Depends on your definition of "easier". I feel like sieges are tougher than they used to be, but if you're used to turtling, that means nothing, because enemies still can't mine through or deconstruct walls. Tantrum spirals don't really happen as much anymore, so if that's your main cause of fortress existence failure, then yeah, it's gonna be a chill time. (personally I'm a fan of having an open gate at all times, come hell or high water, so the sieges hit pretty hard and I'm all here for it)
There's a lot more going on though, and dorf personalities are a lot more fleshed out. Minecarts are pretty fun, and you can have taverns and temples now, with neutrals visiting your fortress (including scholars who may (if you're very lucky) be carrying necromancer tomes for your dorfs to learn necromancy to build an undead army. Libraries are also a thing, along with book manufacturing and writing. You can raid other settlements now, too (not visibly - it happens offscreen with selected dorf squad(s)).
There's other stuff I'm not mentioning here - this is off the top of my head. 0.34 was one I enjoyed a lot, and I remember some of my forts from it vividly, so I'm just listing what I remember there not being in those forts. I think there's also new animal people and fruit trees/fruit gathering, possibly some other things. Not 100% sure but I think multitile 3D trees were also added after that? But in any case, if all the new stuff isn't worth the difficulty changes, might just stick with 0.34. That release was pretty solid as well.
edit: A side note - Toady's been focusing on making the game difficult for us veterans again in the past few devlogs, so those might be worth a read.
Author
Topic: returning to DF, latest version or my old 2014 version? (Read 1009 times)