Bay 12 Games Forum

Hi, just coming back to the game after several years.  I like the new interface, mostly, and am figuring out how I like to run my fortresses again.  One thing I haven't figured out yet is what to do with my caged prisoners without massive tedium.  I used to use "mass pitting" where you empty all the cages through hatch covers into a room below.  (In my case I'd strip them first, then pit them into a room a couple z-levels below where my archers could practice on them.)  Now it seems like the goblins get loose as soon as someone shows up to "pit" them.  I know I can open cages with levers, but when we're talking about dozens of cages, that's lots and lots of key presses and mouse clicks for me.

So: is there a solution?  A way to make mass pitting work in the new version?  Or some other way to safely get enemies out of cages without losing control of them?  The lever thing is so tedious I'll probably just turn to dumping them in magma or leaving them in cages forever, rather than bothering to recycle the cages.  It seems such a waste, though.  For example I have lots of captured beak dogs that could become food and leather if I could mass-pit them.

I'm looking for an embark that's quite flat with a cliff in the middle.  That is, the top of the hill/mountain/plateau is flat, as is the plain at the bottom of the cliff.  I'm indifferent as to whether it has a river or not.  The idea is to be able to see all of the "outdoors" with two views, but still be able to dig in sideways instead of down.  Minerals for iron or bronze would be pluses, as well as high savagery and interesting wildlife.  Anybody seen one like this?

For an archer tower, just build a staircase up a couple of levels and build some space on an upper floor for archers to stand.
If you want them to stand adjacent to the turrets in the wall, don't give them a lot of space in the middle of the tower to stand on.  A rectangular tower with a 1x1 staircase at one end and a 1x8 hallway or so is fine.  That way they're forced to stand next to the turrets.

Remember to build a roof on it!  To accomplish this, build a ramp in place of one of the wall tiles on the top floor.  Then build floors on the upper level (the roof).  Then deconstruct the ramp and build the final wall tile.

The biggest problem with this kind of tower is that when you give the archers a (s)tation order, they feel free to stand 3-4 squares away from the mark you ordered them to go to.  This can have the effect of idiot marksdwarves walking out the front door to stand outside the tower.  I believe the best solution to this is to create a burrow defined on only the inside of the tower, and send the marksdwarves there.  I haven't tried this since DF2012 though, so test it out yourself before a siege arrives.

Is it by design, or is it a bug?
This was always a great way to recycle cages and to give my dwarves some combat training.

Hi y'all, another question from a rusty returning player.  I've built a mass pitting system and am trying to dump some goblins into it, but cannot find them in the list of creatures to "Assign" to the pit.  Here's what I do: hit "i" for zones, move the cursor over the pit zone, Shift-P for "set Pit/Pond information", then there's a list of my domesticated animals I can choose to pit, but no list of goblins.  I have the goblins in cages and have stripped them of their valuables.  What am I forgetting?

Just coming back to the game after playing DF2012 a few years ago.  In the new version, is there something different about how to get dwarves to put on their armor?  I remember always having trouble with it, but in my current game I've had a uniform assigned for *years* and dwarves still haven't picked up *any* of their armor.  They all grabbed their weapons, backpacks, bottles, and quivers with no delay though.  I'm not sure on shields.  What's the trick?

great find! that's awesome.  This means I can much more easily hire human mercenaries since I can make armor that actually fits them.  I've been rejecting the human mercenary visitors in favor of goblins since they seemed to be able to wear dwarf-sized armor.  The goblins mercs are so problematic though, always starting fights in the tavern and knocking each other's teeth out.

Is it possible to actually command the mercenary guests?  What do you do... assign them to squads?

Do you have a corpse stockpile? Your own dead dwarves can be buried without one; invaders (including werecreatures) won't be. They won't be put in refuse either - only a corpse stockpile.

Yup, this was the problem.  Coming back to the game after a year or two away, I had completely forgotten about corpse stockpiles.