Dwarf Fortress

[Boro]

I promised a world map, and here it is:



Sites with a blue border are part of our civilization. Green are allied, grey are either at just peace or with no contact, and red are at war with us.

The yellow circle is where we are (the yellow bordered fortress icon) alongside with two enemy and two neutral goblin pits, plus one pit claimed by our allies after they drove the goblins out. Those two red pits we successfully suppressed, alongside a tower to the east.

The red circle contains Glidedtown, formerly our civilization's fortress, now hosting half the enemy civilization. For all their numbers they have weak leadership, our squad leaders constantly outmatch them in tactics rolls. They come from the green circle, up in the north, where there used to be 7500 goblins before they migrated to the south, and now have about of 3500.

Now, since there weren't any suggestions on the three ideas I have been vacillating about, I think I'll try to combine setting up training with clear cutting and landscaping the surface. I should only need a couple of traps to catch wildlife. As a downside, it might get us into a war with the elves, but as an upside, it might get us into a war with the elves! I think elf clothing can be worn by dwarves, while the wooden crap can be atom-smashed.

[Boro]

Greetings from the mountainhome! There is much to share...

It is the spring of 153, and much has happened in the past half year.

As expected, with the trees jeopardizing their defenses, the dwarves went to town on them. They also dug dry moats closer to the map edges with trap-filled entry dikes to get wildlife onto cage traps. Sure it doesn't work on fliers, but it is a little extra, quite literally when some ambush or invasion comes around. Best of all, with no tree-cutting agreements, we can't anger the elves yet. But time is flying so we better clear-cut as much of our lands as we can.

(And just as a side note, I ended up reloading after getting some of my woodcutters both grievously wounded and outright killed by tree-felling "cave-ins". Those were mostly in the northwestern hill, outside my perimeter, which I wisely avoided the next time)

For the "extra", my dwarves were shocked to see visitors arrive, despite my population cap. They like to head down to my tavern, ask around for artifacts, then often leave. Keyword being "often", not always, as some seem to be stuck eternally giving and receiving mining demonstrations, after I turned my dining room from a regular dining room to part of my (self defense training zone) miner's guild. Just in case something happens I appointed my broker as "captain of the guard" and "dungeon master, which are for the sake of internal security.

Then I started, just as the outpost liaison finished convincing me to get myself a baron, to get notifications that the title of Glidedtown's count passed down to one of my dwarves. Then the title of Braidarch's baron. And now my captain of the guard wanted a separate office and living room too! Oh and I didnt even get my chosen dwarf promoted to baron yet, as the outpost liaison was mesmerized by the visitors and my dwarves hypnotizing each other with pickaxe demonstrations. But at least these dwarves will - as long as their mandates are respected - bear with it, unlike the elves who will attack outright if we violate their stupid tree cutting cap.

So we were busy cutting trees, and at least digging out the rooms for my much-expanded nobility. I guess this is what they were like in the 2d era, just without them doing anything useful...

But back to our little "extra": a trio of necromancers sprung from ambush, right into my cage traps. Now, the outer perimeter is a huge boon, less chance they find their way to my mussel shell stockpile, but that leaves me with a question: what do you do with live, captured necromancers? Defenses?

Then we had spring, with a pretty large goblin siege, almost entirely bowmen and crossbowmen, showing up and being a pain in the butt until most were caged and the rest fled. Oh and it was the perfect time for the elves to distract my baron (that was juuust appointed) with their warning. No more disrespecting the trees here, they say! Pfah, as if we had time for that.

I was sending out my retaliation strikes right after, learning that even untrained dwarves (picks/mining don't count in off-site combat) can cut through goblins like a hot knife through butter, so long as the leader gives them a tactical advantage. My picksdwarves are all competent wrestlers now, up from 0.

Then, just as they returned, I got the notification that one of my rangers has become the dwarf queen, (After a polite discussion with others) probably after the Youthful Ship's capital was attacked by the goblins, leaving their main fort just around 1000 goblins, down from 3500.

Please note that I set the immigration to 60 precisely to avoid becoming a mountainhome. Guess I have no choice on that matter by now...

Images to come soom.

[Boro]

First off, I'd like to think we've done a splendid job making sure there are no trees in the vicinity of our central fort.



Then we had this visitor, stuck in our murky pool in autumn, and got stuck there for most of the winter. Since visitors don't need to eat, drink (although that isn't a problem, hah), or sleep, she was able to learn enough swimming while the water levels were below drowning, and kept improving for a good half of winter too, reaching expert by the time I drained the pools. Then she finally attended the meeting she wanted and left. Oddly enough, pools can be removed permanently, becoming ditches that no longer gather water during rains, but it is tricky. The murky pool slopes are simple enough, just remove the slopes and you get pool-less flat areas, but the flat areas themselves need channeling, or something else... Let me think for a bit, cause I have a LOT of work on my hands now. Just look!



utter failure to accomodate nobles on my part, at least I am staying ahead of their mandates.

However, the guild petitions we've been getting, I failed one of them, which is quite sad, but then again we have a massive backlog to dealt with, and I'm trying to arm my militia too, which is quite the mining project of it's own!

Since I don't have much else interesting to report yet on that front, here is the new queen, with a good head on her shoulders, hardened from her days as an ambusher tasked with stealing anything that wasn't bolted down from the goblins, and a decent military record.



A bit of trivia: she's storing her equipment and expected to get a new set because I transferred her to a reserve squad, at least until her baby grows into a child.

Yes, she got a baby not much after. Inod Urdimnil - Towerhammer. He has much expectations set for him, and although he's the youngest of ten children, both of his parents, as well as his grandmother, are dwarves of great renown. The father, the King Consort, being a legendary marksdwarf and weaponsmith with 60 kills, and the grandmother, our chief medical dwarf, who is a legendary bone carver, dodger, and ambusher. So yeah, let's keep our eyes peeled for him, although I expect he won't be as sneaky as others, preferring a direct approach when settling conflicts.

One more tiny update: we got our first hillock economically linked to us. A small site to our northeast, with a teal border.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the updates, Boro. I don't understand a lot of it, but it is interesting anyway.

Nobles sound like a real hassle to deal with, wanting special rooms and treatment. What is the upside?

Could you explain the trees thing a bit more? It sounds like they are a defensive liability, but getting rid of them angers the elves. I am a bit confused about this aspect of the game.

[Boro]

The upsides are three:

A mayor can console unhappy citizens which helps stave off their moods from spiraling out of control until you can turn things around, or at least stabilize them. Of course there are incurable cases, which is why we have atom smashers / exile. (curiously, some dwarves are just not suited to fortress life, but once out, they can live happy lives). The mayor is elected above a certain population level, I think 50.

A landholder, (Baron, Count, Duke) is required for trade caravans to bring wagons. Pre-v50 the wagons always showed up, but now there is an incentive to keep the noble around. Note that if your landholder dies, then no more wagons will show up. This landholder is the landholder of your fortress, not the descendants of other forts' leaders who gain elevation a bit randomly. Wagons are incredibly useful if you want to import any notable quantities of goods, or any heavy goods like ores not found at your embark site, very heavy pets, etc.

Finally a monarch has it's own requirements to show up, and once it happens, and you fulfill the conditions to become capital, then you can undertake a challenge to "make a fitting throne" to become a mountainhome of your civilization.

Trees... trees are resources. Fuel if you don't abuse magma, reagents for making clear glass, crystal glass, and steel (coke), and of course lightweight material for furniture, shields, wheelbarrows, bins, barrels, large pots, etc.

Elves are dedicated to the ruthless protection of nature. They wont trade with you if there is a single piece of processed or cut wood in your offer, and immediately pack up and leave, potentially coming back with troops to try wiping you out. Nowadays they get similarly offended if you offer them animal products, like bone, wool, or meat. Curiously they don't mind killing and eating sentient beings.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Do the elves still wield wooden weapons?  That hypocrisy undercut their conservationist diplomacy back when I played Dwarf Fortress in the 40d era.  Those wooden weapons made them lose the frequent wars they had to fight after their cannibalism offended the other species, even if the elves had superior numbers.

[Boro]

yes, and as I said they got worse since then. A looted metal ammo (arrows) + earthenware crafts have been the only thing I traded to them for a while.

Thankfully their tree quotas can be configured in the difficulty settings when embarking.

In other news: Glidedtown is no more!



Now my dwarves can get back to work without distractions.

[Boro]

But before we do that there is some background stuff to unpack. Like, it has been a year and a half of campaigning, literally a detour because I wanted to steal some beak dogs from the goblins who turned out not to have beak dogs for some freakish reason, and THEN the necromancers also started sending sieges, and THEN I managed to get half the existing dwarven noble positions in the southern mountains be inherited by some of my dwarves.

To be fair, these are some badass dwarves, but it did put a damper on my plans to do what I intended to do, that is capturing and breeding some crocodiles, and taking the fortress to it's FPS-killed grave by initiating a crocsplosion.

So what happened was first my thousand and a half crossbow bolts piled up, mostly bones, because we had an export ban. So much for our chief industry, although it's a rather exploity one given the weird way stacked items interact with item quality. Then we had a truckload of high boots made (and those are made 2 at a time) by our leatherworker, formerly and chiefly intended to be an engraver after I forgot to turn off repeating the task. And yep, that got an export ban too. I was toying with the idea this (154) autumn to trade it away while the ban was off, but it came back before the caravan left, and it would have been rather annoying to deal with mood swings due to mandate breaking and jail sentences.

In a nutshell we have some housekeeping to do.

On past progress we have the queen's suite fully furnished, doubling as guild halls for fulfilling petitions. It's probably a little exploity, but then again, it's dwarf fortress and we've been very busy.

Top=Bedroom
Left=Throne room,
Bottom=Dining hall.



Then we have the Tombs: to the south is the queen's mausoleum, the rest are the partially finished tombs for the other landholder nobles. Engraved gold floors, or floors with relatively valuable material from something the nobles like go a long way. For fun the small chambers from the sides are for whatever accidents we might end up having. They aren't too furnished, but then again, nobody died yet. (And we've won a war)


While we are on the topic of losses, here is our new guest reception chamber, with many drop chutes and a large guest cage stockpile. The drops are a lot shorter, but it reduces contamination, which is nice. As for the actual disposal method, it's nothing fancy, just a lever-operated drawbridge, the old reliable atom smasher.


As for the loss, well, the reliability of an atom smasher relies on the lever being linked before inauguration, which I forgot to do, requiring me to send in the militia to deal with the unarmed gobbos and...

Biting is weird. It's like the finger was quantum-teleported out of her gauntlet, because said gauntlet is unharmed. Even more odd is that she's a legendary dodger and the attack still hit. Good thing she's feeling fine aside the whole trauma thing.


And yeah thanks to a few leftover cavy corpses in a frequented area I didn't dispose of, a good chunk of my fort "doesn't care about anything anymore." Figure.

No pictures here, but in the same shale layers our new execution chamber is in, I did some exploratory mining and found tons of magnetite. I don't think better armor deflection can help against bites, maybe training wrestler can, but just in case I'm going to start phasing out the hodgepodge leather-copper-bronze junk we pulled off from goblin corpses and start changing to iron, and then steel. It should keep our smiths busy.

So yeah, that's the plan. Some downtime, mood improvements, housekeeping, and hopefully to catch ourselves some nice crocs.

Oh and since our queen is here, maybe we should start making this place more of a "mountainhome" and less of a tiny outpost at a river meeting. As for how I'm planning to accomplish that, it should be fairly obvious to anyone who plays the game, but until then here's a little "teaser".

That was just two minecarts, by the way.

Bonus: Cloisteredfences, something we don't have but is apparently known to be in our fortress, drew some treasure seeking human thieves, one of whom was just a visitor who suddenly turned hostile, engaged our homeland defense squad, including most of our nobles and bad-tempered dwarves who need their combat training fix, and got a little "mouth to mouth" for his troubles:

[Boro]

This winter is a time for consolidation, cleaning, rest, partying, and gathering strength for the tasks ahea...

and we're at war with the elves.

21/40 means we agreed to limit our tree fells at 40 and only cut down 19, with 21 remaining.

[Boro]

Awful news, the goblins regrouped in a previously abandoned cave.

While Beastprison has been super successful, and I have no doubts I could hold off the elves and goblins, even if they decided to come together, as well as deal with my animal population, I no longer felt ready to flood the caverns with magma. Sure the stacks have been dug out, and I can most likely get the whole thing to work, but it just wasn't worth it anymore. The nobles have all been accomodated, the great war was won, so it was time for me to go back to simpler places and projects. The fort was retired, with hopes that it's legendary military and traps would hold off whatever the elves and goblins had planned.

Of course, it's a good question whether the elves and goblins would get to hatch their plans, because after one fort is often another...

Okay, legends mode check, Cloisteredfences was a "Blooming metal" (a form of random divine metals) leggings, apparently stored in our fortress, just not visible to us. Weird.

In other news, the elves took care of the "Slate Fiend" demon who led the goblins in the beginning, so the goblin civilizations can be readily attacked wherever the dwarves would want to.

In other other news, apparently the cave is a place where you can embark. After backing up my save, I embarked there, in the middle of roughly 2000 goblins... it was hilarious.