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[Hyndis]

Requesting fortress critique:
http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11095-minedances
Population 200.
Year 66 from embark.

This was made with the old version of DF. I'm still waiting for the current version to stabilize with the bugfixing before I really start building big.

Exploration into the caverns is limited due to how much time was spent on building the main fortress but the main fortress is more or less finished, so all that is exploration into the deeper layers of the map.



Edit;
Mods/tweaks/adjustements used for the game:
---prospecting, allows conversion of large amounts of junk stone into metal
---classrooms, allows dorfs to train different skills, consumes nothing except for time, generates nothing except for xp
---added in additional hostile goblin and elf civilization, gave hostile elves metal, can be under siege by 3 different civilizations at the same time
---removed clothing from game for everyone to reduce clutter
---used DFliquids to produce the obsidian around the edge of the map, same effect as building drawbridges along the edge of the map but saved a whole lot of time. For bridge and ice version, see http://mkv25.net/dfma/poi-27291-gatehouse
---used Reveal to scout map prior to digging to know what depth to dig fortress to
---turned off invasions while digging out map to free up enough labor to dig out the entire map in a reasonable timeframe as well as to avoid interruptions

[martinuzz]

I really like your fortress security systems.
Just how much time did it take you to make that?
What FPS are you still getting?
Did you buy your computer at NASA's closing down sale?

[Hasse]

OMFG that really really hardcore, how many hours spent? 30? 20? 10?

[Hyndis]

I do have temperature turned off, but I'm getting around 130ish FPS currently. Sometimes it dips down to around 60-70 when a siege shows up, but it goes back up once the siege has been taken care of.

Been working on it on and off for a few weeks. Most of the time the fortress was running in the background, doing its own thing, and I'd switch to the fort and designate new stuff and they'd get to work on the new orders.

My biggest gripe is that I didn't start the dwarven breeding program early on. I have my popcap set to 100 and I try to get dwarves married to each other so they can start producing children. To do this, I need some idle time where everyone can just hang out and socialize with each other, but due to how much construction was required to excavate the entire embark area there wasn't this idle time, so my population is too low for a fortress of this size.

I'd prefer 300 dwarves, maybe 350, but probably no more than 350.

60 dwarves gets me 6 squads, easy to rotate on and off duty throughout the year. I have them take off their armor when going off duty in order to ensure that everything gets decorated, including the stuff they're wearing.

If I'm going to occupy the underworld I'll definitely need a larger military, perhaps another 6 squads, so I'd have 6 topside, and 6 underground, 120 soldiers in total. And a big enough population that I have enough peasants coming online and graduating from dwarf college to join the military and then be useful in the military.

I've got around 30 elite craftsdwarves, 60 generic worker dwarves, and the rest are all haulers. With my current population, I've got 60 soldiers and 90 producers, but that leaves me very few haulers, so my producers are also needing to do hauling duty, which severely limits my production rate. Its much better if the elite producers only ever have to worry about making stuff, and then peasants take care of hauling needs.

[Yeti]

I found it interesting you didn't seem to have any containers in either the apartments, or the hospital. Impressive fort though. Even more impressive FPS rate still remaining..

[Hyndis]

I removed clothing to tidy up the clutter. I really do wish owned items and the economy were fixed, so dorfs wouldn't be leaving unmovable socks around the fortress at random.

A very noticeable side effect of removing clothing is that everyone is a whole lot squishier, so suddenly combat is far more lethal. Clothing will stop a surprising amount of damage, and without it every hit will cause injury of some kind.

Also when being sieged by three armies, having to clean up corpses, weapons, armor, AND clothing would be just way too much. But I can deal with that. Its just the owned items that aren't moved thing that I can't stand. Dwarves are supposed to tidy up after themselves, but its hit or miss. I hate an untidy fort.

As for the hospital, there's no need for containers in there. They will happily use things from regular stockpiles. As I have plenty of doctors and the regular stockpiles are close by its not an issue.

[lemmily]

not really a critique, but wow. I compliment you on your fine fortress/death machine. I wish you luck in underworld/HFS conquering

[Hyndis]

not really a critique, but wow. I compliment you on your fine fortress/death machine. I wish you luck in underworld/HFS conquering

Conquering the underworld would be trivial. The underground gatehouse is able to deal with all kinds of FB's without endangering a single dorf. In the uploaded map you can see a pile of FB corpses laying around there. The only ones that are hard to kill are the ones made out of stone, but they too go down eventually with enough shooting/stabbing/melting.

I'd send out a sacrificial peasant with a mining pick to breach the underworld, then they would rampage through the caverns and end up right at the bait, which puts them in position to get shot up, sliced to bits, and melted.

[peskyninja]

THE GORE! BODY PARTS! Oh Armok, IT IS GLORIOUS!
Now you need more magma.

[Hyndis]

THE GORE! BODY PARTS! Oh Armok, IT IS GLORIOUS!
Now you need more magma.

And thats AFTER I cleaned up the mess. The entire upper portion of the fortress was covered in blood. Its amazing how much blood is contained within a single siege! Every elf is chopped into multiple pieces, which fly around, causing blood to spatter whereever the pieces land. Then the giant war badgers are similarly chopped to bits before being killed.

Only downside is that it multiplies the number of hauling tasks needed to clean it up...but it does result in more bones for crafting.

I haven't even looked at the leather stockpiles. I'm sure I could make a whole bunch of legendary leatherworkers by having them practice. Could free up quite a few bins as well.

[CaveLobsterShell]

Just found the refuse area (level 43). Holy cow (bone)!

[Hyndis]

The thing I don't like about the fortress is that its too...orderly.

I really need to get better at building organically and using more curves or things other than 90 degree angles on everything.

Perhaps colonizing a level of the caverns, and then carving up the natural caverns would be a way to enforce that, using the stone pillars in the caverns like towers. I dunno. Might do that with my next fort.

[Antalia]

There is something almost painfully orderly about it (I don't think it's a bad thing though). It reminds me of castles in old videogame RPGs from the 1980s (in a good way), only much grander. (I imagined Dragon Warrior or Ultima V music playing as I explored.) I love how spacious it is. My own dwarves never get this much air!

I have never thought to build rooftop gardens like these. This is a great idea. Do you just muddy the "rooftops" to get this going?

I like the classrooms a lot too. (It must be "fun" to track student progress with a population this size!) Is it truly safe to learn dodging and blocking in a nudist colony, though?

I am impressed by the response time of your medical team. (My doctors and nurses might do this well without all the "Store Owned Item" jobs and messing around with socks...) I was thinking of getting rid of my in-hospital supply storage since it tempts Urist McSilly quite mightily. I might do that in my next fort since it seems to have worked out here.

It is an inspiring fortress. Nice work!

[doublestrafe]

So, yeah.

Apparently, despite any previous opinion I may have held, I've never made a fortress.

[Hyndis]

The Mayday graphics set actually does make it look a lot like those old NES RPG's, in all their 8 bit glory.

The rooftops are not muddy, though that would work, instead they're just natural soil. Most maps have multiple soil layers. I shaved off the very top most layer, which is actually less fertile than the layers below because on the top most layers you get the occasional pebbles where nothing grows. Everything under that is pure soil, until you hit rock of course.

I really need to work on making my forts more organic and more "lived in" rather than sterile, efficient, and grandiose building, but I'm just really terrible at that for some reason. And the entire point of my fortresses is to make art! Everything goes into decorating masterwork items with as many decorations as possible, such that a single masterwork green glass gem can be worth 100k dorfbucks or more. It can buy out an entire caravan.

So I'm pretty much manufacturing artifacts. A single artifact of such value can take 5+ years of continuous crafting to bling it out to such a degree, but I'm decorating many items all at the same time. Its an ongoing process really.

In my forts I have four dwarven "castes".

Thanes do mining, stoneworking, healthcare, forge work, jewelcrafting, and engineering. They do not do hauling. They do decorate the hell out of things using metal melted down from sieges.

Citizens perform all farming and the blue crafting jobs, such as leatherworking and bonecrafting. Most of their time is spent farming, brewing, and decorating things with bone.

Rangers do carpentry and woodcutting, and also hunting or animal training.

Peasants are everyone else without any skills. They do all of the hauling and join the military.


Everyone gets a basic education of swimming, blocking, and dodging. Thanes get the advanced degrees, which includes metalworking, healthcare, and engineering skill, but their education takes far, far longer than everyone else. Thanes are not expendable. Peasants and citizens can be easily replaced, but not a thane.