Bay 12 Games Forum

I've downloaded a savefile from somebody else (the Whimcrafted succession game) and the ASCII is all screwed up.  Most types of rock are appearing as European letters (y with umlaut, a with accent, and so on).  I've seen this in a number of similar situations but never on my own PC.  I guess this is caused by somebody down the line using a weird tileset mod, right?  Any way to switch it back to normal?

Get that save up, please!  I'm giving up DF for Lent (starts wednesday) so I've got to take my turn ASAP.

On the topic of undead:  In my limited experience, zombie seiges are best dealt with by turtling up and waiting for them to leave... and/or for goblins to arrive and kill them for you.  One thing I know for sure is, the necromancer doesn't always come in person with the zombies.  It's a lot easier to deal with zombies when there's no necromancer to re-raise them.

1. Why are no labors enabled on like ANYONE?
I certainly had labors assigned.  I typically use specialists -- only one or two labors assigned to each dwarf.  Most male dwarfs just had hauling and masonry (I think) as they are presumed to be the militia, even if not organized.
2. Where did our giant cave spiders go?
They're on the surface near the entrance (look for the webs).
3. Why do we have a hundred prisoners next to the pit with spikes at the bottom?
I was going to follow Fishybang's idea and use them to train the militia.  Then my militia all died.
4. Why did you get rid of the gigantic pit of water that half froze. At least when it froze, only one side did... It was a great source of water, as it would refill in the summer/fall
It was empty when I found it. I never got around to building pumps to fill it.  If the lake is still frozen, you could maybe channel down and dig into the side to fill it quickly... but then it would be salt water.
5. What was the overall conclusion on fastdwarf or child labor (assuming i dont get any invaders... and im just walling the entire fort off within a few days of the start)? As said before, it would GREATLY help, but i can still do it without.
Fine with me, I have no opinion.

I noticed the caverns are still sealed off, so one possibility for this would be to simply pick a cavern and build a "village" in there.  Or use the few layers between the cavern and the magma forges, then seal off the upper fort.

Well, guys, there's no beating around the bush:  I made a real mess of this fort!  We are down to a population of 87, about half of them children.  The fortress's main problem is a desperate shortage of water, which I wasn't able to do mitigate.  (Pumping the lake water into that cistern-thing seems like a good idea, but then you remember that it will freeze because it's been exposed to the surface.)  The second big problem is that the entrance is not easily defensible or even understandable -- there are such a mess of up-stairs and down-ramps that I can't even figure out how dwarves get in and out of the various rooms that appear to be near the gate.  The place is also so huge and serpentine that it takes forever for anything to get hauled or done.  And we have no soap.

On the up-side, we have great stores of lots of things.  We have over 100 captured enemies for training the military.  We could probably arm an entire squad of lashers now with their equipment.  Pig iron is being produced and we can make steel soon (you may want to make sure we have enough marble quarried for this).  Morale is recovering and the tantrums have slowed.  We still have giant cave spiders to help by killing off thieves and invaders.

My recommendation to successors:  dig a new fort on the opposite corner of the map and move everyone there.  Make sure it has ample water and magma (perhaps built it deep, near the bottom cavern layer -- caverns have water).  Build a defensible entrance.  Once you've got enough supplies, seal off or destroy the old fort.  It's that bad!

Access the savefile here:  http://sdrv.ms/UTWHes

11th sandstone:  I'm pretty sure we've filled all our coffins.  I'm ordering more to be made.

17th sandstone:  Finally restored power to the happiness generators.  now, if only I could figure out where to put the water in to make these things go.  The pumps do not appear to be set up in a round. Our last surviving founder, Aseaharu has apparently died.  Now we have no one to blame for this fortress but ourselves.

25th timber:  Datan Zulbanilit has created Gongith Cog, a gabbro bed!  Our exhausted fortress is under attack again -- this time two ambushes, of kobold swordsmen and spearmen respectively.  Fortunately, a caravan from the mountainhomes is here and the caravan guards slaughtered the invaders in quick order.



1st moonstone: Winter is upon us.  Finally our cage traps are starting to be re-loaded.  Coffins are being produced and filled.  I have traded some old worn out clothing for some booze (and will trade more if the dwarves will bring things to the depot).  We are at 88 dwarves now, about half of which are children.

3rd moonstone:  The kobold thief Thleebus had the decency to die right on our refuse stockpile so no hauling would be needed.

7th malachite:  The last goblin has been killed.  We are down to 122 dwarfs as the wounded are dying off.  Most of the dead were children and soldiers, so the work force isn't very much inhibited.  (Except by despair.)  We have only one well and it's about 50 z-levels to the water.  Things are moving way too slow for my megaproject to get done, so I've decided on a more modest project: to use the gigantic cistern-thing to store fresh water pumped from the lake, and add some new wells and a hospital on top of it. This will constitute a second above-ground level to our castle and will be a suitable place to station marksmen or train soldiers once done.

8th malachite: Stukos Shoratzokun, Tailor, has created Borushteling, a pig tail fiber thong.

22nd granite:  Babylon went berserk and was beaten to death by the militia.  A couple other dwarves look set to tantrum, so I'm trying to get the happiness generators back on line.  We have a huge backlog of "put item in stockpile" jobs though, so things are going slow.

28th granite:  Dwarfed myself (as captain of spear squad), Dusty (captain of 1st marksdwarf squad), and Tasrak (boy miner).

19th slate: 10 migrants arrive. They have been given jobs.

16th felsite: elf caravan arrives. fortunately, so do goblins, and they kill at least some of the elves. I make about fifty of them, all on mounts (some giant bats, some giant toads, etc.  Our cave spider guards seem to be taking care of the flying ones.  A woodcrafter and glassmaker (and their babies) were locked outside.  Also I atom-smashed an unknown dwarf while re-opening the gate to let him/her in.

22 felsite: Dusty has been struck down by a cave crocodile.  It appears the goblins are coming over our wall using scaffolding I built but didn't remove (I was building a roof and 2nd-floor turrets for archers). Why is there no inner gate or defensible entryway???  All 40 untrained, barely-equipped militia have been ordered to defend the entrance.  With help from cave spiders, etc, we may be able to hold them off.

3rd hematite:  There is blood all over the dining room.  We are down to 129 dwarfs, from 157.  Huh, not as bad as I thought.  There are three goblin crossbowmen with their mounts left alive.  We have a good hundred enemies in cages now.  Fishybang was killed in the fighting.  I'm not sure who else might have died.  Somebody's gone berserk below decks.  More reports tomorrow.