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[vjek]

Poor Dwarven Losers Challenge for Vanilla DF 34.11 (An easy one for novice players)

Context:
For your starting embark, you've been given 7 of the worst peasants Dwarven society has to offer, along with the following starting equipment:

40 pig tail seeds
40 sweet pod seeds
40 cave wheat seeds
40 plump helmet spawn
7 copper battle axes
7 copper picks
2 iron anvils
20 dwarven wine
20 dwarven ale
20 dwarven beer
20 dwarven rum
40 rat meat

Due to an untimely Goblin ambush, the incomplete Prospect report is as follows:

               SAND_WHITE :     13824 Z: 136
                 SAND_TAN :     13824 Z: 135
                FIRE_CLAY :     13824 Z: 134
                 DOLOMITE :     47762 Z: 130..133
                 LIMONITE :      6449 Z: 130..133
               SPORE_TREE :        24 Z: 107..109

The starting embark date is 1st Granite, 351 (Early Spring).
The challenge is to be the fastest fortress (time-wise) to produce or attract a Monarch.


Now for the fine print...

Specifically, the first posted/linked saved region played from the original embark that has either a Queen or King present, with the fewest in-game days between embark and Monarch, will be the winner.
No reclaims, no dfhack, no reveals, etc.  Just Vanilla DF 34.11, and your big overseer brain.  Graphics packs/tile sets are, of course, up to you.  Dwarf Therapist is fine. Everything else? Nope.
Use the saved embark to start playing, and post YOUR save when you get a Monarch.  Easy!

Here is the saved embark, ready for extraction & placement into your data/save/ folder.
The challenge will end on Thursday, January 17, 2013, 11:59pm, MDT, if no winner has come forth prior to that date/time.
Any issues or questions, PM me or reply.

Reference for Monarch/Noble advancement: http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Fortress

The worldgen, embark location, populations, etc, are all in the saved region folder linked above, for those interested.

Mods:  If this should be in the "DF Community Games and Stories" forum, by all means move it!

[Tirion]

Umm... what did you tweak to give these poor fools 10 in all attributes?

[Sutremaine]

On the plus side, you only have to put up with that nonsense for about six months. Spend the time building up a stock of farm plants and maybe some cavern trees, then isolate the starting seven and lock them in a room somewhere. Whether this room has food and drink and a way to make these dwarves useful is up to you...

It's kind of amusing how the site has all the steel ingredients plus sand and fire clay, but nothing else of note.

[vjek]

...
It's kind of amusing how the site has all the steel ingredients plus sand and fire clay, but nothing else of note.

Yep, that was tricky, given the Mineral Scarcity.  Took quite a few worldgens to find just the right site.

[parlor_tricks]

Holy *****. The hell is wrong with these dwarves?! I've never seen a more wretched specimen in my life! And thats the first one I inspected!

She hates essentially any animal with or without a pulse. She hates other dwarves, she hates thinking, she hates change, she hates work, she would rather be alone, she cant sense her own emotions, she is in a constant state of internal rage, she is schizophrenic and thinks people are constantly judging her... and on and on and on and on.

And the start surface is a flat featureless white surface.

This is like post modern literature made to life. Well done, I've never played with the essence of misery and depression before.

[Replica]

You should force people to use DFhack's "misery" command to amplify negative thoughts.

[parlor_tricks]

So if the losers are lost - lost 5 of 7 in the first 20 minutes to a surface troll, but then come migrants, does this still count as a challenge?

[Loud Whispers]

I'd say you have to do EVERYTHING with nothing but those starting 7. For Fun. Conflicts with the monarchy bit, but who cares about that if you manage to make Dwarves out of them?

[Jimmy]

You've not specified whether edits to the init.txt and d_init.txt are allowed. Do these have to be vanilla or can they be our own values?

[parlor_tricks]

I'd say you have to do EVERYTHING with nothing but those starting 7. For Fun. Conflicts with the monarchy bit, but who cares about that if you manage to make Dwarves out of them?

I'd think so too, I'd appreciate if this could be made expressly clear. I'd hate to have to restart the fort again.


No migrants is an interesting question - because then you must succeed with only 7 dwarves. These dwarves are Beyond Bad. Seriously, a harsh vapor will start a death spiral, except they will be too weak to kill each other even in a martial trance.

I could restart the embark, but I've just managed to breach a cavern and its such a neat spot. I'll wait till the thread starter weighs in.

edit: stupidity in wordiness.,

[vjek]

You've not specified whether edits to the init.txt and d_init.txt are allowed. Do these have to be vanilla or can they be our own values?

Vanilla.  If you have a default install of 34.11, and add this save to it, you're set for the challenge.

As has been pointed out, the initial losers are a temporary setback/minor time sink only.  Once the migrants start arriving, things get better.    The starting seven are definitely "losers" though, as the challenge name implies.

The intent of the challenge is for novice players (not noobs, not vets) to be able to put their DF skills to the test in a reasonably difficult embark with generous starting equipment but several hurdles to overcome.  Food & drink, then migrant handling, caravan trading, fuel/wood acquisition, then industry, wealth creation and noble handling.  Pretty standard stuff, all around.

There shouldn't be a serious amount of pain until winter of 351, threat-wise.  There are no restrictions on defense styles or designs.  Whatever you can do in vanilla 34.11, go forth and make Armok proud.

[Trouserman]

While a few of the init settings affect the gameplay, most of them control aspects of the interface. You mentioned that tile sets are up to the player. Clearly that requires modifying the init files. I would feel well justified in changing the display parameters, sound, autosave, and so on. I would not feel justified in changing the settings that affect the actual gameplay, such as temperature, population cap, and (especially) invaders.

[vjek]

Just try to keep it as vanilla as possible.  Tilesets, fine, Dwarf Therapist fine.  Everything else, not fine.  If that's not clear enough, err on the side of caution. 

[MasterShizzle]

All right, I'll bite. Playing now. Delving downward, shifting sand...

[Tirion]

Just try to keep it as vanilla as possible.  Tilesets, fine, Dwarf Therapist fine.  Everything else, not fine.  If that's not clear enough, err on the side of caution. 

tweak fixmigrant fine too, I hope- last years caravan all came back as part of the 3rd migrant wave, would have created a plug if not debugged.