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[slink]

I had a region, my first, with a bunch of really screwed up abandoned fortresses.  Since I have a second region with which I have been fairly successful, I decided to use the first region to find out what it was like to reclaim a fortress.

As it turned out, the fortress I chose to reclaim had a lake connected to an underground river.  It was full of snakemen, lizardmen, olmmen, and as the song goes, "crocodile nasties".  I re-abandoned it and reclaimed it about three times before I finally decided that even armed and armored Dwarves were no match for the huge numbers that DF was spawning.  Each attempt ended in a tantrum spiral, above and beyond all the combat deaths.

Finally, I used Dwarf Companion to kill off all the stuff in the lake before releasing a new reclaim effort from the initial pause.  Everything seemed to go fine for a while, then for no apparent reason everything went to pieces.  I tried using Dwarf Companion to try to jolly everyone out of their unhappy moods, and even tried resurrecting some, but eventually it seemed as if Dwarf Companion was no longer affecting anything.  I could change things and refresh, and it looked fine, but in the game nothing had changed.

By then there were corpses all over the place that no one could see but me, as well as a lot of gear that had been marked for reclaim but no one would put it in the stockpiles.

I finally dumped it and remade the region from the seed, so I could try some areas fresh.

My questions are:

1.  Is reclaiming a fortress more or less doomed to tantrum spirals?  I had Dwarves just suddenly flip out while standing in the nice big dining room surrounded by food and booze, and start throwing things.

2.  Is there some reason why they ignore some stuff left over from before, even when it is marked to reclaim (or more precisely, unmarked to forbid) and they have some place to put it?  They even refused to dump rocks that were marked to dump from a previous reclaimation team.  I tried everything on those rocks, and it was as if they could not see them. 

3.  Is there some reason why Dwarves are irresistably drawn to drink from snakeman infested water on the far side of the map, when they are non-military, the water is marked with a restricted activity zone, and they have a perfectly good well underground?

4.  Does Dwarf Companion cause problems sometimes, and stop working other times?  In other words, did I cause a lot of my problems by trying to use DC to save the fortress?  I don't normally use it, but it seemed like a good thing to try with so much going wrong.
 
5.  What does Tweak change?  Is it only in memory, or does it change files?  I was experimenting with it just before I gave up completely on my reclaim efforts, just to see what it did, and I couldn't see anything happening.  I don't mind that.  I just want to know if it changes any data files associated with the game.

[Magua]

Reclaiming isn't "doomed" to tantrum spirals, but they are something you have to watch out for.  If possible, set up shop outside the fort in a safe location and let your military spar for two or three seasons -- should increase their survivability tremendously.

Tantrum spiral: The "easiest" way to do this, if you can kill the nasties, is to as many dwarves as you can spare at the beginning of the reclaim, and set them up in their own little area, so they never talk to the other dwarves.  Thus, they'll never be affected by their deaths, and can outlive the tantrum spiral.

Dwarf Companion: It edits memory.  If DF expects certain values in that memory, or is updating them itself, this won't work.  Eh.   

Tweak: Also changes memory.  Does not operate on the files.

[Pilsu]

I imagine the well was forbidden. That or the doors leading up to it

Restricted areas simply raise the pathfinding cost. Dwarves will still path through there if the detour is either too long or nonexistent

[Vicomt]

2.  Is there some reason why they ignore some stuff left over from before, even when it is marked to reclaim (or more precisely, unmarked to forbid) and they have some place to put it?  They even refused to dump rocks that were marked to dump from a previous reclaimation team.  I tried everything on those rocks, and it was as if they could not see them. 

Seen this myself, its not just corpses, but as far as I can tell, some random items from the fort get "locked" and you can't do anything with them apart from seal them up in the ground below (i.e. channel the square they're on and floor over it).

[edit] actually, I just wondered, are the items that are locked items that were either marked for dumping, forbidden, or tasked when the fortress was abandoned?, also, does anyone know if this happens when the fortress crumbles and is reclaimed?

[slink]

2.  Is there some reason why they ignore some stuff left over from before, even when it is marked to reclaim (or more precisely, unmarked to forbid) and they have some place to put it?  They even refused to dump rocks that were marked to dump from a previous reclaimation team.  I tried everything on those rocks, and it was as if they could not see them. 

Seen this myself, its not just corpses, but as far as I can tell, some random items from the fort get "locked" and you can't do anything with them apart from seal them up in the ground below (i.e. channel the square they're on and floor over it).

[edit] actually, I just wondered, are the items that are locked items that were either marked for dumping, forbidden, or tasked when the fortress was abandoned?, also, does anyone know if this happens when the fortress crumbles and is reclaimed?

The stones that they would not dump had been marked for dumping when the fortress was most recently abandoned.  They were still marked for dumping when I reclaimed the fortress (again), but they were ignored no matter what I did.  Unmark, mark, claim, etc.

It is very possible that the gear they were ignoring had never been unmarked forbidden from the previous attempts to reclaim.  It gets very confusing after three or four reclaims in a row, over a couple of long days of playing.

The corpses had also been marked for dumping, as I had read somewhere here that corpses from a prior population had to be dumped rather than buried.  There were available coffins, and some of those were used at various times but never with corpses from a previous effort.

A moody Dwarf did build a legenday cabinet from Dwarf bones in one reclaim.  I really wanted to make it work after that.  Constructing a royal bedroom using a cabinet made of Dwarf bones appealed to me.

It is possible that the well ended up forbidden at one time and was ignored thereafter, even though it was not forbidden eventually.

I guess the lesson here is that one should remove every single Designation from the map before abandoning a fortress, if one intends ever to reclaim it?

[Vicomt]

The stones that they would not dump had been marked for dumping when the fortress was most recently abandoned.  They were still marked for dumping when I reclaimed the fortress (again), but they were ignored no matter what I did.  Unmark, mark, claim, etc.

It is very possible that the gear they were ignoring had never been unmarked forbidden from the previous attempts to reclaim.  It gets very confusing after three or four reclaims in a row, over a couple of long days of playing.

The corpses had also been marked for dumping, as I had read somewhere here that corpses from a prior population had to be dumped rather than buried.  There were available coffins, and some of those were used at various times but never with corpses from a previous effort.

A moody Dwarf did build a legenday cabinet from Dwarf bones in one reclaim.  I really wanted to make it work after that.  Constructing a royal bedroom using a cabinet made of Dwarf bones appealed to me.

yeah, that's what I thought, I'll attempt to do some checking on this when I get a spare few minutes, although I think its probably TSK'ed items that are causing the grief, as when I saw it, I got seeds, barrels, and other TSK'able things that got locked

It is possible that the well ended up forbidden at one time and was ignored thereafter, even though it was not forbidden eventually.

the well will have been automatically marked forbidden on abandoning. It's just another building, exactly like a forge or smelter, theoretically marking it non-forbidden should mean they use it again... unless maybe it was being TSK'ed again and got locked like the other items.

I guess the lesson here is that one should remove every single Designation from the map before abandoning a fortress, if one intends ever to reclaim it?

sounds like a good (if annoying) idea. I'll see what I can find tonight.

[Vicomt]

I've had a play around with dump jobs and reclaiming, managed to duplicate it and keep saves, so I've opened a bug report on it.

http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=27838.0

still needs more working on to see if the dump marked items that get locked are the actual ones that were actively being dumped, but I don't have any more time right now.

[Boogerman]

Tantrum spiral: The "easiest" way to do this, if you can kill the nasties, is to as many dwarves as you can spare at the beginning of the reclaim, and set them up in their own little area, so they never talk to the other dwarves.  Thus, they'll never be affected by their deaths, and can outlive the tantrum spiral.

Actually, reclaiming dwarves start out as friends with the rest of the group.