ooc: I quit (sorry!). I made it into the sixth month and the animal menace is unbearable. After mating season we're up to 350 animals which means I play at 2 FPS. Maybe I'm biased because of how low the game is but the dwarves refuse to do any work apart from melting and training animals that are about to be slaughtered. Of course you can't stop training them because the only thing that is worse than 350 giant olms and monitor lizards is 350 wild giant olms and wild monitor lizards. When I say the dwarves don't do any work I mean I waited 6 months for them to do simple tasks like mining out a hallway or building a farm (which hasn't happended yet). I recommend using DFHack to fight all the animals. I am unwilling to use DFHack unless expressly permitted especially because the narrative of BB is very close to actual gameplay so I leave the save for someone with more patience/better hardware to continue fighting the population boom with or without DFHack as decided by the community. Save:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/s0w6kv9u00cvwme/Migrant%20Breadbowl.zip?dl=0In character:
Month 4
A vile force of darkness arrived. Naturally I ordered the bridges raised and the walls manned. I was unwilling to emphasize the importance of our military so I ordered the neighbourhood watch to fill the goblin horde with bolts. While they gathered their ammunition the besieging army spread. It came from the east (it numbered about 80
) and slowly seized our moat and spread west. The trolls seemed especially eager to run to the west. The initial skirmishes led to the first (but not the last) deaths during my brief reign. The neighbourhood watch was massacred. Not in the traditional way of axe wielding goblins attacking crossbowdwarves but through ranged combat. The watch was delayed because there are very few entries to the wall (I gave the orders to rectify this almost immediately following the siege) so they had to walk very far. The fact that they were delayed did not matter because the relevant bridges were raised (eastern, nothern and southern leaving the western one open) but what did matter was that their entrance was far form where I ordered them to attack from. This mean the final leg of their journey was atop the walls while taking fire form the besieging army. The watch bravely followed my faulty orders and instead of stopping to return fire they kept running dodging most of the incoming fire but they did get hit. Eventually they stopped and started returning fire. Usually dwarves have the privilege of being better equipped and trained than their enemies but this was not a luxury the watch had as my predecessors had only given them leather armor despite the abundance of metal armor. Some among them were very skilled marksdwarves but others were hardly capable of hitting a caged elephant at point blank. This meant that they were incapable of fighting after being hit a few times and although some dwarves were skilled at not getting hit
others were not
and all of them had to dodge more bolts than their enemies. It was not my intention but the watchers decided to fight on the entire wall which meant all of the enemy archers had a target to shoot for. I accept full responsibility for the deaths that occured but their deaths were not the result of a tactical failure on my part but a failure in their equipment and training which I had no part in. The watch lost several members and their effect on the battle was negligible.
Seeing my strategy of ranged combat had failed and seeing how the enemy trolls were isolated and thus vulnerable the most reasonable course of action was to send out regular military to fight the trolls in the western moat. I picked our best trained squad (among its members are Taupe and Sanctume) for the mission and they won a glorious battle. The trolls were quickly killed and with only minimal risk to our military. Taupe was repeatedly bullrushed into a wall but with aid from the rest of the squad the trolls were defeated. After a short break the champions pushed towards the east, fighting small groups of goblins and trolls until the siege was lifted after a few days. I am quite contend I didn't send our champions to die a fiery death in the caverns for the sake of a glumprong door. I established a stockpile near the magma smelters to house all the copper armor the goblins came wearing and ordered additional dwarves to take up the mantle of furnace operator. This is a top priority because any reminder of the constant sieges will scare migrants away.
A day or so after the siege was lifted a human caravan arrived. During this time I checked on the alleged Hypochondriac and our diagnosers. I made a test for them and they all performed extraordinarily well. Our chief medicla dwarf is legendary, his second-in-command is great and our last doctor is accomplished. In any other fort this would be great news but in Breadbowl this only confirms my suspicions that the medical personnel is intentionally malpracticing their patients. This is the only possible explanation for why the Hypochondriac has gotten so much attention for so long time yet still lacks the treatment they all know is needed.
The human caravan was an awesome sight. We could easily export more than the elven caravan could carry but the Humans brought enough wagons to take all our booze as well as all our crops and seeds and dwarves if we were to evacuate BB. Exports: before
and after
. Unlike the elves I feel that the Humans deserve our help. First of all they don't throw a fit if they see wooden goods. It isn't a secret that we fell trees and if they think that is unethical, then they shouldn't come to our town and act surprised. And what is up with their "grown" goods? Our trees grow just as natural as their trees. If you ask me then they're simply trying to monopolize woodworking and I'm not falling for their tricks. Anyway the reason the Humans deserve our help is because they are fighting against the goblin menace and judging from the news the need our help.
. Aiding the Humans is not free for us. The booze can easily be replace but hauling cost a lot of dwarfpower that the Humans can never repay us. If we include the time it will take to haul the things we bought from the humans to our stockpiles we will have spent an entire moth working on this one project. Since three caravans arrive each year that means three months of labour that do nothing to further the interests of Breadbowl. Perhaps we should use minecarts to haul food in the future. Unfortunately a simple farmer cannot build such a system.
Month 5
I was reading the bookkeepers reports and apparently we have massive stocks of brewable plants we haven't gotten around to brew yet. Next I checked some of our brewing hubs and to my horror I found that most of our stills were unmanned. This is rectified. The animal population is getting out of hand (I was under the impression that ordering almost every animal butchered and every nest destroyed would keep them under control). A few weeks ago we were down to 230 animals but since the pythons and a few birds hatched we are now well above 270 again. I need to employ more butchers. After increasing the number of active stills it followed that I would need to increase our pot production as well. I did this by optimizing the glass industry and dropping wooden and rock pots since both rock and stone are becoming rare. I increased production of clear glass blocks as well in case the farms are expanded. I doubt that will happen because it hasn't happened the past 5 months but should it happen I would like to be ready.
I used the decimation of the watchers to implement parts of my military reform. I disbanded two of the civilian squads and created a crossbow squad of the remains. The brilliant part is that I intend to briefly train them on live targets which liberates them to do other work permanently in the meantime. I have increased the workforce and limited the military. A glorious triumph.
I think I am losing control over this town. The citizens are becoming harder to work with. Case in point: the previous iteration of the dump squad was a considerable success but the current iteration has done no work despite having twice the original number. I revoked their bedroom privileges to motivate them but they initiated more protests and refused to work. They were discharged and I am currently looking for new candidates. All sorts of animal are hatching. We now have more than 300 animals. I have had no luck ordering citizens to remove the nestboxes from the pastures. Looks like we will be a ranching community and not a farming community in the future assuming we can keep up with taming these animals. Oh god. Monitor lizards hatched. We currenty have 330 animals. I selected a docile dwarf to serve as the core of the dump squad. I will use this dwarf to determine exactly what is so detrimental to the work ethic of these dwarves. We ran out of wood. Despite the fact that 5 months ago I ordered some trees to be felled because they are in the way of some farms I would like to establish. This is a pity because I intended for my new crossbow squad to use wooden bolts for training as to better conserve the live targets. It will make exporting goods to the elves a little easier so I guess there is a bright side. I reinstated the bedroom privileges for the one man dump squad and solved the riddle of the terrible productivity in this town: the dump squad is more inclined to built floors than dump garbage which makes their bedrooms distracting as they're unfinished. Unfortunately this means that making the dump squad more efficient won't yield the key to make everyone else more efficient. Disbanded the dump squad as I wait for their quarters to be finished. A depressed dwarf apparently died. I don't feel anything. I caught myself considering to let the goblins enter Breadbowl and slay all of our animals and useless dwarves so that a more efficient fort may rise from the ashes. I am clearly unfit to lead this settlement any longer. I tried to clean Breadbowl but I find it is dirtier now than when I took power. More dwarfpower is diverted towards non-essential tasks like melting down goblin equipment and producing ludicrous amounts of booze to satisfy foreign interests than towards handling the egg-laying menace.
Edit: two pictures I didn't include in the post. Children playing in the carnage
and one of our many depressed dwarves
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Topic: Breadbowl: a Succession Farm [42.06] - Breadbowl Ends (Read 424510 times)