Bay 12 Games Forum

One thing I've noticed about DF is that there isn't much that's "hard" to it. There is no common challenge to the game that, with sufficient attention to detail and a careful study of the wiki, cannot be defeated.

And the rare cases where that happens are often ones where there wasn't much you could do. Tantrum spirals, for instance. Once you get to a certain degree of angst (and mind this was a bigger deal in earlier versions) there was no challenge because all you could do was watch the carnage ensue.

Or in my case, walk away for a while and check in periodically until things calm down.

I think the challenge in the game is more in the making a story of it, making something beautiful, or alternately terrifying, in the midst of the micromanagement.

Here's one I made a while ago that became something: http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-12253-fountainnotch

Main problem is that it's a very variable problem. It would have to be calculated tick-by-tick.

That's fair. Maybe even a set of categories for known lag-inducers

For instance, this was somewhat inspired by my experience with a sealed-in lycanthrope who got hit with a strange mood. My FPS went from the 40s-60s down to  7 for the duration of the mood until the sad thing went insane.

I'd picked up from the wiki that this was a cause, but I hadn't figured out exactly how much lag it could generate.

This probably isn't something to do in the game itself, but a general list of causes and relative ideas of how much lag each can create might be useful, though I admit it'd be a ballpark thing at best.

I feel like I've asked this one before, but I'll ask again...

I'm getting a lot of cancellation spam from my dwarves being unable to path to things, including a random tanning job.

I bulk-forbade the entire caverns, but it's still happening. I worry that it's one of the things that's killing my framerate. Any advice?

Actually. this is ironic.

I'm currently sealed in against an overwhelming siege.

One reason the siege is overwhelming is I lost most of my skilled soldiers to a previous siege.

The reason I lost many troops is because I sent the army out earlier than was ideal.

The reason I sent them our early was...wait for it...

To rescue the baron from a troll who was leading the charge.

Quote from: GoblinCookie on August 18, 2016, 06:03:53 am

Quote from: mirrizin on August 17, 2016, 07:45:48 am

In a word: vampires.

Do not target nobles in particular.

I think he meant that he wanted to assign bodyguards to suspected vampires, rather than to the nobles. That way, even if the guards couldn't / wouldn't stop the murder itself, at least they would be sure witnesses to the crime, or at the very least the suspiciously-dead guards would incriminate the person they had been "protecting".

That's actually a great idea.

I was thinking that even *if* they don't target nobles in particular (or other dwarves of import) it would be an idea to assign them *just in case* the RNG decides that the vampire is going to target a dwarf of note.

As Halnoth said, a merchant seeing any part of a dead sapient (e.g. half a goblin tooth) will scare the merchant, cause the goods carried to be dumped, and the bugger to flee, bringing the rest of the caravan into flight as well. I'm not sure about half teeth from goblins that got away, though, although it shouldn't LOGICALLY make any difference. Merchant guards seem to be fine with corpses, but the merchants themselves have very weak stomachs.

The only result of ending the discussion is that you failed to request goods you might have wanted, and nothing more.

Good to know.

Had my first real siege, with mounts and trolls and lots and lots of goblins.

I set my squads on call, positioned my archers, and waited...

Then a troll, leading the charge, caught our newly-promoted duke right at the main entrance!

Squads were all mobilized to kill that troll.

The duke got away without a scratch, but then the leading squad saw the approaching army and things immediately spun out of control.

Out of a force of 20 dwarves, I lost 12 including the militia commander who had two forgotten beasts' demise to his name. Near the end it looked like our line was going to break and I'd have to take drastic measures (like raise the drawbridge?) but I put in some new recruits and we won the day.

I was so proud of the old commander that I inadvertently gave him a nicer tomb than the duke's (he of the rose gold statue posted about above.) I threw a couple gold chests into his make up the difference.

I was distracted while playing and accidentally cancelled the "make requests of the outpost liaison" screen. The caravan promptly packed its bags and left. I'm guessing there'a causal relationship here, but wanted to make sure.

Ending the conversation with the dwarven diplomat sends the caravan home in a bad mood?