Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Helgoland]

When do you consider a fortress unrecoverable?

While it's still being played.

[daveralph1234]

I measure the longevity of my fortress not in years, but in tantrum spirals. For some reason, starting after the first 10 years, every 5 years, there will be a devastating tantrum spiral taking out at least 60% of the population, that will then almost immediately settle down to everyone becoming ecstatic again (due to excellent living conditions and their grief wearing off). The population quickly refills from migrants due to the immense wealth of the fortress. This 'reset' allows the fortress to seemingly continue eternally.
My oldest for I remember lasted 6 spirals, putting it at approximately 40 years in age.

Why is that? Did you forget to make clothes or something?

Sieges and ambushes mostly, I'm sure to always keep abundant spare clothing.

[TheDJ17]

I had a fort go for about 20 years before I got bored and deleted it, it was also really messy.
I play on making a more ascetically pleasing fort next time.

[Phlum]

i haven't played for more than 7 years. the fps kills me, so i spend five years on my fort each time trying to make the most kills with minecarts that will still kill my adventure guy when i visit.

[megahelmet]

14 years. On a volcanic frozen mountain. Had the addition of the snakemen race and werewolf race. My first fort that pretty well focused exclusively on military defense. A squad of hammerdorfs, a squad of speardorfs, and 4 squads of marksdorfs. I built shooting towers all over the map and my marksdorfs were brutally effective. The melee squads only ever got to bat clean up. I also built the fort in the first layer of the caverns, since that was were the water was. Walled off a good section, made it nice and safe.

Until a firebreathing flying slug FB showed up. I still don't know how he got into the fort proper. There shouldn't have been any way to get from the unsafe portion of the caverns to the part I controlled. The entire army is 50 zlvls away, outside the fort, playing with the siegers. The slug busts into the dining room and sets dorfs ablaze! Everything is burning. I draft a militia to buy some time for the army to arrive. The militia is slaughtered. The speardorfs arrive! Yay! They slay the beast, but most of them die due to burns.

Over 40 dead. The rest, tantruming. The military working hard on putting down berserk dorfs. Levers are being thrown. The gates are open. The levers that refill the forts cisterns are open. The dining room and everything below it is being flooded...which at least put out the fires. Invaders are now within the fort. Slaughter continues. The fortress falls.

[Shinotsa]

Ever since I learned about 2 dwarf squads my forts last as long as I want them to. My current one was done above ground to make it a little harder (and to preserve FPS) but it's getting rather depressing after 15 years or so. Population's capped at 150 in a 4x4 embark and FPS has been slowly creeping down from 100 to 80. Despite producing mainly food and having slaughtered all but ~20 animals my overclocked i5 can't keep the fortress from dying a slow and frustrating death.

Right now the only limit to my fortress' age is the fact that I'm too stubborn to turn temperature off. If I were to turn it off I guess I'd get a few more years out of it, at which point the limit would be whatever causes FPS death.

[Di]

You've just talked me out of buying new computer, I guess I'll wait i7 gets cheaper.

[mnjiman]

My fortresses tend to last 12 years. At that point there is no longer a point to play, unless i find myself some busy work like a mega project... but i do not like doing those.

[Phlum]

 this fort inspired me

[Sutremaine]

57 years, in 31.25. There's nothing to do there really, and while I could build an outpost at the bottom of the map the framerate is dragging enough to make it unfun. Also I am getting no migrants at all, having gone even without an announcement for several years.

[Helgoland]

Is that Boatmurdered?

[Andal]

Every single fort I start, I am aiming for 50+ years. I've made it past that point several times, usually only ending any particular fort's run when we get a new, non-save-compatible version of DF (or my computer dies).