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Well I am only a few hours into my first game, I was hoping one of the vets could give guidance on settings and rules
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All depends on how newb friendly do we want to be and if we want to grapple with all features or no. For example having less than 80 dwarves means you'll never get the King.
A very newb friendly fortress would be in warm climate ( no freezing of water ), no aquifier ( no hurdles in getting stone ), stream ( fresh water, moat, fishing ) plenty of trees ( furniture and charcoal ), magma vent ( no fuel for forges ), sand ( glassware ), be isolated from goblins ( no snatchers, ambushes, etc. ) and sit in Calm or Good Aligned surroundings.
Depending on what we want from the game in terms of challenge, fun and lurker amusement we can agree on settings / rules / etc.
Only thing I'm keen on is max time to play the save of around a week. Writing detailed reports takes time, and work / life balance sometimes causes awkward shortages of it in my case :]
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I think the first game (hopefully this is succesful and we end up doing this again) should be pretty noob friendly to introduce ideas to lurkers and also to lots of the players!
Is 1 season per week a realistic pace to play report and pass on?
Obviously would suggest an experienced player take season 1 (although I think I have got the hang of that via quick start guides, so maybe its better having the vets later when it gets tricky?)
What is the reason for capping the number of dwarves btw? Just making it easier to track?
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We should play one year per turnset. Seasons are short, you can't do a lot playing just a season. And yes, 1 year per week is realistic.
Reasons for capping dwarf count are multiple including :
Performance concerns - less dwarves = less CPUs dying agonised death
Difficulty - feeding, clothing and keeping happy huge number of dwarves can be surprisingly hard at times and become outright impossible if fortress does not have right conditions for that
Survivability - with large number of dwarves it's nigh on impossible to get out of Tantrum spiral. There's a lot of stuff that can trigger one.
Currency/Employment - if we plan to play with Money on, we'll have to find profitable employment for all our dwarves. Or they'll end penniless without a place to sleep and thus unhappy. See Tantrum spiral.
And generally less dwarves makes whole thing easier to get on with and less of a slog later on.
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I'd love to lurk a DF SG! Never played DF but heard a lot about it.
There are two kinds of fools. One says, "This is old, and therefore good." And one says, "This is new, and therefore better." - John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
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antisocialmunky Wrote:IIRC, water below the well can be really far down and it'll still work.
I think you are correct.
OTOH, filling a well via a direct connection to a river leads to FUN.
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Ok, so I have the following, is this correct?:
Players
Jkaen (semi-noob)
ASM (experienced)
Thoth (semi-noob)
Mist (experienced)
General Settings:
1 year per playset
1 playset per week
Population cap: 60
Child cap: 0
Economy, Invaders, Temperature, Liquid Depth, Weather, Cave-ins, Exotic animals: Yes
Aquifers: No (we would only search for a site without them anyway)
Graphics: I assume can be changed by each game player, but maybe its easier for lurkers etc if we stick to one? I am using Ironhand 0.57 atm
World Settings
World size: Medium
History: Short
Sites: Medium
Beasts: Medium
Savagery: Low
Mineral occurance: Frequent
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A request from a lurker, can you explain the game mechanics as well (like how to set jobs, make furniture and things!). My fortress died when my dwarfs realized that there were no beds to sleep in, and got really sad.
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That may be complicated and there's a wiki. I can give some basic tips but DF is quite complex and somewhat finicky.
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Hahaha just found the wiki. Trying out how to start now.
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