Bay 12 Games Forum

I'm just finishing up my defenses (bridge flanked by towers at the entrance, towers are connected to fortified and walkable walls forming a courtyard ending in another bridge, complete with 2-tile wide moats outside each wall), and everyone is in a pretty good mood. That is, until recently.

I had put my military to patrol outside the walls since most thieves/snatchers got away before they could catch them (seriously, they move 2x faster than my dwarves, not fair), and it worked wonders. However, it didn't work as well against ambushes, since, for some reason, my squad-members preferred to wander alone with quite some distance between them rather than moving in formation. Great for finding snatchers/thieves, but when you run into an ambush alone... well, let's just say I learned this the hard way. Lost a grand master marksdwarf, and as if that didn't hurt enough, he was apparently a guy with many friends in the squads, so they got quite grumpy.

Add to that the fact that many of my dwarves are wearing pretty worn clothing (I'm replacing it as fast as I can, but tailoring new outfits for 200 dwarves take time), and the military especially so since, due to their duties, they're never in position to grab the new clothes that comes out before someone else does (Yes, Urist McPeasant, I'm looking at you, you good-for-nothing fashionista). And I'm also trying to get them used to the sun, which they do not like.

Anyway, end result is unhappy, well-armed and well-trained dwarves. Not a good combination. I don't relish the thought of seeing how my completely untrained fortress guards fare against one of the soldiers should they choose to tantrum...

Oh, and I also got a baron recently. He went full-out tantrum. His sole complaint being that someone had a bigger dining room. The fact that all his other amenities had "Royal" status apparently wasn't enough to weigh this up.

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Bloody nobles...

I use Ironhand graphics, mostly because it "eased" the learning curve a bit, at least for me. Would like to learn to read that ASCII ones though, if nothing else then just to be able to figure out what the heck is going on in various screenshots people are posting.

After having toyed around a bit in adventurer mode, I decided to give fortress mode another go.

Going pretty well so far, I've been busy setting up a workshop area and storage, and was just about to start working on dining area and sleeping quarters when I noticed that every task suddenly took forever to do. Between summer and autumn, effectivity in the fortress had gone down by 50%. Some investigation revealed that my dwarves spent an unproportionate amount of time drinking. I also realized that the reason for this was due to a combination of the fact that I'd run out of booze and that the only viable water source was a long distance away (pretty big embark since I wanted both trees, mountains and a brook on the same map, and it just wouldn't fit otherwise, fortress and brook are in opposite corners), so running there, drinking and getting back took forever.

So, I decided to postpone other operations and instead started to construct a channel for a well (which I'd initially planned for later). Wasted some time digging a path from my fortress to the brook (should've just channeled down directly by the brook instead...), and then started channeling downwards about 5 z-levels. I made a mistake with my previous fortress where I had the reservoir only 1 z-level beneath my dining hall (where the well was located), which caused some flooding... not going to make that mistake again!

All went well, until I realized that one of my miners was thirsty. Ignored it for the moment (stupid) since I thought he was just being a good dwarf, focusing on his ongoing work instead of drinking (slacking). Again, given what I've previously experienced from dwarves and their OCD concerning drinking, eating, sleeping etc, this was stupid of me. Very much so.

It was only when he got dehydrated and hungry I realized something was wrong. I canceled his jobs, but he still loitered around down in the tunnel, starving and dehydrating. Only then did I notice that one of the ramps up had, somehow, become blocked. So now it's a race against time to dig some stairs for him to escape by (not to mention the fact that he has to make it all the way to the brook as well, and my guess is that he'll probably stop to eat first, which will likely kill him). Or I could just crack the last bit of wall between the channel and the brook, I think his chances of survival are the same no matter what. At least with the second option nobody can blame me, since he didn't die from neglect (I mean, I'd give him what he wants, right?).

Though I'd really hate to loose this guy, I have rooms that needs to be dug out!

Must have been the dwarven children they kidnapped decades ago and who managed to grow up as the members of goblin society.

Maybe. Must've been a LOT of children though, since the dwarf-to-goblin ratio is like 50:1.

It's good fun purging this wicked civ though, couldn't bear myself to attacking friendlies before, but these guys just seem... wrong, so now it feels ok.

Hmm, I think I need to make a correction here. Seems likely the elves weren't friendly after all, it's possible that there is some "trigger" that decides how they react to you when you encounter them, and sometimes that doesn't "kick in" when it should.

Noticed this when I wandered into a bandit encampment, and the first guy I met didn't attack. I talked to him, recruited him, and when I moved into the camp proper he was standing in the square I was moving to, so I "stepped" into him. Imagine my surprise when my adventurer suddenly decides to stab him in the head... Seems like whatever "trigger" there is kicked in at that moment, turning him hostile.

Or he was just trying to fool me, lulling me into a false sense of safety in order to backstab me later.

Well... that escalated quickly.

Visited a city, and as per usual I went into the keep dungeon. Found no enemies down there, but what I did find was an entire underground (mostly) elven city!

And it was friendly! At least to me. My human companions didn't think so though. If they want to get killed, fine by me, but they didn't have to drag me into the mess with them.
I got out fine, my companions (and the elves) didn't.

Thought for sure that the city in which the dungeon-city was located were gonna go bonkers on me as well, but seems they weren't of the same civ or something (despite there being an elven majority up there). They even thanked me for killing the leader down there.

I must say that finding this hidden "elf-outcast" place was pretty cool, a nice little "touch" to the game.

In response to the bogeymen, you can get ones with horns. They don't care if you have armor, they will impale you.

Ouch, okay... I was thinking of going solo, seeing as how ambushes are MUCH nicer when you don't have companions with you (2-3 enemies instead of 20-30, easier to handle since companions don't help much in those situations anyway, except as meat-shields), and since I thought I could handle bogeys easily.

Might want to at least keep one companion with me then, just to don't tempt fate TOO much...

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I've finally made it back to civilization, and I'm pleased to say that the journey back was uneventful (got bogeys first night only, no problems there, the only other surprise was an ambush by a couple of goblins and, later on, some wolves).

Made my way to the nearest hot-shot lord and got a new quest, now they want me to kill a titan or something, this time on a different continent altogether... There might be a land-bridge somewhere, but it's still a LONG way to go to get there.

Thinking of retiring for a while, if nothing else then just for resetting my fame, which I'd think would give me some humbler, closer quests for a while. Might get the titan first though, since that'll give me some new lands to explore after eventual retirement.

Fanks for answering my question so far. Another one for today: I'm right in thinking adventurers can't lockpick or bash in floodgates, right? I'm designing a fortress purely for adventurer-exploration, so it's important that there are ways I can keep passages lever-openable-only.

AFAIK that's correct, floodgates cannot be opened manually as adventurer, the only way to do it is if they're linked to a lever.

At least I couldn't figure out how to open one when I visited one of my abandoned fortresses, but then again I can't say I tried all that hard since I had a perfectly bashable door leading into the same space right next to it.