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Voting closed: May 25, 2020, 08:39:38 am

[LeftHandofGod]

Right. So, I'd like to plead guilty to a decent amount of the stockpile issues, on account of the fact that we ran out of wood and hematite on my turn, and I went a little nuts with mining once I got bored. So a good chunk of your issues can be traced back to my term. No idea what booze addled idiot screwed with the clothiers and food stuff, though.

[StrikaAmaru]

Right... I think I'll hold off on playing until the week-end. I did try to get some time in the evening, and I'm really not happy with how it's going, from an out-of-game perspective. It's possible to advance the fort while playing in 2-hour increments after 9 PM, but it's impossible to keep any kind of flow. Everything feels disjointed; I don't have a good handle of what's going on in the fort, of what I have done, of what I'm doing currently, and what I intend to do next.

I'll wait until Saturday & Sunday for uninterrupted gameplay starting in the morning; then I'll edit and publish during the next week.

@LeftHandofGod: Wood and hematite I can live with, it's the stockpiles for furniture, finished goods, and armor that baffle me.

I theorize somebody mis-interpreted how dwarves admire furniture, presuming just seeing a piece is enough for a good thought? But it's not enough, the furniture needs to be built, not in a stockpile. I'm also guessing some RimWorld pathing influences for the lanes cut through stockpiles? In RimWorld, walking over strewn objects / stockpiled goods adds a movement penalty, but that's not the case in DF.

[Glloyd]

I can't believe I forgot to put ramps at the bottom of the library pool! Ah well, it's more dwarfy that way I guess. As for the weird stockpiles on the crafting level, part of that is me. While I was blocking off the big room's from LeftHand's turn to save FPS, I set those up as temporary stockpiles to move all the stuff out of the massive caves. it was only meant to be temporary, which is why I walled that whole section off, but something more permanent never got set up.

[Salmeuk]

Once a fortress becomes a burden to play, it can make generating interesting story difficult. You can't really be in the moment when the only thing happening is hauling, hauling and more hauling.

I have solve this issue before by spending my entire turn just cleaning and organizing. I also once attempted to move the entire fortress to a new, clean location further down in the caverns (I believe that was Doomforests?) but that went extremely poorly as I failed to move everything, and just ended up adding to the problem.

I suggest we use DFhack autodump-destroy or some utility to clean up some of the unnecessary furniture and stone. We should also wall off all the pointless stockpiles, and while they aren't my preferred strategy, quantum stockpiles might be necessary to keep the fortress playable.

As well, the option exists to abandon or retire and start anew in the same world. We might get our named dwarves as migrants (though that could be a problem if there were suddenly two different StrikaAmaru's for example. Nothing against you I just think it might confuse the dwarves) and we could start with a fresh loaf, so to speak. Or a clean slate.

This is just some food for thought. I very much understand how tough it is to play when "everything feels disjointed." You're staring at like 8 different philosophies of fortress organization!

[Glloyd]

I did wall off all the stockpiles, so if the stuff's moved out of there, you'd be fine to lock it up. And I'd support using DFhack to clean things up, although I don't know about retiring, and I think retiring/reclaiming would create more issues than it would fix.

[StrikaAmaru]

Oh, rest easy, Salmeuk; the problem wasn't the fort, or even the stockpiles; the problem was that at 9PM I have about 2 neurons on call and they're both telling me to fuck it all and go rest. To get an idea of how far down the gutter I was: I wrote the prologue convinced the year was 191; the year is 186; the year is always displyed in the top right, too. So yeah, at that hour, I'm not really capable of supporting a complex narrative. Work is making everything even worse right now, too, because we're right before release.

SmithSoldier carries on, now that I can actually have some free mornings. I'm polishing spring and playing through summer, right now.

I did wall off all the stockpiles, so if the stuff's moved out of there, you'd be fine to lock it up. And I'd support using DFhack to clean things up, although I don't know about retiring, and I think retiring/reclaiming would create more issues than it would fix.

Walling off empty spaces will be done, but as always I have other priorities; for the summer, that would be wood, Clean commands.. don't have that much to clean in here; they'd have way more impact in SmallHands, for instance, but SmithSoldier is doing pretty well without it. "Cleanowned x"may have more impact, but given just how much tattered clothing everybody's wearing, running it would brick the workforce for a season easily. Plus, the real trick to cleanowned x is to have spare clothes for the derps to change into...

Edit: I saw the poll after posting; it's my duty to inform you the fort has a grand total of 1 (one) platinum bar, and no platinum ore. Even if we mod in platinum weapons, we can't make them through standard channels.

[StrikaAmaru]

Part 2: Spring 186
1st of Granite:


At least the fort entry has remained unchanged over the years:
 
 
4th Granite. Just as they’ve done dozens of times before, the enemy horde marched in a nearly straight line towards the fort’s main bridge. Clearly, they’re acquainted with the layout, and are always hoping to catch us unaware. This time at least, they did not, and they’re doomed to be caught in traps, or to loiter in the sun and rain waiting for us to slip, or for their provisions to dwindle.


Now that I’m sure the fort is secure, I take the time to look more closely at our provisions:



We might have enough bolts to kill every goblin in the world, right now. For crying out loud, stop making them.


We have enough wooden crafts to last us a lifetime; sufficiently many, in fact, that I’ve decided to sell some of the lesser buckets and beds, something that I hardly ever do.

But trade is still months away, and other matters are far more immediate; first and foremost, our clothing situation. Almost everybody has some form of tattered clothing, and our cloth stockpiles are not as grand as I expected.


Honestly, it’s like some overseers WANT to be punched in the face by some irate citizen.

Well. There are two things I’ll do to ameliorate the issue. Firstly, I’ll order some pants, caps and dresses from the two clothier’s shops in the caverns. By necessity, they’ll be made from silk.

 
Secondly, I’ll see what clothes we can scrounge from our many goblin prisoners. As revolting as it is to wear that junk, it’s still better than wearing tattered clothing, or nothing. For that purpose, I’ll temporarily re-enable the old goblin pile above the former Temple of Armok:


Somewhat related, there was an astonishing number of sheared fleeces strewn all over; I ask them to be piled in the animal pasture, by the farmer’s workshops, where they’ll be woven into yarn.


5th Granite. The farming area on the fort’s roof is either exposed to goblins, or at least visible to them. Farmers are interrupted constantly by the goblin and troll troops passing above; I think roots leave some odd visibility opportunities - though thankfully so far our enemies haven’t been able to shoot inside. Regardless, the farm is going to be closed, and moved lower down, by the animals pasture; this has the added benefit of shortening the distance between farm and stockpiles.


… No, this is far worse: a hole in the roof lets a goblin in; you can see the offending aperture at the upper-left of that discarded piece of clothing. All available military forces are called to kill the bow-goblin:
 

On second thought, I’m not sure any farming is going to be needed for the next ten years or so - our plant stockpile is extremely well appointed, and that’s not counting any plants stuck in improper stockpiles.

While all this chicanery is going on, I do my best to isolate the compromised farming level from the rest of the fort. This involved tearing down 4 up-stairs, setting a wall in their place, and then cutting a new set of stairs, for this level only:
   
 
I take this opportunity to check for unconstructed coffins, find we have none, and chain up 30 olivine coffins. This brings me to the current standing production orders:


Several orders will be deleted. We have no wood for cages (and this only emphasizes the need for a wood dumping session on the surface). Ditto for wooden bins. Wooden barrels, we have plenty already. Lavish meals are best controlled with stockpile designation, in my opinion, and they already number over a thousand.

11th Granite. A rabbit is dying of hunger; turns out several animals were not placed in the pasture, including two rabbits and one alpaca. I throw in the fort’s only pig as well. Now that I think about it, I should also throw in a pasture for the dogs; they’ll be easier to train, and it would certainly be appreciated if they stop meandering all over the fort.

14th Granite While revising our animals, an interesting phenomenon has been revealed:


Despite all guidelines, a large number of wild animals have been marked for slaughter. Butchers have quietly ignored these orders, probably because they aren’t stupid enough to try and handle wild beasts without any training. I’ll leave all butchering orders as they are, but I’ll also see which of these beasts can be tamed, before slaughter. We could use some more meat.







17th Granite. Two visitors arrive, in quick succession; now, in the middle of this siege. How awkward. We wish them the best, up on the surface, and disable all our locations for outsiders.


Already too late for Papos, though:


20th Galena. While issuing orders for web collection, I’m reminded of this silly thing:


That lever has 26 mechanisms attached to it. I have noticed it in my previous rule, but I couldn’t figure out its purpose, so I ignored it. Since then, I pieced together what this unlabeled lever was built to do: to open a whole bunch of cages on the level below this one. All the goblins and beak dogs that had swam into the cavern lake have been released from here. Nowadays, it’s useless, and I order it deconstructed.

3rd Slate


Right as I order the military to station around Cerol, the problem proceeds to resolve itself:




The departed was the single most stressed out dwarf in the fortress; the runner-up, and, I guess, current champion, is a papermaker named Kol, who’s already been imprisoned for disorderly behavior.


This pushes me into a resolution - I can no longer postpone anything that might reduce stress and increase happiness. This means both improving the tavern, and improving (even more) the clothing situation.

With apologies to my predecessor, the tavern needs the gold blocks much more than a random hallway:



10th Slate Unforbidding the goblin clothing from the dump pile has given immediate results: gloves, socks, tunics, shirts, sandals and likely other items that I couldn’t even see, have been picked up by needy dwarves.


13th Slate  The first cavern layer is a bit less safe:


Or possibly a bit more safe, if my guess is right and will pick a fight with the other inhabitant of that cavern, Ib Thollorbam. Here’s hoping they manage to kill each other.


But so far, neither is in any sort of a hurry; it doesn’t help they’re separated by the lake in the middle of the cave.

20th This time, the third cavern gets to see a forgotten beast.


This may cause problems for my plans in the third cavern layer.



I am sick and tired of not having enough coal. In theory, I could get trees, but I need only look above to see how much of a pain the surface can be. Magma will resolve my fuel requirements, meaning the only coal we’ll ever need is for smelting steel. This project was floating at the edge of my desires for a long time, and I can finally justify it to myself.

22nd Slate. Interesting. This stockpile was supposed to hold only booze; quite understandable, considering the dining hall nearby. But, for some reason, it ended up with barrels full of raw eggs and seeds.


1st Felsite. As the last month of spring begins, our last of the miserable dwarves goes berserk in the middle of a guildhall… and promptly gets killed.


14th Felsite, And our doctor Iton follows; luckily for the rest of the fort, he was already in the clink for his previous tantrums and vandalisms.


19th Felsite: the ghost of a recruit has risen. Nobody knows for sure when, but he’s been seen fading in and out of walls in the clothing area. This is a bad time to find out we have no slabs.

[lukerules117]

Still reading through the thread so my knowledge of the fort is a bit out of date, but what exactly was done in order to make the Temple of Armok work? I'm trying to set up something similar in my fort but when I tried with the hatch forbidden none of my dwarves would attempt to pit the cat I used as a test dummy, what am I missing?

Edit: Nevermind, I tried again and they actually did it.

[recon1o6]

I suppose that's one way to remove the fort's stressful population

very good write up!

[StrikaAmaru]

Alright! I've played until mid-winter, and several amazing things have happened (well, I think they're amazing ). I'm going to post summer soon after; it's the most boring season so far. I'd like to not close the year until after autumn is posted, too - I already let play get way ahead of post.

Still reading through the thread so my knowledge of the fort is a bit out of date, but what exactly was done in order to make the Temple of Armok work? [...]

Friggin' voo-doo, man. Dumping hostiles through trap doors is hit-and-miss, sometimes it works fine, sometimes the dumping dwarves get scared by goblins/trolls/beak-dogs, and flee. It's sufficiently annoying that, in my private play-through, I just converted the pond into a standard pasture (*), stationed & locked all the army in, then released one squad so they can act as cage-unlockers. Then the rest of the military would immediately attack the hostile, and that's that.

It's one of the better ways to train marksdwarves, just don't forget to lock the doors.

(*) Btw, if the cage stockpile and the pasture overlap, nobody will remove anything from the cage - they consider the critter already pastured.

I suppose that's one way to remove the fort's stressful population

very good write up!

They're removing themselves, I have nothing to do with it!

Okay, I did convict every criminal I could find, which I'm sure didn't help improve their moods. But now most of them are going berserk while in chains, not in the middle of the civilian population.

Thank you for the compliment! I'm trying to keep it a bit shorter, no more 19-part extravaganza. I'm aiming for 5 (prologue & 4 seasons, and it seems I'll keep to it. Spring was the longest, summer will definitely be the shortest, and autumn & winter will come as they will

[StrikaAmaru]

Part 3: Summer. We Got Wood

1st of Hematite. Summer begins, the siege is lifted, and we can, once again, walk on the surface without risking death.

Since the fort doesn’t have any flurry of tasks at this moment, I plan to drop the bridge now, before the caravan arrives, and see what items can be hauled in; presumably corpses more than any. This reminds me: I should disable automatic dumping for the atom smasher, to preserve any animal corpses for butchering, and any of our own dead. Obviously, those need to be buried, not obliterated like garbage.

On second consideration, I’ll wait a few days. If there’s a second siege coming in to replace the spring one, there’s no need to rush right into it.

2nd Hematite.


Rorec is in prison; his mental break harms no-one. He joins the ranks of the doomed in peace, alongside our doctor Iton, also in berserker rage, and human recruit Zotho RespectRelieved, who’s been staring off into space for a while.


10th. On one hand, I’m reasonably sure we have no pending siege. On the other hand, we’re sufficiently close to the human caravan’s arrival that I don’t want to occupy the majority of the fort’s hands. The gate will stay closed, but a blanket order is issued, to reclaim everything on the surface.

12th. One more thing:


This floor is almost good. I intend to make it actually good. But before I can start, let’s kill off the single surviving axe-goblin, and clean the place a bit.

14th Hematite. Monom is quite insistent I go with him for a while. He asks me about one of the complaints of disorderly conduct, that I filed years ago. Unfortunately, I genuinely don’t remember much of anything, and I tell him as much.


16th The caravan arrives, and so does a guild representative named Astri. The bridge will be dropped, but dwarves are limited to the interior of the fort; we can all haul and cut wood after the depot is stocked.

20th. Discussing with Astri delivers me the single best news I have received in… years, if I’m honest.

The humans sell grizzly bears.

I order as many as they can bring. They’ll be ridiculously expensive, but they’ll be definitely worth it.

They haven’t actually brought any grizzlies with them, and the only animal they have that I’m interested in is one lousy cat. I sell our low-quality furniture and leather armor from goblins and I get for every bar they have, human-sized clothing, and all bags of sand on-sale. We don’t have any sand deposits, so trade is the only source of it. I’ll also buy every book they have, in exchange for rags in the bins with finished goods.

While we’re on the subject, there is one point I must bring up to any prospective overseer, about general stockpiles with finished goods, or even about clothing stockpiles in general: the bins within them end up looking like this:



I’ve picked through them while trading, and got rid of some worn clothing; but by no means all of it. I wish I could just ask people to make a stockpile for tattered clothes, but so far that is still not possible; one dwarf’s trash is another dwarf’s treasure, I suppose, or at least that’s my best guess to whatever twisted logic drives my peers some days.

(ooc: I learned pretty quickly to never ever make clothing stockpiles with bins in them; as far as I know, there’s no way to separate them properly, even with cleanowned scattered x).

16th Malachite. One project is advancing at a brisk pace. Then again, it’s a small project.


All upright spikes were made with 10 weapons in them; the top two have spears, the rest have menacing spikes. All included weaons are of excellent or masterwork quality; we definitely had plenty. I’m looking forward to seeing enemies drop on them.

The lever controlling the kimberlite bridge was built nearby, in a convenient alcove resulting from digging a gem cluster:

 
17th Malachite. Mechanics have reset all cage traps they could; now they’re telling me they have no available cages. Until I can free some through bloody means, there are several old discarded traps which can be dismantled:

 
19th So turns out part of why we still had empty rooms in the new dormitories is that the old dormitories are in use:


The five most distant rooms on every row get unassigned. I know we still have free rooms, and if there will be need for even more, we can always expand them.

24th. Our mayor forbade the export of bracelets; now, a month after we traded and two weeks after the merchants have packed to leave. If anybody gets condemned for this, I refuse to carry out the order.

26th Malachite. Nobody has done anything in the tower, because a door was locked:


Now that it isn’t, farmers rush to plant the outdoor crops for summer - meaning hemp for clothing, and if we had rope reed seeds, we’d put those in the ground as well. There isn’t a single one in this fort, so either they’ve been destroyed, or they’re still trapped in unprocessed rope reeds in the plant layer. Ah well.

27th Malachite. At long last, all the corpse picking and bolt binning and cage loading has been done. With barely a month until autumn comes (and with it, a new potential goblin siege) I take extreme actions when it comes to gathering logs. Firstly, I give up on cutting my own - there are a lot of logs already cut down about 50-70 tiles east of the gate. I’ll make a dumping zone right inside the main bridge, and let outdoor materials gather there. We’ll sort them out later.

7th Galena There’s a copse of big old trees right in front of our gate; if we have any brains, we’ll cut these ones, and not haul wood from one hundred tiles away. This has some unfortunate implications about our overall intelligence - it didn’t occur to any of us until the last month of summer. (More damningly, it didn’t occur to me; I genuinely thought I’m better than this). Either way, all trees are marked for cutting, and we’ll get what we can in the remaining three weeks.


8th We have a casualty of the wood-cutting operations: the other Mosus in the fort dies instantly, on account of falling logs.


He was appointed dungeon master for a season, maybe less, and never got to do anything with the position. I didn’t even get around to assigning him rooms…

27th Galena. On the brink of Autumn, almost all the logs on a 30-tile radius of the entrance have been hauled indoors; that’s in addition to all the logs off to the east. Besides that, all surface corpses were moved indoors, and processed in accordance to their type: our dead were buried, goblins were dumped in the atom smasher, and animal corpses were either butchered, or dumped as well. Nothing has been smashed yet, I’ll still need to run a final check - just in case we accidentally misplaced something or someone important.

The last stragglers are just now coming in, then the fort will be sealed in expectation of a goblin siege. Better safe than sorry.



(ooc: I did run one ‘clean’ here; there was so much vomit, the cages were all dark green instead of light green. Uninformed observers might have thought none of them is loaded).

[DwarvenLord]

We have a casualty of the wood-cutting operations: the other Mosus in the fort dies instantly, on account of falling logs.

We thought the threat of logs was over, but they were only biding their time...
Anyway, good job on the rest of the fort! Shame the gold entryway was removed, but it was necessary.

[LeftHandofGod]

Wow. You've done...lots more than I probably will, lol. Hopefully you'll have time to set up magma smithing, otherwise I'll get stuck with it, lol. Hell, most of what we need we've already smithed, so I may just set it up so that our magma foundries are down at the bottom if it's up to me.

Also, a thought about the clothing stockpiles, is it possible to make it so the clothier's shops give to one specific stockpile that can't take input from anywhere else? Then you'd have one stockpile with only new clothes that the dorfs can't just dump their tattered shit in.

[StrikaAmaru]

Part 4: Autumn.

As autumn rolls around, everybody gets at least a month off; we’ll make an exception for the caravan, but no more.

This wasn’t kindness on my part. Traipsing in the sun has made the entire fort cranky and irritable. We all need a break, and we need it now. The only jobs that haven’t been suspended are food hauling, lever pulling, and cleaning. The only dwarves who weren’t removed from work are the doctors. Now I’m going for a drink, see you in two weeks, unless something catches fire.

10th. The caravan has arrived, and so has the liaison… that was unseemly fast. They can all wait until the proper time. I restrict us all indoors, and open the gate; the former more of a formality than a necessity, since no one is in any mood to set foot outside. The citizenry is either partying, or swarming the library to indulge in literary pursuits. I myself have joined that crowd; at this point, I hardly care what I’m reading as long as I am reading something.

16th. I’ll interrupt everybody’s peace and quiet only long enough to haul loose tattered clothing to the depot. Then we can all go back to our scheduled time off.

Maybe I should turn the farmers back on as well…


20th Another imprisoned dwarf has snapped:


1st Sandstone. The loose rags we have gathered from around the fort have a total value of 34,462 dorfbucks. All of it will be going, regardless of what the merchants have on offer. Let’s trade!

I get every bar on sale, including a platinum one; this makes two in the entire fort. I bought a tomcat, the first in the fort; surely he’ll be happy enough in the company of the four female cats we have already. Clothes, sand, gypsum powder, thread; if I had cloth, I’d have gotten that too, regardless of price. I buy every backpack available; we only had 12 at the start of spring, now we should have enough for any military we can afford to field (quivers we already have plenty: over 100, not counting what we retrieved from goblins in this year). There was not a single book for sale, or I’d have gotten those too.



(ooc: I had to make another bit of save-scumming - the trade option was not available in the depot. It was rather strange, the broker was there and ready for trade, but there wasn’t any {t} option to actually initiate trading. I have no idea what happened, and I really wish I’d have saved a backup of that fort instead of just crashing DF).

3rd. Iden the architect has renounced his allegiance to The Turquoise Company, and become an enemy of the fort:


A loyal citizen:


Iden the architect:


One way or another, the solution will be found in the military. What is yet to be puzzled is the exact nature of that solution. For my first option, I turn to the squad creation process:


SnarledSteals was a former goblin settlement; at this point, it’s supposed to be completely abandoned, and is less than half a day’s travel. I can only hope sending Iden off for a while will change his mind. Plus, if goblins, or anyone else, has decided to resettle SnarledSteals, we’d better find out as soon as possible.


12th Sandstone. Two things have happened in this day: Iton has returned from SnarledSteals, and Cog has snapped in a highly particular fashion:



Cog needs… things… certain things.



We do have remains, off behind a locked door; let’s see if they’re suitable.


Indeed they are. Whichever artifact will come of this, it will be made in a medium of hamster.

As to Iton, he reports that he found nothing; good. He also calmed down, which is even better.


21st Sandstone. An imprisoned miner joins the ranks of the lost:


23rd The liaison finally deigns to speak with me. There’s nothing I can ask of the mountainhome that we truly want; I put down some of the cheaper leathers just to not have him leave empty-handed.

28th Sandstone Cog has begun his macabre construction:


4th Timber. Cog has finished his macabre construction:


Behold, the Helpful Famines, a hamster bone amulet worth 86,400 dorfbucks.


9th. After two whole seasons of idling, it’s time to let magma into the new smithy. All three available squads are stationed nearby, just in case Siga the forgotten beast decides to rush in. Then the miners are called. There are three tiles which should be channeled from above; in truth we could get away with one, but I like to be neat.


The channeling goes on schedule, and…


An enormous spike of adamantine goes from the bottom of the world to the third cavern layer; it goes at least as far up as level 97, and its base is at least as far down as level 32; that is how far down we can determine the presence of magma. It’s entirely possible the magma sea is even deeper, and the spire itself is much longer.


18th Timber. Let it be known that the weaver Inod is a murderer: in the middle of a tantrum, he assaulted one of his fellow dwarves and pushed him in the magma pipe.


23rd Timber. The forgotten beast that inhabited this layer has found us; it killed a doctor, and was in turn slain by the human swordsman Tumwist, who eventually stabbed it in the head.

[recon1o6]

i haven't seen a macabre mood in years!
thats a huge adamantine spire too