I've been playing dwarf fortress for a while now. Probably had about a dozen forts I spent time on, and almost all were successful. I thought I had this game's number, that I was safe. I was wrong, so very very wrong.
My most recent embark site was half terrifying forest and half wilderness mountain. I figured it was time to up the difficulty a bit and had heard that terrifying biomes do that. Things progress well. Other than the occasional herd of zombie moose cows or some such thing it was pretty quiet.... too quiet.
The merchant caravans came and went. I setup a hallway, 2x20 of cage traps. PLENTY for the random ambush, baby snatcher, or just to take the edge off of the occasional siege. I had my military train for 5 years the old fashioned way, no danger rooms for me. Besides, my 20 dwarf strong military had 4 champions, legendary in fighting and nearly there in weapon skills.
I had magma forges working constantly, a legendary armorer and weaponsmith. My military was fully equipped with steel. Surely they were unstoppable!
The action started in year 5, I had 140 dwarves and more weere coming each wave. Boredom set in so I decided to explore the underground caverns. It was time to show those forgotten beasts who was boss. Beware the deadly dust? Psh, how many dwarves can he kill?...
Every last dwarf that could move and swing half way decent died of suffocation immediately after the forgotten best fight. I lost 10, and kept 10. No biggie, a dwarf's a dwarf. I recruited the military back up to full strength and got the new recruits training. The entire military was now essentially filled with fresh recruits.
It was then that the siege showed up. I didn't even bother to check the numbers. How bad could it be? My dwarves were still decked out in legendary steel armor and weapons. He'll I had 60 full suits of steel armor and weapons to go with it just in case things went South.
I sent the dwarves to do their duty. Face first into the siege! I sat there, watching the dwarves file out of the fortress. "Soon the goblin army will be broken, and run screaming" I tells myself. A few moments pass, I hear a few dwarves die. No biggie, there's always a few losers that can't take it. My army is better off without them.
A few more dwarves die... it was then that I notice the edges of the screen are filling in goblins. Then more goblins. Then trolls. There must have been 60 of them. The recruits are falling left and right.
Right about then panic set in. I realize I can't have more than about 10 dwarves left, raw recruits at that. And that they're just waiting to die. So I enact the Stalingrad initiative. I filled all 6 military squads out with any dwarf not related to metalsmithing.
What followed was easily the most beautiful chaos I have seen in the game to date. Dozens of dwarves threw themselves face first into the goblin army attempting to pickup the weapons and armor of their fallen comrads, while dozens more rush off to the armory to pickup shiny new suits.
The cage traps at the front of the fortress filled up almost instantly, it had almost no impact on their army. Luckily the enemy forces stopped moving forward so that they could pick off the half naked dwarves one at a time.
I continued filling the military squads as dwarves were lost. Eventually the siege was broken, chased off the edges of the map by 50 half naked dwarves torn between finding another boot, and killing the goblin in front of them.
I breathed a sigh of relief and put all 70 survivors back to work. Half, they had killed half of my dwarves. "Still", I thought to myself,"I'll be back up to snuff in no time."
Again, I was so very wrong. The next three seasons brought no migrants and a couple ambushes. And the one after those brought another huge siege. Down to 65 dwarves I gave up, and walled off the front of the fortress.
Things were pretty calm after that, and eventually boredom set in and I invited the circus to town. But I'll never forget the lesson learned from that fort:
I do not, at all, have this games number yet.
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Topic: I was so very wrong. (Read 978 times)