In other words, I succeed in making this hell for you guys.
It was definitely not an easy embark, but I think Ahrimahn was the one who doomed the fort. Suiciding our entire military because he thought they could take on tigermen was obviously not helpful and I don't think he did any significant earth moving or keep building like he could have while it was still easy prior to the constant sieges. during I've played with both glacial forts and fortress defense, so I knew what to expect. I think our other overseers were taken off guard.
Save is completely gone, no clue how.
Sorry guys, I don't know why but the save file is bringing my computer to it's knees
I don't know what exactly is causing it but it's making my entire computer run slowly if I open it, not just DF. I won't be able to finish my turn
when I was playing I lost about 4 months because of crashes while using the front end
the last four chapter I had to play twice, I did have a crash
I think Masterwork is a buggy mod. Every single overseer has had problems with it. I'm certainly never going to use it again.
I did not even know what a 17*17 city grid that people use is
The effect of the 17x17x3-wide halllway grid is to size your fortress to match the game interface, so that your arrow keys and your shift-arrow keys all precisely line up with the grid dimensions whether you're in full screen of windows mode.
If you hold down shift when you press the arrow keys the cursor will move ten spaces instead of one. If you do that twice you'll move 20 spaces. This creates a natural grid of 17x17 square blocks separated by 3-wide corridors. Here's a close-up view of a single city block viewed in windowed mode:
While in build mode, those grid marks on the left are 4 shift-arrow key presses away from the grid marks on the right.
And here's a 3x3 grid of 17x17 city blocks viewed in fullscreen mode:
In fullscreen like this you get a screen centered view of the middle of 9 city blocks. In windowed mode, like above, you get a screen-centered view of one city block. 2 arrow keys, or 1 shift-arrow key will move you from centered on one city block to centered on the adjacent block. And...that remains true whether you play in windowed or fullscreen mode.
17x17 with 3-wide hallways is the necessary dimensions to make your fortress match the game interface. 17x17 is plenty enough room to conveniently group any kind of room/workshop/industry/stockpile layout you want. Once you're used to it you'll quickly identify certain block layouts that are fast and efficient. For example, in
this screenshot from my reign, on the middle right you'll see a standard bedroom layout that precisely fits 28 bedrooms in one 17x17 block, with a corridor through the middle. By working with the grid, you always know what the available space for anything will be within a single city block, so it's very easy to use standard block layouts in fortress after fortress. And since the blocks are all the same dimensions, you can easily designate the grid early on and decide later where you actually want houses, workshops, farms, etc. You simply carve out the grid and then build individual city blocks as you go.
It's a
very convenient design.