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[Gergination]

For me, this hasn't really ever been a game about strict survival.  I'm all about creating something wonderfully ambitious within a semi-dangerous world and just watching my dorfs develop.

Course, it never hurts to have some elaborate trap involving magma, ice, spikes, bridges, etc to kill off the beasties.

[Alastar]

Any form of fort-wide roleplaying really.

Obsessive engineers: The solution to every problem has to be technically sweet and powerful. Don't build a drowning trap at the front, build a grand unified variable-pressure plumbing system that can selectively flood and drain any part of your fort with either fluid. Don't just have food animals, have a fully automated meat industry that drops things neatly where they can be processed at a controllable rate. Avoid easy-and-good-enough solutions, especially those that work despite technical weaknesses becaus they exploit quirks like predictable pathfinding.
Maybe add arrogance to the mix: 'Our engineering is too awesome to need a failsafe'. From my experience, complex things will eventually go wrong.

Bearded ElvesSavages: No mining, no metalworking, nothing that relies on moving parts (doors may be ok, locking them probably isn't).

You're in the army now: Everyone is in the military for most of the time. No decadent luxuries, and miscreants will be punished rather than coddled.

...

In the end, it hardly matters. Push hard enough for something you want, and all the small things that could have been taken care of with safe play are likely to turn into a proper challenge.

[Darkweave]

No matter what I always avoid:

• Under-ground farming
• Sealing up my fortress
• Bringing food and drink on embark
• Danger rooms
• Sealing up the caverns
• Using standard traps for defence, especially cage traps

I find not doing the above makes the game a lot more interesting survival-wise. I also tend to make very large sprawling forts rather than small efficient cubes, I find it makes my forts feel my dwarfy and multiple entrances make attacks and the subsequent defence attempts more Fun. I will occasionally use a few cage traps but only if I want to capture prisoners for a labyrinth or arena.

[dennislp3]

I do the general things that make the most sense to me. I start by changing it around so I am humans instead of dwarves in the INI.

Then I do:
No digging or no digging past a certain level (until I do a dedicated tunneling project to find HFS)
Everything hand crafted from self made or imported goods (IE no trading of finished goods only raw materials when importing)
Workers follow a profession (no one worker does only one job with the exception of some like miners but instead have related jobs)
Every building made of blocks with the exception of wooden log houses
Every building has floors made of blocks
All constructions are made from uniform materials (unless aesthetically required)
All buildings must be made realistically (IE don't make a steel house or use materials that make no sense like orthoclase walls)
All buildings are built on the surface (with the exception of cellars and some underground storage in rooms no larger than 5 x 5)
No exploits like traps, danger rooms, locked doors etc.
Low population limit (enforces growth by natural birth and helps avoid FPS death)
All Military is trained through a drill instructor (IE the most veteran soldier runs a squad dedicated to training)
All Military has uniform equipment and until uniform equipment is achieved they are not battle ready
All Military squads are either specialized or generalized (IE a spear squad, sword squad etc OR all squads contain each weapon)
All raids/sieges must be fought
No underground farms and above ground farms are small plots that are planted in 1x10 strips with one space between strips
All farm grounds must be "cleared" before use (IE channel down one level)
Farms in Fallow mode for half the year (to help simulate yearly fallow needs as well as practicing crop rotations)
With the exception of some vegetables and fruits ALL food must be prepared as a meal before consumption
No trading of finished meals (only raw goods)
Proper and uniform grave site that is represented above ground. IE the bodies may be one layer under but there must be mounds or markers for each death. Separate the graveyard into separate sections even for soldiers, workers, and nobles.
Accommodate for population based needs (IE leave no noble positions empty and make a jail or other supporting structure as soon as its available)

I also try and build a castle and town separate. The town is usually outside the stone (block) walls of the castle and almost always only has wooden palisade walls (IE can not be walked on and is made of wooden logs)

TL;DR version

Build/run things realistically and don't use exploits using the "Human" challenge as a base
http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Challenges#Races

I love the little dwarfs and what not but living in a cave is WAY to easy

with this rule set I have found that it extends my game a great deal because I am not invincible in about 30 minutes or less...cause for me invincibility on command is the biggest game breaker for me (in any game)...and I am a big medieval buff that prefers realism

[Darkweave]

I like a fair few of those rules dennislp3, I think I may have to steal some, especially only growing crops for a few months a year. I haven't really thought about it until now but I guess it makes it slightly more challenging that I do often try to make myself use more sensible stones for constructions and goods just because it feels more realistic, like restricting myself to basalt or marble being the only stones not set to economic. I also fill all of the noble positions as soon as they are available and like to make large elaborate jails with moats and steel bars. All of my dwarfs get a cabinet and chest in a 3x3 smoothed bedroom and the military guys also get weapon and armor racks. There's no way I'd convert to living above ground but I do make multiple entrances and tend to have huge 5-6 Z high 80*80 grand halls that are smoothed on every z level, I usually end up with about 20 miners/engravers constantly working.


My dream is to one day replicate this:

http://www.rpg-ash.me.uk/lotro/moria_special_edition/moria_map.jpg

[dennislp3]

Wonder if you could find a more detailed map of Moria...granted that one looks pretty awesome...that would be a hell of a project!

[Darkweave]

Wonder if you could find a more detailed map of Moria...granted that one looks pretty awesome...that would be a hell of a project!

That's the most detailed map I've been able to find after a LOT of searching. It seems to have only sprung up fairly recently. I imagine making it to a fairly decent scale would exceed both Undergrotto and Flarechannel combined in scale and complexity. Maybe when we have quantum computers at home and can handle a 1000-strong fortress at more than 30 FPS.  Dwarf Fortress might have been released as a mostly completed product by then.

[dennislp3]

true perhaps...but I know for myself with just multi cores support would be able to run 3x what I run now (as I have 4 cores) which isn't to far from 1k if I can pull around 200+ with one core (under good circumstances)

[Darkweave]

true perhaps...but I know for myself with just multi cores support would be able to run 3x what I run now (as I have 4 cores) which isn't to far from 1k if I can pull around 200+ with one core (under good circumstances)

I think for a fortress of that scale you'd be needing a 16x16 embark, which certainly aren't good circumstances! 

[dennislp3]

ha true enough...also wanted to add a major (in my mind) requirement for difficulty

varied food sources

I usually do varied food sources under the requirements of at least one source of meat, 3 sources of fruits/veggies, and at least 3 types of booze AND water

[Darkweave]

ha true enough...also wanted to add a major (in my mind) requirement for difficulty

varied food sources

I usually do varied food sources under the requirements of at least one source of meat, 3 sources of fruits/veggies, and at least 3 types of booze AND water

Yeh I usually try and do something quite similar, 5-6 outdoor crops, 2-3 of which are alcohol only and 1 for cloth and usually livestock for meat and cheese. I don't usually bother with eggs, until we have to feed birds they are an absurdly easy food source.

[dennislp3]

you could give them a grazer tag...I am sure you could also manage to make then lay less eggs in the RAWs

[stabbymcstabstab]

they wont be that much harder if you need to feed them insects and a little bit of grass is enough i own chickens and a few ducks but its WATERING that is the real bass you need warm water all year along warm because then it wont freeze

[RAKninja]

another added challenge is "goblin fortress"

add the [CIV_CONTROLLABLE] tag to goblins, and embark.  i thought it was going to be just like dwarves... boy was i wrong.

[Jelle]

As an added difficulty, or just because I don't like the game feature that much, I never ever touch the blue stuff.

It's just ludicrously effective and processing it is rather easy and can be done on large scale, so  the only real problem in using candy is stumbling on the circus, wich can also be avoided. There's so much of the damn stuff usually to.

Anyway, I always  think of steel as the one dwarven material. I mean it's already a huge boon for your civ to be able to produce steel and it's a pretty damn good material. Adding another material a few magnitudes better then the dwarves already improved metallurgy seems overkill.

If it were so rare and hard to process you could only make a handful of candy items it'd perhaps make for some good stories, but seeing a bunch of dwarves running around with godlike equipment slaughtering everything, while funny at first, makes for a horrible story. I want to see mortal struggle!