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

[Ravus Sol]

The save keeps moving very slowly. We are up to run 50 now, almost a whole week to play 2 turns. Orthus will spawn at the end of turn and since I'm very prepared, I'd like him to spawn near me.

I'm feeling a bit indisposed today, so I'll hold on the full turn reports. Nothing special happened. AH is due in 1 turn, settler and monument are still a bit far from completion. My GNP is leading, a bit better than Mardoc and Selrahc (it'll probably change when Mardoc settle his second city, which will happen soon - it's practically impossible to get better demos then the Kurios in the beggining if the game). The workers are idle, waiting to put a pasture in the hindenburg cows.

Dantski settled his second city. I'm pretty sure I'll be the first one to three (my third city will give me 20 commerce at size 4, a great boost for the economy). It'll be named Titanic.

A week to play 2 turns is beyond insane. That's beyond slow as well.

An Orthus axe would be very useful. But if he did spawn near hopefully he would approach from a direction that wouldn't mess up your workers. If that is even possible.

Titanic in the desert will be awesome.

The Kuriotates are powerful early game as long as you get good worker techs.

[Ilios]

Out of curiosity, who is holding up the save?

[Ichabod]

A week to play 2 turns is beyond insane. That's beyond slow as well.

An Orthus axe would be very useful. But if he did spawn near hopefully he would approach from a direction that wouldn't mess up your workers. If that is even possible.

Titanic in the desert will be awesome.

The Kuriotates are powerful early game as long as you get good worker techs.

Out of curiosity, who is holding up the save?

Well, we can manage a good 1 turn per day speed when everyone is avaiable. The problem is that there's always someone with some kind of commitment which breaks the rhythm. Last time Jkaen forgot to send the save and he spent 48 hours with it. Luckily, the game is back on the move and I just played turn 53.

I'm sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been sick for the last couple of days and doing updates can be very tiresome. We finished AH and we are about to finish exploration (3 turn tech, with good overflow). There are horses in Hindenburg BFC, but in the second ring (not that horses have any kind of uses to the dwarves... well, chariots can be useful), which will help to build the Pagan Temple faster.

Orthus hasn't spawned near me, but the barbarians decided to wake up. First I saw a goblin, now 3 warriors appeared. They succeeded to ruin my micro plan, delaying the cow pasture by 1 turn, for example. I could finish it in the planned turns, but that would require taking the risk of losing a city or a worker. The risk of losing the city would be minimal (warrior with 120% bonus against a barb warrior and a barb goblin [str 2]), but I didn't want to take it.

Mardoc demos went crazy high and the others are catching up too. I hope that the third city will boost us forward again.

I'll do the turn 50 update this weekend. I hope I'll be better by then.

[Ravus Sol]

Well, we can manage a good 1 turn per day speed when everyone is avaiable. The problem is that there's always someone with some kind of commitment which breaks the rhythm. Last time Jkaen forgot to send the save and he spent 48 hours with it. Luckily, the game is back on the move and I just played turn 53.

Hopefully the bad luck will end soon. Speed is necessary for keeping the interest in the game.

I'm sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been sick for the last couple of days and doing updates can be very tiresome. We finished AH and we are about to finish exploration (3 turn tech, with good overflow). There are horses in Hindenburg BFC, but in the second ring (not that horses have any kind of uses to the dwarves... well, chariots can be useful), which will help to build the Pagan Temple faster.

Don't worry about it man, like you say only minor stuff has happened. Wait untill you feel better and do a giant awesome update

Exploration is a good choice now that you have 3 cities you want to connect and barbarian hordes are going to start appearing so roads to speed up the slow dwarves will be useful.

Horses can be useful but not by much in this area, if you are in Aristocracy then they can be useful for royal guards. But at the moment a few chariots are all that they will be useful for. Oh and production!

Orthus hasn't spawned near me, but the barbarians decided to wake up. First I saw a goblin, now 3 warriors appeared. They succeeded to ruin my micro plan, delaying the cow pasture by 1 turn, for example. I could finish it in the planned turns, but that would require taking the risk of losing a city or a worker. The risk of losing the city would be minimal (warrior with 120% bonus against a barb warrior and a barb goblin [str 2]), but I didn't want to take it.

Yikes thats quite a few at once. Obviously this is karma for wishing for Orthus. All the annoyance of the Barbarian king and none of the item payoff with his axe

Hopefully they will just try to attack the city and won't pillage anything.

Mardoc demos went crazy high and the others are catching up too. I hope that the third city will boost us forward again.

I'll do the turn 50 update this weekend. I hope I'll be better by then.

Sounds like everyone is getting their own economical plans into action!

[Ichabod]

[SIZE="4"]Turn 50 Report:[/SIZE]
(and turn 49, 51-55 too :neenernee)


So, I'll use the turn 50 report to give a comprehensive look about the things I've already done in this game and the things I intend to do. I'll review some of my strategic decisions (the most important ones) and I'll talk about the next steps, especially where I plan to settle my third city, the future tech plans and how do I plan to win this game.

The first post will be the normal turn review, ranging from turn 49-55. I'm sorry for the delay, but last week was a very troublesome one, so I didn't have the time. Anyway, let's move forward.

Turn 49 started without much going on. Boatmurdered started the settler which will found Titanic (3rd city) and Hindenburg kept on the monument. I'll talk about Hindenburg placement and early culture in my next post, because I have a little to say about it.

Overview of the empire on turn 49:

Like I said before, the micro plan to build the settler is work 10 turns with wheat farm + 4 cottages (giving 13x10=130 hammers) and 1 turn with wheat farm, 3 cottages, plains hill forest (15 hammers), completing the 145 needed for a settler (they sure are expensive in ffh, especially without the awesome agrarianism grassland farms).

I decided to focus more on commerce this next few turns to speed the teching. So, the plains hill forest will be worked on the last turn. Tech path is AH -> Exploration -> Calendar. Pretty straightforward, AH to improve the second and third city resources, exploration for roads, especially to connect the third city (the 1st and second are connected by the river) and calendar to improve the third city resources.

So, here's Boatmurdered:

And Hindenburg. I decided to work the farm on the cows to speed the growth a bit. AH could still be teched in 3 turns, so no harm done.

Turn 49 also saw our second rival to a second city, Dantski. He founded The Hague somewhere. I can't exactly tell where, because I have no clue where he is :neenernee (well, I have vague directions, but I haven't seen his borders yet).

Turn 50 arrived without much changes. I didn't take much screenshots, because the graphs and demographics only update on the next turn. So, to do a proper comparison, I decided to wait until turn 51.

Turn 51 was more interesting. The famous barbarian Orthus spawned and BEHOLD! HE IS MOVING TO OUR LANDS! PREPARE YOURSELF BOYS, THIS IS A FIGHT TO BECOME PART OF THE HISTORY!!

OH NO!!!!

Guess his not exactly Orthus... It's the first barbarian we saw on the game, though... We haven't seen Orthus anywhere near us, but it's turn 55 now and he hasn't been killed yet (unless I missed on it). Go, go Orthus! If I won't be keeping your axe, it's better that noone else keeps it.

So, turn 51 demographics, for everyone to compare:

We are in a good position. Our GNP isn't the higher one, but he's not being masked by culture and other things. Kuriotates have the highest (high pop, academy in capital) and the Lanun are very close to us(coves, coast, pearls, coves), the rest is not that close and will probably have some difficulties. See it for yourself, here's the graphs:

GNP:

Production. The ocasional high spikes are most likely working building with bonuses (Elder Councils are the option this early with the traits in the game). Our peak was when working the plains hill forest in the capital. We'll shoot very high when we build markets (festivals is close by in the tech order). It doesn't say much, but maybe we can scare some opponents!

Crop Yield. In Civ 4 BTS, crop yield is the most important demographic to see how someone is doing. In FfH, especially under this conditions, it's not so much. Commerce has more value in early FfH. I remember when I read pocketbeetle saying this in one of his first posts in FFH PBEM I and I couldn't agree more. It takes a lot of beakers to get the basic worker techs in this game, so your expansion is really hindered until you can get them.

Sciz is the top dog in crop yield right now. This is obvious, since he's the only one in agrarianism. But, what can hedo with such a high food? With a happy cap of 5 in the capital and 4 in his second city, there's not much room for growth. All avaiable buildings, except for elder councils aren't worth it right now and are extremely expensive. Settlers benefit more from hammers due to God King. So, I don't see why I should focus on food early. Since Sciz is the only one running agrarianism, it seems most of my opponents think the same.

End turn finished AH and revealed horses in Hindenburg's BFC. Nice ! They aren't worth much as a strategic resource for the dwarves (they use pigs for they mounted line, so only for chariots), but the yield of the tile is pretty good. Getting them blindly is certainly nice!

Turn 52 started with the AH splashscreen, followed by the "what to tech next?" pop-up.

Exploration it is!

The Kuriotates founded their second megacity. Poor Kurios... Getting only three cities in such a bad terrain isn't going to be easy. I think they'll beeline for some kind of vitalizing hero. Maybe they will compete against Selrahc for Gibbon. Now that I think of it, maybe giving them some hints could be in order. It's best for me if the Kurios get Gibbon, since they'll only vitalize 3 cities, not a whole bunch of them. And keeping Selrahc in the ice would certainly be good!

The workers were eager to work! They sttod on Hindenburg doing nothing for 3-4 turns while waiting for AH. Finally they could work again. Pasture would be ready in 2 turns with on worker with his movements kept, which would proceed to start roading to the third city.

Notice that the goblin felt bad about our mockery and decided to call some friends. So, the first barbarian invasion started against the poor dwarves:

I moved some defences and ended turn. Unfortunately, I didn't see that I left an opening for a threatening situation on the next turn. No doubt that the barbs moved on the worst way (for me, of course :neenernee) possible. So, turn 53 started with bad news.

This way, I couldn't finish improving the cows this turn without risking losing a worker or a city (barb warrior against 1 warrior protecting the worker (two warriors on Hindenburg) or barb warrior and barb goblin against 1 warrior in Hindenburg (with 2 warriors protecting the worker). I think I would have favourable odds in both the situations, but I didn't want to risk it. So, I did the following:

First, the 2 xp warrior started walking towards Hindenburg, to avoid a similar situation next turn (2 warriors in the city and 2 guarding the worker would be enough).

One of Boatmurdered warriors run to protect our southeastern side:

One of the workers started heading towards Boatmurdered for roading duty. We only needed one turn in the pasture, so only one worker could stay behind.

Two warriors and a worker fortified in Hindenburg and a warrior kept fortified in the cow tile. I wanted to avoid the barb warrior moving into that tile, which would be a pain to dislodge because of the river crossing penalty.

I think it's better to lose some hammers and worker turns for sure then risking the loss of a city or a worker. Even if the chances are slim, I think is better to go with the safe route. The only risk I took in this game set me down a lot (the dungeon pop).

Here's how the barbs moved on turn 54. The two that threatened the city stayed in place, which seems like a pretty common move for FfH barbs.

The odds for the southeastern warrior were good, so I took the chance. If I get some warriors promoted to 5 xp, I should be pretty safe from the barbs. Combat 2 + Shock gives me 100% against melee, enough to get very good odds.

The result (with special screenshot, since it's our first combat that didn't happen in between turns):

Which gave us our first unit in the 5xp treshhold:

In Hindenburg, I followed the 2 defenders per tile rule, which is safe enough. The worker then finished the pasture:

That left us only with the northern problem. I made some safety movements to avoid pillaging. If the barb attacked my warrior, he'd have slim odds, with combat 1 and river penalty in my favor.

Here's Hindenburg after the long awaited cow pasture! I can't believe I'm actually finishing that damn monument. It sure took a while.

And Boatmurdered, still on settler duty.

Finally, turn 55 saw what is probably the end of most of my barbarian problems. First, I received a bad news when opening the save. We lost one of the warriors defending the worker near Hindenburg (barb probably had something like 20% chance of winning - notice that now we are at +1 gold per turn). The barb warrior was at 2.4 strenght, which was annoying, since the odds to defeat it weren't that good since he was on a forested tile. Anyway, while the worker escaped to safer lands, the brave dwarven soldiers attacked:

They won, being left with 0.7 strenght and 5xp. I moved the 2xp warrior, promoted to shock now, to defend him against a barb warrior and a goblin that showed up. With 85% str bonus( combat 1, shock, forest), I guess he's safe (the goblin is 2 strenght only).

Hearing about the tales of bravery and courage that took place in the south, our northern defenders decided to go for it too (notice the nice bonus movement on hills taking place - it was a key part of our defense against this barbs, compensating for the lack of roads).

They killed the northern barbarian earning 5xp too. With 3 combat 2 + shock warriors, we have a good defense force against barbs. All battles we took were >70% odds. We won 3 and lost one (the only defensive one), so the RNG was fair.

Protecting the roading to Titanic site and protecting Titanic itself is the next short term military goal. The hghest threat comes from animals, so it's very important to spend few turns without settling. Our military consists of 6 warriors, so we need more. 3 per city is a good number, because we don't have a safe core yet, the barbs could threaten every city right now. Popping Hindenburg borders will help a lot. I'll probably go Monument -> Warrior -> Pagan Temple in Hindenburg, using 2 warriors to protect the roading workers outside the borders. After the settler, one of Boatmurdered warriors will join the worker protectors, giving us 3 to protect the settler. Then, Boatmurdered will build another warrior, maybe 2, so we reach the desire level of protection.

Here's the demographics for turn 55:

The GNP fight between me and Mardoc depends on wether the tech we are teching does or doesn't have a prerequisite. Mardoc is still ahead though. We finished Exploration on EoT54, so we got the splashscreen on turn 55. Calendar was the next tech chosen:

We worked a bit on Hindenburg tiles to grow this turn, working pasture + farm. At size 3, Hindenburg will work pasture + 2 cottages until we finish the Horse and Sheep pasture.

I think you lurkers pretty much caught with where the game is. Since Selrahc is having some family visits, the save is once again stopped. But he warned us about it, so no problem.

We need names for our promoted warriors. Any suggestions, lurkers?

The next post will talk about what we accomplished so far and the one after will talk about future plans. Keep lurking, guys, I'm not dead yet !

[Ilios]

That is a nice research rate, good sir, those Financial cottages have been worth it!

[Square Leg]

Nice catchup post!

Although there were a couple of images without the IMG tags! :neenernee

As for naming of your promoted Dwarf warriors, how about

Use this:

http://www.minimalsworld.net/BrazilName/brazilian.shtml

[Ichabod]

That is a nice research rate, good sir, those Financial cottages have been worth it!

It's probably the only way to go while playing the Khazad. You cannot afford to have an empire with bad commerce. Your tech rate is nerfed already because of the gold needed to maintain happiness and your expansion is slower. If in normal civilization conditions mass expansion = crashing your economy for later recovery, while playing the Khazad, mass expansion = destroying your economy without chances of recovery. So, you need a balance between commerce and food that is way more to the commerce side than normal.

Maybe going for fast Markets could solve the money problem. Trying for a very early Great Merchant could help too. But if I'm going to work cottages, better to start it quickly. And since the start and near terrain is very commerce poor, you can't keep your economy afloat with just resources (if I had like 2 wines and 3/4 calendar resources near, education wouldn't be so important).

That's what I think about playing multiplayer Khazad, anyway. I'm sure looking forward for the time where the dwarven vaults start being an actual bonus, not another setback.

Nice catchup post!

Although there were a couple of images without the IMG tags! :neenernee

As for naming of your promoted Dwarf warriors, how about

Use this:

http://www.minimalsworld.net/BrazilName/brazilian.shtml

Fixed (I think... :neenernee)! Thanks Square Leg!

About the link, it's very funny. It sure must look strange to see those wacky names some of the brazilian players use. The thing is, Brazil is probably the only country in the world that doesn't use surnames in the players shirts. Normally we use the Forename or some kind of nickname.

I can use it, but I still need some kind of raw material to make it work :neenernee.

[Ichabod]

I played turn 56 and here's an interesting thing: the worst soldier number has improved. That's certainly... strange. The worst soldier was Jkaen for a long time (he was at 2000 points for quite a long time - that's only 2 pop ) which lead me and Mardoc to believe he was having a Mistform problem. Mistforms can't capture cities, they can only kill every defender, so it made sense. I was certain that Jkaen would be defeated as soon as the barbs started to appear more commonly (together with Orthus).

Well, the opposite seem to have happened. Maybe it's too early to tell, but I have a feeling that Jkaen killed the Mistform and is back in a safer position. He's still in a pretty bad shape, especially because the Mistform (if it really was one) severely hindered his expansion and land development. Since I'm his eastern neighboor, that's good news, because I'll be able to steal most of the land between us.

I was rooting for Jkaen to be eliminated, so that I had all that land to myself (Mardoc is limited to 3 cities and we are the three players in the northern part of the map). Now that I think of it, maybe a crippled neighboor is better, since I can conquer some already developed cities and get some gold in the process. Even though my tech plans changed from a more militaristic one to a more economic centered one, I'll still be getting axemen + bronze and trebuchets (maybe even Iron if I get lucky with the engineer GP - Bambur is also an option to be considered, it'll depend on the time I tech Arete). That + agressive can probably suffice to defeat a crippled neighboor (I'm hoping he'll have axemen + adepts at best, maybe some archers). Let's hope he doesn't kill Orthus though.

[Ravus Sol]

Do you think that you could take full advanatge of lots of free lands? What with your dwarven vaults?

I forget the fine details of the rivals... Do you have anyone tied up in a NAP yet so that you can have a defended flank?