Bay 12 Games Forum

The stupid human merchants killed all the females when I tried to restrain them

I'm going to await the next siege, hopefully they'll have Rats again. I'll see if I can build a breeding room in the meantime (cage traps around a central restrained female rat, as suggested). Not certain that it'd work (I can see the female getting stuck in the cages, or still killing the offspring), but it sounds like the best available plan

I've never successfully bred animals other than dogs. I tried to breed Giant Keas in a previous fortress after taming them, but sadly they refused to lay eggs (or rather they did but my Dwarves kept eating them, and when I forbade them from eating them the birds stopped producing them :\)

We've all had dopey, suicidal, manic-depressive lunatics.

But what about those rare Dwarves that are intelligent, hard-to-kill, utterly determined and/or even just plain badass?

I have a few on this embark. Had my first hardcore Goblin siege. Traps killed 20 Goblins and their rat steeds, as well as both leading Pikemasters. However, the other 60 Giant Rats and their riders (all Hammermen) just sat in wait, hoping to starve me out.

Hoping to break the stalemate, I sent out my military. 9 Dwarves, 3 of whom were Spearmasters, the others were "Professionals" with varied weapons. All knock-off Copper gear.

Good troops, but with that shoddy gear and against those numbers? I felt foolish as my soldiers marched out to meet the enemy...and then spent the next 10 minutes watching with grim satisfaction as my heroes laid a huge smackdown on them all with no Dwarven casualties!

The highlights included my Militia Captain ("Dastot Mebzuthilrom") charging at a Giant Rat, decapitating it, slitting it's rider's throat with his sword and then impaling a second Rat straight through the head as it attacked. Additionally, my Marksdwarves ran out of ammo...and spent the rest of the battle beating Giant Rats to death with their crossbows. Immense

Gorgeclashed is currently enjoying something of a Golden Age. The booze stocks are bursting with 1500 drinks, meat stocks are fair with 300 and rising (rabid Hunters seem to be leaping upon every single creature that emerges onto the plains).

I've been playing around with more advanced liquid traps for the first time and the net result has been a lot of unfortunate Goblin volunteers drowning in the name of science/sadistic amusement. Actual usage has been disappointing though. I had a large Goblin ambush arrive (killed the Human Caravan, oops), but then they mostly got caged before they could make it inside my river trap.

Then, just as I was feverishly eyeing my "unleash watery Hell for great justice" lever, the survivors stopped and just stared into my fort for ages. So I sent the squaddies in and they were promptly evicted. The caged goblins were thrown into a truly decadent spike pit.

The Hospital is up and running fully and I actually have soap for the first time ever! Was highly satisfied to get a Mechanic with knackered feet "walking" again (well, with crutches, but y'know). Also discovered a big hunk of Gold and bought out the whole Dwarven caravan with Gold Crafts

I am currently working on getting some magma-safe materials so I can pump magma up to the surface for giggles. I want more excitement, so I'm also digging deeper, exploring the caverns and trying to bump up my Fort Value so I can have some tasty sieges

I managed to kill it in the end, pure luck to be honest. I sent down a squad of marksdwarves but due to the awkward layout of the cavern they had to approach the webs anyway and all got stuck...

However, one somehow managed to smash it's skull in, using his crossbow as a bludgeoning weapon! The damn thing killed enough of my soldiers to get it's own name assigned to it ("Tatmenad") before I managed to take it down

On the other hand, I now have 71 Giant Cave Spider silk threads, so there was some gain from the proceedings. Crazy fight, I've never seen one creature prove that dangerous. Giants and Minotaurs are pansies by comparison!

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That Troll I caged earlier and mentioned...if I release it into the pit under my entrance bridge, will it maul anything that falls in? As far as I know Goblins have something of a natural synergy with Trolls, so I just wondered if they'd make friends with a wild one or if it'd regard them as tasty morsels?

Either way I'm not sure it's 100% useful as a trap, but it sounds Dwarf-y and thus I should probably do it

I've had two visits from a crazed Werepanther that, surprisingly, seems to be acting as some sort of Guardian Angel for the fort

The first time it turned up, then anti-climatically converted back to Human form immediately and ran off.

The second time it arrived and started attacking something in a frenzy. I hastily deployed my soldiers, only to realise it was mauling a Goblin Thief to death. After biting his head open it once again transformed into a Human and fled.

you need people who can get to them, have the farming labor and have a farmplot with that crop enabled.

Indeed, this is what's unusual. I had a simple "emergency farm" with only Plump Helmets all year round, I have 3 Farmers with the labour ticked and a custom Plant stockpile for Helmets next to the Still. But regardless only right after everyone died did I actually see Helmets being carried to the stockpiles!

I'm starting over with that fort, I think I will tidy my stockpiles up a bit. I find I tend to dig out warehouses all over the place at the beginning and everything gets tossed in a big heap before I get my workshops set up :\

(Lol, this thread really highlights my numerous resource failures... )

The mass of redundant farmers is probably causing that. My guess is they all have a low Farming skill, which results in small stacks of plants (see my sig for details).

Brewing is a slow process, and if the plant stacks are small, you will only make a small amount of booze for each job. No wonder it gets drunk so fast.

I had a quick look in Dwarf Therapist. Only just realised you can actually alter occupations directly with that program, which means the game just became so much easier to micromanage!

Basically 90% of these bloody Farmers are crap as you suspected. So I got them doing menial stone labour and left a couple of Competent ones to tend the fields.

Unfortunately, I'm now getting dehydration deaths all over the place because all the booze/booze plants I bought off the Elves have run out. I don't understand why, but my logs are filled with "Can't brew..." logs as if I'm not producing crops, which makes no sense since the fields I have are constantly planted when I check them.

I even set the Kitchen to ignore plants in favour of meat and other products, but I still never have any Helmets or Wheat in stock. Never had this problem with a fort before, but it's rather depressing! I can only assume Dwarves are randomly eating the plants raw, but even then I can't see why they'd do that with ample food supplies. Logic would also dictate they wouldn't eat enough to totally shut down my brew production either...

*Ahem* Anyway, enough derailing with my "farm rage"! Dalkar, I like the suggestion, especially since walls need building on the surface in my world too!

I think I might take the Spartan approach soon - I.E. just walling up my entrance whenever more useless swine turn up and leaving them to the elements!