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Author Topic: Growing fort area?  (Read 1555 times)

Garfunkel

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Growing fort area?
« on: May 07, 2021, 09:27:21 am »

I started with a 4x4 area when I meant to do a 6x6 area. Somehow, I didn't realize until now, about ten years into the fort. Everything is going really well so I don't want to abandon this fort. Is there any tricks for enlargement of my fort area?

Also, I insulted the elven caravan by offering them a wooden item by mistake. I'm not at war with them so will the caravan eventually return? I want to buy their giant grizzly bears!
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Quietust

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Re: Growing fort area?
« Reply #1 on: May 07, 2021, 09:58:40 am »

I started with a 4x4 area when I meant to do a 6x6 area. Somehow, I didn't realize until now, about ten years into the fort. Everything is going really well so I don't want to abandon this fort. Is there any tricks for enlargement of my fort area?
To my knowledge, there is no way to change a fortress's size after embarking - if you made it too small or too large, you're just going to have to deal with it unless you want to start over from scratch.

I seem to recall that DFHack is capable of extending an embark region upward (i.e. adding more empty Sky layers), but in this case you're probably out of luck.

Also, I insulted the elven caravan by offering them a wooden item by mistake. I'm not at war with them so will the caravan eventually return? I want to buy their giant grizzly bears!
Other civilizations tend not to go to war over a single incident - if you angered one caravan, the next one might be smaller than usual or demand a higher amount of profit, but in all likelihood it'll still be there next year.

Now, if you do it repeatedly, then hostilities are much more likely to occur, but even if that happens their Diplomat should eventually show up and offer a peace treaty.
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Growing fort area?
« Reply #2 on: May 07, 2021, 12:55:50 pm »

There are a number of DF structure elements that are associated with embark coverage (and there may very well be ones that haven't been identified), but I'm not aware of whether anyone has tried to mess with them to try to change the size of it. I wouldn't be surprised if it crashed or achieved nothing, though, but any attempt to play with this should be preceded by backing up the fortress unless it's a throwaway one, and be prepared to have it go belly up even if it seemed to work.
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Garfunkel

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Re: Growing fort area?
« Reply #3 on: May 07, 2021, 01:46:42 pm »

Right, that would explain why there are no instructions on how to do it in the Wiki. Cheers guys, I'll have to live with my embark area. Getting a giant grizzly bear breeding program running would certainly make it worthwhile!  8)
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Bralbaard

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Re: Growing fort area?
« Reply #4 on: May 07, 2021, 01:58:35 pm »

Would it not be possible to retire and start a new larger embark over the old one? There are options to force an embark with dfhack in places where you can otherwise not embark.

The downside would be that I'm not sure if your old citizens will be part of your new fortress.
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Garfunkel

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Re: Growing fort area?
« Reply #5 on: May 07, 2021, 08:05:59 pm »

Would it not be possible to retire and start a new larger embark over the old one? There are options to force an embark with dfhack in places where you can otherwise not embark.

The downside would be that I'm not sure if your old citizens will be part of your new fortress.
That's a nice tip. I might try that in the future - especially if something bad happens and I lose the fort!

Other civilizations tend not to go to war over a single incident - if you angered one caravan, the next one might be smaller than usual or demand a higher amount of profit, but in all likelihood it'll still be there next year.
You were right, the elves came back. Not with giant grizzly bears though so I had to settle with a giant raccoon.  :P
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PatrikLundell

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Re: Growing fort area?
« Reply #6 on: May 08, 2021, 02:18:04 am »

Would it not be possible to retire and start a new larger embark over the old one? There are options to force an embark with dfhack in places where you can otherwise not embark.

The downside would be that I'm not sure if your old citizens will be part of your new fortress.
That might work. It's risky, of course (Backup!), and I'm fairly sure the old citizens won't be part of the new fortress, as they remain members of the existing fortress. It might be possible to steal them through the script that converts people to members of the own fortress.

Personally I'd rather regenerate the world from scratch and embark in the same spot with the intended embark size. No risk of introduction of weird errors and standard game functionality. However, it depends on how tolerant you are against building everything up from scratch again.
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Starver

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Re: Growing fort area?
« Reply #7 on: May 08, 2021, 08:50:12 am »

Personally I'd rather regenerate the world from scratch and embark in the same spot with the intended embark size.
While that's easy enough (if you don't hit one of the worldgen aspects that don't strictly the follow the same result from the same Seed, which might not happen these days and I don't think ever effected geography/geology anyway) I personally I always (always) go in and make a copy of a freshly worldgenned save (by personal tradition, "region1"->"region1.orig" before I open it as an wctive game. It saves me the effort (mostly time) of recreating an embark opportunity if my very first striking of the earth leaves me with a scenario that doesn't sufficiently match what I had started to expect and I wish I'd not chosen it/shifted another tile into or out of the steep-sided hillside above the floorplane/whatever...

(I may also duplicate it again to run a parallel Adventurer on the world, of course with only shared prehistory, not in any way to interact fort and adventurer (or the remains of one or the other). It's just a thing I do.)

Not really a post-hoc solution to the original issue, nor do I really consider it save-scumming (I have Seasonal Saves for that, though if I use them at all it's mostly for forking an abbreviated redo of a cistern dig/whatever, just to see if I could have done it better, and consider my main save still the true one), but it's a cheap and easy way of overcoming OP's problem, and various other issues, if you make it an option in advance. If you're not put off by the whole redo-from-start.


Other than this, I've had not much to add to this thread as I saw it develop (retire and (over)reclaim the structures was my first thought, and take your chances with the rest), except that I also tend to have no-wood goods grouped handily without wood 'contaminents' in stockpiles that might go to trade, and (another personal foible, here) as I never sell any bin, just the contents (a net inflow of bins by buying bins of leather, etc) then I'm never in danger of accidentally contaminating the stone crafts with their wooden bin container (if so it is, which it usually is).


So just "go back in time and do it differently" is my solution, I know, but you might find it something worth thinking about in future circumstances. Or not. ;)
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