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[Anchel]

Hello all, I have a rather... curious problem on my hands. Or rather, not on my hands.

You see, dwarves are generally not known to be very smart, correct? They would build themselves into walls, ignore diplomats, run towards the booze stockpile when on fire, etc, etc...

But today, I think I have found a new, rather novel stupid in my dwarves.

Dwarves who for some reason or another, believe that they are the suicidal lemmings of lore and decide that the easiest way to path-find to my fortress is to jump off a 7 z-level waterfall.

Now, as you can see in the screenshot here, my embark is divided into 3 roughly equal parts by a y-junction river and a waterfall to the right. I had just started the fortress not too long ago, with this being only the second year and the second batch of migrants.



I might have accidentally created a wee bit too much wealth within my first trading season, because when the second batch of migrants came, they came in a whole group of thirty, all at once. Interestingly, despite my fortress actually being situated in the middle section of the map between the forks of the river, the migrants spawned at the top of the waterfall to the right. But without a proper way of actually reaching the fortress, instead of idling and generally making a mess of my announcements, the whole group of migrants, all 30 including the pack animals, decided the most urgent thing was to reach my fortress.

Now.

Without delay.

And so they unanimously decided the best way to do so... was to try to cross the river right at the edge of the waterfall.

Amazingly, a few of the original party (two) managed to make it past the waterfall, but because the rest of their group died, the moment they reached my fortress, they were well within the unhappy-miserable zone, and promptly started tantruming. One even decided to destroy my trade depot while I was still trading with some elves! Not that I am complaining about the freebies, but that was for awhile rather alarming, because I didn't actually know what they were going to destroy next or even god forbid, who they were going to kill next.

Now the two of them have sort of settled down, and in the summer of that same year, (the first wave somewhen in spring) a new group arrives, this time numbering around 12. They spawn this time slightly down the cliffside on the waterfall section of the map, but like their immediate predecessors, decided to hike up to the top of the waterfall, and proceed to try to cross at the edge. Again.

This time, no one survived, and my whole waterfall-river-entrance project is currently somewhat ruined by the 50 or so dead dwarves and pack animals floating near the bottom of the falls.

Now, I know for a fact that if you manage to wall or at least block of the borders of an embark such that only one entrance is available, merchants will only spawn at that one entrance to get at your depot, but that doesn't apply to invasions and such it probably wouldn't affect migrants. But what I have here is a natural block in the form of my forked river, and even if they were to spawn near the waterfall, shouldn't they try to path to my fortress by another relatively safer way, or at least just stay idle at the water's edge?

I fear of this happens a few more times, migrants wouldn't want to come at all, and then my whole glorious capital-type project would be kind of for naught.

I did begin to build a bridge at the bottom fork of the river to allow safe crossings, but I highly doubt migrants would even bother with that. Now all I hope for is that I manage to floor up the top of the waterfall before the next group of migrants arrive, or that my first siege of goblins decide to path-find their way through my waterfall.

Ah, good times. And a rather...disturbing look into the psyche of the average dwarven migrant.



Oh and as a side-note, my dwarves who decide to go fishing for some reason always decide that going across the waterfall is a good idea. So they try to cross, at the edge and then they fall. As I type this, I just lost another dwarf to "fishing". I've got to start taking notice of my Therapist more.

Manager cancels fish: Dangerous terrain

Duh, dangerous terrain. You just decided to fish on the other side of the waterfall by crossing right at it's lip. doesn't get more dangerous than that.

And hey, first forum post from a lurker. I usually don't share, but this is too much to just pass up.

[Stoup]

Aye, this is a fairly common issue when dealing with waterfalls nowadays. The dwarves see that the water at the brink of the falls is shallow enough to walk in, and since it's the fastest path into the fort, they go that way. Then of course they get swept down the falls to their death. This became a fairly common problem when rivers and other bodies of water got free ramps, as prior to this the lack of accessibility to the rivers would stop this from happening.

If you could figure out a way, perhaps you might want to try having a very dense animal pit at the bottom of the falls, constructed out of grates to minimize flooding, so that when the migrants tumble from the falls their survival rate will be improved by landing on the creatures below.

[Trif]

Or you could use traffic zones and build bridges.

[runlvlzero]

Not quite the same thing but I had a fully decked out military dwarf chase a badger over a 10z fall once =/

A small wall about 4 tiles long on either side would probably stop them from going over the fall, think safety rail

[Anchel]

Hmm, having a bridge at the top of the falls would most probably work, because i don't really want to have my main fortress entrance be filled to the brim with animals. Now I just have to figure out why all my fishers decide to all go over the waterfall and die, rather than choose the nice fish-filled river right at the doorstep.

[runlvlzero]

Designate a fishing zone with the "i" menu and set it to zone only fishing through the "o" orders menu =) Should stop them from going anywhere else.

[dyllionaire]

Bahahaha all I can do is laugh at your pain. I do feel that Dwarves are capable of some great things when guided properly, but are possibly some of the daftest creatures when left to their own devices and a vague goal.

[BigD145]

Point 1: It's not 7/7 water when they decide to path through the top of the waterfall.
Point 2: Lemmings are not suicidal. Disney was just very sadistic when they made their "wildlife/nature" films decades ago.

[NW_Kohaku]

Install floor grates or bars at the mouths of the waterfall.  That will let the water from the waterfall drop down below, and provide a safe walking surface. 

[dree12]

I say... leave it. What you have there is the ultimate migrant killer. I mean, half of the time, those 10+ master cheese makers will just end up as another smudge at the bottom of a waterfall. And it involves no effort on your behalf! Plus, since you aren't the one who constructed the contraption on the first place, it's all the killing and none of the remorse!

No effort until 50+ ghosts show up .

[Anchel]

Now this is starting to get irritating...

First, after the disastrous migrant waves, I 'd' 'o' 'r' ed the whole waterfall area, and built two bridges over the waterfall. Then when winter next came along, I dug up the ice, and build a whole row of grates to try to catch anything that decided to "fall" in.

Should be relatively fool-proof, right?

Wrong.

First, an elven caravan decides to take the scenic route, and... entirely ignores my traffic designations. Predictably, they fall in and whoosh, get swept away, somehow manage to avoid the grates, and drop all the way down. But hey, they are only elves, and I can always dig up the lewt later when ice comes around. No problems there.

Later that season however, a pretty large goblin siege comes around. They decide to path through the waterfall too (i have a small entryway near the lip of the waterfall, and amusingly, nearly half of their siege decides to take the watery slide down, including their general. Some of the drowning ogres though, destroyed my grates while they were swimming but I thought, no biggie, can be repaired. So I think, yay, siege over. But unfortunately, the other half of the siege did not get the message that the siege was over, so they continued to attack.

Long story short, the defense was quite a good success. Without any traps of any kind, my 10 miners and 9 steelclads, as well as 16 marksdwarves managed to hold off a bunch of bowmen, trolls, ogres and a ridiculously powerful spearmaster, losing only 5 dwarves in the process.

Fantastic work, you say.

Yes, I agree, but that's where the fun only begins.

So I release my burrow restrictions, and all the Urists and their little dogs too decide to pour out of the hole, ostensibly to "Store Item in Stockpile". I guess that means they wanted to move the corpses that were clogging up the hallways inside. I hadn't released the entrance yet, so I think okay, fair. So they go about their daily business, find the irresistible need to cross the lip of the waterfall... and decide my two 4 wide bridges and liberal use of traffic restrictions were just "guidelines".

So they decide to swim for it.

And you know the rest.

I lost something like 10 dwarves before I even noticed that dwarves were going splat down the falls, then I remembered to open the gates. So no problems now, right? No. Since, they thought, they had already reached the waterfall, so why not take a lovely stroll across the deceptively serene waterfall? I mean, it's not as if the water was 7/7 or anything near the edge, right?

...and I lose another what, 5 more to that "line of reasoning".

Then I said screw this, and mass forbid the whole waterfall area.

3 more dwarves didn't get the memo.

I give a thin line of high traffic across the bridge, and finally all is somewhat well. Most of the dumb ones were dead, anyway, leaving the smarter ones to path down through the fortress instead.

Total headcount? 17 dwarves dead to their own stupidity. The hilarious thing was that dwarves would first path across my bridge, THEN decide to take a swim on the other side. Awesome, or what.

A few dwarves did manage to bruteforce their way through the water against the current, but they were only limited to my ground-zero legendary mason and miner. the rest just got swept down, down, down.

This beats lemmings by a long shot. Lemming stupidity was a misconception. Dwarves define the concept of stupidity.

[Anchel]

Update:

So instead of building easily destroyed vertical grates, I then decide to build walls (in winter), then carve fortifications through them to let the water flow. Come Spring, 3 more dwarves die to waterfall.

By flowing through my fortifications.

Seriously, what the hell? We are talking about fortifications, those little arrow slots in walls, correct? And yet my dwarves... manage to squeeze thought those tiny, tiny slots to die by waterfall. Really, it was as if I carved out windows in my walls instead.

So a question: is this a bug? Are my usually... stocky dwarves supposed to be able to, under the pressure of flowing water, be able to squeeze through of all things, fortifications?!

[Trif]

A fortification will block passage if it is not submerged in 7/7 water. I'm not sure if it's fully intended that every creature can pass through it when it's full of water, but this behavior has been around for a very long time.

Next time, build wall grates.

[NW_Kohaku]

Build a floor out around the waterfall's edge, and then fill in the gaps with floor grates to let the water through.  Bonus if you can just build walls for extra safety.

Code: [Select]

.77777.
+#####+
+#####+
+++++++
+#####+
+#####+
+++++++
. = natural floor
+ = built floor
# = floor grate
7 = river

[Anchel]

Build a floor out around the waterfall's edge, and then fill in the gaps with floor grates to let the water through.  Bonus if you can just build walls for extra safety.

Code: [Select]

.77777.
+#####+
+#####+
+++++++
+#####+
+#####+
+++++++
But will this be protected against trolls and the like? AFAIK, they will always go for stuff they can destroy first, and my waterfall is near the embark's edge, so sieges with trolls and ogres will eventually walk past the waterfall.

Wouldn't this just attract them to attack the grates, forcing me to rebuild after every siege or so?

. = natural floor
+ = built floor
# = floor grate
7 = river