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[Mrhappyface]

Well I have a fort in a terrifying biome. It rains acrid sludge that makes people dizzy, and has all sorts of nasty undead wildlife. I have 11 dwarves in my fort (including the founding 7) and a steady supply of food and booze through my farms. I just breached the caverns, and there's some wood. However, my anvil is outside with all the undead which consists of various wildlife, merchants, and several entire migrant waves. I don't have enough wood to make cage traps, and the only tools there are are two copper picks and a copper battle axe. What do?

[Cellmonk]

Post images! and make this a forum story! it sounds absolutely awesome!

and if you can upload the save, I'm sure some of us forum goers would love the epic challenge.

Thats a hard one. Do the zombies try to path to your fort when the gate's open? or do they just wander until they see a dwarf?

If they path, you could make a long tunnel with a drawbridge along its length, as well as one at the end to act as a door. connect both to levers. then dig an opening to the surface, run, and get a dwarf to repeatedly pull the atom smasher's lever.

Of they don't, you need to get a 3 wide tunnel to the edge of the map, closeable with drawbridges on both ends. If there are enough trees around to make the entrance inaccessible from other sides of the map, the merchants have a high likelihood of spawning at that edge of the map where you placed the entrance. somewhere along the 3 wide tunnel you can place a depot. They should get underground relatively quickly that way. Remember to keep the fortside bridge up until you know the tunnel/airlock is secure. If the merchants are overcome by the undead while they are underground, only a few undead will be in the anvil-full tunnel.

I'll think about it. the pathing thing is a major question. if they don't try to path to you, its way harder.

EDIT: I've thought a bit, and i have an idea.

the anvil is on the surface, right? if its above a bit of flat ground, you can dig directly under it with an up stair. from that up stair, the floor it is resting on can be destroyed. the anvil will drop away from zombie paws.

This only works perfectly if the zombies can't fly

[Nil Eyeglazed]

1) dig up stairs to the surface, without digging the corresponding surface down stair-- instead:

2) channel the surface on top of your upstairs

Safely builds an impenetrable trench, without fear of interruption, to drop caravans or anvils, or begin a watchtower.

If you've penetrated caverns, you might want to dig out a huge loamy area for a tree farm.

You can separate good guys from bad guys with:

Code: [Select]


  #####
 ##h  ->civvies go this way
  ^####
 ##d  ->zombies go this way
  #####

^ linked to both hatch and door, all weights trigger, civilians DON'T trigger; both paths lead to the fortress, but of course the zombie path does so through, say, a long bridge linked to a repeater


Flyers, trapavoids, and building destroyers are a potential problem, but not an insurmountable one.

For wagons:

Code: [Select]


 #######
 BDDDDDB
 BDDDDDB
 BDDDDDB
 BDDDDDB
 BDDDDDB
 #######

B is raising bridge, D is depot


Simple airlock system-- lower the outside bridge, wagons come in; raise the outside bridge and lower the inside bridge, dwarves deal with the wagons; raise the inside bridge and lower the outside bridge, wagons depart.

[Cellmonk]

alternatively make a glass pumpstack from the magma sea, make a pressurizing tower, and dig out (via the stair method) outlets for your handy-dandy surface magma-ing system.

[NecroRebel]

Getting traders in and out is practically effortless. Dig a tunnel to 6 squares before the map edge, make an up ramp on the 5th tile before the map edge, then seal off the area around the ramp with walls, raised drawbridges, and of course floors on the level above as a roof. You should have a 3x4 area on the map edge on the surface that is accessible only through your fort or that tunnel, and assuming you don't have any other caravan-accessible routes to the surface map edge, all the caravans will spawn in that spot in complete safety.

Migrants and diplomats are somewhat tougher. You could either have one or more places sealed off with layered pet-impassible doors and traps, ideally with readily-accessible dumped-item-destruction locations such as magma sea chutes or repeating atom smashers so your haulers can rapidly permanently annihilate any intruders, or an airlock system. Airlocks, unfortunately, won't let diplomats in, though I suppose if your mayor was a vampire or something and was kept in the airlock at all times that might work...

[Mrhappyface]

Post images! and make this a forum story! it sounds absolutely awesome!

and if you can upload the save, I'm sure some of us forum goers would love the epic challenge.

Thats a hard one. Do the zombies try to path to your fort when the gate's open? or do they just wander until they see a dwarf?

If they path, you could make a long tunnel with a drawbridge along its length, as well as one at the end to act as a door. connect both to levers. then dig an opening to the surface, run, and get a dwarf to repeatedly pull the atom smasher's lever.

Of they don't, you need to get a 3 wide tunnel to the edge of the map, closeable with drawbridges on both ends. If there are enough trees around to make the entrance inaccessible from other sides of the map, the merchants have a high likelihood of spawning at that edge of the map where you placed the entrance. somewhere along the 3 wide tunnel you can place a depot. They should get underground relatively quickly that way. Remember to keep the fortside bridge up until you know the tunnel/airlock is secure. If the merchants are overcome by the undead while they are underground, only a few undead will be in the anvil-full tunnel.

I'll think about it. the pathing thing is a major question. if they don't try to path to you, its way harder.

EDIT: I've thought a bit, and i have an idea.

the anvil is on the surface, right? if its above a bit of flat ground, you can dig directly under it with an up stair. from that up stair, the floor it is resting on can be destroyed. the anvil will drop away from zombie paws.

This only works perfectly if the zombies can't fly

Sure, here are pics.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is the main hall.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is above ground.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The stocks screen.

[Nagassh]

I know how you feel.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Getting traders in and out is practically effortless. Dig a tunnel to 6 squares before the map edge, make an up ramp on the 5th tile before the map edge, then seal off the area around the ramp with walls, raised drawbridges, and of course floors on the level above as a roof. You should have a 3x4 area on the map edge on the surface that is accessible only through your fort or that tunnel, and assuming you don't have any other caravan-accessible routes to the surface map edge, all the caravans will spawn in that spot in complete safety.

That only works if you can actually get outside, easier said than done in this kind of biome.

As was mentioned earlier, dig a tunnel under the anvil, build some upstairs and then channel the anvil into the tunnel. This can be used to get any materials on the surface that are required for fey moods too, just be careful that there aren't any zambabos in LOS of haulers to scare them off, placing a wall there to block the hole is worthwhile too.

Once you've breached the caverns, dig out huge tracts of sand / soil areas in your fort, tower caps will start growing in these and provide a meager amount of wood for the fort, make sure to save some for fey moods, try to use rock pots for storing food and booze etc.

Other than that, build airlocked trade depos at various parts of the map, lock the side to your fort and hope the traders can fight their way to said depo and then be locked in before the undead get them. Making meeting zones there / drafting all immigrants into a military squad and stationing them there sometimes gets some inside, but relying on children inside the fort is what I've ended up having to do.

Also, do NOT rely on doors to keep the undead out. It works on zombie dorfs and animals, but zombambo kobolds seem capable of opening them.

[gzoker]

if you have sand, then glass pumpstack, magmaflood the world.
you can easily get your anvil. dig under it a 3 by 3 room, but leave the middle. ramp up under the anvil. the anvil falls down - but the undead cannot path in. wall in the hole.
if the undead doesn't stand on it, then you shouldn't have any problems.

edit:
I have a zombie siege outside too, but not in an evil biome. I'm training my military to deal with them.