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[revara]

Hey, so I recently made an embark, built a pretty lovely above-ground city, and hit the edge of the map with my outer walls. I was wondering if, with the current version of DF, where you can temporarily retire fortresses, if I could in theory retire, then re-embark upon the fortress, but with a larger embark area this time?

Bonus information about what happens to my dwarves, materials and explored areas will be much appreciated!

[vjmdhzgr]

I know that this won't work if you retire it. Have you ever tried to embark on an already existing site, like a human town? Well, it doesn't let you. Same thing with retired fortresses, they have to be 'R'eclaimed. I'm not sure about if abandoning could work though. Normally abandoning and 'R'eclaiming snaps your reclaim to the original fortress location and dimensions and won't let you change anything. However, I don't know if you can't embark on top an abandoned fortress the same way you can't embark on an active one.

It should be pretty simple to test. Just make a basic world, make a new fortress abandon it immediately, then go back to embarking and see what you can do. I'm not currently able to use dwarf fortress so I can't test.

[Bearskie]

Nope, you can't.  I dunno about DFhack though.

[Space Wizard]

You can if you turn "embark anywhere" on, though this may be a feature of DFhack, as this feature allows you to embark in a human settlement or even in the middle of the ocean. I haven't tested this though, so let us know if it works, assuming you're running a version of Dwarf Fortress with the option available in the embark menu.

[Pirate Santa]

You can if you turn "embark anywhere" on, though this may be a feature of DFhack, as this feature allows you to embark in a human settlement or even in the middle of the ocean. I haven't tested this though, so let us know if it works, assuming you're running a version of Dwarf Fortress with the option available in the embark menu.

Embark anywhere is a feature of DfHack, and it will let you embark on top of existing settlements.
Oddities may ensue however.

[revara]

I will try later today, and edit this post with the results.

Currently, I'm just happy to get a little more work on my city done

[vjmdhzgr]

Make sure to make a copy of the save before retiring or abandoning the fortress. Whatever happens it could easily ruin the fort, so youll copy to either try things differently or be able towel what you have.

[revara]

Alright, so I am tested the following:

• Can you simply embark on top of your previous fortress using embark anywhere?
• Can you resize if you choose to un-retire a fortress?
• Un-retiring a fortress, what happens to the dwarves?
• Embarking on top of an abandoned fortress, using embark anywhere.

The results:

• You can, and every items and dwarf, and visiting trader stays. In place, it seems. Animals move around once in a while, and one of my previous hammerdwarves took a swing at one of my dwarves as he tried to restock a stockpile. Even buildings stay put, though I didn't check if I could utilize the workshops.
• No.
• Everything is as I left it - except the elven caravan has disappeared.
• Items are scrambled about wildly, the visiting caravan's goods were also spread all over, and I was able to pick them up. Most buildings seem intact (Missing only a masterwork cabinet and coffer, from what I can tell).

All in all, I could have abandoned my fortress and then used embark anywhere to increase the size of my fortress, but... One fatal flaw in my plan: I embarked in the very lower left corner of my embark square, and where am I in need of space? That's right, the very lower left corner, so, for me, I'll continue with this 3-by-3, until it all catches fire

[nimbus25]

Well un-retiring skips ahead 2 weeks, so your fort will always be 2 weeks in the future from after you retire.

[Max™]

Yeah, incidentally you can change things like the name of your fortress, and I'm pretty sure I could manage to properly alter the size of an existing fort but it's going to be a really iffy progress at best if you're doing this to a currently retired fort, much less an active one, and I'm sure there are weird little reference chains that will screw things up like trees not spawning properly, caravans getting stuck, pathing through the expanded sections being weird, jobs not being assigned right through there, and so forth.

Technically it should be possible, realistically it is not worth trying.

[Ubiq]

Items are scrambled about wildly, the visiting caravan's goods were also spread all over, and I was able to pick them up. Most buildings seem intact (Missing only a masterwork cabinet and coffer, from what I can tell).

Are they showing up in the stock screen?

If so, they could be anywhere on the map including the caverns if you've opened them or even underwater.