Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Casei]

I'm playing Fortress mode, using the Masterwork mod (though the mod isn't terribly important to the question).

During Spring of my first year, the caravan had camels pulling them, and one of them got knocked off a high bridge into water. The fortress is now about ten years old, and by the time I had interest (or resources) to deal with them, they numbered about 40. Now they are milling around, breeding, chewing up river grass as fast as they can chew up my FPS. I want them dead.

I have tried building a ledge over the river so that my military can shoot them. They tend to avoid the area. The river has only one access point, being down in a deep gorge, so 'building a ledge all the way to them' is feasible, but not very practical.

I have tried to build a fish farm, tapping into the river with channels filled with cages. This trapped only one. Five of them jumped up onto the first cage and managed to leap out of the channel without getting caught, because I had wild camels all over my fish farm, and I had to have the military mop them up. I have since expanded the fish farm, but they're not pathing in.

After all of these efforts, 33 of the two-humpers remain.

1) Are there any suggestions on how I might exterminate the pest that is the elusive water camel once and for all?

2) I know I can dam up my river - but the location is important because of two feeder waterfalls. I'm very leery of this solution because of past Water Horrors. How can I tell where my river is exiting the map? Will damming my river cause flooding because of the feeder falls?

[FallenAngel]

Try to acquire piranha or sharks and mod it so you can train them for war. Train them in partial water so dwarves will actually do the job but the aquatic creatures won't drown. And then get them out to the camels somehow and you'll be drinking camel blood.

[Yaur]

Water will exit the map wherever it can, so it will overtop the dam and spread out. Once it finds an exit it is unlikely to rise any higher unless there is a LOT of water coming over the falls.
Note that I've never dammed a river but this is the method that I use to keep a mist generator/cistern from flooding the fort.

Also... maybe use hunters to turn them into meat?

[FallenAngel]

I think your best option is the one you said was possible but impractical, although it's one of the less dwarven ways.
If you want a nearly foolproof way of getting rid of them, you can drop a floor down on them.

[Casei]

FallenAngel: Yeah, I hate the micromanagement of untiling the river once it is tiled, but it's doable. I certainly wish I had War Sharks, but I'm afraid that by the time I found some, it'd be Camel Fortress.

Yaur: There's only one drainage point on the map, I think. At one side, it's all 7's in terms of water depth. At the other end, it wavers between 5/6/7, but I can't tell if it's spilling off here or if this is the entry point.

The question might be moot, as I've had several consistent crashes while trying to deal with it. I might have to abandon the map, as epic as it is.

[FallenAngel]

Dropping a floor will probably the most effective, as long as you don't want/need their meat.
And untiling a floor is better than FPS death.

[PDF urist master]

If you have GCS, catch an FB (preferrably one with poisonous bite or sting) and drop it on the camels. At this point your fort should be strong enough to survive the likely event that the FB escapes the river.

alternatively, other large creatures with the large predator tag should be able to get rid of them for you (blind cave ogres, jabberers, giant tigers). camels are deceptively powerful though, so one might not kill all.

[Casei]

Sadly, in spite of the Embark Point of Epicness, I'm going to give up playing this save - I reached a point that makes it crash almost as soon as it is loaded.

 

[Koremu]

Yaur: There's only one drainage point on the map, I think. At one side, it's all 7's in terms of water depth. At the other end, it wavers between 5/6/7, but I can't tell if it's spilling off here or if this is the entry point.

The 5/6 part is where it's flowing off the map

[Casei]

Kormenu: Thanks!

Thankfully, the crashes have been fixed by completely eliminating the digging invader references from the dfhack ini files. The nice embark is safe.

As for the camels, well, as I tiled the river closer to them, they'd run out of range. I decided to make easier work of the entire affair and dig out the wall of the gorge. The camels proceeded to leap out of the river and into the fish farm, where I had the military mop them up. Two survivors were on the opposite side of the map, but both were males, so I let them be. Amusingly enough, all of the camels were quite corpulent, so whatever water lilies or seaweed or goblin bones they were gnawing on was quite satisfying for them.

We are now dining heartily on the three that we managed to capture in the fish traps.

Thanks for everyone's help!

[Casei]

Here are a couple of Google+ posts I've made about Machinetorture (the name of the actual fort). The expedition is The Gooey Beds, and our civilization is named The Steely Tongs. The river is called The Concern of Women, and the hill we are on named Barrenhill.

There's a joke in all those random names, somewhere, but as all my nobles are women I shall leave all punchlines up to the imagination.

https://plus.google.com/102095666583949328079/posts/TzTZwxeqivr

https://plus.google.com/102095666583949328079/posts/ErK5iWFUfYn