Ok, so what happened next? Here's a report of events from mid spring till beginning of winter.
Our fortress has a complex entrance facility (F1). Internal corridor is connected to a sort of outside island with a bridge, and that island is connected to the ground via another (so called three-way) bridge. The island has an alternative connection to the trap room beneath. All this stuff is controlled from our workshops level (F2).
When I found the three-way bridge lever, I immediately pulled it. Elven merchants arrived shortly; I was very happy to be able to trade. At that moment I hadn't any idea about how the trap works, why it needs reloading, what is minecart at all etc etc. It happened however that the trap was turned on, so very soon I had 2 freshly injured dwarves (an adequate mason and a proficient potter), the game on pause, me learning stuff on wiki. =) I still don't understand how the trap works, to be honest -- difficult to tell when it's already constructed. I decided it's not that important since you can obey safety rules and treat it like a black box, and went on.
As I said before, I planned to establish high standard healthcare among other things. Nothing was ready in the late spring, though, so capable dwarves hauled their unconscious comrades to the old tableless hospital. I quickly built a table adjacent to both patients to provide some urgent surgery and proceeded to build proper hospital.
I placed it close to the well area, where bp920091 planned it to be (i.e. over the jail). However I was concerned that patients may catch a cold from contact with ice walls, so I decided to coat entire room with wooden walls and make a warm parquet floor as well. Probably it's the most luxurious thing you can do in a glacial fortress with constant lack of wood. First tranche included 5 separate wards with a bed, an adjacent table and traction bench each, separated by colored wooden walls to cheer sick dwarves up. There is a room for another 5 wards left.
At that point I became concerned by fortress defense or, rather, the lack of thereof (I haven't understood the trap design so I wasn't able to rely on it solely). Thus I quickly finished a sniper's nest uber pye designated. I was in hurry so instead of nest it became a pillbox: single story, 3x3 roofed building with a single free tile inside and 8 embrasures menacing in every direction, encompassed by a minimalistic moat. Just then bad luck struck me again: while deconstructing an unnecessary staircase on the pillbox roof (first I planned to make it two story), another dwarf managed to do something stupid and fell unconscious. I have never realized how did that happen: a job was none but innocent, just removing a single staircase with nothing above it. Still a high master spinner was so unlucky that he got twice more wounds than 2 dwarves injured by minecart trap combined. o_O
Dwarves finished the pillbox just before siege came.
I sealed the fortress (elven caravan had already left, but early human one managed to slip inside), stationed marksdwarf squad in the pillbox and continued with healthcare problems. Newly-established soap industry produced bars of valuable forgotten beast soap (trace amounts of forgotten beast venom provide mild analgesic effect). A couple of fully equipped wards was already built, so I deconstructed beds under sick dwarves and removed old hospital zone to have them hauled to the new hospital. I switched to other tasks for a while and was surprised to not find patients neither in old place nor in new. It happened that our fortress had another bad-equipped hospital, placed deeper inside and eventually closer to the old one than to the proper one.
Looks like every second overseer wasn't able to find a hospital and built a new one himself. =) Well, I took on the mantle. =)
After some more bed deconstructing two injured dwarves were moved to the new hospital and started to receive proper treatment. The third one was stuck in the old hospital. I tried everything to unstuck him, but nothing worked: I couldn't build a bed again because he was occupying the tile (the same for statue to move him), assigning him to a squad didn't help. I tried to build a mini-hospital around him (he needs bone setting) but it didn't help either. I haven't tried injuring him more, though. (!!!) I'm talking about Ducim Dodokdegel, Mason. If you manage to unstuck him please describe the process. I think the bug may have been caused by deconstructing the bed when the dwarf was requesting wound dressing (this request can still be seen through z>health screen, but not through his personal health screen). =(
Our marksdwarves did a good job, already scaring away 2 goblin squads out of 4.
I was amused to notice that due to compact pillbox setup enemy was so close early on that some dwarf have entered a martial trance. Third squad managed to pass the active trap and occupy top of the island, being too far from the pillbox to be shot at. I've raised the main bridge and carved some fortification straight beside it, to allow point-blank fire at the enemy from the main entrance. Still it was very difficult to position dwarves properly -- they tended to scatter behind the embrasure. So I've designated some statues to block useless tiles. =) Before it was done third goblin squad was half dead, half fleeing. I disbanded the marksdwarf squad temporarily to let them eat and drink in comfort. The fourth enemy squad led by goblin mace lord fell back but haven't left the map however.
After a time I stationed marksdwarves in the pillbox again and opened trap entrance and main bridge together to lure goblins closer. Almost immediately some Urist McLateDwarf runs to the main bridge instead of the pillbox and starts loosing bolts at the enemy ignoring personal commands to hide. Thus I wasn't able to close main bridge without killing him. When goblins were close I designated toggling trap entrance lever, other marksdwarves were shooting at approaching enemy at full rate, but civil dwarves were extra busy and let the mace lord and a troll pass the trap room. At this moment I realize that the lone marksdwarf is probably dead, but raising the main bridge meant killing him for free. I let him fight instead. Surrounded, he started wrestling with the troll and was thrown off the bridge dead.
I designated toggling main bridge lever immediately, the troll managed to get inside the entrance corridor but the goblin mace lord was launched into the air following nice parabola and died. The troll was killed by human caravan guards almost immediately.
The rest of our squad thinned out remaining goblins and the siege was over.
Meanwhile I've uncluttered magma smelters a little and introduced a goblinite stockpile on the magma level (F6) (material set to iron/steel, base quality to standard/well-crafted). You can d-b-m entire thing from time to time. Some marble was hauled to that level too.
5 steel mail shirts have been forged, steel helms and leggings are next in turn.
We have 22 iron bars, 22 steel bars and 10 pig iron bars at this moment -- some improvement over start of turn.
Some news related to names dwarves:
Heisenberg became an accomplished cook.
joeclark77, legendary bone carver, has grown to become a peasant (obviously a minor bug).
Wolfgrim became a talented weaponsmith.
casser has lost the mayor chair to some thirteen years old peasant.
Njals became an adept diagnostician. I've made him chief medical dwarf.
The rest are safe and sound.
We had an immigrant wave of about 10 dwarves in spring. Our numbers are 82 at the moment (early winter). We had no immigrants in other seasons.
Two injured dwarves have been healed:
The second one still has an infection, though, but I hope forgotten beast soap treatment will help.
The marksdwarf squad gained some skills:
That's all for now. I have 3 more month to play, expect to finish soon.
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Topic: [Self-Explanatory Title] Amberjewel, The Glacial Succession Fortress [/Title] (Read 87536 times)