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Happiness

Efficency

Violence

Science

Art

Challenge

Wealth

Constructions

Military

Traps

storytelling

[PDF urist master]

i completely understand that most overseers will probably pick a combination of the above. i wanna you to think about the decision. make you wonder what you're trying to accomplish for your fort and what makes you most satisfied. this is nowhere near a complete list, so if your drive, let's hear it out.

i also feel like the choices can overlap, but i think they're broad enough that there are some aspects unique to each choice.

Let the poll begin.

[PDF urist master]

i forgot to list my choice.

tough one really. i play for happiness of my people (that's what happiness means). when a dwarf dies, i usually feel conflicted (doesn't permit me from making a personal grave for the corpse, i'm a hypocrite).

[DWC]

I tend to focus on the efficient manufacture of lots of high quality shinies and having a lot of fortress wealth. Also like to make equipment for adventurers to loot after I abandon. Not sure if dwarfs from a fortress form migrant groups after you abandon anymore, but they did in older versions and you could recruit your military to join your adventurers.

[KroganElite]

I measure the success of my fort on my military and its ability to wreck invaders or unwanted guests.

[Jervill]

Happiness.  Without a happy populace, none of the other things can be accomplished as quickly or efficiently.  Also, helps give me the warm fuzzies when my dwarves are happy, having wonderful drunken parties and getting married. (while the goblins are outside getting chopped apart by traps & shot up by bowdwarves).

[Marceline]

Probably a combination of science and art. To me Dwarf Fortress is a collection of intricate moving parts, out of which come procedural stories and intriguing interaction. I love the process of creating a growing, burgeoning city, and reading the details of combat logs and dwarven thoughts and engravings. Seeing the culmination of my efforts in the architecture of my fort is wonderful. I also enjoy experimenting with the system, trying different strategies of defense, combat, or industry. Building silly megaprojects, magma cannons, draining the ocean, etc. All of my forts end up having an arena for that reason, just to throw a couple of creatures into combat and see what happens. It's hard to choose a single goal for my fortresses since they appeal to me in so many ways.

[SixOfSpades]

Constructions, then Art, then Happiness, then Military, then Efficiency, then Wealth. I'm roleplaying the mayor/Duke, and trying to make everything that happens make some kind of logical sense (HA!). So the most important thing is the fortress itself (megaproject, frickin' awesome castle occupying nearly the entire embark), logical names of children and artifacts (I savescum any egregious failings of the RNG--my second child is NOT called Ustuth Bowelpapers), and I am a benign ruler who wants his populace to be well-fed and content (unless, of course, they make any artworks of me being terrified of purring maggots). No self-respecting Duke could lack an army (so it seems I must do without self-respect for now), and while I do try to arrange my fortress with like industries together, the constant trickle of migrants plays hell with urban planning. Wealth, of course, is all well and good, but it's going to happen no matter what I do.

[BoredVirulence]

I don't think my typical selection is on this list, that being security. I make my fortresses just that, fortresses. I spend a long time overdesigning aspects of my fortress that are insignifcant and ultimately boring in the long run. I will say that I have never had my security fail, ever. I also have boring forts by comparison.

I chose military, although my military is a small part of the security of my fortress. For the record, violence is the most entertaining in my opinion. Although I do spend time optimizing for efficiency when it works with my design.

[itg]

I picked constructions, meaning megaprojects. After getting your defenses up, the game loses all direction unless you provide one for yourself, so I always pick something challenging to do. I started describing some examples of my megaprojects, but upon review I guess I really just wanted to share my last fortress. The story is still relevant, so I left it here, in spoilers because it contains spoilers.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In my last fortress, I embarked on an evil site with thrall clouds and an aquifer, so I spent the first years of the fortress getting through the aquifer, building a drowning trap, and building a network of surface tunnels to have safer access to all sides of the map. That took care of basic security, so to keep myself entertained I made it my mission to have the greatest possible animal collection. I caught a giant cave spider and used webbed cages to catch every non-webby FB and titan which entered the map, as well as a false god. I set up a desert titan silk farm (that one I caught with artifact furniture and a retracting bridge) and a couple FB dust pillboxes. I caught a dragon and used it as a garbage incinerator. When it came time to visit hell, I trapped almost all the demons of the initial wave with webbed cages.

Next project was to colonize hell. Not as hard as it sounds, incidentally. There's a trick to it. A bit of an exploit, really. Maybe I'll write a post about it sometime. Anyway, I walled off every possible spawning point except for the entrance to a chamber with spike traps which I could use to harvest demons for their delicious tallow. I used the slade mining/adamantine duplication glitch to build a huge dining room out of solid, engraved raw adamantine at the edge of an eerie glowing pit. That was about the time I decided to just declare victory and move on.

[Matoro]

Chaos. I seek chaos. I try to build as big chaos as I can and still survive. So I answered violence. It doesen't matter what I try to do at beginning. Always at end I try to create most bloody and violent things I can. And when Fortress has peace and prosperity and I get bored to it, I'll try make it crumble with most epic way possible.

[Mishrak]

I'd have to say happiness is definitely one of my primary focuses.  A lot of what I do revolves around preventing tantrum spirals, so no meeting halls, lots of statues (especially gold ones if I have it), good food, good booze.

[Catsup]

evenly split between efficiency and violence. My fort is one where children, expendable dwarves with many friends, and pets are smashed under a bridge (and slabbed) without a second thought to eliminate all possibilities of a tantrum. Torturing of goblin weapon masters and keeping those that survive, bearing horrifying scars, are also quite common, though very few survive the poking process (i have poking chambers since torture isnt implemented...yet). Most wild animals are pitted in a similar spiking chamber and poked to death to butcher them instead of taming and slaughtering.

I also have many other torture devices including a magma slow cooker that burns the victim only briefly and lets them suffer, a forgotten beast rotting chamber where deadly dust causing necrosis rots the victim, a rat pit where disarmed goblins are fed to many large/giant rats/mole dogs, a cave crocodile swimming pool (for goblins), and finally various pits with untameable megabeasts/semi-megabeasts/forgotten beasts chained inside (these are purposely huskified so they serve as immortal weapons).

I also have corpse grinders that can produce useable bones from sentients that dwarves refuse to butcher. My military's armor menances with spikes of these bones to show invaders what became of their brethren from the last incursion upon my fortress.

[Geldrin]

This is totally awesome, the rotting chamber is definitely my favorite!

Some questions: what do you mean when you say "slowly cook"? Curiously, how do you do that?
And what about huskified monsters? Did you chained them up before turned them undead?

[Catsup]

This is totally awesome, the rotting chamber is definitely my favorite!

Some questions: what do you mean when you say "slowly cook"? Curiously, how do you do that?
And what about huskified monsters? Did you chained them up before turned them undead?

normally if you submerge a living creature in magma it quickly burns and dies to bleeding, my slow cooker doesnt submerge the goblin in magma, it just lets a bit of magma fall on the goblin very briefly before the magma falls through a grate below the goblin; burning them horribly but letting them survive.

and yes, i chained the monsters outside during parts of the season when im not expecting sieges/ambushes and un-chain them during the later parts of the season when sieges and ambushes come. Once you have something around in a cage, you can play around with it indefinitely, unless somehow your hauler gets incapacitated, then fun ensues.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Happiness. This is my dwarves' home, perhaps the future of the entire nation. I want it to be as nice to live there as possible, and not a world of suffering that some fortresses turn into.