Dwarf Fortress

That is what's supposed to happen. A Siege. Which is why I built a hospital before anything else. The first beds I rolled out went directly into it, too. Now I'm working on the dorm, since the only thing I don't have is Gypsum plaster for casts.

I'm playing as a human town. Funny thing . . . the Dwarves never showed up in the second Autumn. I don't think I'm getting that gypsum plaster.

That's exactly what I did, set up a hospital zone. Evidently my fort is full of comedic sociopaths.

I think I might make a new world to have big, open caverns so I can play dorfy AND still have a castle.

Underground castles? That works. You could always dig out the layers of the caverns you get. It'd be even more work and dedication to the cause.

Or you could always unleash the HFS and build a castle colony in the wide open pits down there.

with my complete lack of understanding re: military I'd end up playing dwarven checkers to gain access to the circus tent and that's not really fair :p

I can help with that, and I'm sure others will pick up when I miss something.

I've had two deaths, by accidental falls, and one snatching. Otherwise, nothing's gone wrong so far. I'm in my third summer. There's plenty of time for the world to darken.

In the meantime, I must prepare for the homeland caravan, and hope for Dwarves this Autumn, or else any iron/steel edge I can gain goes out the door. Luckily I've started getting my people to get attached to copper and bronze weaponry instead of those dinky wooden pieces we started with.

In one of my forts, I kinda had an Epic Fail, where a troglodyte killed my fort... one lowly troglodyte took out seven dwarves! In any case, I reclaimed the fort, and sealed up the way to the caves once I got to a cave that had spores. (In badlands, and no trees were to be had, so working on an underground tree farm for wood to work with.)

Eventually I'll try one of those runs, but for now I'm sticking with places that have natural resources on the surface.

my current fort is situated next to a multi-z-level waterfall, and I'm contemplating carving the mountainsides into a pair of dwarves holding an everflowing mug.

The Kegstands of Power has fallen in its third year to a tiny goblin siege. This is what I get for not embarking by a volcano :(

<- has honestly never made steel/

I rarely make steel. Iron usually gets the job done.

even with a volcano i never find enough resources for steel, so ive never made it.

The volcanos I embark on never seem to have iron or flux

I once got to iron and patted myself on the back.

On one of my embarks, with a volcano and plenty of steel materials, the undead have overwhelmed me with two necromancers and a growing army of dead. Luck was not on my side at all.

I'm a surface dweller and a lot of my worlds are mineral poor.

Very few people have IRON let alone Steel.

shouldn't goblin christmas offer enough iron to start working with?

I have yet to get more than snatchers, even in year three.

@Lance: With a succession fortress, the gobbos were hellbent to use leather armor on the most part, as well as copper gear. The iron had to be procured from hematite. As for my absolute newest fort though, no goblinite, but again, not needed for hematite and marble on site. Just need bituminous coal from the caravans.

I've finally gone over to the Therapist side. It's pretty neat. I think I'll stick with it til the new release.

So what's everyone else's favorite fortress design?

Mine's a castle with a triple layer of walls. It starts with a basement holding 400 food storage spaces, a set of bedrooms for my starting 30 (I use Peridexis LNP now, so I have the Startdwarf Script) a small dining hall and a set of rooms for my nest boxes.

Usually I start on plains, and since I want a Motte and Bailey style castle with a hill, I'll have a layer of workshops on the level ground, and build a wall encompassing a 30 by 30 open space around the basement stairs. I'll mark the corners of the main keep with guide stones, and place stairs next to them so I can build the next level. I'll actually connect that 20 by 20 keep with the 30 by 30 ring of wall to form . . . a hollow artificial hill.

Sometimes I ring the entire hill with ramps, but this current fortress is only getting one side ramped. The doors to the keep are on the other side so the enemies have to path through my dog pens to get inside the keep.

After that I build a three square deep wall encompassing a fifty by fifty area for a well system, trade depot, and set of farms. The wall is hollow so archers can walk through it, and the outer layer is fortifications so the archers can fire. There's a moat so the enemies can't get right next to it, too.

The entrance to the fortress includes a pair of barracks blocking the entrances to the archers' way so enemies can't just get at them.

The third wall is a repeat of that design enclosing 150 squares. By then the Castle dominates the landscape and has everything it needs for survival.

I found this little gem in the dev log from 3 days ago:

"Yesterday I messed around with camp alarms and made armies suffer more if their leaders are lost (by whatever means). Plenty of loading up camp sites and pressing the dismemberment button to test it out."

That's right, Toady has a dismemberment button. Just thought I'd pass along that amusing thing.

The professional term for that is "unit tests"

I've been reading through this. It's old, but it might be my favourite narrative fort ever.