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Author Topic: Dojo (parallel challenge) - #2 - Kill Elves & Megabeasts!  (Read 6116 times)

keenerd

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge)
« Reply #15 on: September 18, 2010, 06:43:58 pm »

Some notes on double aquifer busting.

Pumping is a pain.  It can be done, but needs a lot of attention.  Constantly un-suspending, with brief flurries of tear-everything-down-and-rebuild-one-square-over.  The need to clear a large area for the second layer is murder.

Evaporation won't help you.  Aquifers only come in through the walls (linear to the size of the hole) while evaporation is based on surface area (square of the size).  In theory, make a big hole open to the sky and the center will be dry.  Not happening, even on a scorching biome where water can't exist on the surface.

Height of the fall has a lot to do with the damage.  (Duh.)  But it seems what the dwarf lands on matters too.  A single square of 7/7 water appears reasonably safe, assuming it is less than a dozen tiles to swim.

When collapsing anything, dig down to the water.  The wooden arm should drop into the water.  No part of the structure can hit land, otherwise someone is going to die.  Don't deconstruct the wooden arm.  Dig it out.  Less chance of a cloud of dust and very little chance of being sucked in.

My current time for breaking through two layers is 12th of Felsite (late spring), but this can be improved.  The arms were longer than necessary (10 units) and I dug out a lot of extra space.  Upwards ramps with water count the same as empty space with water, I think.  I did not know this and dug an unnecessary border around everything.  Biggest time waster was building an arm for the outer ring.  This should have been dug out.

Next experiment will be checking if digging/pumping the entire area is needed.  Dropping the outer ring into an O shaped trench instead, then dig/pump out the center, then drop the inner segment.

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keenerd

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge)
« Reply #16 on: September 19, 2010, 09:50:01 am »

depending on the target audience, challenges could also focus on individual aspects of the game
...
other things could include unusual embark sites without the usual resources (i.e. embarking on a frozen ocean with a few picks and food to last the first season), to learn something doesn't mean the challenge has to be hard, it just needs to be different from the stuff you usually do.

I like this.  Has the feel of a kata.  A set of short training exercises for extreme conditions would be good.

Premade forts sound frustrating.  There is too much individual expression in the layout.  On the other hand, an established fort that is on the verge of collapse would be fun.  You get to be the expensive dwarf consultant hired to fix morale.
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Tuxman

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge)
« Reply #17 on: September 20, 2010, 12:35:12 pm »

building on what shivoc said:

A challenging biome in the way that it is just that: challenging. Methinks that we all pool our ideas for a specific challenge and vote on the best one. Then we get to it.

The biggest problem is that now almost all resources are instantly avalable on all maps. With no supplies at all you still can make a functioning settlement. With supplies you can make just about any industry...

In any case, we should pool ideas that by themselves would be difficult.

I recommend the most savage evil biome there is, but still containing good resources and no aquifer. This would be very effective in training people to use the new military system (which until my last fort I basically forgo-ed).
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TurkeyXIII

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge)
« Reply #18 on: September 23, 2010, 11:28:30 pm »

So my plan was to simply extend the end condition for as long as possible - it doesn't finish until somebody dies, so as long as nobody dies I'll be able to keep going until my fort becomes wealthy of its own accord.  I started a day or two after you guys, and... well, let's say I've had some success with my plan.

17 Felsite 1051
Palisade around the camp is almost complete. Until today the only wildlife we had seen was chimps, but a tiger wandered up just now. The woodcutters it strolled past didn't seem to worried, perhaps it's friendly.

5 Malachite 1051
Between Deduk pulling turtles out of the aquifer and Nish collecting berries from the surface, we are doing well for food and drink.  Pumps are built but I don't want to dedicate dwarfpower to operating them until all the wood from clearcutting has been carried inside the palisade.

1 Limestone 1051
Pumping out and walling off the aquifer is progressing slowly.  Meanwhile we've started a surface farm and locked the palisade doors - we won't have much reason to venture outside from now on.

1 Timber 1051
Migrants arrived, but they seemed rather hesitant.  Among them was a high master mechanic, a skilled hammerdwarf and a drunk.

19 Timber 1051
Caravan from adolkol arrived, along with a swarm of chimps. The chimps didn't seem to pose a threat, but our new hammerdwarf killed one anyway. Now we'll have to build a butchery.

22 Moonstone 1051
Caravan is now on its way. We traded shell crafts, rope reed dresses and a bit of booze for things like silk, gems, raw glass and metal bars as well as a new pick.

13th Opal 1051
We're through the first layer of aquifer.  It's a large enough breach to get through one more soil layer, so I'm hoping there's stone beyond that or it will all have been for nought.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

9 Slate 1052
Migrant weaver just showed up. He came by himself for some reason; I hope he can get inside before the lions get him.

17 Hematite 1052
Just finished trading with the elves. They didn't bring much of interest, but I gave them some clothing in exchange for a tame orangutan. In other news, the aquifer breach has just been pumped out. We will have stone soon.

8 Galena 1052
Hit 2 deposits of native platinum, among assorted other precious metals. I've ordered the miners to leave it for now as I don't trust them to not damage the ore.

20 Galena 1052
Human caravan wasn't carrying anything interesting, but we gave them a couple of robes in exchange for exotic meat and cheese.

11 Sandstone 1052
Our two best miners have married, and threw a celebration in the dining hall they'd recently dug out.

20 Timber 1052
Dwarven caravan. Gave them more robes, dresses and mechanisms for iron ores and trap components.

5 Obsidian 1052
Dwarves were complaining about the lack of water source. I thought they were just being silly - we have no injured, why do we need water?  Then I noticed we had no booze left. Uh-oh.

11 Obsidian 1052
Built some barrels and brewed some strawberry wine. Crisis averted.

19 Slate 1053
Migrants again. Huge wave by comparison to the last 2 years, we're up to 39 dwarves. No notable skills among them but a lot of moderately skilled metalworkers.

15 Felsite 1053
Elven caravan brought nothing worth noting.

12 Malachite 1053
Goden Diamonddrove, a stoneworker, has gone Fey. This is our first strange mood. One schist rock and some rough brown zircons later he gets to work.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

27 Malachite 1053
Our miner couple just brought a baby girl into the world. When possible, she prefers to consume dwarven beer.

22 Limestone 1053
A forgotten beast appeared in the cavern.  An enourmous kinglet with poisonous gas. This probably means it's time to wall off the cavern and dig past it.

21 Sandstone 1053
Discovered the magma sea, it's much lower than I expected.

26 Sandstone 1053
Need to unlock the doors to chop some more wood.

4 Timber 1053
A bowyer is possessed. Throwing a bowyer's workshop together for him. He only wants logs apparently.

10 Timber 1053
The bowyer finished; it's a palm bow that menaces with spikes of palm.

19 Opal 1053
A speardwarf, who immigrated last spring with her weaver husband, just gave birth to a boy. Minutes later, a hammerdwarf from the same migrant wave had a girl.

28 Opal 1053
Another dwaven baby has graced our halls.

6 Obsidian 1053
A speardwarf withdrew from society. After claiming a craftdwarf's shop he started drawing pictures of skeletons. A bull and a mule later he began working secretly...

13 Obsidian 1053
A cow bone ring. Wonderful.

17 Obsidian 1053
Another dwaven baby, this time a girl.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

7 Slate 1054
Migrants! New population: 60.

17 Felsite 1054
Elven caravan brought nothing interesting, but we traded for some cloth and a few cages for the cage traps.

19 Felsite 1054
Atir the miner had another baby, another girl.

14 Hematite 1054
Possessed woodcrafter.  He ran around getting 3 logs, cloth and fine pewter (we still have no smelters, but we've been trading for metal bars).

21 Hematite 1054
Tun has created Tradecircles the Thin Music, a palm trumpet.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

23 Hematite 1054
A FB in the second cavern: A scaly frog with deadly blood. It should be sealed already but I'm about to double check.

4 Malachite 1054
Another migrant wave. Most with military skills and they even brought their own equipment. Excellent. Current population: 67.

15 Galena 1054
Magma smelters and furnaces are up and running with no risks to dwarven life. First order of business: nickel bins and barrels.

6 Sandstone 1054
Leatherworker is possessed. He only wanted shark leather, lay pewter and a log.

11 Sandstone 1054
The Fed Squid, a longfin mako shark leather cloak.

25 Sandstone 1054
A couple more migrants arrived. Population: 75.

22 Timber 1054
Traded with dwarven caravan, imported some $30k worth of metal bars, weapons and trap components for our dresses, robes and rock crafts.

28 Timber 1054
The mayor just forbade the export of rings.  I'm expecting he'll be upset, as some of the rock crafts the caravan is about to leave with are rings. Time to build a jail and assign a captain of the guard.

1 Opal 1054
The caravan's gone, and the mayor didn't seem to notice any wrongdoing.

12 Obsidian 1054
Clothier went secretive. The mean clouds, a pig tail fibre right mitten.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

24 Obsidian 1054
A blob of filth was spotted moving around in the third cavern. This removes the last possibility of cavern access, at least until we're willing to get into a fight.

6 Granite 1055
I just noticed some cave swallow spearmen and blowgunners on the deceased list. It looks like that blob has found the tribe of natives down there.

14 Granite 1055
The kitchen just ran out of ingredients, and the cats a breeding like... well, like cats.  I sense a solution to both problems on the horizon.

26 Granite 1055
More migrants. Among them, a strand extractor of some skill. Added to more births near the end of last year, our population is now 96.

16 Felsite 1055
The adamantine vein is exposed, but I can't dig it due to a bug in the 0.31.13 raws. Looks like my wealth will come from gems and textiles.

21 Felsite 1055
Planter was possessed.

2 Hematite 1055
The possessed planter couldn't find enough bones to sate his needs, so I ordered a few orangutans slaughtered.

21 Hematite 1055
The glacier titan Shace Flowertundras the Earthen Autumn has come! An enormous one-eyed serpent. It has thin wings of stretched skin and it emanates an aura of giving and kindness. The doors are locked, but that's not going to stop a flying titan. I've been having crash bugs associated with the military so I have only one hammerdwarf enlisted at the moment. That's about to change - but I hope they have enough time to grab some gear. First order of business: Everybody underground.

22 Hematite 1055
The serpent doesn't appear terribly interested in our fort for now, but the elves will try to leave any moment and I'll need to unlock the doors for them. The militia expanded to 19 strong, and most have picked up a few things but we don't have enough armor to go around. The smiths are trying to throw some last-minute greaves and mail shirts together.

6 Malachite 1055
The elves have been running around impatiently for some days now, and the serpent has come to hanging around the northern door. I can't wait any longer - the militia will have to make do with what equipment they have.

7 Malachite 1055
Just realised Adil the speardwarf is carrying a baby around.  She has been relieved form duty.
The serpent has destroyed the door.  Only about 10 militia dwarves are present and they still don't have all the steel armor that was just made, but it's happening now whether we want it to or not. Bomrek the hammerdwarf is charging in with her baby still on her arm - I will do what I can to order her retreat.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

12 pages of battle reports later, the serpent is dead - some underequipped marksdwarves saw fit to let fly with the punches, but despite the lack of preparedness our only injury was a speardwarf with a superficial bite wound to the hand.

5 Galena 1055
If Shace taught us anything, it's that the doors in our palisade wall are inadequate to keep such beasts away. Construction on a larger, stronger stone block wall is underway.

9 Moonstone 1055
The Gabbro block wall is now high enough to pull apart the inner wooden wall. Trading with the dwarves yielded enough iron ores to work on steel armor again, meanwhile a planter/metalcrafter has gone secretive.

4 Opal 1055
Ral has created The Gloved Sanctum, a copper harp!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1 Granite 1056
The prison and hospital were both completed a month or two ago, but both remain unused for the moment. Recent births have brought our population to 101.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So 5 years later and still no deaths.  It turns out this embark has neither goblins nor kobolds, and the only unnamed cavern civ was taken out by an FB before I gathered the courage to meet them.  The only dangers I forsee are from titans and ettins etc at surface level (one so far, no fatalities), and construction mistakes causing cave-ins (none so far).  Apart from that I'll keep going until somebody dies of old age.
I honestly don't know how you guys managed to die so fast.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2010, 11:37:12 pm by TurkeyXIII »
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keenerd

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge) - #2 - Kill Elves!
« Reply #19 on: October 01, 2010, 03:51:25 pm »

Good job TurkeyXIII!  I am more than a little curious about how you did the pumping.  I spent a year on that without luck.

Another weekend, another challenge.  Since the goblins have lost the fighting spirit, we'll be picking a fight this time around.

Challenge 2: dead elves and megabeasts within five years
31.14 download
Does not matter who or what kills them, just tally up the number from your units screen.  When the fifth year of the game concludes, save and quit.

Same horrible embark gear as last time.  Took long enough looking for a random site near elves.  (Or even a world with elves in it at all, humans are vicious.)
« Last Edit: October 02, 2010, 01:52:23 pm by keenerd »
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keenerd

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge) - #2 - Kill Elves!
« Reply #20 on: October 01, 2010, 05:49:59 pm »

[reserved for writeup]

Spring 251
Time is short.  We must become a machine of war as quickly as possible.  The miner has been instructed to dig for magma, ignoring everything else.  Today, the 18th of Granite, she has come through.  The third cavern has a magma pool!  We can begin building the fortress proper.

Summer 251
Three migrants have arrived.  One is a furnace operator.  He should be useful soon.  A Trap Depot was set up on the surface, to lure foolish Elves into our land.

Autumn 251
Three more migrants, two with some military skill.  We begin training immediately.  The first magma smelter is running.  The miner thinks it might be possible to run a shaft clear down from the surface to the fortress proper without hitting any caverns.  Bringing the sky down to the magma seems like blasphemy, but it would make moving caged elves and ore much simpler.

Winter 251
Traders from the mountain home arrived.  Nothing to do with them.  All we want are more migrants and more elves.  Before you ask, yes I am in perfect health and no I have not been drinking the muddy water.  Everything has been moved down to the magma, except for the ore face.  The 100z drop shaft should speed up ore processing.  Iron production is underway, and steel will begin once the smith learns how to not hammer his fingers.  State of the fort at the end of Year 1:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
No dead elves.

Spring 252
A big migration, 22 beards strong!  Anyone who claimed fighting skill was drafted, bringing the military up to 10 members.  There was also a skilled armorsmith in the lot, now hammering out iron maile.  Three more smelters have been added to keep up.  Just as spring was ending, two Elves arrived. 

Summer 252
Somehow the clever ears managed to be thrown across a chasm to safety instead of falling 10z to their doom.  They escaped before the stairs could be blocked.  Shortly afterwards a peasant recruit became very secretive.  17 bones and a piece of leather later, he has promoted himself to a lifetime of crafting masterwork bone bolts.  Cross training everyone else in weapon or armor smithing begins now.

Autumn, Winter 252
Very little happened.  Dwarven traders appeared, kolbold theives fled the scene.  Many junky weapons by smiths-in-training were sold off.

Spring 253
18 more migrants, 11 of them conscripts.  One flashed a bunch of fancy papers from the mountainhome, demanding to be Chief of Medicine.  The armorsmith went moody and made a rather nice gauntlet.  His new found skill has granted him access to our limited steel supplies.  Two elves had arrived and the Trap Depot performed correctly this time.

Summer 253
Another quiet season, mostly used for steel production and military training.  Coal is the current bottleneck.

Autumn 253
Our first Beast has entered the caverns, a scarlet falcon with antenna and webs.  It will be taken care of later, there are goblin ambushers to deal with immediately!  All of whom were promptly dispatched, though one hammerdwarf lost a tooth and got an eye poked in the melee.

Winter 253
The goblins have been a little upset about their missing master theives and sent a real raiding party.  Two lessons learned - hammers are no match for pikes.  Masterpiece steel armor is no match for iron pikes.  With sixteen of our twenty warriors dead, can we still take on the elves?  Access to the surface has been cut off, much to the dismay of a few haulers, a hammerdwarf (now dead and dismayed) and the secondary miner.  May Armok find joy in their slaughter.

Spring 254
The vocational weaponsmith training nearly paid off, but the moody dwarf did not learn anything.  Crossbow training is about to begin, two years too late.  The small number of troops are still green and were in no way ready enough to help the migrants who just arrived.  Surface depopulated, the remaining goblins left.  Three elf traders arrived and were dealt with.  Access to the surface has been opened, to bury our dead and reclaim a large amount of masterwork steel.

And then it was over run by goblin, bow and axe.

5 elves, no megabeasts.  Threw everything into arms manufacturing and training, but spent nothing on defensive building.  Poor choice there.  (And even then, the training amounted to nearly nothing.)  I did manage to produce an absurd amount of masterpiece steel armor though, so at least the workshop layout was decent.  The basic design from year 1 was continued downward as more space was needed.  A wing was added for a closer trap depot and for an archery range, otherwise it was very much a cube.

Next map will be 2x2, this one was very slow to play.

« Last Edit: October 14, 2010, 07:05:37 pm by keenerd »
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TurkeyXIII

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge) - #2 - Kill Elves!
« Reply #21 on: October 02, 2010, 08:26:04 am »

Good job TurkeyXIII!  I am more than a little curious about how you did the pumping.  I spent a year on that without luck
First layer was channelled out an 8 x 8 area, with extra channels 2 tiles away for pumping into.  Manually operate 2 pumps at a time (one where the wall will be built, second where the builder will stand) and build a wooden wall 1 tile at a time all the way around.

Second layer was the 6 x 6 area within the wall, but the whole thing wasn't channelled out: a tile near each corner remained intact for sinking the pumped water.  Lots of constructed floors to build pumps on, wooden grates for accessing tight areas, and a crapton of job cancellation spam later, the 6x6 wall was built and it was just a matter of channelling out the last 4 tiles and stacking 2 pumps to get the water out.

It still took over a year to get through, but there was little danger because the wall around my embark kept the animals at bay and I had enough above-ground farming to survive, and even trade.  I didn't get any moods until Malachite 1053.


Do elves siege in the new versions?
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DuckThatQuacks

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge) - #2 - Kill Elves!
« Reply #22 on: October 02, 2010, 11:19:22 am »

Do elves siege in the new versions?

It looks like invaders of any kind are bugged in .14. So for now, I doubt we can kill more than eight elves in five years (2 in each caravan, with a caravan coming every year after the first). I guess I'll turn this into a megabeast-slaying fort instead.
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keenerd

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge) - #2 - Kill Elves!
« Reply #23 on: October 02, 2010, 01:51:32 pm »

Do elves siege in the new versions?

It looks like invaders of any kind are bugged in .14. So for now, I doubt we can kill more than eight elves in five years (2 in each caravan, with a caravan coming every year after the first). I guess I'll turn this into a megabeast-slaying fort instead.

Aww, nuts.  And here I was thinking I was being clever with elves.  If no one minds, I am ammending this challenge.  And borrowing your idea.

Elves + Megabeasts!

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DuckThatQuacks

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge) - #2 - Kill Elves & Megabeasts!
« Reply #24 on: October 02, 2010, 03:46:44 pm »

Well, I do have some mildly good news: it looks like the elven caravan sometimes comes with more than two elves (five just showed up to my fortress). Still, no elven sieges -- we're stuck murdering their traders.

Edit: For improved punctuation.
« Last Edit: October 02, 2010, 05:14:50 pm by DuckThatQuacks »
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keenerd

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge) - #2 - Kill Elves & Megabeasts!
« Reply #25 on: October 03, 2010, 05:54:54 pm »

New version fixes invasions and works with old saves!  Yay!  I'll be upgrading my existing game, but if anyone wants to restart (technically against the "rules") I would not hold it against you.  But do tell us if you do so.
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DuckThatQuacks

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge) - #2 - Kill Elves & Megabeasts!
« Reply #26 on: October 03, 2010, 06:02:56 pm »

I'm pretty far into the five years, so I'll restart my save.
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barconis

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Re: Dojo (parallel challenge) - #2 - Kill Elves & Megabeasts!
« Reply #27 on: October 04, 2010, 03:09:48 pm »

[reserved for my entry]
 Got a late start due to weekend commitments, but I can start with .16 and not lose anything.
Halfway through the first year, very uneventful. Need elves to kill.
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