Print

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

By the holy swelling of Armok's Prostate, this is unfair!

0 (0%)

No, really - my miner's head was ripped off before he even started digging!

0 (0%)

OHMIGERD WHY OH WHY OH WHY

0 (0%)

Your sanity has crumbled to its end

0 (0%)

I'm a masochist.  This is the perfect spot for a new mountainhome!

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 0

Voting closed: November 16, 2013, 07:34:02 pm

[WoobMonkey]

I'm giving my vote to FireCrazy - I really like having lots of screenies to chuckle over.

[puutuulion]

I feel like Woob did the best job, but FireCrazy's is the most representative of what happens to 99% of people who would attempt this embark.

I give WoobMonkey the vote for breaching the aquifer and for cultivating such an extremely macabre party culture.

[WoobMonkey]

What?  Doesn't everyone like to throw children's parties in the midst of steaming clouds of rotted corpse miasma?  Sheesh, where's your Goth cred?  XD

[MDFification]

Might I suggest that for the next iteration of this game, you have players submit seasonal reports of recorded wealth and population?
Seems like a pretty good way to keep score. Also, sweet graphs could be made. The last man standing/the man with the coolest fort still wins, of course, but it'd be interesting, neh?

[WoobMonkey]

I'm not on the official scoring team, but if you'd like to be, MDFification, you're more than welcome to join in.

Or, perhaps, you'd prefer to take a shot at this embark, and show us how it's done?

Personally, I like the current loose, vague system: the embark is punishing enough as is, without making extra demands on players.  If anyone goes to the extra trouble of writing up extra-detailed reports, there's no reason not to weight their contributions a little more heavily - if that's your sort of thing.

Shall I add you to the players' list, the judges list, or both?

[MDFification]

I'm not on the official scoring team, but if you'd like to be, MDFification, you're more than welcome to join in.

Or, perhaps, you'd prefer to take a shot at this embark, and show us how it's done?

Personally, I like the current loose, vague system: the embark is punishing enough as is, without making extra demands on players.  If anyone goes to the extra trouble of writing up extra-detailed reports, there's no reason not to weight their contributions a little more heavily - if that's your sort of thing.

Shall I add you to the players' list, the judges list, or both?

Maybe next round. I just have an obsession with graphs.

[Grimmash]

I'm down for another round, maybe sans aquifer covering the entire map?  It may be a personal issue, but watching literally hours of cancellation spam has me leery of trying to do that competitively.  I have no issue with adding a mod per previous sugesstion.  But if you go for Spawn of Holistic, be careful which build you take.  They have been modding fast and furious over there, so I make sure you don't puck a mod with rampaging scythods that spew necrotizing syndrome on the whole map or something.

[WoobMonkey]

Sorry, Grimmash, but the aquifer stays.  Without it, the difficulty of obtaining wood becomes a non-issue; that would destroy the challenge.  I don't understand how you can, on the one hand, argue to make it easier by removing the battle with the aquifer, and at the same time argue to mod in creatures to up the difficulty.

Though I understand the frustration of cancellation spam, there are other ways to bust an aquifer.  Maybe you can figure out a way to safely plug it?  I know I would give my vote to you, hands down, if you managed to brave the surface long enough to make that method work.

This challenge is meant to illustrate the difficulty available in non-modded, vanilla DF.  Taking out aquifers is modding.  Adding new creatures is modding.

If you'd like to set your own challenge with these changes, mind you, I'd be sure to sign up for a spot in the competition.  But it won't be happening in this one. 

And, to be clear: there is no shame in not wanting to take another round with this embark as is.  It's incredibly difficult, frustrating, and infuriating - in fact, we're all sort of mad for doing it in the first place.  But hey, losing is FUN, right?

If you'd rather not give it another go, your voice on the judging panel is still quite welcome.

[Grimmash]

I'll hang around .  Not sure which side I'll be on yet, but I will most likely give a new map another go just for the sake of trying.

Complete aside to playing the next round:

As for the Aquifer v. mod challenge, that's simply what kind of challenge I find interesting.  Watching cancellation spam for an entire evening (or multiple evenings) with so many other problems on the embark just frustrates me too much.  From my attempts (which may have been flawed, but after the number of tries I gave and all the advice, I am inclined to think not), it's a problem that will only have a brute force (spend time) solution, whereas creatures, vanilla or modded, are a gameplay and base design challenge.  That way I get to spend time doing something interesting as opposed to hitting 'q', 's', 'esc', 'space' over and over until the RNG works in my favor.  That sort of challenge does not strike me as a challenge so much as an artificial barrier to solving the other challenges on the map.  I might be inclined to reconsider that if the aquifer was only blocking weapons grade minerals or adamantine or flux, but in the case of the original map it is a challenge I will pass up for now.

Opinions of what makes a challenge fun differ.  Obviously your game, your decision .

[WoobMonkey]

I think you may be falling into a bit of hyperbole, here.  It took me no more than 1/2 hr, IRL-time, to get through all layers of the aquifer.  It's a matter of managing resources, including dwarf labour - do I use precious wood to make blocks, to speed the process?  Do I sacrifice some of my farming and brewing, to get more carpenters on the job? 

It's questions like these that make it interesting, to me.

I'm glad you'll be sticking around, one way or another!  And, hey, please do set up your game in the way you describe - it sounds like a neat challenge of its own, one I'd be happy to lose at.

[Grimmash]

I will swear before dwarf and man that I spent three entire evenings trying to get that wall built, with wood blocks .  If anything, I am curious to try on another map to see if it wasn't something that happened along all the save transfers.

I may start a game at some point, but in the meantime I have more than enough other succession games that I am part of.  I'll you fine folks manage the games, I'll take my turns and bitch and moan about other people's maps for now .

[4maskwolf]

Alright, shameless plug for something I set up, but I set up a version of this that uses mods to add to the challenge rather than aquifers.  Same rules, not intended to compete with this one, rather to supplement it.

[WoobMonkey]

Sweet.  I'll be on my merry way to the sign-ups!

[Grimmash]

I second Woob's statement.

[WoobMonkey]

Okay, all - we will be starting another round this Sunday.  Please, if you haven't done so already, submit your vote for the winner - based on whatever criteria you prefer.

For anyone who'd like to, you're more than welcome to abandon the embark and reclaim, provided:

You've tried, and failed, to use the embark as-is (there's no way to prove/disprove this claim; you're on your honour);
You give full disclosure on any extra items, skills, etc. you bring along;
You're prepared to lose some cred for making it easier on yourself - so you'd better be extra awesome!

Who's in for a retry?  Posts will be due up Sunday, December 8th.

Let's go!