Bay 12 Games Forum

I.. don't understand... didn't I die!?

Elephantmen would be vegetarian no?

Oh yes i believe i left it under a siege so we can't do it until we deal with that.. i'm sure we could win the fight on the surface against the humans at least the problem will be all the war elephants and stuff hiding in the river (you can't see them but trust me they're there)

This.
Is.
HELL.

The surface above belongs to the invaders.  A wasteland of the corpses and detritus of those who came before as far as the eye can see. 
Miasma emanates profusely from the trap-hall and from the stairs below the fortress, bones of some poor creatures ignored down there.
The tombs are extensive, and yet I worry they may soon be inadequate.
The caves are wisely sealed off lest we have to contend with what's still roaming below, Ogo snacking on some troglodytes or something down there

Though we have a queen no one seems to visit the royal quarters.

Our dwarves seem happy enough, the mist definitely making a difference keeping them going, but didn't we come here dreaming of conquest? We can't cower behind our walls.

To continue our plans we must break the siege.
That trap tunnel is very nice, but I can't stop the idiots from running up back through it.  I guess next  turn I have I will be using DFhack like the rest of y'all.
For now I can't use the trap tunnel, so our only choice is to meet the invaders on the field of battle.  A less risky proposition than you might think, with our steel armor and weapons the goblins and humans hanging out on the surface can't really do much to us!


A couple of martial trances later the field is clear, unfortunately more elves keep showing up, this cycle continues.  We aren't suffering many losses but we are losing one or two here or there. The only way to stop this attrition is to attack the elves in the forests that surround our fortress.

Did I mention we're in hell? the invaders will just KEEP coming.  This is such a sick sad world we even saw a dwarven snatcher

Luckily they were spotted before getting in.

My predecessors have had a hard time, but I think our military should be strong enough to strike out and take the fight to the elves, if nothing else stopping the sieges showing up at our door constantly is a must at this point.

The raiders all assembled in one place do look like a formidable force

Many of the elves humans and goblins who took residence at the fort are becoming citizens by now, and they will prove their loyalty by joining us in the attack.

Things go well at first, we easily smash one of the nearby settlements, hailjewels.  My method is to send the actual force to pillage the place, and then a small force of the non-dwarf soldiers to demand actual ownership.  After a one sided beating the first time around they don't resist the occupation.  Asmel Mansionraces is now in command of the place.

We moved on to the next forest retreat..
The forest retreat of weaknesshail, just north of us, population 100, easy pickings right?
We were not ready.
War tigers.
War Elephants.
They aren't in the forest, they are the forest.
Our queen had come, to lead the charge but.. she never returned.  Only about half of the force I sent out came back. First I lost the queen's elephants, then I lost the queen 
Salmeuk fell Again I swear the name is cursed. (sorry!)
A HUMAN by the name of Astralathalius  took the throne, its unclear what his claim even is, this is a dreadful state of affairs... I leave it in the hands of my succesors if we want to arrange an accident to restore dwarven rule..
on the bright side my turn took so long we have portraits now, Behold our king:

In the face of such heavy losses I resorted to accepting any and all petitioners for residence again, of which there are always plenty! our population was thus brought back to over 190 pretty soon, but a few less dwarves I'm afraid.  The way I see it if we don't want them we can send them to another site easily enough, and its a very fast way to grow our population when we suffer losses, and hopefully in future we send non-dwarves out to fight first
Also look at the quality of these visitors I have to work with:


And whats worse, the elves were PISSED:

A new group of friends to play in the bonefields..

Those are all war elephants and tigers.
I wasn't game to send our diminished military out against that, so I shut the doors.
Some of them still managed to wander down into the trap hall, and we fired at them until we were out of ballista arrows.

Did I mention this is hell? Maybe for us, maybe for the enemy, who knows, but I doubt they're having a good time dodging iron bolts among the half rotten skeletons of their allies.
An iron ballista bolt can quite commonly take the head clean off an elf, elephants do prove a bit sturdier, in the end we haven't killed even half the force.
Elves sneaking around don't count as putting us under siege so a migrant wave and NUMEROUS other visitors are getting killed out there.
Oh, I should mention we did have a migrant wave that succesfully arrived earlier, despite all the bloodshed here, I suspect that because we are the ONLY site of our civ, migrants will just keep coming from somewhere no matter what

MEANWHILE IN THE CAVES!

A NEW CHALLENGER HAS ARRIVED

FORGOTTEN BEAST TITLE FIGHT GOOOO

BORA CLOSES IN BUT OGO LANDS THE FIRST BLOW, THEY'RE BOTH BLEEDING

BOTH WRITHING ON THE GROUND HOW MUCH MORE PUNISHMENT CAN THEY TAKE???

WHO CAN EVEN TELL WHO'S HITTING WHO?

AND WE HAVE A WINNER LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, BORA IS THE NEW KING OF THE CAVES!

...Anyway back on the surface
Humans arrived too. great.

Actually wait this is great, they are hostile to the elves! The elves seem spread out and from what I can tell they're hiding in the river though,  the humans by and large haven't quite engaged them.
I also really wouldn't recommend trying to fight the elves and thier animals anywhere near the river, they are all perfect swimmers, and our forces are NOT so that leaves it at a bit of a stalemate, the doors are still shut.
Luckily the humans actually count as putting us under siege, so the bloodshed from new arrivals can stop (I think some visitors are still lurking out there).

And thats where I'm leaving the fort.  Still doing ok internally, but lost some of our best fighters and under siege.  Since we don't really have anything important to do until we can open the gates again, I put the military on constant training, at least while the mood holds, feel free to change that back.
I saw someone got rid of my work detail for visitors, please keep it, maybe dfhack makes it unecessary, but as I said in my first turn it seems like a loophole where non-citizen residents will still do all the work if they get given a detail, when otherwise they would only do some things, some times.
I had put some plans down for new bedrooms, which we do need, but with all the busy military work not much mining has happened, we also need substantially more armor and such which I have put orders for somewhat.
sorry for the slow turn the lag really slowed me down a LOT I was going at about 1 minute per DF day for most of that.  I kinda want to avoid using dfhack and do things the good old fashioned way but this burrow thing might just convert me for next turn.
Here's a list of named casualties I didn't mention above, from a mix of fighting the armies on the field, raids, tantrums and getting caught when sieges arrive:

Good luck!

(also who's turn is it? salmeuk? I'm just putting the save here: https://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=17076)

Lag is taking its toll sorry for the wait... should be done in a day or two

can anyone explain to me how to stop idiots from running up out of the fort when i open the door to the trap corridor? the burrow doesnt seem to work.  Its too late now (dont worry nothing terrible happened) but I would like to know..

You can use DFHack to autodump stuff into the atom smasher. If I had done that on my turn we wouldn't have had the inevitable tantrum spiral, but it definitely feels like cheating!

By armok, the elves will work hauling trash and they'll like it. if you want to do that after my turn fine but I'll be doing it the good old fashioned way as best I can

I'd say each of us has nearly lost the fort at least once now lol.

Give me time..

I'm here, I'm still in! Just not able to check in for a few days. Everyone happy if i take it from here? Wont be starting for another day or two