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Author Topic: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)  (Read 26797 times)

pikachu17

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #30 on: April 19, 2017, 03:53:36 pm »

I think that in a Luddite fortress, spiked balls would be useless. Try wooden mine carts instead, as they can be traded, AND are somewhat useful without mechanisms. Is minecart quantum stockpiling allowed?
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Sigtext!
dwarf 4tress from scratch
The Pikachu revolution!
Thank you NatureGirl19999 for the avatar switcher at http://signavatar.com

A warforged bard named Gender appears and says"Hello. I am a social construct."

zazq

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #31 on: April 19, 2017, 05:37:20 pm »

we need to expect an undead siege spring year 2.  It would be unfortunate if nobody had armor before that...
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Derpy Dev

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #32 on: April 19, 2017, 07:22:57 pm »

we need to expect an undead siege spring year 2.  It would be unfortunate if nobody had armor before that...

Worst case scenario, we wait out an undead siege. Hopefully that does not happen.

zazq

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #33 on: April 21, 2017, 04:02:04 pm »

*worst case scenario, the siege never comes because nobody is playing this game.
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Derpy Dev

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #34 on: April 21, 2017, 04:24:05 pm »

*worst case scenario, the siege never comes because nobody is playing this game.

That is indeed the worst case scenario.

Anyway, here's fall:

Last time, we began to hollow out a large chamber for the beds. This autumn, we are going to be building beds.
First off, I may have neglected to mention an important detail. You see these three logs at the entrance?
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
They are forbidden and there for a reason. In case of emergency, we can unforbid them and then build a wall out of them. This will be important if undead come before we are prepared, and I am 100% certain that they will.
Also, a whole load of animals have given birth. We now have a bunch of poults, puppies and kittens.
Merchants have arrived! I decided to request some steel so that we can more easily get the weapons and armor we need to defend ourselves.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Purchase wise, I bought a bunch of axes, two breastplates and a bronze mace. Maces are good for pulping undead.
New migrants! The only notable ones are a talented weaponsmith and a suturer, who is now the chief medical dwarf. They did bring a water buffalo calf and a bull calf two, so that's nice.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
We finally started building the bedrooms! The two chairs are the offices of two innocent dwarves that have to manage the work orders and organize the records.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
As well as giving the main meeting area an expansion, I have made the it a temple as well. This will help to improve morale.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Now this is the time in which I would typically connect the fort to the first cavern layer, because putting cage traps there gives you plenty of animals to butcher. But that would be pointless because cage traps are banned. So I am out of ideas. What I am doing for now is building a load of schist blocks for the construction of a platform over the volcano for magma smelters, and start smoothing the bedroom area's floors and walls.
And winter has come. I'll be leaving town tomorrow, but I should be back the day after unless something goes terribly wrong. But I will be able to complete winter before monday and pass it on to zazq.

zazq

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #35 on: April 21, 2017, 06:55:14 pm »

getting some military training would be good.  dabbling soldiers are a whole lot better than just-picked-up-a-weapon soldiers.  Also getting the forges up and running would be very useful.  Gathering outside plants in hopes of getting sunberries would be useful as well, and safer now than it will ever be again.
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Derpy Dev

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #36 on: April 21, 2017, 07:20:52 pm »

getting some military training would be good.  dabbling soldiers are a whole lot better than just-picked-up-a-weapon soldiers.  Also getting the forges up and running would be very useful.  Gathering outside plants in hopes of getting sunberries would be useful as well, and safer now than it will ever be again.

Hmmm... When I do winter, I will look for some sunberries. But I never know who to pick to join the army. I know you can check their attributes to see which dwarves are strong and which ones are agile, so I will spend some time checking that out as well.

hun

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #37 on: April 21, 2017, 07:43:50 pm »

getting some military training would be good.  dabbling soldiers are a whole lot better than just-picked-up-a-weapon soldiers.  Also getting the forges up and running would be very useful.  Gathering outside plants in hopes of getting sunberries would be useful as well, and safer now than it will ever be again.

Hmmm... When I do winter, I will look for some sunberries. But I never know who to pick to join the army. I know you can check their attributes to see which dwarves are strong and which ones are agile, so I will spend some time checking that out as well.

I would suggest to find a guy with the highest military skills and make the fortress champion out of him. That is, to make him a captain of his own squad and assign recruits there just to get them trained. But never let this champion to really go into battle. Eventually, he will reach legend skill in military and very high Teacher. A veteran with 10+ teaching skill do WONDERS with recruits. Many of them gonna die, and so we could very quickly train new ones, using our champion.

As a recruits, just pick the most useless guys. Attributes like strength are actually trainable, but to lose great armorer is a way worse than a couple of glazers or fish dissectors...

Derpy Dev

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #38 on: April 21, 2017, 08:02:22 pm »

I would suggest to find a guy with the highest military skills and make the fortress champion out of him. That is, to make him a captain of his own squad and assign recruits there just to get them trained. But never let this champion to really go into battle. Eventually, he will reach legend skill in military and very high Teacher. A veteran with 10+ teaching skill do WONDERS with recruits. Many of them gonna die, and so we could very quickly train new ones, using our champion.

As a recruits, just pick the most useless guys. Attributes like strength are actually trainable, but to lose great armorer is a way worse than a couple of glazers or fish dissectors...

So... this is kind of embarrassing, but I have never set up a teacher before. How does one do that?

hun

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #39 on: April 21, 2017, 08:35:44 pm »

I would suggest to find a guy with the highest military skills and make the fortress champion out of him. That is, to make him a captain of his own squad and assign recruits there just to get them trained. But never let this champion to really go into battle. Eventually, he will reach legend skill in military and very high Teacher. A veteran with 10+ teaching skill do WONDERS with recruits. Many of them gonna die, and so we could very quickly train new ones, using our champion.

As a recruits, just pick the most useless guys. Attributes like strength are actually trainable, but to lose great armorer is a way worse than a couple of glazers or fish dissectors...

So... this is kind of embarrassing, but I have never set up a teacher before. How does one do that?

There is no really a direct way to set it, the game handles it on its own. When you assign dwarves to a squad, they occasionally participate in training demonstrations - like shield demonstration, armor demonstration etc. One dwarf is leading, and the others are learning from him. The one who teaches is typically (or always - I'm not sure) the one with the highest skill for that particular kind of demonstration. He gains teaching skill for that. So, the trick is that you must ensure that your presumable champion have the highest skill in as many military skills as possible in this squad, so he will always lead demonstrations and will be quickly gaining teaching skill. Otherwise, different dwarves would lead demonstrations all the time, and each of them gains only a trifle of teaching skill.

zazq

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #40 on: April 22, 2017, 12:54:10 am »

The wiki indicates that close combat dwarves want Agility, Spatial Sense, Strength, Toughness and Willpower.  Practicing close combat skills will train all of these, and so anyone can become a soldier with enough training. 

If we have no dwarves with any combat skills, than just pick one.  Therapist can sort dwarves by affinity for a particular skill, so you could pick the highest hammerdwarf affinity cheesemaker or whatever.  Create a squad and put him in first position within the squad.  Make a barracks for the squad and make sure it is set for them to train there.  That should be about it.  Even if he sucks just like all the other recruits, he'll train up evenly with them.  Then we transfer out all but him into a new squad and send them to their doom, and bring in a new batch of cheesemakers.  NOW he totally has the highest combat skills and will lead all the training and get all of the teaching, and mass produce soldiers to die for the god of blood. 

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Derpy Dev

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #41 on: April 22, 2017, 05:42:50 am »

The wiki indicates that close combat dwarves want Agility, Spatial Sense, Strength, Toughness and Willpower.  Practicing close combat skills will train all of these, and so anyone can become a soldier with enough training. 

If we have no dwarves with any combat skills, than just pick one.  Therapist can sort dwarves by affinity for a particular skill, so you could pick the highest hammerdwarf affinity cheesemaker or whatever.  Create a squad and put him in first position within the squad.  Make a barracks for the squad and make sure it is set for them to train there.  That should be about it.  Even if he sucks just like all the other recruits, he'll train up evenly with them.  Then we transfer out all but him into a new squad and send them to their doom, and bring in a new batch of cheesemakers.  NOW he totally has the highest combat skills and will lead all the training and get all of the teaching, and mass produce soldiers to die for the god of blood.

This sounds morbid... I love it.

I won't be able to play or post today past now, but I will start trying to train some soldiers tomorrow. Or at the very least build a magma forge.

Pseudo

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #42 on: April 23, 2017, 02:49:31 pm »

Minecart grinders can be built without mechanisms! 2x2 room, straight/clockwise tracked ramps in all 4 squares, enter / exit via the corners.

(Though they can't be *stopped* without mechanisms, which could pose a problem.)

Ditto, it may be worth setting up a minecart-filler - or maybe two. One for magma, one for water. (You can indeed fill minecarts without mechanisms...)

Also, you can build panic switches using pumps. 2/7 water ditch with pump facing into it, magma supply behind pump. Turn on pump, water immediately obsidianizes. (If you need it wider than 2, pump it into the z-level *above* the ditch.)

This may be rather going against the spirit of the challenge, though.
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Derpy Dev

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #43 on: April 23, 2017, 05:22:07 pm »

I pulled my jacket over myself. A cold, biting wind chilled me to the bone as a I looked upon the countryside. It was winter. It wasn't usually this cold near on the surface in Flamehorses because of the volcano. Turns out that volcanoes are really, really hot. But the temperature would have to be ignored.
I examined a bush with a large quantity golden berries on its branches. Sun berries were supposedly one of the most delicious fruits known to dwarves. Checking the surroundings to make sure nobody was looking, I popped one into my mouth. It wasn't bad. But it would make a fine wine. I would have loved to gather them myself, but I had more alcohol
to brew and chores to manage. Plus, I couldn't trust myself not to eat more berries.

After entering the fortress again and escaping the horrid sun and fresh air, I set to work. All of the baby grazing animals we had been collecting had fully grown and I decided to have them butchered, for many reasons. For one thing, I couldn't afford to have any livestock turn undead because of a necromancer. Also, we need the meat.

Now, because of my own error, the lava in the volcano is quite a ways away from the meeting hall. A long hallway must be traversed to go from their to the volcano.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
It goes up a few levels after that, and then another road goes in a straight line to the volcano, but hopefully we will be able to manage.

So I guess it is time for me to mention a couple of embarrassing ramp fails I have made.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Let's just say that I'm not good at this game at the best of times. But remember that there is another one I'm just not mentioning because it's hard to show a picture of and tell what you are looking at.

Well, the time has come. The first year of Flamehorses has ended. I wasn't quite able to watch this be completed in my time as ruler, but here is a platform made of schist suspended over a volcano.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Be warned that there is no ceiling to this at the moment, so that has to be completed in the next turn. But for now, I must leave. My successor will hopefully do a better job maintaining this place than I did.

Real talk now. I'm sorry if the first couple of months were a bit dry. I tried to make the final month of this year a bit more interesting by writing in a more in universe fashion.

Here you go zazq. Your turn begins now.

zazq

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Re: Flamehorses, the luddite fortress (It has begun!)
« Reply #44 on: April 23, 2017, 05:57:30 pm »

boom
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