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[agvkrioni]

I built a modest fortress into the side of a volcanic mountain-island. Water was scarce but I dug deeply enough to find a subterranean ocean. The winters were long and came early, all surface water freezing over in Autumn and holding over until late-spring, and it took three embarks before a team of dwarves could survive through it. Once the first winters were passed, things grew easier. A nearby pond was drained from below to make plots for farming and everything seemed up and up.

But somewhere along the line, as it often does, trouble reared its ugly head. Although some minor enemies stepped out from the darkness of the caverns, they were too far down to reach my dwaves on a completely different cavern connected only by a large cylindrical open shaft in the middle. Forgotten Beasts came and went, none able to reach my dwarves... at first. Then one day a one-eyed gecko that shat webs somehow spawned in the waters at the edge of the map and came up to my dwarves. I had defenses in place but none of my highly-skilled marksman-spear dwarves could maneuver all caught up in the strings of sticky webbing. They fought for a long time but they all died.

By the time the Forgotten Beast made its way up to the fortress itself I realized I had deconstructed the bridge that blocked the hallway off from the caverns. I had gone maybe 4 years without any noticeable threat and when I decided to expand a bit I was going to rebuild the bridge. And the forgotten beast came when the new bridge was not yet linked to a lever.

I had to abandon the fortress. It took over half a dozen expeditions full of weaponized dwarves to reclaim the fortress. Each time they arrived four foul and frenzied forgotten beasts would come from the depths and slaughter them. Finally the last was dispatched and the dwarves entered the fortress only to find the bottom caverns where the water source lay absolutely covered in armed and named amphibian men, olm men, and the remains of numerous beasts -- including a cave dragon which apparently came out of the dark and fought the armies of whatever was there to kill it. I held on to that fortress for another two and a half years but that entire time was spent trying to piece together the remnants left behind from the dead. And dwarves started dying by the tens or going mad from the legion of ghosts that arose from previous occupants. My list of dead and missing were pages and pages long, encapsulating the entire history of the fortress and all the ghosts seemed to come out in my farming fields where my brewers were. No one wanted to work. The ones that did literally died of fright or went mad, killing their kin. Dwarves starved. Rot began to spread, probably the remnants of the blood of one of the ancient beasts newly dead.

In the end it was too much.

I abandoned.

Reclamation isn't worth the trouble. All the magma forges and obsidian in the world can not make that endeavor sweet again.

[Kar98]

The biggest thing I hate abouy reclaimation is finding the scattered items all over the map then it taking nearly a year to get all the items back into a stockpile. It also feels too easy when everything is dug out for you

[Friendstrange]

You dont have to reclaim. The fortress lived its life and died gloriously. Time to move onto the next project.
I suggest a terrifying shrubland with aquifers.

[DavionFuxa]

Reclamation attempts are generally only good when the dead in the fort are mostly buried/memorialized. If they aren't then your going to have happiness issues and likely experience more fun as your fort withers away again.

[Jacob/Lee]

I reclaimed a fort that fell to a zombie siege. 4 embarks slaughtered by zombies, berserk miners and ghosts later, I finally got a foothold.

Then more necromancers came. Hundreds of bodies outside. Years of being trapped underground by endless hordes of zombies. It's a miracle that we survived. We thrived and created a military that could fight tens, hundreds of zombies! Nothing would stop them!

Then some workers and babies were killed in the caverns. TANTRUM SPIRAL.

[misko27]

I only reclaimed as a noob desperate not to lose all of my hard-earned-work. reclaiming from a frankly horrifying tantrum spiral, caused by my inability too supply the fort with beer, and unaware of freezing rivers in the winter. When spring came there were 10 dwarves, all unhappy. I didn't last long after that, Gobbos attacked, although I was given a repreive by the wiki-instructed cage trap entrance. After Reclaim I  Died to gobbos again (didn't understand that leftover weapons from prievious attack are not very good, and not much armor).

Then I reclaimed because I liked that first fort. Mountains of junk. There was a moment, where I. as expedition leader, zoomed-out and saw the oceans of stuff everywhere, and I thought to myself sighing deeply, "Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit" I Spent forever cleaning that up. When I died eventually, to a combination flying-FB-with-dust-attack/tantrum-spiral/goblin-siege, I couldn't bare the thought of cleaning. However a baby/cat dup hold a special place in my heart for managing to survive a fightwith the FB , injuring it, then crawl off wounded to hide.

[i2amroy]

Hah! I had a single fortress be slain several times over by a camel. Basically I had built a goblin grinder (for those of you who don't know it exploits the AI to make an enemy run back and forth over a line of traps), and I was just about to fill it with traps when a camel gets stuck in there. "No problem", I say, "I'll just send in my 5 skilled axe-dwarves, they'll take care of it!" Well come what happens is that camel kills all of them, and now that it has a taste for dwarf blood it is willing to slay any dwarf that comes near. At this point I realize something a moment too late, I forgot to forbid the fallen dwarves' stuff. As a result my haulers start going in, an upon being injured my dwarves attempt something that I would normally applaud, rescuing the injured, but instead it just gets more of them killed. Eventually my entire fortress of 25 dwarves have all fallen to this single camel.

So I reclaim, and everything is going fine. I'm cleaning up all the stuff and getting everything put together when suddenly I get the message "Kinglore the Buttered-Tops has sprung from ambush!" And I look to my horror as the deadly camel suddenly appears inside of my dining room and immediately slaughters two of my starting seven. Before going on to butcher the other five.

I then decide that this camel means war and I'm bringing along 7 military dwarves, they can scrape by after they kill the camel till migrants arrive. The camel slaughters all of them... and it does the same to the next 4 attempts after that. At that point I simply decided that the camel was too tough and there was no hope for fighting him after he sprung from ambush right next to the wagon and slaughtered my last attempt before they could even arm themselves with the weapons and armor I brought.

End Scores:
Kinglore the Buttered-Tops:50 kills
Dwarves:0

[thegoatgod_pan]

reclamation is a different sort of game with a different sort of vibe. You don't need industries for a while, you will find food, items and clothes for all the migrants that come. Everyone will be cleaning and gathering and building bins and filling bins. It is more survivor horror than dungeon master-- the things that killed you and their hideous plagues are still out there and you must proceed cautiously and tentatively to recover the lost artifacts of your people. 

Having said that, yeah, reclamation can suck, it is not for everyone, but it is an interesting experience in its own right,

[agvkrioni]

...yeah, reclamation can suck, it is not for everyone, but it is an interesting experience in its own right,

Rule #1 Reclamation. It isn't worth it.
Rule #2 If reclamation seems not to suck and seems an interesting experience in its own right, reread Rule No.1 .

[Mudcrab]

All the scattered items put me off reclamation.

Can't be dealing with that man!

[Yoink]

I personally like the idea of reclaiming, you know, in the role of a party of dwarven explorers trying to work out just WHAT THE HELL happened to the previous settlers... But the scattered clothing tends to ruin my FPS.

[slink]

I've always enjoyed "reclaiming" sites in other games, such as Caesar 3.  I've enjoyed reclaiming the space station sections of defeated AI players in Startopia.  I've even, in DF 40d, sometimes enjoyed reclaiming my fortresses.  The worst feature back then was the items that remained forever forbidden because they were tasked when the fortress collapsed.  You always had to make certain that all designations were removed and all jobs were cancelled, unless you wanted rocks and corpses permanently stuck to the floor.

But I can't find any pleasure in the new version of DF reclamation, with the lack of manpower and supplies to overcome the combined forces of all of the enemies on the map when you left, including ones that could not have gotten into the fortress without teleporting.  Being forced to fight three FBs at once, with seven barely trained and ill-equipped Dwarves, just smacks of punishment for not having played the game according to someone else's plan.

[crazysheep]

Weird.. the first time my fort died I reclaimed it. Yes, having all the stuff scattered everywhere was a pain in the ass to retrieve. Yes, having to explore to retake my forges was a pain. Yes, having goblin thieves marked as Friendly hiding inside the fortress was interesting (and then annoying when the first siege arrived).

I won't deny there are plenty of problems to clean up when you reclaim a fort. I feel that's the way it should be though: fighting off whatever nonsensical stuff the last overseer left you to deal with, whether it's gross mismanagment of space, or forgotten beast overload. And if you manage to clean those up, or if the damage was minor (which happened to me, didn't abandon/reclaim due to FB-related deaths), then you can get the original fort close to normal again :3

tl;dr: I don't mind reclaiming forts. It's not too much hassle imo, but there are always complications which can swing people's decisions to reclaim.

[blue sam3]

Reclamation for the purpose of reclamation after a disaster is generally not worth the hassle. The one time I have used it was a fortress started out with the express purpose of being repeatedly reclaimed - essentially, I embarked with seven proficient miners and a mountain of food and drink, then did the mass-scale terraforming necessary before I started working on the fortress proper.

[Urist_McArathos]

I've always enjoyed "reclaiming" sites in other games, such as Caesar 3.  I've enjoyed reclaiming the space station sections of defeated AI players in Startopia.  I've even, in DF 40d, sometimes enjoyed reclaiming my fortresses.  The worst feature back then was the items that remained forever forbidden because they were tasked when the fortress collapsed.  You always had to make certain that all designations were removed and all jobs were cancelled, unless you wanted rocks and corpses permanently stuck to the floor.

But I can't find any pleasure in the new version of DF reclamation, with the lack of manpower and supplies to overcome the combined forces of all of the enemies on the map when you left, including ones that could not have gotten into the fortress without teleporting.  Being forced to fight three FBs at once, with seven barely trained and ill-equipped Dwarves, just smacks of punishment for not having played the game according to someone else's plan.

Actually, this is what draws me in to reclamation.  I think of "Moria" when I think of reclamation, and Balin's ill-fated efforts to retake the mines from goblins, trolls, and worse.  I like the idea of a grand site that fell to terrible things being reclaimed by dwarves that cannot simply let such a potentially glorious place go to waste...

Spoiler: Do not read if you haven't gotten to endgame yet (click to show/hide)

Especially since adamantite isn't found anywhere in the world at large, so I like to think that, in game, my fort is the only one to have found it and begun mining it, making the importance of reclaiming this special, perhaps once-on-a-planet place even more crucial

Yes, Balin's entire party died and most reclaims do.  I may be in the minority that likes this aspect of it.  I -do- hope, however, that Toady implements varied embark sizes and options in time (I may be wrong, but I could swear he discussed adding this later for "starting scenarios" like a mining team, military outpost, etc.).  It would be nice to choose between playing a band of seven mad-dwarves off to reclaim a site against the kingdom's better judgment, and a war party of 40 of the King's finest meant to reclaim a true bastion of the civilization.