Bay 12 Games Forum

Well, I guess that explains that. Indeed, I set up my colossus to help with the siege, and he certainly did (that bugger heals quickly! The goblins managed to pluck out his eyes but that was it), but I neglected to recognize that after the siege all of my cage traps contained gobbos and trolls, and there was no way I could trap the colossus again. There goes another fort. At least losing is fun.

The colossus did seem, in fact, to be immune to all my traps--i.e. he didn't set off the stone-fall traps. I would guess that that is because he's tamed, and thus "on my side" in some sense. (Incidentally, I can still set him to be butchered. Good luck with that.)

Questions remaining: why is the hydra not killing my folks as well? He's listed (properly) as a "War Hydra." (Which is awesome.) He is named as well--all fantastic creatures that arrive are named (they get names upon arrival). Might he not be hostile still if he didn't kill any dwarves before being trapped? I don't remember if he did or not.

Now if only I can get the hydra to fight the colossus before all my guys die. I expect the colossus to win handily, but it still will be fun.

I think another big reason is that by open-sourcing his (and Threetoe's) vision for DF would get diluted, and seeing as how wonderful it is now, that's not something I'd want to risk.

Haha... didn't think about using it to give the Marksdwarves practice; I only thought about my own edification. Just need to make sure not to release any goblin bowmen, then.

Also, can't you just lock ("forbid") the door to prevent them from getting out? It would be easier than a floodgate.

Oh, and how do you check the value of a room?

So there was this bronze colossus giving me crap (actually, he was pretty cool, killing off a whole bunch of zombie elephants and mandrills for me, until he followed somebody into my fortress--I thought I was done until a brave, brave stray cat he was chasing (after smiting a few dwarves, mind you) led him out of the fortress and he went back to his spot) and then my third goblin siege spawns in on top of him and after a pretty impressive battle they finish him off. The goblins rallied and advanced on my fortress--we're talking about 30 goblins and 15 trolls left, though the colossus seemed to kill only one or two (he did get swamped by them, to be fair). My last dwarf outside was running in, and he almost made it, until this Goblin Mace Lord--the King, it turns out--runs up and bashes him about 4 tiles away from the fortress entrance. A hush falls over the battlefield, as the assault is prepared, and then they charge, led by the King. As it turns out, the first trap I have is a cage trap, and the King gets caged. This took a bit of steam out of their attack, and even though they still breached the first line of defense they were turned back at the second. As they retreat, my captain of the guard charges into them and turns it into a rout--she was smashing the greenskins left and right, laying a bloody trail of body parts; quite amusing to watch, in fact. At the edge of the map, a goblin spearman gets a lucky strike in on the captain, and even though he is promptly dispatched, a zombie elephant kills off my poor captain, sustaining mortal wounds in the process. She will always be remembered as a heroine, etc. etc.

The question is: what do I do with the goblin King? Currently I have him in a cage in the zoo (he's the main attraction now!), but I was thinking about moving him into the room I dug out to put the colossus corpse--er, masterpiece bronze statue--in. I thought it would be rather ironic to have the King staring at the colossus that he worked so hard to destroy. (Were I to do this, should I define the room from the cage--a zoo--or the statue--a statue garden? Would it matter? What if I made two overlapping rooms?)

Alternately, should I let him out and kill him? (Let him out in a heavily trapped corridor, of course.) Or chasm the sucker? Drown? Magma?

Would any of this have any effect on the greater world? Would they get a new king? Will they stop besieging me if I hold their king hostage, or try to rescue him? Or will they stop if I kill him? Or neither?

(Also, one of my jewelers went nuts and made a perfect gem. He then went outside and got ambushed and eaten by a cave croc (how the croc got outside, I don't know). Nobody will haul the damn gem back in--I have empty stockpiles--and some damn zombie mandrills keep picking it up but are too slow to make it away even before my pathetic military gets there to kill them. How the hell can I get the gem back inside? And what should I do with it? It would be sweet if I could encrust the colossus corpse with it... hehe...)

Thanks for any suggestions!

So one of my dwarves throws a tantrum and destroys the (only) bridge across the underground river. In addition to drowning two cats (fortunately no dwarves!), he drowns me in cancellation spam. I thought I'd seen cancellation spam due to ambushes, etc.... boy was I wrong. This was so much cancellation the game slowed down and the CPU usage spiked to 40% (normally it's 25%). It was such a pain in the rear rebuilding it... had to do it out of blocks, which were in my stockpile, instead of regular stone b/c when I tried regular stone it just gave me more spam; apparently the stone was on the other side of the river as the builder. Finally it was rebuilt. What a nightmare.

Part 2:
Apparently one of the cats that drowned was his own (makes sense: must have followed him to the bridge when he tantrumed). The death of the cat caused him to tantrum again, and he... you guessed it... busted the bridge again. I am not kidding... you really can't make this stuff up. This time, in addition to  a calf or two, he drowned a hapless farmer, and, fortunately, himself. Good riddance.

Oh, and is there any way to block up again something that I didn't mean to mine?

Thanks a bunch, guys!

Horses are still being slaughtered... I debated setting up another butcher's shop to speed it up but I don't have enough barrels, anyways, so this way the (multiple) carpenter's shops have some hope of keeping up with the butcher, the farmers, and the brewer.

Still haven't managed to get the ballista arrows loaded on to any weapon racks; they're cluttering up the siege shop and the jewelers (who knew that was what "encrust ammo" meant?). I even made little mini-barracks with just weapon racks set on ballista arrows only and all materials. But I did figure out how to see what was in the other weapon racks. Apparently there is some leather armor on the stand and some on the ground beneath the stand. Go figure.

Also, made it to the magma. Do I really have to set up shop right next to the chasm like the wiki says? Can't floodgate it out? (I was hit by 2 firemen... one killed my legendary minor and another dwarf real quick and then started busting down doors going to my base, until he went through like 5 stonefall traps. The other fireman was taken down by 2 or 3 dogs who happened to be there (friends of the next miner, I guess) and did absolutely no damage whatsoever. Go figure.)

P.S. I have a possessed dwarf in jail. It's pretty funny to see him sitting there, blinking "!". Wonder if his sentence will run out in time? Haha...