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Total Members Voted: 7

[IlFedaykin]

Hi everyone,
our mighty lord Meph asked for feedback on the new masterwork releases so here we go.
The plan is to play a human city for as long as possible in order to gather info. Even if you never played masterwork please give it a try: there is no better way to learn how it works!

The city fell to a Naga siege in the summer of 194. There are plans to reclaim it

History of Shieldgates


Here is the latest save
ABANDONED


Here is the game folder
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByH8T2wcgpr2cVhJS2FqN3RVZHc

Here are some basic policies:
-temporary buildings in wood, definitive ones in stone.
-try to mantain the general layout of a city
-complete your projects
-PUT NOTES ON THE LEVERS

Here are the players who already took a turn and the links to their logs:

First turn - Foundation

-IlFedaykin - COMPLETE

-Baffler - SKIPPED

-MCreeper - COMPLETE

-Meph - COMPLETE

-Arcturus - COMPLETE

-Timeless Bob - COMPLETE

-IlFedaykin - CRUMBLED

Second turn - Reclaiming the city

-MCreeper

[Imic]

Sign me up for the 3rd turn. My computer should be un banjaxed by then.

[Fleeting Frames]

Is this in the style of DF together, or more traditional succession fort?

[Baffler]

I could take a turn as well. I've played Masterwork dwarves extensively but haven't tried any of the other races before, so this should be fun.

[IlFedaykin]

Is this in the style of DF together, or more traditional succession fort?

Nothing decided yet but since we had quite some problems keeping the server up and running with a stable vanilla version, it would probably be easier to take one turn at a time with MDF

[Meph]

I'll certainly spectate and take a human. Please "dwarf" me as Meph ingame, one of the starting 7, your pick.

[IlFedaykin]

So... i was thinking of a somewhat large embark (5x5?) since the limited mining usually keep the FPS at a reasonable level.
A lot of other things to decide, tho: climate, surroundings, how many defence races to activate, river or not , etc etc. Please come in with suggestions, even if you decide not to take a turn. Tomorrow i'll run the worldgen, post some screenshots and maybe embark.

 

[Fleeting Frames]

Tbh, I've never even built a fort that used up even 1600 squares available in 1x1, so 5x5 seems like a way to have trees kill you - unless you embark on a treeless area, I suppose. What are you thinking that would require that much space?

That said, seems rather uninteresting to build a surface colony if surface has, say, only ice.

If mining is eating your FPS; perhaps try retiring and unretiring.

Suggestions for worldgen:

A) Run a 33x33 or 65x65 worldgen  (not sure how many races MWDF has), with painted central 10x10 104z/100z (for small rivers - or not) flat center hub for patchwork of desired biomes and ~20 tile walk for each civ to reach the hub so that they can reach anywhere you plop your fortress down but can't reach each other. This should allow them to prosper. Ideally, the races should all be forced to face you with their major site, but I don't know if this is possible in the mod. (It is in vanilla, though.)

B) How many MWDF races require caverns? Perhaps it'd be prudent to disable them alongside bottom and magma layer for additional FPS - This would get something like only 5 soil/stone levels on a flat embark, perhaps. You lose dwarves and steel imports, but I've gotten the impression that steel is far less important in the mod than in vanilla.

C) Embark biomes. I don't know what races MWDF prefers, but you would get all booze trees and most booze plants (missing just 1 each from tropical savanna and grassland) with simple (preferably dry) tropical forest, temperate grassland and finally swamp of any kind. (In vanilla, making the forest terrifying would stop it from being settled on by goblins).

Though since trees are an issue, perhaps go for only the first two being lightly sheared in into a desert embark and then use air biomes to grow the plants in hanging gardens of Oz. Shearing in some extreme cold in otherwise warm+ embark could also be interesting for freezing traps.

Another possibility would be to paint mountains leading to rain-rich canyons for major river, settling only on tiles having it (something like 1xN) - so there's barely any terrain to build on, forcing one to make a dam/hydro(electric?) station in the  center of the river. Would hit FPS, though.

What do you have in mind to take up entire 5x5 embark?

[Meph]

What do you have in mind to take up entire 5x5 embark?

Human guilds and the town.

B) How many MWDF races require caverns? Perhaps it'd be prudent to disable them alongside bottom and magma layer for additional FPS - This would get something like only 5 soil/stone levels on a flat embark, perhaps. You lose dwarves and steel imports, but I've gotten the impression that steel is far less important in the mod than in vanilla.

None, yet humans can still dig. I'd keep caverns and HFS.

Though since trees are an issue

Why are trees an issue?

[Fleeting Frames]

...Even at their most wide, I think the custom workshop planner maxes out at 32x32, which is still less than half the squares in 1x1. The biggest MWDF workshop I've seen from playthroughs has been 6x5, I think - small enough to fit 48 into just 1x1x1.

HFS has at least little point in allowing goblins to start with dark fortress, thus giving greater control over civ major sites I suppose, but fights in unused cavern only kill your FPS. Ever have a fire FB idle in cavern lake? :/

All the surface vegetation - DF2014+ trees especially - lowers FPS a lot. It's really noticeable if you compare a desert and forest embarks and of course stacks with time - but even without stacking - i.e. the equivalent of running cleaning constantly, I assume - I've gotten 25 FPS on a mere grassland (sparse trees) versus 85 on rainless badlands (16x16s on embark). That's 3,4 times difference without even bringing all the leaves and fruits falling into play. It's the reason why vjek's gens are by default on areas with no regrowth.

[Meph]

Guilds are 5x5, with 4 extensions for each direction, each 3x5 or 5x3. Thats a total of 11x11 per guild. There are 12 guilds. And dont forget that you cant build furniture outside... all the dining rooms, bedrooms, offices, etc need their own huts too.

Hu... didnt knew that trees eat FPS. I usually start with 150FPS and by the time enough dwarves are there to affect the FPS, all trees are cut down, as it should be.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Sign me up! Looks cool.

[GhostDwemer]

Guilds are 5x5, with 4 extensions for each direction, each 3x5 or 5x3. Thats a total of 11x11 per guild. There are 12 guilds. And dont forget that you cant build furniture outside... all the dining rooms, bedrooms, offices, etc need their own huts too.

Hu... didnt knew that trees eat FPS. I usually start with 150FPS and by the time enough dwarves are there to affect the FPS, all trees are cut down, as it should be.

After three years, trees come back with a vengeance, at maximum density in all biomes that get more than 5 units of rain per year. There's no way you can cut down and use that many trees. Trying to stomp out all the seedlings using dirt road construction is a massive undertaking even for a small area. But with buildings built over much of the map it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

That being said, has anyone done any real science on tree related FPS drain? How much is it? What causes it? Personally, I have not seen much FPS difference between similar forts on forested and desert embarks.

[Timeless Bob]

Idea: Make it a "pocket island", but max out the number of races that can fit onto it.  I'm usually able to to fit 100-120 races onto a pocket world with unlimited population cap and unlimited sites, but rare minerals.  Give the world a single megafauna to make the Age of Myth be named something more fitting like "The Draconic Age" or even "The Age of Ishia".  Only allow a dozen years to pass in World Gen - that should keep the goblins from multiplying beyond control, but allow things like Towers and various minor lairs to develop, as well as allow all the races to build up their populations enough to make post world-gen an interesting place to be in when all the wars blow up.  With minerals set to be less common, precious metals like Gold become truly precious.  After world-gen, we should scout around for minerals and use that as the initial reason the Humans decided to build an outpost there: to mine out those precious metals. 

I've found that building houses with peaked roofs rather than flat boxes uses up more wood, and things like gutters or door placement become more important than they have been before.  Likewise, not excavating a flat area out of a slop to put a house, but rather building walls on the down-slope side to produce the foundations for the main floor also are historically more accurate (and uses up all that extra stone from excavating the mineshafts too.)  Eventually, I envision an area to be designated as "The Quarry" to specifically excavate stone for use in building homes/workshops, ect... because all the excavated stone on the map has already been used for one purpose or another.

Something to think about when planning your city: what kind of sewers are you going to use? Excavating those should give us a good general idea where houses and other water-needing/using buildings may be built.  Run-off from the major streets will be going into these via grates, and of course all sorts of secret societies and underworld criminals may begin using these passages for their nefarious purposes as well.  As the city develops, more cellars and possibly an underground highway might even be developed, depending on need and traffic flow.

To keep people from going through houses or workshops on their way to wherever, I suggest paving some main roads over the sewers and designating them as high traffic areas.  As the city builds up along these main roads, sub-streets and alleys will develop naturally as a matter of course.  I would further suggest that similar occupations each claim a side street on which to build their work-shops and homes.  In this manner may the side roads be named: "Fisher's Way" for example, or "Old Mine Road".  The fourth building away from one of these main roads could then have the address of "#4, Old Mine Road", and we'd know precisely where to find that house.  Once we build up the city a bit, having some empty houses for adventurers to claim would really be fun, don't you think?  They could walk over to the pub down the street or walk over to their favorite shrine or temple to pray or meditate.  They might head up one block and over to #8 Metalsmith Lane to exchange some gossip with the weaponsmith there and maybe make a trade with that person for one of their weapons in stock.

That leads into my last suggestion for this post: Have each dorfed character choose a specific industry and become the "Guild Leader" for that industry.  Anyone else wanting to work in that industry either becomes a Guild Member (and therefore able to be directly ordered and controlled by the Guild Leader from the forum) or pays some annual fee to be allowed to work for anyone as needed (like an added percentage of any work order that becomes the property of the guild.) By making each Guild workshop only allow those who are members of the Guild to use them, and setting certain stockpiles to only give to those workshops, then this system can be implemented with only a minimum of fiddling around. The city could be run by a Guild Council and whomever on the Guild Council has the most members in their Guild could be chosen as Mayor.  The Mayor never is the one who gets to actually play the turn, but is the one who sets the "City tax" on all of the Guilds. (a percentage of that year's profits that go into the "Caravan fund" for trading with the Caravan. Every year, The Guild Council could get together and vote for who gets to be the Mayor for that year.  The number of people in each Guild equals that guild's voting power.

If the City becomes populous enough, one Guild could rise to power over the others, and when a Royal title like "Baron" is offered, that Guild Leader would be the first to be chosen.  After a little while, the most powerful guilds (or wealthiest ones able to buy the titles off of the most powerful ones), would become the nobility.  The Noble titles are inherited, so unless the family died off, that dorfed person's family would continue on into the future.  Over several embarks and in between bits involving adventurers, that could make the world that much more interesting.

[Timeless Bob]

Incidentally, sign me up for a turn.  Name one of the starting Humans by its profession and I'll take that one.