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[ShunterAlhena]

Gentlemen (and beloved bearded ladies),

I invite you to share some stories on how your fortresses failed. Toady in his recent podcast states "Every fortress fails, sooner or later", and I find it hard to imagine that mature, well-built and protected fortresses can go down. But failures of fresh colonies are also of interest, if only to share your pain and be able to avoid the same missteps.

My first establishment, Tourtin, had about 80 residents, of which 15 was military trained in wrestling and marksmanship. Our fate was sealed by the lack of defensive fortifications - the entrance had no gates, and stone-fall traps fire only once before they must be reloaded. The first goblin invasion was repelled easily. At the second, the stalwart military was all but butchered and only by the frightening traps was the fortress saved. But the third, a vengeful, strong goblin army, complete with a spearmaster, broke in shortly after the second, braved the boulders and despite the desperate efforts of unarmed craftsmen our halls ran red with blood. http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/poi-2928-hallwayofdeath

[Crushy]

Pretty much the same as mine. Only my first 2 starved to death and/or thirst. My 3rd one was turning into a glorious fortress with a huge entrance hall... But for some reason I just can't figure out traps... Do they auto-fire on enemies? Do they all need triggers? If so, where should I place them?

[umiman]

All my fortresses fail because they become too ferpect and the overseer is possessed by Stigmatus Boredomus. This leads to a quizzical construction effort that completes to quickly for the dwarves to truly question, and subsequently, whatever end that the Stigmatus decrees.

[Tahin]

Ooh, let's see...

My latest Fortress, "Doomcasket the Firey Death," just had a rather horrible death. It all started when I got my second siege. Few of my marksdwarves were on duty, no one was around to raise the drawbridge, my traps weren't enough to take care of all of the goblins, and I didn't think to send my champions up to deal with them until the leader was already inside, happily slaughtering peasants. Now, apparently dwarves don't take death well, as even though I was able to kill all of the goblins with only 11 or so casualties, the remain 104 dwarves began randomly going melancholy and berserk, creating more unhappiness. I abandoned once I had gotten down to around 50 dwarves, about half of which were hopelessly insane or seriously injured.

[Asehujiko]

Old version: Most of the time the forts and the worlds they resided on were sucked into the dark abyss by a mysterious force whose name remains unspoken but is signified the the unholy number -3.

Most recent of the new version:
A kobold somehow got stuck in one of the grated channels surrounding my farming area(and food stockpiles), scaring every single farmer away and starved almost the entire fort by himself. One of the 6 survivors trantumed and destroyed the cage holding a titan.

[ilnar]

flooded with lava and excavated,,,,
looks awsome in dwarf 3d
my next fortress with a volcano is going to have wider passages and rooms so that, once lava has been added and the fortress has been excavated, i am going to dig into the obsidion and live there smoothed and detailed obsidion floors and walls
everywhere

[Rictus]

Mostly starvation here, but once a Dragon AND a Hydra attacked within a few weeks of each other on a semi-mature fortress of about 110 souls.  They both made a beeline for my fort.  While I managed to take the dragon down (at the cost of my military), the Hydra entered and began eating people.  

I drafted the entire remaining population (by this point about 90 odd folks) into one massive unit and just dogpiled the hydra, eventually they beat it to death using rocks, tools and whatever else was at hand.  

However, the dreaded fire caused by the dragons breath made sure I wasn't able to venture outside much, and I needed water quite badly, as most of the casaulties had been farmers/brewers.  So gradually the fortress died of thirst and later, tantrums.

Actually, I don't think this has technically died. I just stopped playing it when a new version came out.

[Fishersalwaysdie]

quote:Originally posted by Asehujiko:
<STRONG>Most recent of the new version:
A kobold somehow got stuck in one of the grated channels surrounding my farming area(and food stockpiles), scaring every single farmer away and starved almost the entire fort by himself. One of the 6 survivors trantumed and destroyed the cage holding a titan.</STRONG>

This is what kobolds should do on purpose...

[Linthar]

My first fortress technically fell 3 times, each of which ended with me cheating by reverting to an earlier save. All three times I flooded my fortress, in the process of building the same well. The worst part was that when I finally figured out how to get the water in place safely, I found out that I did not have any rope, or any supplies I could use to make rope.

[sorbius]

I started a fortress in a mountainous region with a river.  I had accidentally quick started so i did not have the food stocks I usually have.  I carverd out a fortress entrance down on the z level with the river and proceded to carve out my elaborate living quarters, diniing room, stockpiles, workshops, and defenses.  sometime later I realized I had forgotten to setup farming.  i dug down to the river level and began carving out irragation systems and fields, but it was too late.  My mechanic dropped dead of hunger installing the flood gate levers and it went down hill from there.  Moral:  food production should be priority #1 you can make your fort look cool later.

[Greiger]

While my internet was down I experimented with creature temperature tags and succeeded in making a creature completely and utterly immune to fire damage.

I decided to test it on one of my forts to make sure it works in dwarf mode as well.  I do not backup saves and even though this would be a reasonable excuse to it didn't cross my mind.  

I annoyed a group of fire imps until they attacked catching one of my recruits on fire.  I deactivated him and he walked back to the barracks (to sleep) burning the whole way, never taking damage.  The barracks filled up with smoke but soon I was noticing the occasional extra smoke trail coming from the barracks.  Sure enough, the one flaming guy caught everybody else in the sleeping barracks on fire.

I was still not too worried however, I hadn't changed the raws back so my guinea pig would not die, so I figured that I'll just wait til everybody else's clothes burn off too.

Eventually they got hot, very hot. So hot that everything anywhere near any of the flaming residents spontaneously combusted.  The wilderness went up in a giant fireball, the water in the well flash boiled dry every 2 seconds, all the stockpiles were on fire, I had molten metal and stone all over my fortress, but most distressing, was that the food stockpile was burning.  All the tallow was boiling over, every piece of meat was burning merrily.

The fortress ended in starvation and flaming fistfights.  Shamefully, I was too stunned to record the disaster.
EDIT: The experiment however was a HUGE SUCCESS.

[ January 23, 2008: Message edited by: Greiger ]

[Dopefish]

My main goblin defense usually consists of raising the drawbridge and bringing all my dwarves inside to wait it out, while the military pelts the enemy with pain.

In a recent fort, however, I made a quite fatal mistake.  It seems I had been paying attention to something else while building the main (and, I should note, only) defensive drawbridge and neglected to tell the archetects and masons that, in fact, this bridge at our gate really, really should be a drawbridge rather than one which retracts.  Guess what happens next?

Correct.  Major goblin invasion.  I saw them coming, ordered the lever pulled and banged my head off my desk when I saw the bridge disappear, rather than replace itself with a nice, sturdy wall.  With nothing to stop them getting in, the goblins made mincemeat of the dwarves inside the fortress.

The moral of this story is, of course, always test your drawbridges.  I know I will from now on.