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[Eric Blank]

Rat brain cells of any mass less than twice that of a human's simply can't process that many threads at once. Probably can't even handle the basic embark at more than 9 frames per second. You're going to have to use either a photon or electronic processor.

[Helgoland]

DF still has only one thread - Toady refuses to multi-thread because it's too much work. Nevermind that it becomes more difficult by the day, but hey - Bay12 newbs need something to chew on.
A few threads would actually be great, but the real problem is that DF's binary - biocomputers are terrible at normal binary programs. There's a few C** to bio compilers out there, but they're terribly inefficient and don't work with code as old as DF's.

What you want is one of the bronze-age silicon processors, the kind they were producing right before the switch to qbit and neurocomputing. High CPU frequency, lots of internal fast memory, lots of RAM space - that kind. Look around, sometimes they appear on auction sites. Maybe your local museum will let you use theirs; they like seeing the stuff being used, because it keeps it from rotting completely.

On-topic: My dwarves keep using Agent Orange to defoliate the elven settlements, and that makes pacifist movements more popular than I'd like - how can I avoid Vietnam-like scenarios?

[Mesa]

DF still has only one thread - Toady refuses to multi-thread because it's too much work. Nevermind that it becomes more difficult by the day, but hey - Bay12 newbs need something to chew on.
A few threads would actually be great, but the real problem is that DF's binary - biocomputers are terrible at normal binary programs. There's a few C** to bio compilers out there, but they're terribly inefficient and don't work with code as old as DF's.

What you want is one of the bronze-age silicon processors, the kind they were producing right before the switch to qbit and neurocomputing. High CPU frequency, lots of internal fast memory, lots of RAM space - that kind. Look around, sometimes they appear on auction sites. Maybe your local museum will let you use theirs; they like seeing the stuff being used, because it keeps it from rotting completely.

On-topic: My dwarves keep using Agent Orange to defoliate the elven settlements, and that makes pacifist movements more popular than I'd like - how can I avoid Vietnam-like scenarios?

SEMI-OFFTOPIC: (on-topic in a way - it'a context of my previous post).
So, I imagined that PCs within 40 years from now will use biological-based hardware - it's already kind of possible (proof), and I thought that processors would esentially be brain-like structures (but not being actual brains). They'd be like millions of really low-power processors made into one "collective mind" of sorts.
Also, Internet that utilizes similar technology called Neuronet would take over gradually.

[Armok]

CONTINUED-OFFTOPIC: Maybe, but yea you *really* couldn't use normal neurons; those run at 100 *hertz* (compare to billions or hertz for a normal processor). A more likely candidate for "neuronet" is a robust, self-updating wet nanotech system gaining it's name from existing within the neurons of it's user.

[Robosaur]

My dwarves keep using Agent Orange to defoliate the elven settlements, and that makes pacifist movements more popular than I'd like - how can I avoid Vietnam-like scenarios?

You have to glorify violence. By now it'd be too late, but next time, you have to put effort into painting anyone who is against that sort of thing as pansies for a few years.

[Helgoland]

I tried that once - but other civilizations usually mop the floor with Spartan-types because of technological advancement.
Though maybe... how hard is it to get a Meji-era kind of spirit in a civ?

[hops]

I tried that once - but other civilizations usually mop the floor with Spartan-types because of technological advancement.
Though maybe... how hard is it to get a Meji-era kind of spirit in a civ?

It's kind of impossible with the dwarves as your main focus, really. Try the Elven Retreat mode (and ignore the copious amount of insults inserted by Toady Three). They have an extended ethics and arts menu, and if you know your history it shouldn't be hard to recreate any culture short of modern ones.

[RenoFox]

I had been running a pretty successful fort, until gradually more and more dwarves started getting sick. Loss of hair, bleeding gums, weird rashes and so on. I decided to make an adventurer and go see what it was about.

Turns out a cult of Tyr, the god of minerals and deformities, had somehow gotten it in their heads that pitchblende was sacred, and needed to be digested by the devout followers. The cult had slowly spread to my fortress, and with such a visible signs of "working", was getting more and more popular.

Using my adventurer, I tried to educate the dwarves about the dangers of radiation, but since I didn't know how to prove it with medieval instruments, I came out as just another religious zealot. I still managed to gather enough followers to start a good counter movement, which eventually escalated to an all-out civil war.

The war isn't over yet, but I wanted to share what the legends say about it: "The Nuclear War is a conflict between worshippers of Tyr and The Danger of Rays..."

[Kumquat]

So people were nonplussed about that recent update of keeping worldgen simulation running in the background while you play in fortress mode? Let me tell you the story of Bronzeabbeys. It was a nice little embark started between ocean trench and mountains with magma pools here and there - I was hoping to assimilate some amphibian men from the caverns or something along those lines to start a whale farm in the ocean just to try and get a rare narwhal tooth artifact and lots of whale cheese to export. I did not expect much trouble really, nearest goblins were on the other side of the continent and busy with their war with elf and panda man and thrips man alliance, too busy for serious long distance raids.

It was going fairly smoothly for a few years, what with the priest guild mandating another temple every now and then and grudging nobles keeping the coffin makers busy with the help of assassins... then suddenly half of the fortress caves in, especially the grand cathedral, magma works get flooded with magma, whale farm airlocks break and there's enough pressurized steam going around to break through all but masterwork doors and hatches and steam-cooked dwarfs explode through the ceiling of the central staircase, not to forget all the kittens and whatnot and even a whale or two that got sucked in from the ocean.

I go through the log file for an explanation about what the slade just happened and find this message that apparently was not worthy of a pause:

The fortress has been hit by a 7.5 magnitude earthquake!

That's right, people: the worldgen simulation includes plate tectonics. Don't expect to maintain a long-term settlement on a subduction zone, at least nothing with large open underground spaces or even corridors that do not have steel supports or better. The fort went from 1500 to 50 dwarfs in just a few hours, mostly hunters and herders left, and those either went insane, got killed in tantrum spiral or migrated away.

Oh, by the way: the salt water problem still isn't fixed.

[tomio175]

About that salt water problem of yours? Yeah, I found that out as well, the hard way.

You know, salt water makes things float better than normal water, right? So no problem there. However, due to a series of bugs in the programming, some creatures with [FOOT_SIZE: 900] or more, while having [BODY_MASS: 260 000] or less can actually WALK over salt water. Ever seen a whole orc raiding party going all "HAVE YOU ACCEPTED JEZUS CHRIST AS YOUR SAVIOR YET?" is NOT fun, I assure you.

[hops]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So people were nonplussed about that recent update of keeping worldgen simulation running in the background while you play in fortress mode? Let me tell you the story of Bronzeabbeys. It was a nice little embark started between ocean trench and mountains with magma pools here and there - I was hoping to assimilate some amphibian men from the caverns or something along those lines to start a whale farm in the ocean just to try and get a rare narwhal tooth artifact and lots of whale cheese to export. I did not expect much trouble really, nearest goblins were on the other side of the continent and busy with their war with elf and panda man and thrips man alliance, too busy for serious long distance raids.

It was going fairly smoothly for a few years, what with the priest guild mandating another temple every now and then and grudging nobles keeping the coffin makers busy with the help of assassins... then suddenly half of the fortress caves in, especially the grand cathedral, magma works get flooded with magma, whale farm airlocks break and there's enough pressurized steam going around to break through all but masterwork doors and hatches and steam-cooked dwarfs explode through the ceiling of the central staircase, not to forget all the kittens and whatnot and even a whale or two that got sucked in from the ocean.

I go through the log file for an explanation about what the slade just happened and find this message that apparently was not worthy of a pause:

The fortress has been hit by a 7.5 magnitude earthquake!

That's right, people: the worldgen simulation includes plate tectonics. Don't expect to maintain a long-term settlement on a subduction zone, at least nothing with large open underground spaces or even corridors that do not have steel supports or better. The fort went from 1500 to 50 dwarfs in just a few hours, mostly hunters and herders left, and those either went insane, got killed in tantrum spiral or migrated away.

Oh, by the way: the salt water problem still isn't fixed.

Your fortress is too tall, or too deep, in this case. Undwarfy it may seems, but I find that making a wide and aboveground fort designed by architects usually stop the earthquake from messing you up.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

About that salt water problem of yours? Yeah, I found that out as well, the hard way.

You know, salt water makes things float better than normal water, right? So no problem there. However, due to a series of bugs in the programming, some creatures with [FOOT_SIZE: 900] or more, while having [BODY_MASS: 260 000] or less can actually WALK over salt water. Ever seen a whole orc raiding party going all "HAVE YOU ACCEPTED JEZUS CHRIST AS YOUR SAVIOR YET?" is NOT fun, I assure you.

Toady Three had planned to add more realistic surface tension soon, so even if the orcs still walk on water (I hope not), you can just have your dwarves throw a bunch of rock at them to break the tension.

Alternatively, just put trained sharks in there and chuck a blood barrel into it every time they try to invade you.

[Robosaur]

Modding the tensile strength of liquids is fun. I've been building walls out of solid blood, which upon impact with a sharp enough substance liquefies and sends people flying. Now to recreate the scene from Carrie except with pig blood bricks...

[cattouchdis]

My adventurer got some dimension magic but I accidentally opened both the water dimension and the magma dimension and now there is just one big obsidian dimension, any ideas on how to fix this?

[Starver]

Find the diamond pickaxe dimension...

[mastahcheese]

My adventurer got some dimension magic but I accidentally opened both the water dimension and the magma dimension and now there is just one big obsidian dimension, any ideas on how to fix this?

Wait, didn't he fix that bug a few versions ago? I thought it just resulted in a single block of obsidian at the merge point of the two dimension openings now? And then you just have to mine out one of them, or close and re-open the portals?

Anyway, I hope he refixes the bug with dwarves dropping items on the map edge, it's really annoying when they leave advanced weapons on the ground and they get stolen and reverse engineered, then you just have to brace to deal with them being practically unstoppable a year or two down the road. And by freaking kobolds, no less, I thought they weren't even capable of reverse engineering to begin with, or is that a new bug, now?