Losing is Fun: Kandros Fir Dwarf Fortress [Khazad Spoiler Thread]

[Caustic Soda]

I would seriously consider moving city 3 one tile NE if I were you. That way, you could share the sheep early on for some semi-quick growth, you'd have better defenses, and you'd be able to get the mana in your 3rd ring. You would get some overlap with your 2nd city and couldn't get the gold immediately w/o using a Thane, and you'd lose out on the Oasis. but let's face it: on this map, getting Spring early can make a large difference. Until you get it, city 3 won't amount to much of anything. You *might* be able to borrow it from the Lanun or the Kurios, but I'd feel a lot safer with a secure source if I were you.

[Ravus Sol]

You make a good point C-Soda... I think there is a mana node up north near the deer as well but it would take ages to get into the borders naturally from the capital if at all and any actual city up there would be even worse off then #3

Personal Water mana would be awesome but i don't think elementism shows up on any Dwarven tech plans untill after turn 100 normally. Although if anything can change that a map like this could.

[Brian Shanahan]

I'm pretty sure this is number one on the list of Famous Last Words.

"Kiss me, Hardy."

At this point in the game any nasties are going to be really bad. Even a couple of fawns could end the game pdq. Early lairs are high risk, high reward propositions. An early GP can be game altering. So is getting your capital sacked on t5 because of a close lair pop that went wrong.

So the question is: Do you feel lucky?

"you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well do ya, punk?"

Sorry I'm running late.

[Ichabod]

Some diplo I had with Irgy. It has been a while, but I never posted it here, so there you go:

Irgy's answer to the message I sent him:

We're sorry to hear about your troubles with the caerps, although we admire
the bravery of your scout in daring to explore a dungeon. We greatly
appreciate being informed of the situation. We'd also strongly prefer such
bravery not to be displayed anywhere near our borders. I'm sure you understand.

As you no doubt noticed by now, our scout was happy to take your word on the
wonders or lack thereof in the possibly mighty city of Boatmurdered, and has
followed your request by heading south instead. He can currently see in the
distance a blue glow which appears to be the aura of the Elohim, and we expect
to make contact next turn. They appear to be directly to the south of the gold
in the desert. Sorry, did I say gold? I mean the hill of worthless but
slightly shinier sand. The three of us form something of an equilateral
triangle, with the shiny sand roughly in the centre of it.

Best of luck avoiding the caerps and whatever else comes your way.

Irgith Lorda of the Kuriotates

Ichabod to Irgy:

Hey Irgy and Mardoc,

You may have noticed that I dropped the roleplaying and in-character speech. It takes me a long time to write it and it isn't that good anyways (not to say outright bad - my dwarf seemed more like an irish man or a pirate). I thought about just talking about dwarven stuff without the accent, but I don't know much about dwarven lore, so there's no point. This way I can make myself more clear and avoid misunderstandings.

The whole don't scout my capital area was just dwarven role-play. You can take a look around the city if you'd like, but I must warn you that there are a lot of dangers around (I talk with more details about it later). I'm bordering tundra to the north, so there's nothing much to see up there. There are some resources to the east, but mostly desert and plains. I haven't scouted west yet.

The problem is that I stopped scouting after popping the dungeon. It was a really dumb move and I'm still kicking myself about it (together with the WW3 game that was going on, there was a lot of kicking happening, rest assured). When it happened I was really worried that my game was going to take a major setback. Only after some turns I realized that I could have ruined someone else's game with my stupidity and I felt really bad about it. I think I got a little bit delusional with all the good lair results from the other PBEM games and since I couldn't pop dungeons in my last game (playing as the Clan), I was really eager to do it. Truth be told, I would have probably reloaded the turn if I knew about the mistform (the dungeon popped a mistform and a hill giant), since it can be a major game breaker, but I only found out about it when reading the event log in the next turn.

I'm afraid that the mistform may have gone to haunt Jkaen's city, due to a comment that he made on Square Leg's FFH PBEM V thread (I cannot confirm, since I didn't meet him yet). It has been quite a few turns since I popped the dungeon and the mistform haven't attacked my city and from what I understand about your message, it hasn't attacked your scout either, even though he went that way (since you know about the gold). Well, I'd have to wait and see.

Did you find any good spot for your second megacity? The game's map is looking to be very though to the kuriotates, since they are all about cities with a lot of population (you can get a pretty big happy cap) and that's going to be very difficult to achieve here. My civ is about a few powerful cities too, but at least my bonuses are connected to gold, not population, so it's not that bad. But look at the bright side, at least we didn't have to walk 4-5 turns just to find water to settle our capital :P.

I found a nice spot for a second city. I thought about settling the gold with the second city, but decided against it. The surrounding terrain is just too bad and is a little too far for a second city. The only benefit would be the commerce, anyway, since I have the palace gold.

Well, guess that's all I have to say right now. The game is just beggining, anyway. Ah, just a last thing: if the mistform end up going your way and you manage to defeat it, please let me know. I'd like to compensate the one damaged by my stupidity. Maybe a palace mana loan for some turns or something like that.

Well, another last thing before I say goodbye: are you planning to tech Runes of Kilmorph? I'll do a beeline of some sorts to it, since it is really helpful for the Khazad. I don't exactly need the holy city (the mithril golem is not my plan to win the game :P), but it would be a nice bonus. Feel free to not answer the question if you don't want to. It's just out of curiosity. I'm a trusted villager, so you can believe me ;D. Well, I was, at least...

Good luck on the next turns and on the game!

Ichabod

Irgy to Ichabod:

Hi Ichabod

Thanks for the frank and detailed communication.

I'm not that fussed either way with the roleplay stuff. It's good fun but it
shouldn't be a significant barrier to prompt and clear communication. I don't
tend to use it much myself, but I'm happy for others to. The stay away from
the city stuff I took to mean you didn't want our scout sitting for instance
on your 2SE diagonal, from where we could declare war and capture an abandoned
city (or one made empty by a Mistform) in the one turn. Which was fair enough
anyway. In any case we decided we'd prefer to make new contacts and scout our
own territory rather than spy on yours.

We sent the scout south, which I thought was away from your dungeon. I thought
the dungeon in question was to the west of your capital, but I gather you just
meant to the west of where the scout and warrior met. I think I can see the
dungeon itself actually (revealed by the tower). We've found the hill giant
Mithecha wandering about to the south, just northwest of the Elohim borders.
He's also found a buddy down there. Our scout is still alive and scouting though.

I wouldn't lose too much sleep over the prospect that you might have sent a
mistform into Jkaen's territory. Popping lairs on other players' borders is a
perfectly legitimate tactic, if admittedly a somewhat unbalanced and cheesy
one. I won my first ever (well, first completed not first started) FFH
multiplayer game in about 15 turns doing that, it was great, if a little lame
in its way too If there's no agreement to disallow it then it's fair game.
That you might have done it somewhat by accident is just the way it goes
sometimes. Maybe I'll have a different view when my worker dies to a mistform
though

I'm kind of glad you raised the question of RoK. Since you've asked straight
out, I'll tell you. We have something of a plan to make the most of our
temporary philosophical trait by rushing to Mysticism and running some
specialists. Ideally we want an early Academy out of it, however we'll get it
twice as fast by running both a scientist (from Elder Council) and a priest
(from Pagan Temple). This gives us a risk though of popping a Great Prophet
instead. And the best thing to do with a Great Prophet at this stage of the
game is to bulb Runes of Kilmorph for the eventual Shrine. Bulbing that tech
is a popular strategy

We figured you might be likely to use RoK whether you had the shrine or not,
making it even more appealing as you would spread it for us. We are fairly
confident we could beat you to it, as between philosophical and running both
speicialists we can get the Prophet four times as fast as you could. You have
a head start with Crafting, but it wouldn't be enough to hard research WotE
before we'd get to mining ourselves.

We made this plan before even meeting you. However, we were then a a little
unsure about it, as we don't want it to cause a rift - especially since you
are in fact our preferred candidate for a long term ally. So I guess I'm
saying you might be able to talk us out of it. Or of course we might just pop
a scientist instead and save you the trouble

Best wishes,

I'll make a post about religion this weekend and I'll send an answer to Irgy too. There's nothing much I can do to stop him from getting RoK before me if he gets a prophet, but it's not a very big problem.

By the way, Selrahc told me that Sciz killed a Mistform some turns ago. That's why my worker defense got lighter.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the update, Ichabod!

Hmmm. Lose the holy city if they get a priest, or have their super city with an early academy? Are there any other choices available? It's true there isn't really anything you can do about it, but neither is really something desirable from the Khazad point of view. Hopefully the low-food terrain will help hold back the Kuriotates a bit.

Good news on the mistform being killed. Hopefully that was the one you set loose, and not just a random/other one.

[Ichabod]

Well, the options aren't that bad considering that my plan is to attack Irgy and steal whatever bonus he got .

I'll elaborate more on it later, but here's the thing: Irgy is close, he's a peaceful player (even playing the Sheaim in PBEM III), I doubt he'll tech to horse archers for defense (he'll probably go KotE) and his second city is going to be very near my capital.

The plan is do a catapult (trebuchet for the dwarves 6/4, 80% retreat chance) + axeman + Bambur attack, maybe even with Iron from the Mines.

I'll post the plan with more details later, just wanted to let you guys know about it!

[Ravus Sol]

Euuugh Evil Kuriotates and their great people!

Are you going to buddy up to them before the inevitable backstab? He might give away details but people allways seem to hold a grudge more if you were friendly before attacking... go figure :neenernee

Which Direction are they in? If they build towards you and you build towards them at least you will have an easy time with Manoeuvring.

Catapults + Bambur + Mines for Iron make for a powerful mid-game attack force, You gotta love it. Personally I allways like Priests for the bonus and healing as well as the Ale for +2 exp on the dwarves, But you seem to have a plan nearly formed allready which will be fun to see!
You think you could take everything? The Economic and Productive power of the Kuriotate capital in the hands of human player has allways seemed awe inspiring.

Will be fun to see what else happens in the mean time. A more middle game attack means the Hippus should have chosen a horseman rush target before then... The Hippus used competetantly for rushes are going to be bad news... for someone...

[Ichabod]

Turn 31:


Well, the pace of the game has definetely slowed down. We were managing 1, sometimes even 2 turns a day. Now it seems that everyone wants to take a day to play their turn... Well, I kinda understand the reason. Just like PBEM IV, PBEM VI has some very wacky settings, which may take the fun of the game from some people. I'll try to do my best to keep on playing, though.

So, what's happening in Khazad lands:

First, about techs. We currently have Crafting (starting tech), agriculture and Ancient chants. We are slowly teching education, which is to be completed in 4 turns. Then, we will go Mysticism -> Mining -> Way of the Earthmother. This is not subject to change in any way, even if Irgy gets the RoK holy city. Yes, in my opinion, RoK is that important to the dwarves (I'm almost beelining it from the start, just getting education for financial cottages first, since we need to get some economy going).

After that, I'll probably get some basic techs (AH to improve second city, exploration for roads and calendar -> festivals for markets and plantations) and go to construction and BW. My plan is to bulb Arete with a GP.


Here's an overview of the empire:

The settler will be ready soon and will found "LZ 129 Hindenburg" (anyone care to take a guess on my naming scheme?) in this location:

Exploration hasn't been that good, unfortunately. I'll definetely make some warriors with the second city and send them in different directions to find out more about the map.

My explorer had to run from a bear near Sciz borders. It was the only possible movement to get away from it, taking advantage of the doucle move on hills:

Yup, there's a party being thrown near Sciz borders.


Diplomacy:

Another message from Irgy:

Greetings!

It's been a while since we've spoken. We hope all is well. The giant Mithecha
and his unnamed friend are running a merry chase after our scout Veeson,
you'll be glad to know they're both a long way from your borders now. No sign
of any mistforms anywhere as yet.

We're currently trying to find a decent site for our second city, and in all
honesty struggling a little. The only reasonable site we've found so far is in
the desert, next to the gold south of Mithecha's dungeon. It is full of
desert, but eventually this is something our water mana would be able to
clear. It is however a bit of an aggressive location, situated as it is
somewhat equally between us, yourself and the Elohim - it would include for
instance the reagants and sheep just east of the dungeon. This is essentially
unavoidable for us, as the size of our cities combined with having settled
basically in the centre of the small area available to us means there is
literally nowhere for us to put it that does not poke into someone else's land
at least a little.

So, we're letting you know in order to gather your thoughts on the issue
before we commit ourselves to it completely.

In other news, well there's not much of it. We've yet to make any other
contact. We've discovered that there is indeed snow and tundra to the north,
rather than the hidden green fields of happiness we'd secretly hoped for.

Best regards,
Irgith Lorda

So, his next city will be very close to me. I don't know if the gold he is referring to is the one south of my second city. There's no way he could get that and the sheep + reagents with only one city. Maybe there's another gold out there that I haven't found yet. Here are some possible second city locations for Irgy:

I have a nasty diplomacy plan going in my mind, which will probably be released soon. If I can make everything right, invading Irgy will be way easier.

Is there anything else you guys want to know about the game? Go ahead an ask!

[Square Leg]

Air disasters!?

Ok - I have a question - what is your diplo plan? :neenernee

Nice to hear you plan to attack Irgy a few posts ago. Trebuchets are quite formidable!

[Ichabod]

Air disasters!?

Almost! After Hindenburg, next city will be RMS Titanic. Disaster theme it is (starting point was boatmurdered, of course). I hope it isn't offensive. If it is, I'll change it, of course.

Ok - I have a question - what is your diplo plan? :neenernee

I'll post the message I'll send to Irgy when it's done, alongside the reasoning behind everything that's being said.

Nice to hear you plan to attack Irgy a few posts ago. Trebuchets are quite formidable!

Yes! Trebuchets will be my main trumph in the war. I cannot waste much time, though. No sidetrack to get unnecessary goodies. Let's hope Irgy stays in pacifist/"I will get Chalid and than attack X" mode for quite some time !