly the entire embark), logical names of children and artifacts (I savescum any egregious failings of the RNG--my second child is NOT called Ustuth Bowelpapers), and I am a benign ruler who wants his populace to be well-fed and content (unless, of course, they make any artworks of me being terrified of purring maggots). No self-respecting Duke could lack an army (so it seems I must do without self-respect for now), and while I do try to arrange my fortress with like industries together, the constant trickle of migrants plays hell with urban planning. Wealth, of course, is all well and good, but it's going to happen no matter what I do.

Situation: I want to torture a goblin for everyone's amusement. Ideally, this would be in my fort's High Temple, where the faithful could pay tribute to Armok and Pull the Lever / R, which would send an artifact bone shortsword stabbing (swinging?) at the captured goblin War Leader, who is locked in a golden cage a couple of tiles away.

Problem 1: Cages are essentially suspended-animation chambers, shielding their occupants from nearly everything. Am I required to use walls for containment? If so, will using glass walls cause the sight of the hostile goblin to spook my civilians?

Problem 2: Just how dangerous is an artifact bone sword, anyway? To ensure non-lethality, would I have to first put the goblin in a more conventional danger room, "training" for the exact same time as a similarly-equipped raw recruit, and then assume that the goblin's skills are at least as good as the recruit's?

I think gods that take titles get said titles from a pool or words related to their sphere.

Yes, but subject to the whim of the Random Name Generator. I once saw a civilization that worshipped both "Melbil (Tomes) Mindfullessons the Scholarly Brain of Prophets," god of writing and literature, and also "Sodel (Shield) Oxsnuggle the Soapy Bunny," god of trees.

Gods whose portfolios include fortresses, wealth, fire, or water seem to draw their names from the "related word" pool more consistently, although some of the names in that word pool aren't that related. For example, my current god of fortresses is "Reg (Glove) the Escorted Shell." Gloves, armed escorts, and shells all provide protection, yes . . . but it conjures the image of an anthropomorphic scallop, with Disney gloves on his hands and a hooker on his arm. I wish I could cherry-pick gods from other civilizations--especially "Rimtar (Castle) Bastionshields the Defended Blockade."

Ral Mistemzod, Dwarven Child: "But Moooom, I don't WANNA go outside! Bad monsters might get me!"

Bax Snogspmu, Goblin Spearman cancels Invade Fort: Interrupted by Turkey Hen.

Etur Bomrekdoren, Farmer: "Hey, I finished butchering and skinning those blue peacocks like you asked."
Rovod Zalsibrek, Clothier: "Great! What'd you do with all those magnificent tail feathers?"
Etur Bomrekdoren: "Here they are."

Tholtig Lolorezum, Weaver: "Just water for me, please. The chief medical dwarf has directed me to avoid all alcohol while I'm pregnant."

Just to be clear, when I talk about victory conditions, I'm talking about things like people posting on the forum with things like,
Poster: "Hey guys, I built my fortress INSIDE a giant magma piston. When the invaders outside included a mounted goblin siege, 3 slain and zombified caravans (1 human, 2 elven), a herd of skeletal water buffalo, and a Cyclops, I Pulled The Lever. The entire fort dropped 7 z-levels and sent 25 x 25 x 7 tiles of magma shooting up into the air. The roof of my piston/fort is sloped, so all the magma went pouring off toward the various invaders. Here's a screenshot of the aftermath. Out of my 129 dwarves, I have 37 who are still somewhat able to tend to the 19 dead and of course all of the other wounded. Oddly enough, many of the dwarves are still ecstatic. Did I Win?"
Others: "Not quite, there are a few goblin stragglers in the corner there that seem likely to be caught by the magma. If you'd paved the entire outside map with lignite or coke first, then you would have won."

I'm not talking about situations where the game tells you, "Congratulations! You won!" That would be rather anticlimactic.

Let us say that, in order for a game to be considered to have been "won," the player must amass 100 DwarfPoints. How many points, then, should each of the following achievements be worth? Post your own assessment of each action and/or add your own: I'll keep a running total of the averages.

Points   Achievement
25        Attracting the Monarch
50        Having the Monarch die of old age
75        Having a descendant of one of your fortress's dwarves become the Monarch & die of old age
100      Having a descendant of one of your starting 7 become the Monarch & die of old age
40        Getting a ticket to the circus and killing all the clowns that enter your fortress
75        Killing all the clowns that enter your fortress via direct combat (no remote spikes or obsidian, etc.)
80        Going to the circus and cleansing every last inch of it
90        Having your fortress leader drink booze distilled from surface plants grown in the circus
20        Building a megaproject involving 5,000-10,000 blocks
40        Building a megaproject of 10,000-20,000 blocks
60        20,000-50,000 blocks
80        50,000-100,000 blocks
100      A megaproject of more than 100,000 blocks
75        A megaproject built via obsidian 3D printer
80        Being down to just one dwarf and bouncing back to reattain a population of at least 200
100      Having your fortress contain the last vestige of dwarfkind in the world, and outlasting all other civilizations to the point where history enters "The Age of Dwarves."

For the sake of those of us whose morals and aesthetic tastes have not yet been completely charred to cinders, kindly restrict your discussion of stripped prisoners to more appropriate channels.


Thank you.

Personally, I'm still playing 0.31.25, or whatever version it is wherein dwarves "claim" dropped goblin clothes, leave them lying where they fall for a few months, and then pick them up and leave them lying all over their bedroom. So I'm thinking that in order to avoid clutter, I should cage all incoming goblins, leave them in their cages for about 10 years, and only pit them after all their clothes (except armor) have rotted away to nothing.

You can inspect the starting 7's personality profiles before embark, and either accept or reject back to the embark selection map screen and try again until you get results you like.

Which can be a real pain if you're as picky as I am. I wish the game offered you the choice of which to select first: The site, or the party, and then allowed you to save your progress. That'd allow you to build "the perfect team" and save them to embark them wherever, or generate different starting 7s over & over without having to find the destination all over again on every single try.

You don't really have much control over the physical attributes and preferences displayed on the personality page though, so it's a bit of a crapshoot.

Yeah, I allow myself a little bit of cheating on that one: Immediately after embark, I'll allow my dwarves to exchange stats & traits--if Dwarf 5 has an iron will and Dwarf 1 doesn't, I'll have them swap. I only have Runesmith, though, so I can't edit preferences.

Quote from: SixOfSpades on January 07, 2013, 08:36:57 pm

Dwarf 4: Broker. 1 rank of Appraiser is all you need.

You don't need any points in Appraiser, as you get a boatload when you commence trading for the first time. The only advantage to starting with Appraiser skill is that you can see your fortress's wealth before the end of Autumn.

One point of Judge of Intent is enough to let you see the trader's mood, which will give you a very rough guide to how little profit they're willing to take. You can force-train this skill by making numerous small trades, but it'll also train other social skills. So maybe you should let Dwarf 1 be the broker for a while, and then retire him once he's cornered the social skills market.

Spending 5 embark points is worth going to the trade depot already knowing that a -gold figurine of dwarves- costs a lot more than a +chicken leather bag+. I don't worry about haggling merchants down to the lowest they will tolerate, I just give them a 100% profit margin. They get a nice deal & bring more stuff next year, I shove some surplus crap off the edge of the map. Win-win.

I don't like the idea of socializing the mayor through trade because a) the duke doesn't like it when he keeps seeing engravings of himself weeping because he was removed from the position of broker, and b) maxing out his social skills at embark is the only insurance against the inevitable craptastic migrant with batshit loony preferences . . . who also just happens to be a Talented Consoler.