Bay 12 Games Forum

Well, I held off a goblin invasion with a little defense I was tinkering around with. I thought this was amusing enough to share~

This is an overview of my current fortress in it's 6th year-

Home Sweet Home

One of the more prominent things about it is the large... ummm... sword-like water moat in the front ->

   

My dwarves call it the Giant, Big, Large, Super Huge Sword of Death, or GaBLe in front of polite company, and 'the BIG one' in front of elves. It has multiple bridges for a nice, scenic view and for traveler comfort. The water is clean and pristine, and is a nice, surprisingly warm temperature despite being next to the river.

Not only does it look nice, it also has a special feature for the more... unclean guests that drop by->

 

Yup, that's 3 groups of goblins on break dogs accompanied by a group of trolls, all coming to pay an unexpected visit.

... uh oh, something wicked this way comes...

   

Yeah my timing was a bit off, but....

   

I counted ~7 survivors from the initial raid that managed to limp off with injuries, which was pretty good for my second time around in using this thing. Once the lava gets to the river, it seals it off completely with steam, making escape (or entry) impossible without serious injury.

The fortress is not completely impregnable however. The overlord handbook building codes insist that for any impregnable castle/high rise building/death star built there must be a sewer grate/ventilation duct/exhaust port for easy backdoor entry just in case the overlord locks himself out of the fortress.

So, as you can see, there's a small, unattended drainage gate down south that pumps water into the moat when the river freezes over. When refilling the moat in the winter, this tiny channel can empty for a small window of opportunity for the castle overlord, or an intrepid band of adventurers to sneak in.

Just in case this happens, every bridge on the parallel lava channel can retract with one switch, trapping the annoying band in a deadly maze with their only hope of salvation being an impossible to find switch to lower the bridges in the middle of the maze, guarded by wild beasts and traps (eventually anyway). The bridges lead to the kennels/armory where the fools will have to fight off war dogs and soldiers in a small, tight corridor that nullifies the number advantage of my soldiers.

Or alternatively, they can try to navigate down south of the maze to a deadly, steam filled bridge that requires heroic timing and ungodly luck to get across and leads almost straight to the control room with no resistance but for a few traps.

Both are impossible, so I'm pretty safe on the defense side, right?

So, anybody else care to share their defense systems?

[ September 27, 2006: Message edited by: IronStorm ]

Oh god, the light - -

IT'S BEAUTIFUL.

*sniff* Thank you *sniff*

Ah I see, thank you for clearing that up.

Now if only those dwarves would eat cooked food instead of plump helmets ><

Well, this will be my last post responding to  RPB in this thread because yes, I do believe your sense of reality is warped. I'm getting fairly exasperated (and it shows in this post)  at the arguements you use and judging drom the other posts, you appear to be a lone minority on your position that late game nobles should not come with any advantages.

So, here we go~

quote:

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My sense of reality is warped?

You can, if you're really bent on it, get right to work on heading for the magma and have a magma smelter up and running around the end of summer. That's about 2 hours, at 1 hour per season (which seems to be about normal).

No matter how much effort you put into it, I don't believe you can get the governor before the 5th spring. That's over 16 hours, 1 hour per season.

How can you say that 14 hours of play time is a difference of "nothing, really"? There are plenty of games, especially freeware games, that you can play start to finish in 14 hours.  

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This is a hugely fallacious arguement- I can't believe you even tried to argue like this.

Here's ONE counterpoint:

"You can, if you're really bent on it, get right to work on getting lots of farms and for lots of food and beds to house your dwarves. That should really bring the immigrants in! You'll probably have a nice stable fortress by the end of the 4th or so year to get the governor! You'll only have to deal with the occasional siege (maybe not even that) if you don't build past the river and a few snakemen shouldn't be a bother. Best of all, no bridges that break pathfinding!

But, no matter how much effort you put into it, I don't believe you can get to the lava without hitting the chasm and having to build bridges there. How can you say that the time spent building bridges, and the risk involved with them AND having to build defenses against antmen invasions is 'nothing'? Getting the governor is easy if you just build some farms and houses."

I can apply the same arguement you make against the governor and use it with the lava example. I just use the lava example because its advantages and disadvantages are well known and implemented unlike the governor, who I believe, is probably incomplete. Presenting the governor as an example when his supposed functions aren't even known is a  quick way to turn the arguement into fruitless speculation.

Which leads to a second counterpoint:

quote:

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"You can, if you're really bent on it, get right to work on heading for the magma and have a magma smelter up and running around the end of summer. That's about 2 hours, at 1 hour per season (which seems to be about normal).

No matter how much effort you put into it, I don't believe you can get the governor before the 5th spring. That's over 16 hours, 1 hour per season. "

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But you're forgetting that players often build before the river first and then relocate (which seems to the normal way of doing things). Building to the lava means you have to spend so much time removing furniture and crafting new rooms since once you have the lava you probably want your dwarves near there to get the ore/gems. All that managing and extra planning takes a lot of time- I'd say 3 hours extra per season, maybe more! That's 10 hours! I'm sure there are a lot of games, especially freeware games, that you can play from start to finish in 10 hours.

Wait... where did I get these facts and numbers from? Well... the same place you did of course- speculation and oversimplification land! 16 hours vs 2? It MIGHT BE 2 hours IF you are an experienced player and IF you really want to get a smelter down really fast. But what IF we add in the time it takes to plan a fortress where you get to the lava so quickly instead of making rooms as you need them? Then the time difference begins to shorten.. when is it not a 'large' difference to you? 16 vs 10 hours? 16 vs 12? I can make a million little arguements relating the time/effort taken about the governor and lava- BUT I can't argue (without seeming like I have a warped sense of reality) that getting the lava or the governor doesn't take time and effort and that I start off with them.

Which is why it's a valid example for arguing that, yes, players don't need to have certain things given at the beginning like lava or noble functions and still enjoy the game. That giving them these functions automatically WOULD trivialize certain important aspects.

Ah, and here's another counterpoint for good measure:

"How can you say that 14 hours of play time is a difference of "nothing, really"? There are plenty of games, especially freeware games, that you can play start to finish in 14 hours."

Actually, I think there might be some games out there you can complete in the time you use to build a normal smelter! But the magma smelter requires steel and will take so much longer and it also provides benefits! Obviously we should make it so that getting the normal smelter/lava/whatever should be equal to the time taken to get the magma smelter/governor/whatever...

If only we had a large amount of posts in this thread that related the ADVANTAGE GAINED vs. THE EFFORT REQUIRED! That would be the perfect foil... oh wait.. there they are!

which leads to....

quote:

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So does that mean that EVERY time someone plays, they should have to wait 3-4 years and get 100+ dwarves before they're allowed to go to the lava? That's the difference. If someone plays for 20 hours before they reach the magma, then if they decide to start over they can go get to the magma again in 2-5 hours, depending on how fast they are--that saves a lot of time. If someone plays for 20 hours before they reach the governor, then if they decide to start over they still MUST wait for 16 hours. 10+ hours might be a couple of weeks' playing time for a lot of players, and that's a lot of time to ask them to invest in the game EVERY TIME they want to see any of the later features.

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Why yes, I am saying that you should put effort into receiving rewards! That you SHOULD invest time and effort into this type of game to get the full experience!

And I'm also going to say that two can play at this little game:

"Are you saying that player's should just get continually punished when their fortress is good enough to attract important nobles? That investing any time or effort into a game to reap rewards is false because it makes the game harder than it should be? That the game should be a non-interactive slideshow showing all the cool features and big fortress layouts?"

Wow, that sure was easy to do. I didn't even have to defend my position- just attack my opponent,

Oh AND:

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I guess we'll never find out, because SimCity ALREADY LETS YOU DO THIS. At least every SimCity game I've seen featured a scenario mode, anyhow. Sure, most of those featured DISASTERS hitting those huge sprawling cities, but you still got to play with them without having to build them yourself...

Incidentally, adding a mode where you could jump in and play a pregenerated fortress that's already progressed quite far would be a very good feature for Dwarf Fortress too and would eliminate most of the concerns I've brought up, whether it was a "problem scenario" mode like what SimCity had or if it was just "here's a fortress, go nuts." But I'm guessing you're probably going to explain why this is such a BAD BAD HORRIBLE THING.

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I was HOPING you'd mention the scenario's in SimCity, because it's one of the most solid proofs that: YES, players WILL play a game where you DON'T get everything in the beginning!

The most popular part of simcity wasn't the scenarios (just look at 99% of the fansites out there), it was the build your city from scratch part. Will Wright wasn't even going to add scenarios into the original game, it was the execs who were wary of just putting out a [then revolutionary] game design  concept.

But players didn't get addicted to simcity for the scenario's- they were drawn to the open-ended gameplay where you built your city from scratch and watched it GROW and EVOLVE. Your little residential zones grew from little houses to huge hotels- AND here's the kicker- you got benefits AND disadvantages from progress! Your problems went from not enough money/not enough industrial/commercial buildings to pollution/traffic/crime. And this was the original simcity- just follow the sim-trail and you have Will Wright's newest project: Spore.

If you don't know what Spore is well.. you should google it. It's apparently your worst nightmare, a game where -gasp- you start of with a little spore and you don't see the full scope of the game until you spend enough time and effort to grow your spore to an entire planetary civilization. If we go by your logic though, people won't play it because they'll have to work too hard to get that point. You'll probably say it will tank and its a HORRIBLE BAD GAME ( <-- LOOK I can make BASELESS accusations too! It's fun for the whole family!)

I was tempted to end it here, but I really should give the main reason for my continued exasperation. I'll try to reign the sarcasm in on this part.

A good portion of mine and other's past posts have focused on JUST the advantages the position that nobles should have both disadvantages and advantages.

The main points that were made were ( I might have missed some) that isn't an attack were

a) Nobles become something a player wants, a 'short' term goal

b) Giving them disadvantages/advantages provides more variety in the way you play the game by positively encouraging an evolving strategy (key word is positive)

c) Nobles can be a great mechanism for moderating difficulty levels

d) Nobles can be a nice way of introducing new functions into an already complex and cluttered interface (related to point c, but I feel that they're different enough)

These points can stand alone as advantages.

But, taking a quick scroll through RPB's arguements reveal that nearly EVERY one of them is some kind of attack on these points.

But where are the standalone arguements for nobles that don't have advantages? WHAT DOES KEEPING THEM USELESS ADD TO THE GAME?

I don't know if I can stress those 2 questions enough, especially the last one. Because they are the crux of my irritation. Rather than listing any of its positive effects on the game, RPB insists on pointing out what is 'negative' with the other side.

Now, judging by the post count, there are negatives to either side of the debate- but I've only seen a positive rational on the position that nobles should give advantages and disadvantages.

It's easy to attack an opponent's arguement- I did have some fun writing a large section of the above post- but in this case, I'm finding that my attacks are essentially counterattacks.

What's the point in arguing with someone who's defense doesn't include a good reason why, and just reasons for 'why not'?

quote:

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the lava is an unrelated comparison. The player chooses when they want to go to the lava...Nobles generally don't work like that.

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It's not unrelated- starting players don't know about the lava at all. How they play their game determines whether they reach the lava or not. This is the same with nobles- EVERY noble you get is DIRECTLY related to how you run your fortress. There are no nobles that have a time condition only. Aftger all, migrant jobs aren't set in stone- it doesn't take long to turn a novice jeweler into a farmer, etc. Also, as you pointed out, you can choose to kill your immigrants if you want, and forever stay at no nobles, or at a certain point. How is this any different?

As an added note: like the governor is impossible to get without the manager, it's also impossible to get to the lava without first getting to the river and chasm. You're governor->manager example doesn't hold much water in any case.

The lava example isn't suddenly invalid because it can take the player only 1 year to get to it, while it can take the player 5 years to get to the governor. This is a cosmetic difference. The POINT was that you don't START OFF with the lava- and you don't get the +'s and -'s associated with it.

 

quote:

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If you take it out of context, sure. The point is that once you have the nobles, gameplay WITH nobles doesn't matter whether it's a result of the nobles or a result of the things you start with.

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Take it out of context? I just used an example inside of the actual game itself. Just because you can't reach the governor as fast as you can reach the lava doesn't invalidate the example. Both of them still take time to get to, and you can play the game without reaching either of them.

In addition- it appears you haven't read why that statement is false. The main difference lies in what happens BEFORE you get any nobles. Bundling with nobles gives the player something to look forward to. In contrast, giving them useless nobles as punishment for progressing throughout the game isn't nearly as encouraging.

You made a blanket statement about gameplay- one which is obviously false in a large majority of games (one of the few exceptions I can think of is tetris). In most games, as the enemy gets harder, players get better tools to deal with them- the difficulty increases, but isn't overwhelming.

 

quote:

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As for the point of the game, I think we have a difference of philosophy here. I think games should generally start out easy and get harder and harder, you say they should have a consistent level of challenge throughout them.

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Now, you're the one who has taken what me and Lurve has said out of context.

 

quote:

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Here's the point- lessening the difficulty of situations in the lategame with bonuses/tools allows the game to present the player with NEW challenges without overwhelming him/her. It keeps the difficulty level at a manageable rate- not too easy in the beginning, and not too hard in the end.

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Where in there do I mention that the difficulty shouldn't scale with progress? Both mine and Lurve's post mention that the game already does begins to get more difficult with time. One of the points of bundling tools/advantages with nobles is to make sure the beginning isn't too easy and the endgame isn't too hard.

And finally:

 

quote:

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You could give new tools to the governer, too, but making players wait until they have the governer before they get those tools isn't really do anything to make the early game more interesting.  

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... the last few posts have addressed this issue multiple times. NOT giving players every advantage in the beginning can make the early game challenging. It also gives the game more scope by giving the endgame a experience by allowing the player to transit from one challenge to the next, rather than be stuck by dealing with the same challenge over and over again from the beginning.

My past few posts have argued that nobles should be double edged swords with their own advantages and disadvantages. I gave several reasons why, the main 2 being

a) it would make the game more interesting
b) it can be a mechanism to mitigate/control the difficulty level at every stage of the game

You still haven't given a reasonable explanation as to why you think nobles should, essentially, be punishment for the player for making progress in the game. I don't see any advantage to doing it that way.

[ Edited for mass spelling mistakes =X ]

[ September 16, 2006: Message edited by: IronStorm ]

quote:

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I still haven't seen any sensible explanation as to what's wrong with the approach.

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To be fair to Varil, however, you also haven't given a sensible explanation as to why nobles should be 99% useless. Varil sums up a point I tried to make- a good indicator of progress is actual progress- not suddenly finding yourself babysitting nobles.

Tying late game functions/late game abilities to nobles does 2 things:

A) Nobles become useful- instead of an irritating burden; they become a double edged sword. This is simply a better gameplay system than just handicapping a player in the lategame and expecting them to be happy that its an "indicator of progress".

B) It can give the player something to look forward to when playing. Look at magma smelters/forges/kilns- you can get ore the moment you take a pick to the stone, but refining it to usable bars is prohibitvely expensive until you get to the lava.

I've made these 2 points in the past- but I wanted to summarize it here since apparently you still don't get it. Also-

quote:

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If you get a tool or bonus to cope with a situation, that makes that situation less difficult. There's no difference between doing that and making the situation less difficult to begin with and withholding the benefit.

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This is the statement that Varil was attacking- and with good reason. Frankly, it's an incredibly stupid statement.

It's broad and ignorant- there is a HUGE difference between lessening the difficulty and giving a bonus/tool to alleviate that difficulty.

Nearly every 'evolution' type game uses the pattern of having a player overcome a challenge, trivializing that challenge through a tool/bonus- and giving the player a new one.

For instance, the reward for getting to the lava is getting a tool that lessens the difficulty of refining metal. The challenge of getting enough wood to burn and of the time it takes to melt a single ore is nearly trivialized once you get to the lava. The tradeoff is increasing levels of difficult creatures to contend with, a wider border to defend, the risk of losing parts of your fortress to the initial magma flood, and the increased amount of resources that nobles and fey moods can call upon. Toady didn't make outside lava pools for a reason.

The difficulty of burning wood is lessened with the addition of a lategame tool- but the addition of having to dig further to find the resources you need presents new challenges to the player.

Here's the point- lessening the difficulty of situations in the lategame with bonuses/tools allows the game to present the player with NEW challenges without overwhelming him/her. It keeps the difficulty level at a manageable rate- not too easy in the beginning, and not too hard in the end.

Giving the player everything he 'needs' skews the beginning/midgame difficulty level and takes away from the depth of the game.

Mario doesn't start off with the ability to fly and throw fireballs because he doesn't start off in a level with mile high pipes and Bowser breathing down his neck.

RPB- I have no idea what you are arguing about when you talk about broken nobles- my post DID say that nobles are broken. The first post I wrote was complaining about the bookkeeper- and praising the concept but complaining it was broken.

I also did give the reason why nobles SHOULD give management tools/benefits later in the game. Managing late game numbers of dwarves and the massive amount of resources does start to become tedious rather that fun. Pile on useless nobles who do nothing but make demands, and you compound that difficulty. The interface might be 90% of the problem, but

Making nobles more enticing also gives a sense of purpose to expanding your fortress. You WANT those nobles to come- so you build farther and make more buildings- and then get more dwarves- and then you actually do need those nobles to make the game a little less hectic... etc.. its a nice cycle. Useless nobles break that cycle.

Giving players challenges is the fun part of the game- staying alive in the early game, staying alive in the midgame, etc... but giving players useless nobles isn't a challenge in this type of game- its just tedium.  This is, as you said, a design game. And most of it really takes place in the imagination- those ascii tiles become towering stone walls and massive halls.  Surviving endless goblin sieges might be 'pointless', but it FEELS like an accomplishment; you can take pride in building defenses strong enough to withstand an onslaught. I love seeing those little red 'g's and 'B's littering the front of my fortress because I just imagined a huge battle took place. I love seeing machine-lagging amounts of dwarves running around inside huge rooms.

But seeing your once grand fortress limp along because you were hoisted with useless nobles is NOT what I would call a fun endgame challenge. You run around and try to find rare and precious metals for what? To please some random noble that doesn't do anything or else he'd sic the pyschopathic sherrif on a random dwarf? Who the hell wants to imagine satisfying the demands of a fat, useless, idiot? That isn't a game anymore- thats LIFE.

I'm fairly sure that most people would rather have an epic battle replace every useless noble that comes into the fortress. Or maybe having the option to build a huge hall and build gold statues to accomodate a USEFUL noble that would make your armies more efficient for a coming war... etc...

I know I'd rather do that than have Sir LazyPants command me to make 10 silver crossbows or have my weaponsmith executed.

Nobles making the game harder I can understand- but they should not be so frustrating. Some of their demands are unreasonable given the limited control you have over what materials the dwarves should use. Trying to build an 'obsidian' statue doesn't add depth to the game- it just makes you drown the snooty idiot.

They also shouldn't CRIPPLE your base if they come in. The way they work now; I have to constantly resist the urge to lock most of them in a room and dump in water and lava.

The sherrif/captain is an example of this. Because of his 'beat em up' feature- high skill/legendary dwarves are killed by his idiocy. Admittedly, when he works right its nice to have some control over tantruming dwarves, but 99% of the time he is a pyschotic LA Cop who needs to be caged.

The bookkeeper is a great concept- he changes the structure of the game once you get him. But currently, he is crippling if you like to give your dwarves nice rooms- and provides almost nothing in return.

Wealth generation is useless especially when you have a renewable resource like bones/leather to craft with, and losing the ability to assign rooms can make your fortress crawl to a standstill if you haven't planned ahead and centralized your living quarters. The only depth the bookkeeper adds is making sure you dont mint coins until you've a good amount of rooms assigned. It would be nice to be able to pick your type of government instead of having a capitalistic one dumped on you when you decide to make coins.

Nobles adding depth/benefits in return for making the game harder I can understand- but right now, most of them don't add complexity- they just add needless frustration. Who needs more of that in this type of game?

This post should probably be in suggestions- but I wanted to know if there was anything I could do about getting my dwarves to get take their expensive rooms back once they are evicted =X