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DF General Discussion / Re: Playerlogs from 2050
« on: October 12, 2013, 07:02:29 pm »
Guys, I think I'm in trouble here, and any help or suggestions are welcome. I'll start from the beginning.
I got my fortress set up pretty uneventfully. I had all of the basic industries going, but didn't have any real wealth, just enough to support the military and administration's wages, and a few basic social programs. All in all I was about in equilibrium and considering some research into the new fluid dynamics system. But in my eighteenth year a major war against the goblins broke out. Reports are hard to come by from the goblin territories but it sounds like a group of clowns strong-armed them into an empire after they escaped from the circus. A lot of forts fell in the early days, but a human civ ours was allied with got invaded later. The goblins, though overextended, still have the manpower and materiel to fight to a stalemate, at least for a time. Anyway this war created a huge demand for soap, which my fortress produced in huge excess and exported already. I got a LOT of wealth really quickly. Now I did have at least some basic controls to prevent runaway inflation, but the sheer amount of capital flowing into the fortress was too much to manage with what I had. I decided to fight the inflation by jacking up trade duties and setting up coin and gem reserve stockpiles to take them out of circulation, and it's helped somewhat, but it wasn't enough to stop my biggest problem.
I mentioned the humans got into the war, right? Well they took a pretty bad beating in the early days too, and there were a lot of refugees from their border region with the goblins. The border was decently protected, but raiders made it across regularly to burn farms and small villages all throughout their kingdom before the bulk of their fighting forces could be mustered to drive them out. Now with my fortress' new found wealth and relative safety they flocked here in droves. They were our allies, so I couldn't just turn them away without causing serious strain on our relations with the humans, but I didn't really have the space to accommodate them either. It didn't help that almost none of them had any skills that are even remotely useful in the fortress. I mean really, I can only find work for so many unskilled laborers and herdsmen, especially since so few of them even speak dwarven.
I did my best to set up decent quarters for them, but shortages of basic necessities are starting to appear, even with all of the money I'm pouring into food imports. The rooms I've set up for them are basically bunkhouses, and crime and poverty are rampant. My own dwarves aren't helping the situation either. They're getting mighty pissed that so much of the fortress' time and resources are going toward these guys, and some of the nobility are calling to have them removed, alliance be damned. It's gotten so bad that the few humans who actually did have the skills to find work in the fortress are in serious danger of being assaulted or even killed in some parts of the fortress. The regular military are still loyal to me, but I don't think I can count on about half of the fortress guard units or any of the civil militia to restore order if the refugees start rioting, or the dwarves try to kick them out. It's hard enough keeping up with the trouble going on now. I've sent an envoy to both the human king and mine for aid, but neither one has responded.
So between my xenophobic dwarves, disgruntled refugees, and the Mountainhomes and Human King's apparent apathy to the situation, I'm almost certainly heading for a meltdown here, and it won't be pretty. I am willing to spend a significant portion of the fortress' treasury to handle this if need be, but I'm afraid if I get rid of all of it my economy will bust when the soap exports dry up. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? As I said, I'm open to just about any suggestion at this point.
I got my fortress set up pretty uneventfully. I had all of the basic industries going, but didn't have any real wealth, just enough to support the military and administration's wages, and a few basic social programs. All in all I was about in equilibrium and considering some research into the new fluid dynamics system. But in my eighteenth year a major war against the goblins broke out. Reports are hard to come by from the goblin territories but it sounds like a group of clowns strong-armed them into an empire after they escaped from the circus. A lot of forts fell in the early days, but a human civ ours was allied with got invaded later. The goblins, though overextended, still have the manpower and materiel to fight to a stalemate, at least for a time. Anyway this war created a huge demand for soap, which my fortress produced in huge excess and exported already. I got a LOT of wealth really quickly. Now I did have at least some basic controls to prevent runaway inflation, but the sheer amount of capital flowing into the fortress was too much to manage with what I had. I decided to fight the inflation by jacking up trade duties and setting up coin and gem reserve stockpiles to take them out of circulation, and it's helped somewhat, but it wasn't enough to stop my biggest problem.
I mentioned the humans got into the war, right? Well they took a pretty bad beating in the early days too, and there were a lot of refugees from their border region with the goblins. The border was decently protected, but raiders made it across regularly to burn farms and small villages all throughout their kingdom before the bulk of their fighting forces could be mustered to drive them out. Now with my fortress' new found wealth and relative safety they flocked here in droves. They were our allies, so I couldn't just turn them away without causing serious strain on our relations with the humans, but I didn't really have the space to accommodate them either. It didn't help that almost none of them had any skills that are even remotely useful in the fortress. I mean really, I can only find work for so many unskilled laborers and herdsmen, especially since so few of them even speak dwarven.
I did my best to set up decent quarters for them, but shortages of basic necessities are starting to appear, even with all of the money I'm pouring into food imports. The rooms I've set up for them are basically bunkhouses, and crime and poverty are rampant. My own dwarves aren't helping the situation either. They're getting mighty pissed that so much of the fortress' time and resources are going toward these guys, and some of the nobility are calling to have them removed, alliance be damned. It's gotten so bad that the few humans who actually did have the skills to find work in the fortress are in serious danger of being assaulted or even killed in some parts of the fortress. The regular military are still loyal to me, but I don't think I can count on about half of the fortress guard units or any of the civil militia to restore order if the refugees start rioting, or the dwarves try to kick them out. It's hard enough keeping up with the trouble going on now. I've sent an envoy to both the human king and mine for aid, but neither one has responded.
So between my xenophobic dwarves, disgruntled refugees, and the Mountainhomes and Human King's apparent apathy to the situation, I'm almost certainly heading for a meltdown here, and it won't be pretty. I am willing to spend a significant portion of the fortress' treasury to handle this if need be, but I'm afraid if I get rid of all of it my economy will bust when the soap exports dry up. Has anyone else been in a similar situation? As I said, I'm open to just about any suggestion at this point.