I'm on my 13th fortress, so in honor I'd like to recap some of my best fortresses and how they ended.
So my first fortress was pretty awesome. A small stockpile of food outside, a small single space tunnel with 7 bedrooms dug out of it. Before the carpenter could figure out how to cut down a tree and turn it into a bed, the food ran out and everyone stood around starving. I decided to watch 5ippycups tutorials and how to play after this.
My second fortress was a carbon copy of 5ippycup's tutorial fortress. It died of me being bored.
Fortress's 3-7 were experimental fortresses where I tested various fortress layouts to find the one that was most efficient. Fortress 7 ended when I felt I had finally found the perfect layout utilizing a perfect balance of space between living areas, dining rooms, workshops, and stockpiles. I decided to start over from scratch to see how effective my layout was. I also experimented with pointlessly moving water around, and found out how effective large serrated discs were.
Fortress 8 I scrapped the design from fortresses 3-7, withdrew from society, and after a day came up with: A fortress layout. All craftdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with sandviches and encircled with bands of coffee. This object menaces with spikes of awesomeness. I then realized that there was a distinct lack of coal on my map, yet plenty of gold and silver. After my military clad in leather brandishing silver warhammers failed to stop two back to back ambushes followed by a siege, all of whom decided to come right after each caravan and proceed to rape their camels with silver spears, the goblins had their way with the dwarven women and I abandoned the fortress.
For fortress 9 I decided to tackle aquifers. Unfortunately, embarking in a desert with a few levels of aquifers directly below the sandy ground isn't the best way to learn something new. I did learn how to break through aquifers with the pump method. I also learned just how long they meant by 'long method' and that dwarves don't last long when they have nowhere to hide from giant desert scorpions. Giant desert scorpions win when your hunter runs out of ammo.
Fortress 10 I decided to break away from the 'fortress in a side of a mountain' routine and embarked in the only heavily forested area I could found that didn't have an aquifer and wasn't next to a mountain. I was hopeful as I designated the entire fortress to be dug out, placed temporary stockpiles for food and wood, and assigned all the bushes and trees to be butchered for their goods. My hope was quickly dashed when they were immediately set upon by a squad of ornery buzzards, two of which lured the wardogs away while the rest kindly stole all of the food. To add insult to injury, they decided to push the brewer into the lake and fly around scaring away the miners until he drowned, after which they flew off with our their food. In the wardogs defense they did kill the two buzzards they were chasing, and were rewarded by being butchered alongside the buzzards for emergency rations. After digging out my fortress I realized that there was no iron ore or coal and most of my dwarves were depressed, and decided that dwarves aren't elves and shouldn't be treated as such.
Fortress 11 I (finally) experimented with siege engines. After about three years in my fortress was surrounded by two walls and a moat, the entrances through which were thoroughly guarded by three ballista per entrance. If that wasn't enough, my main entrance was a 3x20 line of traps also guarded by 3 ballista (oh, I had 9 legendary siege operators) with 3 magma proof hatchcovers over the stairs and 3 magma proof floodgates at the entrance. And magma. Five years into the game, the much awaited killingsiege came. They left rather quickly after one of them stepped on my first layer of weapon traps and got a boo-boo on his leg. This depressed me and I abandoned the fortress with the goblins.
Fortress 12 I experimented with new residential layouts and by an genius effort (mistake) managed to make an effective layout that held 4 more dwarves while still having the farthest room exactly 25 spaces from the entrance of the fort. Unfortunately I didn't like the way it looked and stuck with my original design, and while I was at it revamped all the rooms to look more 'artistic' instead of squares built inside squares dug out of a giant square. Now they're squares built inside diamonds dug out of a giant rectangle. Add some octagons and symmetry, and my fortress is now aesthetically pleasing with minimal efficiency interference. Fortress 12 died due it taking a ridiculously long time to save/load on .18.
Here I am, on lucky fortress number 13. Aesthetically pleasing symmetry with wonderful efficiency. Plenty of marble to make everything I possibly can out of marble, and the northern portion of the map has a sedimentary layer with everything I could possibly want. I was just thinking that this might be the one fortress that lasts a ridiculously long time and dies due to me being bored of everyone having solid marble rooms decorated with diamond encrusted gold furniture and even Urist Mcpansymiller being an unstoppable killing machine; when I realized that all of my dwarfs appears to suffer from a logic malformation (retardation) and that there are too many series of unfortunate idiocy. I decided to destroy all of my orthoclase buildings and replace them with shazzy new marble block ones, but I couldn't build the fishery because there was a cedar bucket in it and I couldn't build the dyery because the marble block that was going to be used for the fishery was dropped in it's building area. I couldn't build a carpenters workshop because the barrel assigned to the dyers was in it's area, and for some series of blocks being dropped about only one of the six masons workshops didn't get suspended. If that event wasn't enough, Urist Mcnowfirstintobattle organized a party right after the dwarven caravan came. It's not like we needed that iron anvil and food or anything. On subject of anvils, fuel is present but isn't unlimited so I had 20 steel bars made to outfit a small squad before I wasted all of my fuel/iron on large serrated iron blades. Sensing the newfound value of steel, Urist Mcnumbskull decided to become possessed and make 'Zararbost: a steel animal trap. It is encircled with bands of orthoclase. This object menaces with spikes of steel.' Gee thanks, all of the iron and gems we have and you want to make a steel animal trap. I don't want to abandon and start another fortress because I like how my fortress is made (it's the first with a working mill) and it's my 13th fortress, besides the events would have been humorous if I didn't have to fix them.
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Topic: Lucky number 13 (Read 1927 times)