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[slink]

With some effort you can count the number of beings in a civilization using the sites_and_pops file generated from your world.  You need the name of the goblin civilization that is attacking your fortress.  Then search that file for all entries with that as the "Parent Civ".

[Zantan]

Maybe I could run the world for 15 years and give goblins a massive litter size.  That could give me plenty of goblins to work with.

I suppose the animal die-off issue could be resolved if I edited the life expectancies in the raws, but that would take a long time to edit.

Any idea on the issue of too many FB moving into my caverns while I slowly breed my military?  Has anyone seen FB spawns drop after a period of time or when they had a certain number of FBs?

[vjek]

As far as I've seen with forgotten beasts, if you have caverns, you will eventually get them, and there are no limits I'm aware of as to how many.  I've seen as many as 8 at the same time, in one cavern.

My personal solution was to remove caverns and let dwarves farm above ground (because they can already, technically) but of course, then you lose underground crops & underground trees.  Wasn't a big deal to me, but may be to you.

I've seen 70k goblins in a 300 year worldgen.  It doesn't take long if you set things up right.   The ideal is 10k goblins per dark fortress, so as long as you give the goblins the advantage, they'll take it.  The world does have to be large enough, though.  Pocket worlds have limits, and Dark Fortress density appears to be one of them.  Not that 30k or 40k goblins isn't enough, it just depends on your goals, I s'pose. heheh. 

When you're gen'ing the world, get into the habit of pressing 'p' before you accept it, and then look at the world populations file.  I do this every time now, and I also copy those 4 files 'p' makes into the save directory, so they are always there.  You can get that information later, however, if you make a copy of your save, abandon your fortress, start playing again in legends mode, and then export that same information. "p: export map/gen info."

[Martin]

Well, if you want to avoid FBs, you can always either wall in your cavern, or just the staircase room that carries you below. If you reveal cavern 1, you won't get FBs in caverns 2 and 3 until they are also revealed (though I've had those caverns interconnect through pits and revealing one revealed all 3, but that's somewhat rare.)


So, I'd say to enlist an army of masons, crank out blocks and bins as fast as you can, get them staged, breach the first cavern, send in the army, and start walling off. Technically, you can seal up right to the edge and prevent them from ever spawning, but that's a hell of a lot of stone. Instead, go for choke points, and be careful to get all of the little corners where a flier can sneak in. You can also do it in stages, get a minimal perimeter established with a drawbridge to give you a safe way out, look for the next opportunity to expand, go for that, and repeat while it's safe. If a FB shows up and you can take it, then go kill it and continue. If it's the poisonous vapors made out of steam or steel or some wicked thing, then call it a day until you can build a proper trap for it, and keep digging down.


I wouldn't worry about running out of enemies. Many of us have run forts for 50-100 years, racked up thousands of kills in individual dwarves even and never suffered a shortage of things to attack us. As for wildlife, things may have changed from 40d days, but I thought I extincted all of the local wildlife in one fort only to find a few decades later that new ones spawned. That was a bit of conventional wisdom overturned, but it really depends on how dedicated you are to this fortress. I don't think many players can drag their games out that long, if for no other reason than the game starts to lag quite badly.

[somebody64]

If you have enough resources and dwarfpower, cage traps everywhere is a fun way to do it.

[NW_Kohaku]

Well, if you want to avoid FBs, you can always either wall in your cavern, or just the staircase room that carries you below. If you reveal cavern 1, you won't get FBs in caverns 2 and 3 until they are also revealed (though I've had those caverns interconnect through pits and revealing one revealed all 3, but that's somewhat rare.)


So, I'd say to enlist an army of masons, crank out blocks and bins as fast as you can, get them staged, breach the first cavern, send in the army, and start walling off. Technically, you can seal up right to the edge and prevent them from ever spawning, but that's a hell of a lot of stone. Instead, go for choke points, and be careful to get all of the little corners where a flier can sneak in. You can also do it in stages, get a minimal perimeter established with a drawbridge to give you a safe way out, look for the next opportunity to expand, go for that, and repeat while it's safe. If a FB shows up and you can take it, then go kill it and continue. If it's the poisonous vapors made out of steam or steel or some wicked thing, then call it a day until you can build a proper trap for it, and keep digging down.


I wouldn't worry about running out of enemies. Many of us have run forts for 50-100 years, racked up thousands of kills in individual dwarves even and never suffered a shortage of things to attack us. As for wildlife, things may have changed from 40d days, but I thought I extincted all of the local wildlife in one fort only to find a few decades later that new ones spawned. That was a bit of conventional wisdom overturned, but it really depends on how dedicated you are to this fortress. I don't think many players can drag their games out that long, if for no other reason than the game starts to lag quite badly.

It's worth noting that cavern creature power is rubber-banded.  If you have a low number of dwarves and low fortress value because you haven't done anything else yet, and you just beeline for the caverns, the worst you'll find is crundles and maybe be unlucky enough to pop out near a GCS. 

You only get the serious stuff from the caverns when you are rich and have many dwarves.  (FBs don't even appear until you hit a minimum number of dwarves and wealth.) 

So going straight for the caverns, and setting up a safe-zone that is completely walled off early on so that you can create a staging area for the cavern creatures early enough is a fairly safe venture.