Print

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

[Urist McVoyager]

For a while now I've been working on surface forts as humans. I give them Site specific nobles so they're decently playable, and I've recently taken to doing 10,000 point Embark budgets. When Toady did his rock nerfs he forgot to fix the embark screen, so a Sandstone boulder costs the same as an oak log, and gives four times the building material, which means you can buy 2,500 of the things, get 10,000 materials from them, and still have almost twice as many embark points left as you would have had at all with the default set up.

I've been trying to fine tune my methods to maximize trade success and get into the game faster, but my natural caution keeps getting in the way. I haven't done very much with the military, and it still takes me a full year to get into the swing of things production-wise.

Anyone else do much with surface forts, and maybe playing as humans or even Elves?

[Grim Portent]

I pretty much only play as humans these days. Even have a succession game running using humans.

I'm currently doing some modding to make a norse themed race to play, most of the basic stuff is done, but the language is slow work.

I tend to build around a central building that serves as a meeting hall, dining room and dormitory for the homeless. I like to have some good soldiers to throw into the fray when enemies arrive but I do scatter some cage traps around to catch animals.

[Urist McVoyager]

So far I haven't done much with the military. Soon I'm going to have a DF reset that undoes all my modding work, so I can start fresh. I'll play as humans all the way and my first embark I'll set about twenty percent of my population as soldiers. At least at first. It might bump up as I settle in, not sure.

This time, in WestGlossed, it took me two and a half years to merit a Minotaur visit, and the Gobs still haven't shown their faces. Our population's peaked at fifty, and everyone's the "Only one of their kind" so humans seem to be getting their butts kicked so far.

I used to start with a main hall, but it takes too long to get everything set up that way. I went to making houses and a neighborhood now. It proceeds bit by bit, but we walled ourselves in with only eight houses, and we have a Minotaur outside, so the town's kinda ground to a halt for the moment, since we don't have much of an army.

[BlackFlyme]

I've tried playing as humans before, back when I was new to modding. Of course, that meant I had no idea what I was doing, and couldn't do too much, since I was missing a few reactions and had no military or nobles. I did have one decent fort in a glacier, though.

Elves would be interesting to try, what with the "no metal, no woodcutting" rules. Though it would probably take a lot of modding to work. I remember there was an old elf mod floating about, but it is probably outdated by now.

[Urist McVoyager]

To play humans, I mod in the site specific nobles only. NOT the big ones like Count or Baron. Mayor is as high as I go. The others glitch like the HFS and you'll wind up with a Count and Baron right on embark. 

After that I mod in the Coke reactions so I can make fuel without wood. The wood's for furniture and soap making.

Westglossed involved 1,000 sandstone boulders, 1,000 logs (I'm replacing the logs with 1500 more boulders, I can make do with the trees I cut for furniture.) 50 Bituminous Coal stones, 50 Tetrahedrite, 50 Cassiterite, and 50 Hematite. We've been managing trade on Silver goblets and clothing. This was my first time setting up a full textile industry, right down to the dying department! I really need to master the hospital and military systems, otherwise I fear I'll continue to fall prey to enemies.

Another problem was space. On the surface, space is at a premium, but I was giving my people too little. That was partly just layout decisions, not actually the amount of space. I'm OCD about symmetry, so I wind up putting doors in the center of walls. Which isn't smart when you only have nine blocks, and you can't stick a second table/chair combo into the room without blocking the door. I'm thinking of jacking the size of the standard rooms up to 5x5 instead of 3x3, for more room for furniture. Two tables is great for a bachelor or a childless couple, but you want the family to be able to eat together, you know? A five by five gives room enough for six dining sets. A family with four children can settle in there without waiting for their turns.

[Aspgren]

I haven't tried playing as another race than dwarves (except when everything bugged out and dwarves became troglodytes) but I often build above ground.

Usually it goes like this:
1. Assign construction labour
2. Build common house, complete with well, small storage, dinning room and hospital/dormitory.
3. Build a trade depot and start planning the city.
4. Immigrants arrive, far more than I had anticipated. Add more houses to the city plan.
5. Farm and pastures are being constructed because Armok knows food is dwindling.
6. The undead swarm over my unprepared village and slaughter everyone. Because I always build within the vicinity of a tower but I always assume I have more time... just a little more time to prepare...

[Urist McVoyager]

If I were going to do an above ground embark within range of a tower, I'd dig in basements first and set up a thriving underground site and then build up from there. Just vault the damn thing, considering Dwarves have below ground crops to start with. And I always get screwed over by "common houses" they take too long to set up when you'd do better to set up the farm houses first, then the construction ones, and set people to work in their specialized fields pronto. That way you can trade a little in the first year, or the second.

Yesterday I did a no-points embark and it forced me to deal with the military system in more depth. I was building a storage shed out of a walled up canyon, and needed a guard to keep thieves out. So I set up the patrol route and scheduled a crossbow general. The Kea people showed up as the caravan did, and since I didn't have a Depot up, the caravan sat there and helped my crossbowman keep the keafolk occupied.

Observation: During the battle my crossbowman never abandoned bolt shooting. A few times the keas got real close, and he only shot them, didn't charge. One got right next to him while he was retrieving bolts from the shed, and he still shot it. Not once did he go melee.

Hypothesis: Using patrol routes instead of direct orders might help maintain battle discipline in crossbow soldiers.

Alternate Hypothesis: Humans are more disciplined than Dwarves.

If someone else using Dwarves will try out using patrol routes to get people to the battle, we can test whether it's race based or not. I'll do it on my side for ten battles, and then switch to ten battles using stationing and kill orders. We might be able to find a workaround for the whole "Leeroy Jenkins!" attitude people have in this game.

[Urist McVoyager]

Okay, experiment collapsed. I've seen my warriors break patrol and fight with their bows as hammers now.

Hell, no-points Fortress is now a mess. The second Winter in saw us facing a Kobold ambush while the General was injured. We've got two other shooters, and they were both killed, then the Kobolds slipped into the Hospital section and did in four others there, then two people in the bedrooms . . . I'm back down to 7 people from the 14 we had before-hand. Luckily I've got the casualties set in coffins already, so they won't haunt us.

I'm actually loving taking losses this time, because it's teaching me more about the game than my boring successes ever did.