Bay 12 Games Forum

i will use the named animals as archery targets and leave the other ones caged. they seem to reproduce  when they are caged (as long as you keep a male and female in a cage), even when they are still on an animal stockpile. it's interesting that elephants are less aggressive than hippos - my dwarves were never attacked by elephants, but i lost several fisherdwarves to hippos (in fact, that's perfectly compatible with reality - in africa hippos cause more deaths than crocodiles and lions).

but don't you think hippos and elephants should provide more meat and fat. dogs provide 5 meat and 1 fat, elephants 16 meat and 10 fat - but an elephant weighs about 100 times more than a dog. it also takes far more time for them to grow up, and they get less offspring. so setting up an elephant/hippo ranch is fun, but it's definitely not very efficient.

i managed to capture a few elephants - some of them are tamed. but i don't know what to do with them. trading is no option, as i have so many stone crafts i want to get rid of. i could throw them into my pit and let my marksdwarves shoot at them, i read that's a good way of getting experience.

however, i'd like to free the tamed elephants and wait for them to produce little elephant foals - and start butchering, when i have plenty of them. but i have never seen an elephant foal, and the hippo foals i was able to tame don't grow up. any ideas - is it possible to set up a hippo and elephant ranch?

i'm currently building a magma room with a water connection to make obsidian. my first design was a complete failure. my new design should work, but sometimes i have to close certain tunnels. but everytime i try to close a tunnel, the mason traps himself.

1:               2:

ssssss           ssssss
ssstss           ssstss
ssstss           ssstss
ssstss           sssmss
ssswss           ssswss  
tttttt           tttttt
tttttt           tttttt
tttttt           tttttt

s.. stone, w... designated wall, t.. tunneled area, m... mason

number 1 shows the area, a tunnel connected to a room, and the designated room. number 2 shows where my mason starts his work - INSIDE the tunnel, not the room, trapping himself.

this does not happen by chance - it happens every time i close a tunnel. does anyone know how to prevent this stupid behaviour?

oh i just read freddybear's idea. sounds to be an excellent solution - this way i don't have to bother about the stone mechanisms.

i tried to build an obsidian room. i do have obsidian on my map, but it's quite an advantage to have a permanent obsidian source (and it is fun to design it)

i've dig out a 5x5 room, made channels to the river and to the magma vent, built lever connected floodgates (steel of course) and then wanted to start the action. i will tell what happened: i connected a channel to the magma vent and tried to close the floodgate to control the stream. however the magma stream took the floodgate away and the magma went uncontrollably into the designated room. then i opened the water floodgates  - but i connected the water channel directly to the magma room, so the water met the magma turned into obsidian, blocking the water supply.

i propably have a solution to the second problem. next time i will build a 5x5  room, directly above my magma room, completely channeled, with floor grates, and a connection to the river. this way i should be able to turn all the magma into obsidian.

but i really have no idea how to handle the magma floodgate problem. i will build several floodgates, but losing one floodgate every time i open the magma channel is definitely not satisfying.

if you have any experiences or suggestion concerning magma/obsidian room please post them.

i had a trader who completely refused to trade with elves. i turned all labor options off, but the result was: take a break, eat, check chest, take a break, check chest. of course i dismissed him and got a new trader. i suppose the character traits of a dwarf influence his willingness to do unpleasant tasks. my old trader had almost all negative character traits you can have (doesn't do more work than necessary, dislikes to help others, etc. - he is the archetype of a unfriendly, grumbly dwarf).

my new trader, who was not experienced at all, immediately went to the trade depot. before you embark make sure who you distribute the social skills to.

no it has nothing to do with inheritance. i had childs born in my fortress, raised by their peasant parents (they only had a few coins...). it's just a flaw in the game - there is no rational explanation for the children's wealth.

thank you very much for all the usefull comments. actually i generated dj's map and found a great place to build my fortress there. on the first level there is forest, then sand, clayloam, and finally the rock layers. there is a lot of marble, a magma vent, and running water (i really need it, as all the lakes dried up, didn't fill up during winter and spring - then i turned weather off to increase speed). there are also lots of elephants and hippos on the map, but by now only one of my dwarves got killed. it is very easy to make glass here - i have magma kilns, and magma glass furnaces, directely  above plenty of sand, two more levels above lots of wood. Compared to my old region, this region only has advantages - not as much magnetite, but propably enough for my planned steel industry.