Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Bitharne]

He's either new or a troll(perhaps in a good way, to purposely start dialog on how to handle hard situations in the game) from what I gather.

We all started somewhere bad 

[toomanysecrets]

1st update (Dead of winter year 138)

Had to strand 3 guys outside but I managed to get a good sized group back inside with a military alert.  So far only one tantrum and one death due to melancholy.

I started digging out some more room, planted crops and started building workshops and what not. Also started out digging out tetrahedrite, which was already discovered, (OP you have 183 coke and no ore mined out??). Next is armor and weapons, and bedrooms (the fort's got 1 dorm with 8 beds and 125 population), and a great deal of coffins and slabs.

2nd update:

Made it through winter but there are still about 12 goblins just cruising around the map.  I decided to let them hang out while I tried to catch up on booze and food and other things, but starving dwarves continuously snatch up plump helmets the second they sprout.  I even have booze queued up with the job manager in hopes that a brewer would catch a helmet every once in a while but it's not happening.  Despite building some big farm plots and getting a lot planted, this is a huge issue mostly because I've had two farm plots destroyed by tantrums (never knew this could happen.)  Overall, though, at this point happiness is generally improving.  At one point I had only 5-6 "miserable" dwarves.

Started making picks before anything cause this fort is so friggin crowded and only 2 or 3 picks were available and digging was going very slow. This fort needs a TON of expansion and it simply can't be done all at once.  I was happy with 6-7 more picks, miners started really opening up some space and by this time I'm thinking I need weapons and armor ASAP but then a smith got a mood and took over the only forge......

Mid-spring passed by, I knew traders would be arriving soon and this is fort is so desperate for some food and booze that I decided to send a group out to confront the goblins. I sent 4 soldiers who had metal weapons I scrounged together (but no armor, sadly) and also sent my newly-equipped miners out with them since I knew 4 half naked, depressed soldiers would be useless against the ambush.

The results of my gambit:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

At least 8 out of 11 Urists were struck down....then the survivors just started limping back into the fort and the gobbos decided to call it quits, too.  So for a split second I was relieved but just seconds after the goblins disappeared a vile force of darkness showed up!!

Here is the catastrophic happiness impact of the insane unarmored shenanigans:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So 20-25 dwarves dropped to "miserable" so this fort is going to be pretty out of control at this point.  The siege that showed up is actually pretty small so I could get some cage traps up to deal with it but missing the elven caravan is really gonna cause a shit storm.

Done for tonight, will probably play a little more tomorrow but the "fun" of the challenge really started wearing thin when the farm plots got ruined by a berserker and my tiny booze supply disappeared instantly.

[christehchris]

I must say I love your effort.

[Mimodo]

I've never had a tantrum spiral to deal with, so this could be an interesting situation for me to try... 90% chance I'll fail miserably

[toomanysecrets]

Just played a little bit more, I don't think I can sink any more time into this.

At this point the military is cruising around the fort dealin with berserkers, tons of citizens are following the Captain of the Guard to report a crime but they keep mass spamming "cancels report crime" because the captain of the guard is busy punishing people, or he is sleeping on the floor with a gangload of people standing over him trying to report crimes.

Farm plots are continually destroyed, and despite getting huge farm plots up and running for a few months the fort was unable to sustain even a small booze supply because the 125 residents were already starving their asses off and plump helmets could scarcely make it to a still.

Now there are fights everywhere and the military is dwindling, I dropped to about 75 pop.  I'm sure I could survive it, but it's just way too much work considering there will be maybe 5-10 survivors tops and this place is such a slaughterhouse I would be shocked if any migrants came any time soon.

So I am retiring from this.  It was fun for a while but now it is just kind of depressing.

[omg_scout]

Remember that there is a bug which easily causes tantruum spirals. Military dwarves receive way too much unhappy thoughts caused by long patrol duties, making them miserable in about year - two of patrolling. There is a binary patch for that on mantis, I lost 2 great fortress because of tantruum spirals before I applied it.

[toomanysecrets]

I've been using this. It's a 34.11 dwarffortress.exe file with the long patrol duty patch and the deconstruct bug patch already applied.

Most of the misery in this fort was from seeing death, seeing the decay of a loved one/friend, improper bedroom, food/booze shortage.

[omg_scout]

Oh, looks awesome, I will give it a try. I would just like to add that a moderate Fortress might be easily killed by this bug. I had most of my dwarves very happy, while military was miserable - I would prefer it the other way around.

[hjd_uk]

engrave.everything.

also zero food = Fun times.

[Hans Lemurson]

I'm on my 4th attempt now at saving this place, and am succeeding partly due to just lowering my standards and accepting the loss of half the population to murder and insanity.

Priority #1: FOOOD!!! For the love of god, get some FOOD going!  I did some rearrangement of the food stockpiles, by which I mean I eliminated it entirely and converted that massive area into mushroom farms and food processing, since a 200 tile food stockpile without any food in it is a bit of a waste of space.  I also built the farms as a series of 3x5 plots to avoid the total loss of a harvest should a tantruming farmer wreck it.  Once the population is no longer starving, then you can start to work on getting them boozed up again.  I had 3 kitchens working together nonstop (except when they got destroyed) churning out seed biscuits.  For the productivity needs you have, 1 workshop is grossly insufficient.

Priority #2 Coffins!  There is a LOT of dead to bury, even before the Tantrum Spiral gets into gear.  If you can get the fresh bodies into coffins before they rot, you avoid an extra unhappy thought, but don't count on it happening any time soon.  I think it at least limits the overall unhappiness hit over the death of loved ones.  I had 4 masons set up next to the stone stockpile churning out coffins non-stop, and have filled the two lower level rooms with them.  I activated the mason labor indiscriminately on my dwarfs to make sure there'd always be a mason available for coffin-work.

Priority #3 Individual Rooms.  Rooms for all!  "Didn't sleep in a proper room" is also a constant source of complaint.  Unfortunately it also takes time and resources to make the bedrooms.  A lot of wood and a lot of carpenters.  If you're going to be making something out of wood other than a bed, you better have a darned good reason.

I also made a nice sculpture garden with a couple extra clay statues I was able to make.  Fire clay is awesome!

With careful planning I was able to scrape together an armed squad of dwarves which were able to skirmish with the goblins enough to make them run off.  The standard "opening move" though is to set your interior fort as a "safe" burrow and set that to be used by the Alert which you set to be the "Civilian Alert".  Open the coal drawbridge and the trapped civilians will all try to run in, though the goblins will be a little more hesitant.  If they get caught in the cage traps, then you can strip them for extra equipment.  Free axes helms and chainmail! 

In one attempt though, an axegoblin made it past, ran into the fort, and when I rallied my military to take it down, it dodged into the reservoir, broke some teeth in the fall and started drowning.  I thought that was that, and the drowned miner from an aquifer accident would have some company.  Turns out it must have been a super-goblin or something, since it apparently recovered and swam and climbed out the well-hole and returned to killing civilians.  By the time I put it down, I'd lost my Mayor, Doctor and a craftsman, and a hapless farmer was pushed into the hole and DID drown.  I was doing pretty well until then but the extra 7 deaths it caused pushed the fort into a much deeper tantrum spiral.

One question I still have though is what the unhappiness hit is for "finding someone dead" versus just having them go missing.  When I opened the gates after the ambush ran off (current attempt), I noticed a sudden increase in the number of "miserable" dwarves as they discovered the dead bodies of their friends.   This bumped me up from 26 to 40 miserables very quickly.  However, I was also able to use this interlude to repair the outer gate and regain secure control over my own walls.

One thing which will be interesting to analyze is the demographic change brought about by the tantrum spiral.  Lots of dwarves went insane or berserk, but not all.  I wonder if perhaps the remaining population will have more a more resilient psychology than average.  I also wonder if large family sizes have been broken up, since those are very powerful sadness transmission networks.

[malimbar04]

downloading now, and I'm going to do this tonight after work, with no DF utilities/mods/graphics either (not used to them).

judging by what others have said so far, I have a few ideas of what to do:

- scrap military and justice system. I'm guessing you don't have the resources to even make them effective at stopping so berserkers.

- burrow miserable dwarves behind a wall.

- figure out what few resources we actually do have to work with to make food/industry of any sort.

- seal off fort from outside until further notice.

- mine out a HUGE dining room for socializing. Faster than engraving decently.

- create a well. Might have to go to caverns without seeing the map. Wall of section from outsiders in said cavern. Booze is off-limits until we have food.

no idea what else until I see the map itself.

[Kamin]

Your recovery session is going quite well, it seems... But even more important, it's intriguing. Definitely keep us updated with it!

[Hans Lemurson]

I was stabilizing at 69 dwarfs, but then my woodcutter, the only non-military dwarf I allowed to have one of the scarce battle-axes, went berserk while in the hospital (I dedicated a corner of that engraved + shaped room to be a hospital).  Killed all three other patients in there (including a wounded member of the military) before running off to a nice open area where a marksdwarf was able to subdue her with 4 bone bolts.

Needless to say, this...renewed instability within the fort.  The husband of a slain patient, also an axedwarf, just went melancholy.  I now have only 2 dwarves left who know how to wield an axe.  I have heard other weapons exist too, but I am dubious.

[Sutremaine]

This reminds me of those Sim City scenarios where half the map turns into rubble the moment you unpause.

[Hans Lemurson]

Down to 51 Dwarves now, just lost my last medical dwarf, following her husband into a melancholy death.  

Also after a long period of peace, one of my axemen suddenly went berserk.  I was able to dispatch him quickly with 4 bolts from a nearby marksdwarf, which is good in that he caused no damage, but bad that my best armored melee warrior was taken down by bone ammunition.  Will have to work on this.

Also, that original birch outer gate is very difficult to remove.  Do drawbridges have to be down before you can take them out?