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[wlmartin]

The more and more I play, the more I realize that spending 2 hours waiting for the baddies to eventually come and then having my defenses fail (or having none at all) is painful

I tried to prepare on my last game. I had a lovely series of traps and moats but the problem was that the levers for those were outside of my burrow so i set the alert, my dorfs go running in but no-one presses the lever on the way in (of course, not their fault but mine)

Next game, I put the lever in the right place but because i put my burrow so far deep in my fortress, by the time anyone got to the burrow to trigger the lever, the bad guys had already got past the point of no return.

So, for my next game I will put a burrow right near the entrance - somewhere temporary that just serves to get them in safely and the doors closed, then release the alert so they are safe behind the walls and will get jobs done and i can handle the invaders



This got my thinking about the whole burrows dynamic. I know that the purpose of a burrow is typically to move dwarfs during a crisis but I wondered if it would serve to micro-manage my dwarves more.

If i want my trader to stay near the depot and not go 5 levels down to have a sleep or a drink - a burrow does this. Just set him up in his own room with drink/food and restrict him there. His supplies will get replenished by dwarves not subject to burrows but he wont leave the area.

Same goes for my doctor/nurse staff. If i just want them to live in the area, just burrow them off.

The principle seems to work well with people that I never want to leave a certain area.
I am even going so far as to create a sweatshop where my dwarves have workshops that are setup with the resources they need, a bed, some food/drink and they just grind out their work for me in these little rooms.

I have even thought about creating outside burrows for my woodcutters.
I make a small underground spot for them to sleep and restrict them to cutting a small piece of wooded area until it is gone, then i move them to the next one, rotating them around. That way if evil strikes, I still give them some security but keep them from shlepping into my fortress all the time with their wood.

With the above I can even shut my doors constantly, taking maybe an annual trip to the wood stockpiles and blitz everyone to just haul wood inside, then shut the doors again.



Would the above ideas work?
Is this a feasible strategy or am I just wasting time?

[LMeire]

The only real issues with burrows are that dwarves ignore them until they've actually walked into them, and tend to wander around aimlessly at first since they can't take jobs not in their burrows; and that workshops won't acknowledge resources placed outside of them, so you'll probably need a dedicated team of full-time haulers to keep things running smooth. Also, Miners refuse to dig squares that aren't within their burrows, so if you're restricting their movements as well it'll require twice as many commands to get them digging.

One thing you might not be aware of though: Vampires also obey burrows, even if they get "thirsty". So you can prevent vampires from killing anyone important by burrowing them away from important people's beds, though if some peon happens to fall asleep in the wrong hall the vamp will consider them fair game.

[wlmartin]

Yeah i heard that about burrows so i might need to do CIV alerts to get them kick started


I also thought about the idea of creating communities (involves a really large map i suppose)

first 7 dwarves are my utility guys who have free reign over any burrow
The migrants serve as communities that when they arrive immediately get their own burrow

Kind of like communities

I also thought perhaps about making 1 burrow = 1 level so they dont travel out of their burrow and aside from resource generation (stone/metal/wood) that would be done by a multi-burrow contingent, they operate seperate from each other