Dwarf Fortress

You're welcome to when we set it up. I need to get back into the game, because it's been a while for me. I just want to wait and get acquainted with it after the update.

Okay people, new release is live today!

http://bay12games.com/dwarves/

Major highlights include sending out actual raids to bring back loot, and the ability to create Tributary relationships resulting in yearly loot caravans! Also off-site battles got more interesting because both your full squads AND the nonhistorical figures will fight. Skills and equipment matter, and you will want to pay attention to where you send your people so you don't actually lose them. Unless you want to conscript a bunch of useless migrants and ship them off en mass to die.

YEEEES! MARCH MY DWARVEN MINIONS AND SHATTER THEIR WILLS!

Seriously that is pretty cool.

I'm already in the embark menu picking my loadout. This time I'm trying something new. No points to mining or wood cutting, I've got those guys skilled up in crafting options, but will enable the landscaping labors by hand at the start so they can get to them. Instead I've got a mason and a smith handling the digging, my carpenter/crafter is handling the wood cutting, I've got the spare that would be the carpenter doing the "apprentice" work for the smith in making fuel and metal bars, I've got a tanner with one skill who has five skill in leather working and going to have butchery turned on at start, and I have a low grade thresher/weaver who mains in clothing. By the time that first caravan arrives, I should have something usable to sell, and I can probably swap out miners soon as the first migrant wave hits so I can get to arming and armoring people.

Genned a small world and ran the history for 250 years. The largest settlement I've seen was 300 goblins in a dark something or other, and I'm at Autumn of year 251. I've got workshops for wood, stone, and metal, and I've done up an armed and armored sword squad of two. They're just now starting to train. Our civ is dead or dying, I literally don't see any other settlements of ours, but we don't have the King and there's twenty of us so far. There wasn't a liaison, but there was a caravan.

I start a brand new fort and toady drops a new update two days later?

Clearly I am some sort of wizard.

I tip my hat to you.

And yup, our civ is dead as a civ outside of us. It's my second Spring now and our militia captain elevated herself to Queen after a polite conversation with her rival.

ETA: If I weren't worried about someone else claiming the throne, she'd meet an accident for desertion of her post.

And I can also confirm that that stupid fucking asshole barrel/bin bug still exists where people can't mill plants that are in barrels. Part of me wants to call this fort a wash, but I know these are temporary setbacks. Doesn't stop me from raging anyway.

edited 10th Mar '18 6:45:30 AM by Journeyman

I just got back to Dwarf Fortress and my first new fort happened to have been founded around an yeti cave. Good thing I sealed the ape inside, but I'm wondering if that's a sign of... something.

It's a sign of Fun.

Much, fun....and yeti invasions hopefully.

I've started a new fort in a savage jungle, two layers of soil, rich in clay. I'm going to be focusing a lot on ceramics.

Nice.

I need to run up a new fort this weekend after I get done with my allotment of social interaction via remote murder simulators.

Just started another fort for this version. Did dwarves always try to step into the lava/water when channeling? I lost my best Miner that way. It wasn't a cave in, just a matter of him digging a channeling, then stepping inside of it to dig the other side.

The Dorfs are not always the brightest in their positioning in relation to dangerous work> I have had dwarves carving channels die like that as well. I got into the habit of installing a flood gate with a lever first before breaching the lava or at least finishing most of the channel first before the final breech.

magma safe doors are better imo for tapping lava because you don't have to switch them. the dwarf just runs through and calls it a day.

i also channel diagonally. idk if that slows the flow or anything, but since it cancels water pressure, i figure it can't hurt

Yeah, it's always suggested to tap into flows diagonally. It does actually slow the flow.

In the meantime, I don't want to continue the current campaign. It's annoying, and not what I want to play. New plan. Mod to play as humans, do an aboveground fort Japanese style. Enclose a 100 by 100 tile space with a 7 wide, 7 deep moat. Place a single layer of flooring right around the fort side of the moat, and a single layer of fortifications around that. Japanese castles are basically hill forts with a shooting gallery up on the walls. Within the castle space, I'll build little apartment complexes involving four rooms connected in a square, with an enclosed walkway around them to protect people going home. Even with an empty space around the walls, that's only a fifteen tile-to-a-side building. I can fit six to a side within that 100x100 space. Twenty all up if I'm only ringing inside the perimeter (the walled in walkway is so I can place stairs to make it multi-floored). With an easy extra ten spaces for main roads on three sides and a keep on the fourth. Plus a 70 x 70 courtyard for workshops, depot, and barrack-yard. Farming will be outside the fort, since it'll take more space than I have. This will also add tension when we run into sieges.

Right now it'll be human. Talking to a co-worker about the game tonight gave me an idea. Mod in an intelligent race with a pet value and castes adding natural skill level one to various categories of work. They can do the labor, while the main race runs things and goes to war.

ETA: Human modding complete. Made them playable and gave them the Site nobles but nothing larger. Didn't want to risk my own people becoming Nobles right off the bat the way that's happened in the past when I tried. On the plus side, giving humans the Site nobles tends to strengthen them against Demonic rulership.

edited 10th Mar '18 8:00:46 PM by Journeyman

Quick bugfix release dropped today to fix some raiding issues.

I started over, modded as humans, and am actually setting measurements for my Shogun 2 style castle. Pro-tip: If you pick a stockpile type you aren't going to be using any time soon, you can actually lay single-tile wide stockpile lines as chalk survey lines that you can see and work around. I'm doing it now to lay out my castle and moat boundaries.

Okay, succession fort idea isn't dead, but the recent changes to the devlog have me wondering whether we wanna go for one now, or watch the releases and wait for Toady to finish. Because it's looking like we're getting a true army arc here that'll end with us finally being able to run a multi-site mini-nation of our own through tributaries and hill dwarves.

I am having some issues getting my military running. I am so horribly out of practice. That and I hate setting up jobs the old fashion way. I can't even recall the program we used to use to help with that.

Dwarf Therapist? Or Dwarf Manager in the Long Long Ago, but that one's outdated now.

Therapist.

I rarely used that one but I can see the utility in it. My only issue right now is priorities in-game. If I can iron those out, I'm golden.

So apparently the latest version has serious depression issues. Toady's already got a fix built into the next version, plus they're going to work on Hill Dwarves. They've already managed to iron out a site conquest system for us in which we can leave a squad in occupied territory to enforce tribute and whatnot.

I say we wait until Toady the Great retreats into the waves of the deep dev cycle, then play the crap out of the version we're left with. I mean, conquest and the ability to peacefully settle your surroundings? Yes please. Plus then we can go adventuring in our countryside and see what the game did with our people.

http://bay12games.com/dwarves/

New devlog. Tl;dr version is that we're getting the ability to send civilians off-site (either to settle hill sites, or just to leave because we don't want them around anymore. This excludes nobles, sadly.) And we're getting messengers we can use to request specific people to come to our fortress.

The most important part: "Release is likely ~this time next week, finally." Won't bet on it, of course. New bugs could pop up that delay it. BUT we are in the home stretch for a release that includes finally being able to turn our fortress into the focal point of a proper country or duchy, without using an army to conquer others to do it.

YES!!!

http://bay12games.com/dwarves/

Version 44.11 has dropped! Highlights: Well developed fortresses will have small settlements form around them. You can interact with these settlements by sending workers and soldiers to them. You can now conquer sites and set up a loyal administration to keep the tribute flowing. Also, dwarves now have proper story arcs that were fixed up so they're no longer overly horrified. They'll see things, remember them, relive the memories, and change in a decent simulation of a real person.

Emergent behavior that caused issues: The mere fear of insurrections would cause administrations to abandon conquered sites. Answer for now was to turn off insurrections for our own conquered sites. The way he worded it tells me that insurrections do still happen for sites conquered by others. I wonder if that was a skills issue where maybe the administrators didn't have enough of a discipline skill to stay in place. We didn't get enough info to find out but I might ask in the Future of the Fortress thread to find out.

ETA:http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=169696.msg7792428#msg7792428

I posted the question. I'll be interested to see Toady's response.

edited 23rd Jun '18 6:08:22 PM by Journeyman

Sweet now we can conquer our neighbours. Also downloaded the version they have up.