Bay 12 Games Forum

Heheheh.

Ballsects

That did work thanks. I was able to find a suitable embark with over 1 million (!) marble on prospect.
Now, though, the problem is that when my sufficiently skilled miners mine out a marble tile, they are leaving no marble behind. Plenty of other stone is left behind, but no marble! Why would that be happening?

As in it's NEVER leaving any behind? Or have you tried mining out a large area? Miner skill has no relation on the % chance of dropping a stone boulder anymore.

It's been done.

I was lucky - out of the new batch, 7 have melee skills.  Two more have some archery skill, and one useless dwarf is amazingly tough (sounds like melee material to me).

I have a problem though - the 7 dwarves with military experience, they don't have the same weapons - some are axes, a few maces and one swordsman.  Is it ok to have a squad with mixed weapons?

That's totally fine. There's no real reason to limit them to a certain weapon; in fact it's probably a plus, considering there's some enemies that are difficult to injure with certain weapons (spears vs. hammers work very differently against armored/large/undead targets for example). Just don't make any wooden weapons, like training axes, etc, because they can get attached to them while training and tend to try using them in actual combat.

I rarely use crossbows or bows because Ive had terrible experiences with them in the past due to all the bugs involved.

Quote from: Tacomagic on October 15, 2014, 08:44:05 am

Quote from: Teldin on October 15, 2014, 08:07:02 am

I use highly specialized workers; the top 10% do 90% of the work. It's definitely risky, but is extremely efficient in terms of both time and materials. This also means I always have enormous piles of unemployed loiterers. So, since I never use traps, bridges, or moats, they all go into the militia. At least 50% of my total fort pop is military, usually more like 75%, and out of the military, it's split 50-50 into crossbows and melee. There tends to be a wide variety of equipment, and they're pretty smart about handing it out -- the squad leaders grab the best stuff first, and later recruits get the poorest gear.

Pretty much this for me too.   Dwarves that idle too long get drafted.  Even if I don't have equpment for them, they can join a wrestling group and play grab-ass until I have stuff for them to wear.

To be fair if you use two or three mechanics then you get traps as well. Make fifty wood cages and those traps will easily eat up all smaller invading forces by themselves.

The entire point of not using traps is not to use traps, though. It's not because I can't, it's because it's not fun.

I also have been doing this for years. I really like playing out the early life of a fort, a small handful of families struggling in the soil until word of their exploits spread. I typically start at 25, bump it up to 50 after a few years, then 100.

Having played since 2D, I've fallen into a typical pattern for my forts which I only rarely deviate from. so there's not much planning, though I am pretty specific about embark locations. I usually re-roll worlds until I find that perfect spot, with both magma and running water. Other stuff is a bonus but it MUST have water and surface magma.

After that it's easy since I just use the setup I've used for a decade now:

a) dig into hillside, or straight down if no convenient hillsides are around. First a 5x5 room for the trade depot (with a 3 wide entrance), a narrow winding hall to a small barracks. Early, this barracks is the communal dorm; later it becomes a training and sleeping room for the militia.

b) A downwards staircase off from the entrance lobby, which branches into a x2 or x3 wide hall heading either east-west or north-south. On either side is four shift-diagonal'd storage rooms; these are always Wood, Furniture, Finished Goods and a general stock for everything but food. (I also always chop off a 3x3 area of the Finished Goods and replace it with a 2nd one, this one only accepts stone goods while the other forbids it-- this means I can crank out stone crafts and pick them out easily for the depot).

c) At either end of the hall, staircases down. These, and the main hall, continue downwards until I hit stone.

d) On the next level, 4 more 11x11 (or is it 9x9 for shift-diagonal? Can't recall) storage. Two food, one refuse, one becomes a farm.

e) Next level, 4 more 11x11 squares, only I chop them into 5x5 chambers by removing the mining designations through the middles. These become workshops, all are set to be as close as possible to the appropriate storage. Since not all workshops will fit in 16 chambers, the next few levels are reserved for more as they are needed, but only the hallway is mined.

f) 4 or 5 levels down (or when I find a nice vein of ore), the two up-down staircases become one down staircase in the middle of the hall. This level becomes the social district - a large (at least 11x11) dining hall, small prison, hospital, graveyard. Also, down a long, trapped corridor are the treasure chambers; one room with a barrel-less stockpile that only accepts artifact-quality items, another only accepts coins. Looks fancy when they're all arranged on the floor!

g) Down a few more levels, government rooms. Expedition leader's chambers, throne room, noble quarters; typically these are lavish and branching, and always at least 4x4.

h) Down a few more levels (typically, just before the caverns), the apartment complex. In earlier days I would make large, 3x3 rooms for every dwarf, but lately I just make big, elaborate dorms and put 4-12 dwarves in each one. They still seem pretty happy.


I only rarely ever use traps, bridges, moats, or walls for the front door, instead relying entirely on militia and crossbows -- since I let the elite masters do all the work it leaves me with an enormous pile of unemployed. If there's a tantrum spiral I let it work itself out, and the survivors carry on and rebuild. It's actually very rare for the entire fort to be lost.