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[Makbeth]

I want to continue loving this game but I'm not sure I should.  I think my biggest problem is learning to have fun losing.  How do you teach yourself to enjoy it when your ballista operators, who have been training for a year or more, insist on walking downrange of the practice battery while reloading, or when everyone starts canceling tasks because a 4x4 cluster of wells over flooded ramps instead of channels lies between them and a main stairway and they never consider just walking around them?

Did you guys teach yourself to be amused by this or does it just have to be that way naturally?  I'm addicted to this game but tired of trying to build a fortress while the dwarves fight me every step of the way.  I know I should laugh when this stuff happens but it's just not my first reaction.

[Proteus]

Well,
you can always found a new fortress or even try to reclaim your old fortress if everything goes wrong...
and killed dwarves  can be replaced with migrants, especially if you play 0.31,
where migrants tend to have extremly high skill levels from the  beginning on

[Marconius]

Actually those aren't really the fun bits... fun bits are invading goblins and deadly elephant herds!

Though just to make a specific suggestion: try designating traffic zones. For example, make the area in front of your ballistae restricted, that should mean your dwarves will circle around!

[gtmattz]

Keep playing, eventually you will learn to plan around the myriad little idiosyncrasies the dwarves have, then you can truly appreciate when you inadvertently send 75% of your population to their deaths due to some minor oversight.

#1 thing to keep in mind is IT IS ONLY PIXELS ON A SCREEN FOR CHRISSAKES, GET A F*ING GRIP MAN! 

[Moogie]

Bugs and AI problems are not fun, but over time you learn how to compensate and even predict such problems so that they don't or can't bother you again. Luckily we have a few tools to counter these issues, such as the aforementioned Traffic Zones which help immensely in a busy or volatile fort. The biggest hurdle you'll need to overcome to truely enjoy DF, is patience. Once you learn how to handle it, it becomes background noise; you won't even notice the problems anymore.

Also, this is totally offtopic, but I just had to say it. gtmattz, that quote in your signature sounds like the best game in the world.

[Shakzen]

Have you read the story of Boatmurdered?  That is the perfect example of having fun losing.

[AncientEnemy]

as has been said, "losing is fun" more refers to dying in some epic or hilariously catastrophic fashion. dying due to dwarven AI being stupid is not fun. you just have to learn to work around all the little things dwarves do that will wreck your day.

[o_O[WTFace]]

I always figured loosing is fun meant that if you weren't loosing then the game was easy and thats no fun. 

Personally I savescum if I loose or get someone important killed just due to a bug.  Like when a siege came and I ordered my entire army to assemble at the entrance, and they all left and began individual practice drills instead, then ran back out 1 at a time.  On the other hand when my siege weapon training range releases the goblin targets into the bottom of the fort where they start shredding children, pets and fish dissectors while the siege operator runs?  Thats fun.  I figure stuff like that is how you learn to design better fortresses.  Next time I won't mix fortifications and armed bow goblins, or doors and trolls. 

Or when I first started and I built a waterfall into a magma pipe and flooded my entrance and the dwarven caravan with it.  2 reclaims later and I had a submerged fortress, 80 dwarves and a dozen units of food and booze that I salvaged all sitting on a little island in the middle of a lake I accidentally made.  And then it started to rain and everyone snapped hilariously. 

[Lytha]

The most fun I had with DF2010 so far was indeed when I embarked with nothing but a pickaxe, 1 copper nugget, 1 wagon, 7 peasants, 2 kitties, 2 cows on a beach (= saltwater), and found out that Dwarf Therapist should not be used to make a peasant start mining or woodworking, because they won't pick up their equipment. I spent half of the spring figuring this out, and so everyone was already thirsty when I finally got around to produce the battleaxe for the woodcutter.

5 of them collapsed and died of dehydration just when at last the first two barrels of booze where ready and in the stockpile. And then one of the two survivors turned berserk and chased a cow through the landscape for the next one and a half seasons, until he died as well.

The last survivor got along then quite well, until immigrants arrived and he killed one of them in a tantrum.

The 3 survivors of that had then fun when they all were turned into noob medics and could diagnose each other. But the last of the first 7 needed surturing, and you probably all know that rope reeds in DF2010 are not one of the things that you find first. So, he died soon after.

Anyway, it became stable at or about after the dwarven caravan and the next immigrant wave... and I grew bored again.


Not exactly fun in losing, but fun in an extremely difficult situation. It was just hilarious how that berserker dwarf chased the cow all over the place, for instance. 

[Dave Mongoose]

The bugged kind of losing is why I've gone back to 40d until the new version is more stable, but I've had trouble finding enough Fun without caverns to explore... this may be about to change with my latest fort, as it's over a rather large chasm with trolls, ratmen, batmen, antmen, giant rats, giant bats, (no giant ants), and at least one giant cave spider (which I plan to catch and tame, but which will most likely attack the fort and kill everything).