Bay 12 Games Forum

So I've got a pretty sweet starting location.  It's a bald patch of obsidian in the southeast corner, surrounded by thick forest on mostly flat land.  Two z-levels down, the magma pipe sits, waiting to be tapped.  A two-level tall bump of obsidian -- perhaps a cooled volcano? -- juts out of the ground.  Naturally my dwarves dug right in, laying down a wide channel and carving the obsidian blemish into a gorgeous bunker with fortifications overlooking the sunken channel.  I've gone deep enough that I'm building a territorial wall of alunite nearby to keep the immediate surroundings safe...

My problem is the ambushes.  Holy Armok, the ambushes!  Three or four ambushes every year: elves on unicorns and horses, goblins with elvish weaponmasters leading the charge, kobold and goblin thieves trying to sneak in amidst the confusion... it's nuts.  It's the fourth year now and I've got my operations pretty streamlined: I almost always have archers in the bunker, and I've got swordsmen/wrestlers waiting in the wings inside the trap chute.  But I'm starting to feel like the US forces in Vietnam. 

AMBUSH!  Peasant who was hauling bloody GCS clothes from the traps discovers that he is cut off from the bunker and runs around aimlessly... he dies.  My archers decimate the enemies, who are routed and flee through obsidian sword traps, where there bodies are finely minced.  Hooray!  Our kill ratio is a fantastic 30:1, and we all celebrate.  Except for Urist McRedshirt's buddies, who are demoralized by the constant poaching.  Now, other than that, life in the Green Zone is lovely.  We've got great R&R (rooftop statue garden with a view, epic dining hall, obsidian furniture everywhere, delicious roasts, surfing, Playmates helicoptered in for a stage show, etc.) so it's not too bad, but I'm beginning to worry about the inevitable day when Urist McPopular is the canary outside the coal mine during the initial strike.  The troops are going to take it pretty hard, and I worry about tantrum spirals.  We need to gather up the GCS clothes to sustain our conspicuous consumption lifestyle, but one of my engravers recently carved "NO BLOOD FOR GOLDEN SALVE" in a hallway.

In short: what tactics can I adopt that give my dwarves the liberty to walk about on the surface without having to sacrifice a dwarf every time I get ambushed?  Can I force civilians to wear (elf-bone) armor and carry a (formerly goblin-owned) iron buckler?  Can I give the ambushed dwarf orders to flee somehow?  Help me out of this all-too-familiar situation!

Had RTS been named better we would have a lot less terminological and meaningless confusion and in today's computer game theory debates.

I think most "RTS" games would be better named "small army tactics" or "regional resource and combat" games.  Nobody would actually use those names, but the problem is that very few RTS games involve anything as grand as strategy, and you rarely command more than a hundred military units.

Zerging is a tactic.  Turtling is a tactic with some strategic elements.  Economic boom with a future plan for a crippling blitzkrieg is somewhat strategic, but relies on good tactics to work.   Choosing to establish a trap-laden fortress of cave-dwelling dragon-slaying luchadores in the one mountain pass that connects your civilization to the goblin civilization is the cornerstone of a (very defensive) strategy.  It's like the Maginot Line, only finely decorated with cat leather and hanging rings of goblin bone.

Call it what you want, Dwarf Fortress is a fantastic game because it's not just you and Player 2 on the terrain... it's you vs. the mountain, and the magma, and the carp, and the elves, and the gobbos, and the HFS, and the Hammerer, and the Dwarven Society that keeps sending nobles and soapmakers...

but be warned also that, bins and barrels are forniture too, so if you ask for decorating furniture with diamond you migth want to assure that it wont be on a tower cap barrel (but it is optionelle i like the idee of drinking from decorated barels )

You can also micromanage your furniture stockpile: forbid all qualities except masterwork, forbid barrels (and if you can tolerate giving up coffers, forbid boxes & bags), and while you're at it you can forbid low-value materials like wood.

I like to set up a 5x5 room with lockable doors, put a 3x3 craftsdwarf workshop in the middle, and forbid all skill levels below legendary.  Then I designate two walls (9 tiles) of excellent furniture storage -- no bins or barrels allowed -- and 2 or 3 tiles for valuable bone storage (allow only unicorn and fire imp bone, for example).

Do the same with a metalsmith's forge and a jeweler's workshop and you're all set.  If you're really savvy you can put all three around a central (masterwork only, no barrels, forbid low-value stone) furniture stockpile and designate all of the space in the shops for decoration materials.

A little pile micromanagement can boost the value of good decorations quite a bit!

But who had the horses... the elves?

Yeah, they were packed in with the unicorns as near as I could tell.  They slaughtered the caravan so viciously that one of the pack mules went insane.  I'll check the list of deceased and count the ratio of dead elves to dead unicorns.  I should have counted the skulls, but I've already carved and sold them. 

Is there a way to combine a spear and a skull totem into an outside building to get a nice "head on a pike" effect?

That is the hilarious thing, copper is a soft malleable metal not at all fit for anvils

I'm waiting for steel alloys that use different amounts of charcoal, bone, or coins in their production - e.g. add aluminum and nickel to make much stronger steel, which could then be used for very thin (lightweight) armor, with a correspondingly higher value.

So... does that make cave adaptation the rough equivalent of scurvy, and above-ground plants somehow more citrusy?  Heaven help us if dwarves actually require a balanced diet at some point.

Meme time:

"yo dawg i heard you like fortresses so we put a fort in your fort so you can play while you play."

Yo dorf I heard you like engravings, so I put an engraving in your engraving so you can get happy thoughts while you get happy thoughts.

If my liaison got killed by a combined goblin/elvish ambush, am I never going to see another caravan again?  The elves are at war with me, so no caravans from them.  I haven't seen a human caravan yet and I've been around for three years.  Dwarvish trade is my only hope!

I don't have an anvil in this fortress yet... am I basically doomed?