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[Knight Otu]

Huh. I actually hate that the game doesn't auto-pause in the squad menu. Maybe it would be more tolerable in the other menus where you view the map, but if you need squads, you don't want to find your targets to have slaughtered you fortress by the time you've chosen them.

[monk12]

BTW, why do people prefer 40d? Just because you can embark on top of site of other races and adventure mode has more different kind of cities?

Nostalgia.

beastmaster

Lack of bugs, maybe.

People bring up lack of bugs a lot, but really, 40d was just as buggy as the more recent versions- we were just accustomed to working around them, so they didn't feel like bugs.

[Fieari]

I don't miss 40d.  There was practically nothing to DO in 40d.  If I want to play with legos, I play with legos, not df. (I don't really want to play with legos)

Me, I miss the challenges of 23a!  Surviving your first winter was an actual thing back then!  It was a necessity to open yourself up to danger simply by building!  No walling off your enemies!  Sure, you could make a trap corridor, but EVEN THEN frogmen could jump up onto your bridges and tackle your dwarves into the underground river.  EVEN THEN batmen could blowgun snipe dwarves into the pits.

There were constant challenges, and they could be met.  Granted, there were tricks you could learn to save yourself from them very easily, but they were TRICKS, and thus tricky to perform/understand.  Compare a 23a steam-cannon to... well, simply building a wall to permanently block off all enemies.  Compare training up an army of guard dogs to... having a front door.

I've taken to enjoying adventure mode due to the challenge there, but I likely won't be back to dwarf mode until enemies can dig their way straight into your dining hall. That said, the anticipation for the next release with night creatures has me thrilled!

[Neonivek]

I likely won't be back to dwarf mode until enemies can dig their way straight into your dining hall

You would be surprised how controvercial that is. Even if the enemies don't leave pernament tunnels there are quite a bit of people who absolutely dislike the idea of digging enemies.

[MaskedMiner]

Hmm, yeah, with those kind of enemies, you would never be safe o-o Though I understand what you mean, game can get boring if you have created perfect trapzone/sealed yourself in cave with food and drinks/etc, good thing that I don't know how to do anyone of those things correctly xD

[Untelligent]

Generally whenever there's an idea that's just controversial enough that the possibility of it making into the game exists but there's still a bunch of people who'd hate it, the general proposed solution is to make it an init option. Everyone happy.

[Dradym]

to do digging enemies right, it would either have to be very rare, or have some sort of reliable defense for it. im not against the idea, but it needs to be balanced in some way so that "onoz its an army of burrowing badgers, were doomed" doesnt happen every time.

prolly a better idea is subterranean bad guys dig under the fort, and not into it, and cause cave-ins.

[tfaal]

The problem is that this game has far too many reliable defenses already. There is no confrontation that cannot be averted by simply building a wall, and indeed, no confrontation that it would be prudent not to build a wall around. It is generally bad practice for a game to encourage its users to do boring things, and this is in my mind the critical flaw of fortress mode. Excitement must be thrust upon the player or made attractive to the player. Otherwise, the player does not feel challenged. Burrowing enemies are a good means of thrusting excitement on the player, and a civilization style campaign mode is a good way of making it attractive. Between these two, I think we've got a good shot of making fortress mode fun.

[Johuotar]

Sounds pretty bleak when People like the first versions of the game rather than the newest which have been seen countless amounts more work to do. So 0.23 didn't have constructable walls?

[Neonivek]

Basically what Toady said is without digging there is no reasonable way for a race to successfully attack a Dwarven settlement without the ability to dig.

A Fortress can reasonably feed a population of five times its own, it has no fortifications to really care about, they can dig and build like the wind, and its soldiers are super powerful.

[G-Flex]

The problem is not only that defense is reliable. Think about actual medieval sieges: The purpose was often not to actively take over the settlement/castle/whatever, but to starve them out, preventing supplies from reaching them.

The issue with dwarven fortresses is that they're completely self-sufficient. Dwarves can farm without using any resources, any significant area of land, or even any recognizable source of energy. In fact, their farming is better and faster than above-ground farming. They don't even need a source of water for most purposes. They can, using a space about the size of a dining hall, secure enough food, clothing material, and drink to survive quite well and easily. They can also raise many animals as livestock; they can even raise grazing animals if a bit of underground pasture is secured, and dogs give more meat than cows anyway (I'm not kidding).

Realistically, an underground settlement should be much less self-sufficient than a real-life human castle, yet it is currently much more so.

[Neonivek]

Plus don't forget that rivers are extremely efficiant as well. Even if water became a requirement an underground river or simple a diverted river can supply your fortress pretty much forever with no concequences.

Which is kinda what makes Dwarven Fortresses different then real life ones. Castles in real life specialised. Dwarf Fortresses do everything... They are basically like city centers producing tons of goods.

Though to admit... Unlike Castles/Forts in real life and heck even in the game (outside of war outposts) Dwarf Fortresses are not supported by surrounding infrastructure. They don't sport a "surrounding country side" they have no towns, cities, or anything except forts.

Dwarf Fortresses are living cities. The Mary Sues of Castles (joke)

[nil]

Realistically, an underground settlement should be much less self-sufficient than a real-life human castle, yet it is currently much more so.

With the caveat that access to the magic vibrant underground ecosystem should be almost as good as access to the surface.

[G-Flex]

I think it should be good in different ways. There's no reason why the underground has to be a carbon-copy of the aboveground with different flavor text, but it is.

Above-ground, you have plants and grass and farming and trees. Below-ground, you have underground plants and underground grass and underground farming and underground trees.

I don't understand why dwarves need an underground stand-in for everything that exists above-ground, but this is getting more and more true as development continues. At this rate, there will end up being nothing special about the underground at all; it'll just be a weirder version of the above-ground world. I'd rather have meaningful distinctions between them. Why shouldn't underground farming work differently (and probably less well), and why should underground towering mushrooms serve exactly the same function as trees? Why am I able to burn giant mushrooms to lye-bearing ash, and why should cows be just fine grazing on fungus? In my opinion, it makes the underground a lot less special when it's given an "underground version" of all the normal stuff, because then it's less distinct. I'd rather see things developed for the underground that are actually unique to it, and not just perfect substitutes for the things above the surface.

[Roflcopter5000]

Meh, I feel that most of these issues can be resolved by giving opposing armies siege equipment.
Frankly, the idea of waiting out a siege, as a player, is dull. There is no way that would be an enjoyable experience.
Actively fighting off enemies that can breach your defenses, however, would be interesting.
Actively fighting off enemies that can breach your defenses arbitrarily, such as through digging, not interesting. Honestly, random hostile civs busting into my dining hall without warning would completely kill my desire to play the game. Perhaps the ability to dig through soil-layers, but honestly, the amount of effort it may take to code an AI that could implement that strategy might be prohibitive.

The whole 'self-sufficiency' aspect of dwarven fortresses is a little cheese-ball, but then again, this is sort of supposed to be what makes the dwarves special. Dwarves make the best fortresses, fortresses that are supernaturally good. Goblins don't have to eat, Elves live forever, and Dwarves can create a self-sustaining settlement in an incredibly cramped subterranean space. It's their thing.

As far as the unique nature of the caverns goes... I think that it should be less about a mirror image of the above-ground world, and more about work-able alternatives that accomplish the same end. Like you -should- be able to have grazing beasts in the caverns... But maybe not cows. Maybe giant worms, or something. And perhaps there is a harvest-able moss that you burn or treat to make lye, etc. A player shouldn't be limited by a choice to rely solely on the caverns, in short.