Dwarf Fortress

[maheusz]

At least you have elites . The only thing my marksdwarves/hunters can come up with is pissing off the giant versions of normal animals. And cats taking on entire goblin ambushes. Can't forget about these. Fucking cats.

[wallace]

haha yeah cats are so frustrating. I hate it when they walk outside and you feel compelled to let every last one inside before shutting the gates but then more leave. *sigh*  Have you encountered any forgotten beasts yet?

[maheusz]

Well in my silly fortress with copper and silver, 200 dwarves and some magma smelting I've already had like three forgotten beasts. One was a giant moth which promptly flew towards my miners and hurt few. Then my militia came and beat ass. Then was some kind of fish/aligator monster which killed few fisherdwarves (I got them to gather fish from underground lake). Also dispatched. The third is lurking while I'm making a bridge.

I'm on a third year? I guess. Few ambushes squashed on my traps (and one waited out in the fortress when they slaughtered my militia with arrows) the rest of goblins and trolls are in cages. I'm currently doing a pit of doom with silver spikes on the bottom and testing their endurance .

There was also an werelizard which killed my hunter... and nothing more. I guess I'm waiting for a siege or something. Making glass traps and planning few funny things. Maybe I'll post some screens here .

My only problem is that because I didn't invest in training room my militia is not really that strong. I usually pit them on the goblins which survive 10-z levels fall and impaling. Or trolls. These survive too usually. I can't wait when I get to some adamantum .

[wallace]

Nice! You sound pretty prepared. My fortress is built over a river. (with a bridge connecting both sides) The idea being that on one side (with the entrance) would house my soldiers and the other side is a fall back point with the rest of my dwarves. I managed to increase the population limit in the config file to 300 so the fortress is still growing. In the caverns underneath, there is a forgotten beast somewhere but I've walled it off.

Making a pit is a good idea. I usually just have them fight my soldiers fully armed but recently I had a dwarf called wallace with an artifact sword but his arms were smashed to pieces by a goblin maceman so I think I need have a new system for fighting prisoners :/

[xmorg]

I am a big supporter of bone carving. Bone armor and weapons are cool.
Before the smelting industry i usually do lots of shell/bone gear as well as bone
studded gear.  How do clamshell helmets work?  Im not really sure, but its definitly
a primitive fashion statement.   

[wallace]

Is bone equipment good? I never do much with it except when someone goes into a strange mood and asks for bones. Before I start making weapons, I usually rely on the miners to hack any enemies to pieces with their pickaxes.

[maheusz]

Haha, well bone equipment is god damn awful . I've already tried it few times and each time my militia was slaugtered by copper wielding goblins. There is a lot of stuff when considering quality and usefullness of the weapons and armor... but mostly I use bone armor only when no other things are available. It goes like this: bone - copper - bronze - silver - iron - steel - adamantum. Or something like that anyway . I'm going from memory. Of course there is also question of quality, so artifact bone equipment can be awesome, but it's more of a exception from the rule . Shells are pretty much on the same level as bone thingies.

Are there any bone weapons? Not counting artifact ones? .

God, 300 dorfs? My computer would die and burn. With 200 it's getting like half of the normal FPS. And when siege/ambush comes... duh. I prefer to rely on lumberjacks to do the killing. The axes are edge weapons which means they cut stuff off. And that tends to kill people and monsters fast. Pickaxe is a piercing weapon, with some bashing capability I think (I remember reading it on the wiki) so it has a chance to destroy vital organs.

Bridges are good, but won't the river turn to ice in winter? I got fucked over by the temperature changes more than once . And making different part of the fortress the military and civilian is cool and all... in theory. Because dorfs and animals love wandering here and there. Pissing my OCD off.

Also I must say that pit is not really THAT effective. Better thing could be probably some kind of magma chute for prisoners (but their stuff would be unrecoverable) or drowning chamber. It depends on the level of the skill though. I'm not sure I know enough to attempt it.

[wallace]

I'm in a kind of warm climate. It hasn't snowed in a long time. Though a few years back I had a huge depression amongst the children because there weren't enough clothes (I haven't updated yet) and some child got angry and somehow destroyed the bridge and 3 dwarves drowned

I also have a back entrance but that goes under a waterfall so two thirds of the time they get swept off and drowned (there are 6 dead dwarves at the bottom)

I made a wall around my fortress completely out of mircoline which took ages because part way through we ran out and I couldn't bring myself to use another material.

In the last seige I was soo annoyed because the elves arrived just before a siege and I thought I'd better let them in. So they were in my fortress the whole time during the siege at the trade depot. Then it came up with the message they have embarked on their journey so I decided to open the gate and lower the bridge... But they didn't leave instead a whole lot of trolls got in a beat my elite marksdwarf to death.
My other champion was paralyzed from the waist down because in another siege trolls broke his spine I hate trolls.

[maheusz]

You're lucky then, no changes of temperature mean that there will be less of problem with power production, etc. And yeah dorfs tend to destroy stuff when they're angry. They're like little, bearded Hulks.

Back entrances are dangerous - you have to keep an eye on every place enemy can enter and it was my death many times. But, of course, the idea of making stuff outside still sits well with me, so archer towers above the ground to destroy (and see!) these pesky ambushers is sure good.

I usually surrender fast when it comes to building walls . Especially because in newer iterations of game the stone starts to become scarce resource! I actually did run out of it! That was a shock first time it happened.

Also I read somewhere (on wiki or maybe bay forums) that ambushes and sieges tend to arrive with merchants - just to fuck you over more . So I'm always veeeery careful when one shows up (not counting the first year of course). Still the only good thing elves bring are tamed animals. The rest is just crap. I've would have left them for the siege to deal with .

At least trolls aren't poisonous. Tried Giant Spiders yet?

[wallace]

My back entrance has a bridge that is pulled up at all times and a corridor filled with traps and two locked doors (mainly to stop my dwarves using it and getting swept off by the waterfall) My wall took ages to build because for some reason they often ignored the wheelbarrows and hauled the microline there.

Yeah I'm regretting letting them in. I've decided from now on to kill them if they come near.

My dwarves ran into some giant spiders while they were searching for webs to make silk. My mayor got killed by one before my soldiers could reach him, but it turned out he was the vampire that was troubling my fortress so that was ok I guess

[wallace]

Another seige just arrived literally 1 second after the human caravan This time I'm not letting them in.

[wallace]

Survived the siege with no casualties (except the humans) taking 16 prisoners and killing 19.

[JeffTheShark]

i..... have been avoiding this... honestly.... i.... the save file.... is.......*sigh* corrupted. fuck. every time i load it, even with a fresh program, it says that the file is corrupted. and honestly i am NOT playing the entire year over, with like 5 forgotten beasts, 3 caravaans, and umpteen trillion mother FUCKING 'path not found's! no. im done. mahzeus, if you want, the save from the beggining of the year is there, and i'l even upload the corrupted mid-winter save if you want it. but no. no more beastes, no more 'miserable' dorfs, no more sober forts, and for Armok's sake, i didn't even have !!FUN!!

[xmorg]

If you want you can just start from where i left off, the file is still on my site...  I really want to keep playing.

Edit:  Lets continue without save scumming   It is ultimately more fun.  If you screw up, just run with it.  It will also minimize the chance of corruption

[wallace]

Sounds good, I'm looking forward to my turn