Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Iamblichos]

So... I have recently begun doing the "single pick" embark, with all 7 dwarves unskilled and only a wagon, two animals and a pick.  It's been a lot of fun, and has taught me a fair amount.  Latest one was on a glacier with no trees or plants - time to sprint for the first caverns!

That being said, however, once I get dug in fairly decently, it seems to always turn into the same old fort.  About year 3, the first FB or two are dead, the goblins are sending ambushes to supplement their snatchers, the clothes are starting to wear out, and I can buy anything I want from the caravans.  It turns into a game of "try to find work for the 40+ unskilled dwarves to keep them from throwing nonstop parties in the legendary dining hall"... and by year 5, the whole focus of the game is on used clothes.  I go from being the Overseer to being the Shonky Man    The fun goes away.

I don't have much success with large-scale engineering projects, but I tend to get bored around year 5-6 and abandon the fort.  What do you guys do to spice it up/keep it interesting?

[klefenz]

You could take the SimCity route: destroy everything and build it again.

I dont know how possible this is, as dwarves have a much larger tendency to lose their shit and go insane than sims.

[Melting Sky]

Step one: Embark on a Terrifying reanimating biome next to at least 4 necromancer towers.
Step two: Enjoy your new not boring fort.

Alternatively, to spice up a pre-existing fortress you can buy a ticket to the circus and pay the friendly neighborhood clowns a visit.

[dirkzen]

When the boredom starts to set in, (which usually happens if I don't hit magma/metals soon enough, or any myriad of other things go wrong) I tend to get destructive.  I don't just 'abandon' forts, I light the bridge on fire behind me and send it all howling down into the abyss.

I like to make it dramatic. 
My final project is always to dig out as much underneath as I can, to eventually send everything above collapsing down 3-4 levels as the river pours in from above, (I always dig my sites near rivers) turning everything into a wreck of broken furniture, stone, body parts, drowned dwarves and carnage everywhere.
Bonus points if I take the trade depot with me while someone is still on there.

Theres something satisfying..  almost cathartic about destroying something you've worked so hard on so you can start again.
Like breaking apart a bunch of legos after you're tired of looking at that little castle you've just made.

[Panando]

You could also install a mod like Fortress Defense II (add both challenge and bonus races), which adds enough sieges that there is a fairly good possibility you'll be wiped out, especially if you're also doing a single pick challenge or something (One of the nice things about FD II, is unless you do something dumb like make an adamantine artifact in the first summer, the first siege will arrive in winter and be of very weak enemies, so it's exciting but wont wipe you out even if all you have is a squad of wrestlers. If you do grossly inflate your fortress value sieges can get very !!FUN!! very quickly)

[Rum]

I like to build forts for the aesthetic/fun aspects not functionality.   Plus modding elves to use metal with caravan guards and diplomats make for fun sieges.   When you have human/elf sieges inbetween attacks by goblins who are sometimes larger than humans(uruks) it gives a reasonable challenge.

I also like to use mainly doors and fortifications for the non-living defense.

You could always go the rp route and create the fort according to the whims/internal politics of the dorfs too.

[Di]

I usually build various advanced traps like magma minefields and such. Apart from that old fortresses are actually my fetish, so, when there's not much of overseering needed and fps is still tolerable, I usually jut run the game in background and do other stuff.

[Meph]

Try mods (Yeah for aggressive advertisement)

No, seriously, there are many interesting minor and major mods, total conversions and more, if you have gotten bored with vanilla DF.

[Iamblichos]

True, I haven't explored any of the mods    Thanks.

I also need to figure out the minecart system but it has frustrated me to the point of ragequit every time I've tried to use it 

All suggestions are welcome, because I have so much fun setting these forts up and getting them to run, it seems a shame to Abandon them once they are ticking along merrily.

[XArgon]

Roleplaying is key. Focus on something, try limiting yourself with things other than the starting conditions, such as using no traps. (Or with some limitations - like, I usually place cage traps out in the open, and not anywhere near the fortress.)
Bonus points if your roleplaying focus is based on the randomly generated NAME of the fortress.

When the new version is released, I'm planning on playing as chaos-worshipping dwarven outcasts... Capturing invaders and having one-on-one fair fights with them in an arena... in a mostly above-ground fort with wooden walls.

Oh, and you made me remember... I never actually even TRIED to figure out minecarts.

[Nyxalinth]

I'm in the same boat as you..  I get to about Year 10, then all the issues come in along with FPS issues.  Right about then I usually send every dwarf en masse to fight invaders/FB's/etc and then watch the fireworks.  If that doesn't do it, I'll abandon.  But in some cases, after the intial deaths/madness/tantrum spirals, things are interesting again... until the next time.

I never could work out minecarts either.  I'm a visual learner, so learning through videos tends to be more helpful than written tutorials.  I haven't looked for any on minecarts in a while, though.