Bay 12 Games Forum

DAMMIT WE ARE DWARVES!  If we see shiny metal, we must do something with it.

A few answers:

I am spoilering the following, because it involves using dfhack to answer a question:
 
Unspoilered part of the answer:  I was hoping for a drow caravan, or a dwarven caravan, hence the metric ton of gold-bearing rock mugs.  The mugs were fast, and were meant to be a get out of jail free card for food, and most importantly, they we supposed to be gone by this point. Stupid value of those things is probably hurting us now.If you manage to get a caravan in, you should be able to buy the whole damn thing out with all those mugs.

I know harder farming is on, because the fields were almost all empty when I started, and nothing I planted grew.  I lost some above ground seed, because I was not aware harder farming was on until early autumn.  Then it was painfully obivous.  I was honestly expecting to have food sorted by mid-way through the year.  Oh well.

All the materials to build a Researcher's Study and Herbalist are in the dump pile, outside the stock room by the temples.  I forgot to forbid bins in the stocks for research, and was unable to get it all loaded back into the stockpile due to everyone hunting vermin and fishing for food.  If you can find more gold, research the mint, build the embassy and the toolmaker's shop (for the dies for the mint), by all means summon a caravan.  Just read the manual that comes with masterwork, it's fairly easy to get the coin mint.  I... totally blanked on that.  Sorry guys.  Just be careful - the whole surface is going to slowly burn up.

Yeah, use a bridge to seal off those few stair tiles.  I tried to leave room to do so.  As for layout, I put in the most relevant levels in vertical order in my final write-up.  I think I skipped a stockpile layer or two.  I did take out the kitchen, because the main floor was so chaotic I could not understand what the hell was going on.  Most everything was rebuilt, save for the Masterwork forges, a thatchery, a possible few vanilla shops that I had no real use for.

Chiming in to say I like the idea of very few nobles, and no real migrants.  If there are migrants, I think it should be acolytes of some shade, or a powerful necromancer lord that wants to usurp the current order.  I'm not sure how that would work out though. 

The idea of only having seven (or some starting embark size) of necros, but they don't need bodies was nifty idea someone else tossed out.  I imagine that working something like the temple of armok, but giving the resulting body a longer life span, or no set limit, and then having a slain necro drop a shard that requires the reaction again to reanimate?  That way you could have fortress death if all your necros are disembodied, and you have nothing left to reraise them with.  There could also be tiers of reaction, and you might have to kill the current embodiment of the necro to get its' soul item, and run the reaction again.  So if you want to upgrade, it requires sacrificing the current form and a period of danger for the new transformation to take place.

Not sure if this has been covered, but it might make sense to have skeletons or whatever have a shelf life, maybe a syndrome that causes random body parts to rot or disintegrate or something, so you need to engage sieges to replenish the undead slave hordes.  A sort of trade off for what I imagine will be rather shockingly powerful necromancers.

Derp.  I have the nobles fort to finish and the most recent year of Umgankor to write up.  As soon as i finish those up, Saltmines will rise again!

I dug out an iron vein or two, so there should be some.  The only problem is that whoever is next will either burn up all the wood to use it, or need to dig deeper.  I did run into mummies, and a few other nuisances in the cavern.  But compared to the sieges they seemed rather bland.

Summer

I have set aside rooms for more dwarves.  By Armok’s Grace, we will last through this siege and find food from our brothers from the Mountainhome.

12th Hematite

We have no food.  Our fields are expanded and planted, but we have nothing to put in our mouths.  I have designated all the ponds within our walls for fishing, and ordered construction of a fishpond.  I hope my device works to reopen our fortress…


17th Hematite

The elven traders have all gone into melancholy.  Perhaps we can tunnel into the depot once they have passed and claim some of their food.  I have order our militia to kill the envoy.  When next year’s caravan comes, we will tell them stranglers killed the elves.


4th Malachite

The devices are almost complete.  Thank Armok the pond has been completed.  We are down to hunting vermin.  I order a turkey slaughtered, the last of our available livestock.

20th Malachite

The trap worked!  We lured in the stranglers, into a new entryway, and I was able to use bridges to smash all but three.  Unfortunately two are stuck on the wall!



27th Malachite

Well, we have constructed an artifact abacus.  While this may help us in the future, for now it will go into the stockpiles.


7th Galena

By drafting all our dwarves, I have rigged a controlled cave in to try and get rid of those pesky elves.


The plan worked, but destroyed everything, save for the armor of those damn elves.  Well, we have mithril, if we make to the next caravan.

9th Galena

In order to find food, I am going to try and dig to the caverns.  Perhaps we can find mushrooms or moss…

13th Galena

The caverns were only a few floors below us!  We found iron, gold, and many other things.  I have ordered our craftsman to begin creating gold-bearing rock mugs for trade.  There is not much food, as it appears the caverns are barren and lifeless.  Still I have ordered all able bodied dwarves to salvage what food they can.


14th Galena

An Orcish siege has come.  We have resealed the gates.

Autumn falls, as we start to lose our brethren to starvation.

Autumn

Although no pages are missing, it appears nothing was written during Autumn.
Winter

3rd Moonstone

It appears the Mountainhome has forsaken us.  No caravan came, not even to bypass our besieged fort.  We have been left to die.  So be it.  We shall try to carry on.

I was notified of an artifact scabbard being constructed.  Wonderful.


We have no food, no drink.  New farms are in place, and I am digging out space for more fish ponds.

We also have a new catapault, to try and fire upon the orcs on our borders.

1st Opal

In desperation, I ordered our archers and soldiers in position to try and break the orcish siege, and find food outside.  We lured in one warlord and struck him down, at the cost of half our melee fighters.

Over the days that followed, our archers needled the remaining orcs.  Eventually enough blood was spilt and the orcs withdrew.


11th Obsidian

As our dwarves scavenge for food, we are finding the dead around our walls.  One of our fisherdwarves has starved.

13th Obsidian

And now giants have laid siege to our home.  I tried to lure them into the trap, but the when the bridge dropped, it simply smashed into pieces.



23rd Obsidian

Our archers are valiantly shooting at the giants, but doing little.  They have a wizard with them, who appear to have somehow lit the plains on fire. 


27th Obsidian

As best I can tell, the wizard threw some sort of magical fire at our marksmen.  Five have bled to death, and another has starved.


The conflagration continues to consume the plains.  Almost all of us are starving.  A handful have started to go mad, tantruming and lashing out at those around us.


I leave you with the fort as it stands, with my thoughts for the next overseer.

Here are the newest farms and fishponds, along with a seed stockpile:

This is the cleared main floor, with expanded farms and more fishponds:

The Abbey is complete.  However, there were issues with bins, and most of the research items and in a dump pile outside the stockpile.  I had hoped to build out the research buildings, but the sieges and starvation slowed me down.

I relocated most of the workshops down a few floors.  Above this is a set of stockpiles that holds most of the rest of the goods of the fort.

The next floor was to be the forges, but I ended up saving wood for arrows and emergency building.

My plans for new bedrooms.  Obviously not very complete.  The mayor’s suite is dug and smoothed.

Here is the cavern entrance.  The first layer is barren, with no moss.  There is tons of iron.


Levers 

Off the dining room.  They are all labeled.  The top left level is the inner door of the courtyard.  The middle top is the nest door outwards.  The right top lever was for the outer door on the edge of the wall, and is not connected.  The bottom left lever is for the atom smasher, one of the bridges is broken.  The bottom right lever is for the caverns door.

This lever, in the main hall, controls the outer most bridge.  It might be broken.

And this is the vampire bookkeeper, of the dining room.

Our final stats:

We have no food, no drink, farms planted to come up probably some in spring, maybe a few in autumn, and a bit next winter.  Most of the dwarves are near starvation.  Our military is largely decimated, as the giants lit most of the archers on fire.  One melee squad remains, and a handful of archers.  The giants are camped below the hill to our east.

Good luck.  You’ll need it.

Ok.  Farms duly noted, and I'll expand the crap out of them.  I'm no longer eating vermin exclusively, but it's going to be a fun trip through the end of the turn.