Print

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

[kääpiö]

So I've been playing Dwarf Fortress for some time now, and most of my forts get to the point of maybe ~20 dwarfs and then I get bored and start a new fortress. I'd like to hear some tips what interesting things I can do with my small fort, or anything that could get me to mighty forts. I once or twice have had a ~70 dwarf fortress, but in them nothing happened, until I got sieged and lost almost instantly.
How should I start my military, should I start some mega project, how do I make an efficient fort that looks good, anything that helps my fortresses get mighty and great.
I know someone would say "Just experiment and read wiki", but my experiments end up to me having no idea what's going on, and the wiki is a bit too much "now do this, then do this" type.

[ond_magiker]

Youtube tutorials/let's plays?

[kääpiö]

Youtube tutorials/let's plays?

I've watched a ton of them, but most are a bit boring, mainly because the excessive naming of dwarves.

Also, very few of my forts have iron, most have only tetrahedrite or gold.

[VerdantSF]

Here's some personal copy pasta from a similar thread.  We're all different, so it's possible that none of this will resonate with you.  Best of luck, regardless!

My fort is now 50 years old and one of the main things that has kept me going is my attachment to certain dwarves.  It's especially cool to watch babies grow up and take a prominent place in the fort.  I also used to rage quit when favorite dwarves died, but then I realized that if everything always went to plan, I would definitely be bored.  The unexpected accidents and fatalities make the rescues and triumphs that much sweeter.  Throwing it all away is just unthinkable now. 

Big projects also help.  Whenever I read about a cool idea on the forums, I'm tempted to try it out.  Usually this meant starting up a new fortress, but it's much, much easier to test things out with a mature fortress.  No more starting from zero over and over again.  These days, after a project has run its course, I just dismantle it, or leave it be, as a monument of sorts, rather than abandoning. 

Before this fortress, most of mine only lasted 3-7 years.  Sometimes, I would even scrap a fortress if I couldn't find iron in the first few levels.  Going back to the earlier thought, imperfections make things fun.  My current fort has flux, but no native iron ore.  It relies on trade and goblinite to fuel the steel industry.  Especially in the early days, making sure caravans got in safely was paramount.  It led me to construct the underground trade network that I mentioned upthread.  This has become a defining piece of the fortress as a whole - all due to the lack of iron, a major embark imperfection which I had a VERY hard time tolerating before.

Symmetry can be a big thing for me, too.  Keep in mind, if you mess up, you can always restructure rooms with constructed walls .  Good luck to you!   

[kääpiö]

Here's some personal copy pasta from a similar thread.  We're all different, so it's possible that none of this will resonate with you.  Best of luck, regardless!

Thanks for that! I've often wanted to do something big, but I don't know what to do, or how to do. Also, when I make my initial design for the fortress, later I realize it sucks and want to make it better. But I can't undig, so I'll have to start a new fort. Maybe if I think first and dig later I'll get it right.

[Matoro]

If the wiki is too much "now do this, then do this" -type, what kind of help you are actually wanting? The basics are always "do this, then this". Get the weapons. Get a good military dwarves. Therapist helps you. Make barracks. It's important to set your squads "active" in the alerts-menu (military screen). Order them to train in the barracks. Get DFhack and use military tweaks to make training less buggy. There really isn't a way to tell the basics without sayin it like "now do this, then do this". If you don't want simplified guides, I afraid you'll have to just try by yourself things.

[Argembarger]

Do you ever use inaccessible digging designations for the purposes of fort planning, etc.?

That always helped me think before I dig.

[itg]

So I've been playing Dwarf Fortress for some time now, and most of my forts get to the point of maybe ~20 dwarfs and then I get bored and start a new fortress. I'd like to hear some tips what interesting things I can do with my small fort, or anything that could get me to mighty forts. I once or twice have had a ~70 dwarf fortress, but in them nothing happened, until I got sieged and lost almost instantly.
How should I start my military, should I start some mega project, how do I make an efficient fort that looks good, anything that helps my fortresses get mighty and great.
I know someone would say "Just experiment and read wiki", but my experiments end up to me having no idea what's going on, and the wiki is a bit too much "now do this, then do this" type.

Well, the obvious place to start is to try to not lose instantly when the first siege arrives. The military quickstart guide on the wiki should get you going on that front, but I'd also recommend building a trap corridor in front of the entrance to the fortress. Cage traps are reliable and cheap, and each trap puts one goblin out of the fight, 100% of the time. With enough cage traps, you don't need any other defense vs. sieges. Weapon traps are good, too, but you'll need weapons/trap components to fill them with. Wooden spikes or spiked balls can work if you don't have metal. drawbridges (aka atom smashers) can be used to crush sieges. Just remember to put the lever far from the entrance. Don't use stonefall traps or siege weapons. They're not effective.

[VerdantSF]

Thanks for that! I've often wanted to do something big, but I don't know what to do, or how to do. Also, when I make my initial design for the fortress, later I realize it sucks and want to make it better. But I can't undig, so I'll have to start a new fort. Maybe if I think first and dig later I'll get it right.

You're welcome!  Don't get too caught up in how much a design sucks or not.  While dwarf fortress has lots of fine details to obsess over, letting certain things just be can allow for unexpected fun (and longevity) .

[laularukyrumo]

Sieges don't show up until you have 80 dwarves in the first place, and so you should get yourself prepared for that before it happens by creating a device (as simple as a raising drawbridge linked to an interior lever that blocks your only exit) to lock the fortress down in case of emergency. Goblins get bored and leave eventually, and you can expedite this by shooting them with crossbow bolts, caging them en masse as described above, weapon traps... If built properly, ballistae can be effective, but you need to be pretty dedicated to them and there's always the risk of your civvie operators pissing their pants and abandoning their post.

As far as designing your fort and not liking it, it's often more Fun to just suck it up and deal with it. You can fill imperfections with constructed walls, and then later, when you have MMMMMMMMMMAGMA, you can use careful obsidian casting to fill the walls back in and then dig them back out again later.

I've also recently experienced the same situation you're in and a similar epiphany relating to what Verdant described. I joined up an amazing pseudo-succession game where instead of building a fortress, the players are building the RAWs from scratch. I took the first player turn, embarking with a squad of halflings (who are water-dependent and not booze dependent) on a river that froze in winter. It started out frozen, so I knew it would freeze in winter and that I'd die if I didn't do something about it. But I got distracted doing what I'd always done, setting up industries, and winter came and the river froze and everyone starved to death before I could fix it. It was a learning experience, and what I learned was that Losing Is Fun. I'm no longer as paranoid about my forts being super efficient and perfect. If I obsess over these things neurotically, I'm never going to get past the starting couple years, and it turns out that letting some of this stuff go isn't necessarily lethal. And if everything goes to hell in a handbasket? Makes a better story that way.

[weenog]

The main thing holding my interest together is losing, and learning from it.  Nearly every wipeout is something you could have prevented.  Determining why the disaster happened, doing things differently next time around, and checking whether the new way works (or why it doesn't) keeps me going.

I'm currently in the process of cleaning up after a mistake that put the volcano INSIDE my fortress.  After that, another try at stopping an aquifer with obsidian casting, most likely with the entire control and containment setup created and double-checked before letting the magma go anywhere new.

[kääpiö]

If the wiki is too much "now do this, then do this" -type, what kind of help you are actually wanting? The basics are always "do this, then this". Get the weapons. Get a good military dwarves. Therapist helps you. Make barracks. It's important to set your squads "active" in the alerts-menu (military screen). Order them to train in the barracks. Get DFhack and use military tweaks to make training less buggy. There really isn't a way to tell the basics without sayin it like "now do this, then do this". If you don't want simplified guides, I afraid you'll have to just try by yourself things.

I mean help like suggesting different things, not just "go to military screen, press a and press c to set stuff".

Thanks everyone for your time. I'll try to not get bored and do something great. Expect to hear from me someday.

[Matoro]

If the wiki is too much "now do this, then do this" -type, what kind of help you are actually wanting? The basics are always "do this, then this". Get the weapons. Get a good military dwarves. Therapist helps you. Make barracks. It's important to set your squads "active" in the alerts-menu (military screen). Order them to train in the barracks. Get DFhack and use military tweaks to make training less buggy. There really isn't a way to tell the basics without sayin it like "now do this, then do this". If you don't want simplified guides, I afraid you'll have to just try by yourself things.

I mean help like suggesting different things, not just "go to military screen, press a and press c to set stuff".

Thanks everyone for your time. I'll try to not get bored and do something great. Expect to hear from me someday.

You can always make topics like these and ask suggestions for your situation.

[weenog]

Making big things of small discoveries can help you stay interested, too.  There was one time I tried to bucket irrigate a single tile of stone for aboveground farming (it was in the way of an otherwise good location for a plot).  The water froze immediately, and after a couple of years it had still never thawed, summer just didn't get warm enough.  This gave me an idea.

I dug down to the caverns for water and filled a large reservoir.  I put the carpenters to work creating many buckets, and erecting a scaffold.  This fortress did not have a trappy entrance corridor, nor even a walled courtyard to greet visitors.  With careful pond zone designations, I poured a giant ice castle, one bucket at a time.

[dwarfhoplite]

I had a big problem with perfectionism but I learned to cope with it. According to my experience, completely planned forts that use a constant plan and are strict with detail are going to be boring. It is like playing the same fort over and over again.

A very good tip to keep things interesting is to build everything on a single floor. Flat forts look nice and you get to think things like traffic and logistics. The best piece of advice I have is to play spontaneously: plan the fort on the move and don't be too perfectionist. Accept mistakes and heavy casualties, for misfortune is what makes a good story.