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Author Topic: The Spires of Pain: Untimely demise  (Read 1150 times)

ibanix

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The Spires of Pain: Untimely demise
« on: July 16, 2019, 03:05:24 pm »

After a few years off from DF, I came back to see all the fun about visiting bards, temples, libraries and such.

I always wanted to make an above ground tower fortress. I decided that an offshoot of my dwarven civilization had decided that true dwarves used the earth to build great tower fortresses, but were shunned and forced to leave. They embarked to a rocky wasteland where they were able to realize their vision in undisturbed solitude.

So here was the setup:

* 3x3 map (more FPS, more danger from invaders)
* No tree harvesting allowed
* No farming allowed
* Start with 10 dwarves (dfhack) but same embark points
* No more than 10 new dwarves/year

Thus was founded: Spires of Pain (Datur Zulash) by Ronmamgoz (Ragedraons).

The tower was coming along pretty well into year two, when this happened:



No problem, I thought. Werelizard. The main gate of the fortress is designed for just this issue. Close it and wait until he goes away. So I give the order to Urist McAnyDwarf to pull the lever. And I wait... and wait... and wait... and by then the werelizard is inside the tower. A quick squad is formed to attack it. The visiting humans shoot it with arrows. Blood, blood everywhere. Eventually it dies and I have 10 injured dwarves of various types.

So I quickly create a hospital and set them up in it. They recover for a week... and then most of the injured transform into werelizards and slaughter everyone else before dying of their wounds.

Aftermath of the carnage, and just before everyone else dies:




Lessons learned:

0) Do not create a defense system that relies on your dwarves doing things quickly!
1) Don't forget to set up your hospital *before* you need it....
2) Make soap before you need it...
3) Isolate anyone who was injured by a were-creature
4) Equip those nice weapons and armor you bought from caravans... early.


The next tower attempt will be "Spires of Longing". It just sounds dwarven.



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pamelrabo

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Re: The Spires of Pain: Untimely demise
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2019, 03:10:18 am »

After werebeast attacks, your hospital is a quarantine zone. Lock everybody in, and let Armok sort'em out when they transform.

If you're lucky and the injuries are minor, you can lock the cursed in individual rooms usi g burrows. Sometimes the werebeast just kicked or bashed them and the curse was not transmitted to the defender.

But if you play the micromanagement game, just be sure of tagging every potentially cursed injured. A stray cursed kid can become your fortress' demise.
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Large Wereroach

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Re: The Spires of Pain: Untimely demise
« Reply #2 on: July 18, 2019, 02:34:17 pm »

After one of my early werebeast encounters I decided to have two hospital zones. One is quite ordinary and easily reachable by foot, the other is a dwarfwalk away and double-purpose hospital/drowning chamber designed for flushing stuff (i.e. drowned dwarves waiting for the next full moon) out...
on second thought this might be more complicated to build in an above-ground fortress
on a third thought I've only used it once and became somewhat more cautious about werebeasts since
« Last Edit: July 18, 2019, 02:37:31 pm by Large Wereroach »
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TheEqualsE

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Re: The Spires of Pain: Untimely demise
« Reply #3 on: July 20, 2019, 10:42:13 pm »

I had a whole series of were beasts appear in my fort's tavern - in the heart of the fortress.  Luckily every time it happened we mostly lost a few humans, and we had plenty of those.  We had a large and well appointed hospital.  I had some of the walls fortified just in case.

That could have gone badly as I heard somewhere dwarves changing can cause loyalty cascades if someone is the first to see them change and shoot them.  But I still think I could have waited for them to change, then moved the crossbows team behind the fortifications and that would have been just fine.  But it never came up.

I got ridiculously lucky.  Everyone who got attacked either died outright or didn't get cursed despite injuries.  The curse must only be a chance because some of those injuries were pretty severe.

I'm never putting the tavern inside the fort again.  It goes on the outside now.  I also learned you gotta have a door you can slam shut before the end of year one because you never know about those early were beasts.
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Large Wereroach

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Re: The Spires of Pain: Untimely demise
« Reply #4 on: July 21, 2019, 05:32:48 am »

Yeah I've had the same experience... On reaching the magma sea at level -150 I decided to build a small burrow down there with a nice tavern and booze/food and absolutely no separation from the main fortress. The game announcements wouldn't notify me when a character turns into a werebeast... Adversely to my intention of giving my dorfs a place to enjoy when they're forging in the depth, no dwarf ever visited that tavern but it was stuffed with a dozen or so foreigners. When I finally noticed that something was going on, it had already turned into a pool of body parts and blood with one survivor, which I luckily managed to kill without getting bitten. That was the day when I restricted my taverns to citizens only. Meanwhile I'm feeling more lucky and have allowed visitors to my central tavern again...
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