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[Mickey Blue]

So in my waiting for the new version I decided to set up a pretty difficult situation (for me at least).

Going to try to survive in a haunted (terrifying) glacier living on the surface (in houses, buildings, etc).  I can use the soil layer for basements/storage but no farming (in fact turning caverns off so underground farming will be impossible) and I can only use the stone layer for mining out stone/metal (if there is any), nothing else.

Rules:

-No walls and no 'linked' buildings.  Each building will be free standing and at least three squares away from any other.  They can only close with regular doors. 

-Soil basements can only be as large as the building above, small building = small basement

-Soil basements can only be used for storage, cannot build industry down there

-No underground farming, if I can figure out some way to farm above ground more power to me

-No danger rooms

-No magma

-Buildings cannot be more then one story high

-Buildings must all be separate, no massive castles or anything


That is all the rules I can come up with right now, I'm using standard embark rules as far as points and all that go, I'm using Fortress Defense II (which adds a bunch of enemies) and Forgotten Realms (which I've never used before so we'll see how that goes) for mods. 

My main concerns will be getting some shelter up and finding water early on, then of course I'll have to worry about food (as farming may well be impossible as well as keeping large grazing creatures) and setting up a military ASAP.  One major deviation is I'm allowing myself to use traps (which normally I do not) given how many other limits I'm putting on myself.

More info as it arrives (genning maps looking for a suitable site now).

Update:

Ok, I've chosen my site.  Its an overlap between a terrifying glacier and a (frozen) terrifying ocean (The dwindling frost and the angry water respectively).  They both have some minerals (left the settings to default), the glacier has an aquifer and of course there is plenty of ice.  I'm also hoping for sand but we'll see. 

I have a total of nineteen enemy civs (one of which I'm at war with) and five friendly civs including dwarves. 

My embark is going to be heavy on the farmable animals which don't need grass of course, and on general supplies.

Strike the earth, and all that..

Update II:

Well as I suspected there is no booze at all so I'll have to solve the water problem quickly.. On the plus side the ocean is, right now, unfrozen as is a small pool that is sitting inside a small canyon formed in the ice near the beach.  Of course it will all be salt water but still, perhaps I can desalinate it.  That is the first step in any rate, I have until my dwarves die of thirst to come up with a practical source of water.

[gomwon]

-No magma

 

[Varnifane]

-No magma

 

[Xen0n]

Rules:

-No walls and no 'linked' buildings.  Each building will be free standing and at least three squares away from any other.  They can only close with regular doors. 

Just to be clear, does "No walls' mean no giant wall around your city, or that every individual 'building' has no walls, just everything out in the open?

Depending on how difficult you want to make it, you could consider some of my mainstay rules:
☼   Using (an updated version of) the Seasonal Crops mod to make crops only grow once a year to cut down on foodspam.
☼   'Fixing' the 1 bar per metal object issue, at least for weapons and armor.  Takes 3 bars for a breastplate, among other changes.
☼   Overseer Mickey Blue has issued a new ban on exports!  Exporting of Food, Trap Components, Mechanisms prohibited. (Consider changing this to ONLY allowing Crafts as exports)

[Mickey Blue]

Those are interesting mods, I may have to use them for all future fortresses..

That said, for this one (as its started) I mean no walling in my city at all.  All my buildings will be above ground and they can have walls but that would be it.  Additionally, as they are going to be many separate buildings as opposed to, say, an above ground castle, attacks can come from any direction (as opposed to knowing the attacks will always enter through your front gate).  Also, since my only protection will be doors, any building destroyers can break right on through.

[Xen0n]

Those are interesting mods, I may have to use them for all future fortresses..

That said, for this one (as its started) I mean no walling in my city at all.  All my buildings will be above ground and they can have walls but that would be it.  Additionally, as they are going to be many separate buildings as opposed to, say, an above ground castle, attacks can come from any direction (as opposed to knowing the attacks will always enter through your front gate).  Also, since my only protection will be doors, any building destroyers can break right on through.

I'm liking the sound of this scenario.  I've been on the fence about banning the use of bridges, myself.  As for the Seaonal Crops mod, I think the raw about Quarry Bushes has some parts that need to be updated to the current version by copy-pasting from the 31.25 vanilla raws. 

[Necro910]

-No magma

I know what you mean.  I'm just saying that making such a mod is just... theme-breaking.  Unless you're playing humans or... any non-dwarves.

It'd be like making a DF mod where there's no magma ...

No... magma?

But... magma...

and the magma....

Magma?
MAGMAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Necro cancels post: Throwing tantrum.
An orthoclase floodgate has been destroyed!

[Mickey Blue]

Indeed, I've not used bridges as a 'wall in' since.. Well for a long time now.  The only thing I use them for is to actually be bridges and don't use any kind of retractable feature in normal fortresses.

Walling in simply makes things far too easy, it isn't hard to have a nearly completely self-sufficient fortress and wall in combined with crossbowmen can easily equal an auto-win in most battle scenarios.

This is the first time I've seriously tried a real "build only on surface" scenario, we'll see how it goes.  Right now the problem is that without plants there is no booze, and without booze and it takes time to create a desalination station, but trying my luck at it (failed once so far, missed smoothing on part of the floor..).

As for no magma.. In this case it goes hand in hand with only building on the surface (I know there are ways to bring magma up but they are all more trouble then they are worth IMO) and without caverns I don't even know if magma will exist to begin with.

That said, generally speaking I don't use it anyways, again it makes things too easy.  Having to use wood (or coal) to fuel my metal industry not only slows it down some (so it takes a bit longer to pump out equipment) but also, depending on my embark, can remove the effective infinite weapons/armor thing so I actually have to think about what I really want.

Magma traps are amusing but I tend to find them to either be more trouble then they are worth and/or too easy (auto-killing nearly everything).

To each their own of course, but as many here I'm sure I've found DF to get kinda easy once you get the hang of it, so over the years I've taken measures to make it harder via difficult embarks, mods, and self-limitation.

[Di]

The problem with difficult embarks and self-limitations is that they either simply create tedious problems at the very beginning or make you feel like a partially paralyzed rather than actually giving a good thrill.
Here, you won't be able to plant anything aboveground in freezing biome anyway, so don't bother with modding crops.
You could consider breeding cats, dogs and other animals feeding on sun energy for meat. And it would be really a pain to stockpile everything mostly aboveground. You'll have to get water from caverns but be wary that water can freeze on its way up even if the well is underground causing dwarf to try again and again. You can melt ice in cave-ins but that won't be enough if you don't have any booze. Oh and undead have the combat capabilities of balloons so go for non-undead terrifying region.

[Tharwen]

If you want the mining thing to be slightly stricter (the 'only for stone/metals' rule is a little vague), you might try only allowing yourself open quarries. That means no underground tiles at all except for the basements.

[Steelgeek]

-No magma

I know what you mean.  I'm just saying that making such a mod is just... theme-breaking.  Unless you're playing humans or... any non-dwarves.

It'd be like making a DF mod where there's no magma ...

No... magma?

But... magma...

and the magma....

Magma?
MAGMAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Necro cancels post: Throwing tantrum.
An orthoclase floodgate has been destroyed!

Now look what you went and did to poor Necro.
There there, it's ok.
*guides Necro through his volcano dodge trap, goblin-pult, and drowning/burning goblin ash/obsidian maker*

[Qwernt]

smoothing doesn't keep salt out.  Constructed floor is required.

If you are going to start no booze on a glacier with a puddle, I would bring stones for mechanism and walls/floor, + wood for the pump.  build the 3x3 "well" beside your water source.  one wall will be the pump.

the bigger problem will be keeping it from freezing... which means you may need to dig first and build it underground... which breaks your basement rule (since you don't have a building yet.

[Patchy]

The fact that the ocean is liquid means the water will be liquid on the beach. The well there won't have to be underground unless his ocean does freeze for part of the year. Now if he tries to move the water up to the glacier section of the embark, it will freeze.

You probably know this though, but you don't have to deslinate the water. The well will do it for you, or at least it makes your dwarves not care about the saltiness. Other than that, sounds like a tough challenge, good luck.

[Mickey Blue]

The problem with difficult embarks and self-limitations is that they either simply create tedious problems at the very beginning or make you feel like a partially paralyzed rather than actually giving a good thrill.

I think it depends on what you choose to do.  Now some of these I've never really done before so maybe they won't pan out but one of my favorite fortresses was on a glacier (non evil and no salt water) back in 40d, it was awesome to realize when I crossed the threshhold of 'surviving' in what was at the time one of the most difficult biomes to survive in.  I did the cavern challenge not too long ago (chronicled it in the thread somewhere) where you immediately move to the cavern once you start and only get your starting supplies, cannot ever trade and simply have to survive down there, I did ok until a forgotten beast slaughtered me (I had ramped up the monster amount and removed any limitations to them attacking).

As for my general go to options I've found that disallowing traps (which I can use here but ordinarily don't save sometimes for hunting creatures) and disallowing walling ones self in make for far more exciting attacks.. Sure, sometimes the attacks do far more damage then they would have, sometimes they even kill me off, but when I win an attack where the enemy had nothing to stop them save my military it feels more fun then when I have the enemy sitting outside until I'm totally ready for them then having them wade through a sea of traps before I finish off whats left.. Its fun at first but eventually (to me) gets dull.

Now I will say that right now I'm having a bear of time not having any booze, I may have to remove those rules and return caverns even if I decide not to allow farming (and limit booze to caravans), we'll see.  Just having an above ground wall less fort in a glacier may be enough.