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Author Topic: Stupid dwarves :\  (Read 780 times)

Virtz

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Stupid dwarves :\
« on: August 09, 2006, 12:41:00 pm »

Besides rather bad luck, like elephants right outside my fortress, I've been having constant troubles with the AI. Besides their terrible priorities, like building a road instead of a well during winter or going by a 10 mile longer path to the river, they seem to always go right into the bunch of animals nearby.

This has been happening to me rather regularly lately, they grab some food and head to the upper-left corner of the map (where usually the regional animals run around). I even tried forbidding them from wandering outside and gathering food, but they don't respond to that at all and manage to get themselves killed. Oh, and their function during the trip is "eat". Perhaps a mess hall would help here?

And I would be greatful for some hints on how to gain food. Animals miraculously avoid my traps, the river is always fishless, farming is hazardous due to lizardmen and I'm near foodless by the time the traders come.

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BeefontheBone

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Re: Stupid dwarves :\
« Reply #1 on: August 09, 2006, 01:19:00 pm »

I just had a pair of miners inexplicably wander off to the top left of the map to eat, too; they were interrupted by "combat" with the gorillas that are hanging around outside (and slaughtered my poor hunter just after we arrived  :()
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Toady One

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Re: Stupid dwarves :\
« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2006, 05:04:00 pm »

A dining room might help, but if they go to eat in the top left corner, that's indicative of their goal x/y location being mem-zapped to (0,0).  Another sinister lurking bug.

As far as food goes, butchering the horse and mule works for a short time.  Then processing raw turtles.  But eventually, farming is the way to go.  Getting defense up against invasion from the inside is important, and traps work well as you can place them in the (hopefully) few access points to the river.  Once you get the hang of floodgates and mechanisms, you can eventually set up a fortress that is virtually immune to river invasion by making a channel from the river to your farm room the only access point.  Later, you can set up a heavily trapped bridge to access the other side for more minerals.  The vet playtesters might have other ideas.

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Gedsaro

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Re: Stupid dwarves :\
« Reply #3 on: August 09, 2006, 06:05:00 pm »

I had some trouble with dwarfs going to the top left to eat to. Thing is There was actually some food up there somehow (traders that had arived and got killed by animals?). One of my dwarfs had found some cheese of some kind up in the wild there. I think that was way they were all up there cuse after that they didn't go there any more... until they decided it was time to recover the body of my carpenter who was killed by a bear when trying to eat up there.   :(
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Toady One

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Re: Stupid dwarves :\
« Reply #4 on: August 09, 2006, 06:09:00 pm »

Ah, that's good to know.  If is was cheese, then it probably was the traders.  That should help with this a bit...  although it's still quite confusing.
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Virtz

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Re: Stupid dwarves :\
« Reply #5 on: August 09, 2006, 07:24:00 pm »

Well, I've found hunting for unicorns with wooden crossbows does wonders... up until my dwarves decided to try attacking a horde of gorrilas. :\

Really wish there was some way to quickly cancel their actions or atleast tell them never to attack something. :S

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Captain Mayday

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Re: Stupid dwarves :\
« Reply #6 on: August 11, 2006, 04:28:00 am »

Yeah, I'm also experiencing the 'go to top left to eat' bug in the latest version.
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Toady One

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Re: Stupid dwarves :\
« Reply #7 on: August 11, 2006, 05:25:00 am »

Telling hunters not to be idiots and attempt melee combat with creatures while they want ammo is one of those...  important reqs.

It seems like the top left corner bug is also one of them.  I wish I had a clue about what was happening right before that does it.  This sort of thing has happened before -- basically, it'll happen any time an item is left in limbo with a cleared or fresh location of x=0,y=0 (the top left).  Items that get unhinged from containers without being grounded, and so on, will do it, but there's a lot of code to hunt through without more information.

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Virtz

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Re: Stupid dwarves :\
« Reply #8 on: August 11, 2006, 07:02:00 am »

Argh! The dwarves really need to stop fishing when the underground river is overflowing. I just lost one that way, flood swiped him into the river and either the current kept him from getting back or he was just too stupid the find a way back. :S

Well, atleast no one saw his death and got depressed...

[ August 11, 2006: Message edited by: Virtz ]

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Prospero

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Re: Stupid dwarves :\
« Reply #9 on: August 11, 2006, 11:45:00 am »

Aye, I've experienced the top-left-eating bug too, although I can't really add anything specific as to why. I hadn't set a dining room at the time though.

And I know this has been mentioned by others so I won't add anything lengthy on it - but I also agree the hunting behaviour is vaguely, er... eccentric?  :)

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Aquillion

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Re: Stupid dwarves :\
« Reply #10 on: August 11, 2006, 04:32:00 pm »

Perhaps 0,0 should be turned into an invalid location, with "ERROR:  Cancelling task, reference to invalid location 0,0" or somesuch coming up if a dwarf or item ends up getting sent to it?  Of course, then you'd have to make sure that dwarves never get legitimately sent to 0,0 or something, but that would at least keep these bugs from disrupting the game too badly while, perhaps, making it a little easier to spot when they're happening.

[ August 11, 2006: Message edited by: Aquillion ]

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Toady One

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Re: Stupid dwarves :\
« Reply #11 on: August 11, 2006, 04:51:00 pm »

That sounds like a good start on this one...  the eat job at least should never go to (0,0), and even if there were a legitimate haul job for (0,0) you probably wouldn't want to risk your life in the wilds.  I'm going to sit down with it in a little bit and see if something occurs to me, but I'll probably end up with the debug message first.
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