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[GavJ]

Or perhaps even more slick, be able to designate scaffolding materials (logs) similar to wheelbarrows, and dwarves have algorithms to use them reasonably to achieve more efficient build patterns and then deconstruct them in order when done.

[Sadrice]

For a challenge, try the single pick challenge in a nasty biome.  In the thread on the front page, there's a reanimating tundra with aquifer and titans that show up by summer.  If you don't bring that one plump helmet, walling yourself underground won't save you.  You can get food from the pack animals, but that's hazardous, and without stone vermin will eat it quickly.


In the thread, it was eventually decided that freezing biomes are easier, because freeze drilling is a good way to pierce an aquifer, though it leaves you exposed to fliers.  A hot biome that will evaporate any murky pools and has no vegetation or above aquifer stone was decided to be the nastiest.  Red sand deserts, black sand deserts, and wasteland has the potential to be nasty.


For extra nastiness, pick a saltwater aquifer.  Without embark booze, surface vegetation, or caverns, there are no drinks, which kills very fast.  You can drink saltwater by desalination with a screw pump, which permanently uses all three wagon logs, so any workshop tasks will have to be completed, and you will have no building materials until you hit stone, unless you can deconstruct your pump for a block without losing water, without using a door or anything else built, and limited space above the aquifer.  According to the wiki, you can drink saltwater with a well.  This only permanently uses 2 logs, giving you a workshop, but you need a rope, and since no pack animals are she arable, I don't think that can be had til the caravan.


The one pick challenge thread had methods to pierce an aquifer of at least 3 levels I think without permantley using any logs, and I think the only requirement was a building material, so the desalination pump might be able to be deconstructed to make that and then you could pierce the aquifer, reach the caverns, and be home free bar random disaster, but it would not be easy, especially in a hazardous biome.  Any reanimating biome can be nasty, because you have the potential to lose all access to the surface if you don't find a mass zombie disposal system (one such system described in the one pick thread), which limits growth to actually waiting for children to mature and prevents you from accessing any materials not found locally, unless you can somehow get caravan goods.


In addition, if you somehow find a terrifying Oceanside embark, you even have the potential to get zombie giant sperm whales trying to squash your dwarves, which if you play it right gives you access to what I think is the single most potent minecart projectile in the game.




Sure, a water cannon would make more sense, but do you have no pride?!  You could flatten your enemies with a giant sperm whale, which would promptly reanimate and continue the slaughter.  And you would have the satisfaction of having dug it all out by the hair of your beard, and a lot of luck, if you have zombie giant ravens in the locale.

[Button]

Black lung.

Add it to every kind of stone for an extra challenge!

[thegoatgod_pan]

Settle the second and third caverns and wall off nothing are generally my strategies for a fun fort with a quick death.

[Guvnah]

Above ground without clay/glass spam.

[wierd]

Addendum to above suggestion:

Only purchased wood, only purchased stone, only purchased metals/ores.

it CAN be done.

[pisskop]

Are you kidding?  In one year and 100 stone you can make a city wall.  And a few metal for mechanisms?

[wierd]

Au contraire.

If you set ONLY stone as the high priority import, (and the caravan wuvs you), they will bring much raw boulders.

If you turn the raw boulders into blocks, you get the force multiplier, and can build much more than just 1 wall per biannual period. (humans can bring stones if you enable the diplomats)

It's a challenge, but a workable one.

Same is somewhat true of ore processing into bars, but with the "only imported wood" restriction, you have to decide when you are going to import wood for fuel for the conversion, limiting growthrate.

It is the limitations on growthrate that make you less able to survive ambushes and sieges, since you will be lacking in materials useful for making either weapons, armor, or trap components.

Your fortress networth can exceed the threshold with crappy cloth tradegoods (which can be produced en-mass to trade for the needed goods) which will trigger sieges, well before you are able to fend them off successfully-- Caravans can be lost due to turtling if you decide to turtle into a soil only layer (thus producing no stone boulders, and satisfying the no-dug-stone challenge point, and using a tiny permimeter wall around the downstair) since you wont have armor or weapons to mele them into submission-- or appropriate components to make sufficient traps to break the siege.

This challenge is about balancing production to keep under the siege threshold, while producing enough items to trade to build up the raw materials needed to affect and effective defensive stratagem.

throw in the wildcard of migrant arrivals, and it can be quite challenging to pull off.

"ultra mode" additional rules include "no picks at all", and "Embark with only one stone"
This prevents the use of a soil-only layer as a bunker, keeping dwarves out in the open, since building materials to protect them will be scarce. 

"Suicide mode" challenge: Do this where there is huskifying dust clouds.


So, the challenge, from easiest to hardest (for me at least) goes like this:

[easiest]
No turtleing

[modestly hard]
no turtleing + no traps of any kind

[medium]
no turtleing + no traps of any kind + no glass/ceramic

[medium hard]
no turtleing + no traps of any kind + no glass/ceramic + No harvested wood

[hard]
no turtleing + no traps of any kind + no glass/ceramic + no harvested wood + single pick allowed

[very hard]
no turtleing + no traps of any kind + no glass/ceramic + no harvested wood + no harvested stone (includes coal)

[very very hard]
no turtleing + no traps of any kind + no glass/ceramic + no harvested wood + no harvested stone + no water + savage/evil biome

[insanely hard]
no turtleing + no traps of any kind + no glass/ceramic + no harvested wood + no harvested stone + no water + savage/evil biome + auto_undead biome

[essentially suicidal]
no turtleing + no traps of any kind + no glass/ceramic + no harvested wood + no harvested stone + no water + savage/evil biome + auto_undead biome + huskifying dust weather

[masochism tango]
no turtleing + no traps of any kind + no glass/ceramic + no harvested wood + no harvested stone + no water + savage/evil biome + auto_undead biome + huskifying dust weather + 100% trade dependence for food and drink + must make best effort to always save caravans and migrants.

No one has done the masochism tango yet, to my knowledge.

[WoobMonkey]

Extreme cliffs, terrifying/reanimating woods (because they spawn more flying undead), on a no-points embark.

It's possible.  Unless the biome is scorching, that is.

For added joy, make sure the embark zone has a lair, as well.  Nothing's quite like not even being able to deconstruct your wagon, due to job cancellations from a nearby undead roc.  That is, IF your wagon isn't scuttled on the cliffs in the first place, leaving you with nothing to build with.

[GavJ]

I don't resonate with the concept of just setting arbitrary, meaningless restrictions on myself.  That doesn't redeem the game.

For examples:
* "Don't build cage traps" This is totally reasonable, because cage traps are stupid and unrealistic in the extreme, so not using them is increasing the realism of the game and making it make more sense, in addition to being more challenging.
* "Don't bring even a single pick" is totally UN-reasonable, because in no universe would dwarven settlers leave the mountainhomes to go start a fortress with no only zero supplies, but no pick... And if they lost their pick on the way, they would turn around and go home.
* "Don't chop any trees or mine any of your own stone" is even less reasonable. Even if you could maybe come up with some hackneyed RP reason for the above point (waylaid by bandits at the absolute last moment??), NOTHING would explain this one. The caravan in the first autumn brings an axe and a pick, and you just... don't buy them and use them? That makes absolutely no sense.

So you're not really working WITH the game with most of those restrictions. And at that point, you might just as well say things like:
* You have to play DF with a plate on your head.
* You have to play it piss drunk.
* You can only hit keyboard keys with your cat's paws, not your own fingers
etc.

Once you resort to things that all make equally zero sense, then there's no distinction, there. And thus, you could apply just as many arbitrary challenges to ANY game. I could also play angry birds with a plate on my head, or not allowing myself to detonate bomb birds manually, or whatever other unjustified challenge. Thus, none of these challenges are redeeming dwarf fortress any more than they would be redeeming any other game if arbitrarily applied to, say, angry birds instead.

Long story short: only really interested in things that eminently make sense in-universe. Burrowing invaders being an excellent example. Not digging any stone on principle alone... as a dwarf... being a poor example.




I also pretty much never play in evil biomes, for similar reasons. I've tried it lots of times, and it is sort of challenging, sure. And I can survive, or sometimes not. But it just feels so DUMB that none of that matters to me and I don't have fun anyway. Why would any dwarves settle in an area where their friggin butchering hair products come to life and strangle them? That's ridiculous, it completely breaks atmosphere and immersion for me. Even abstract world gen dwarves have the common sense not to do that.

Being invaded by zombies is one thing, you can't just let the necromancers push you around to the extent of not settling within 40 tiles of them. It seems reasonable and fine to settle within range of them. But a civilization could do just fine without needing to ever settle areas where the land itself presents the same threat.

[pisskop]

Then.

Don't.

Play.





Maybe take a break from the genre or go to another game. for a bit.  I do that.  I stop playing for weeks and occasionally months.  An then usually get an urge.


--

@wierd

:v

[GavJ]

Then.

Don't.

Play.

No, but there have been a lot of good suggestions that jive with me. The thread is being productive. As mentioned, burrowing invaders via dfhack script sounds awesome and like it might largely solve the problem, for instance.

I'm just pointing out which sorts of things I would consider workable solutions versus others, by personal preference. Not that it's hopeless.

It might still come to taking a break sooner or later, though, yeah.

[WoobMonkey]

I also pretty much never play in evil biomes, for similar reasons. I've tried it lots of times, and it is sort of challenging, sure. And I can survive, or sometimes not. But it just feels so DUMB that none of that matters to me and I don't have fun anyway. Why would any dwarves settle in an area where their friggin butchering hair products come to life and strangle them? That's ridiculous, it completely breaks atmosphere and immersion for me. Even abstract world gen dwarves have the common sense not to do that.

DF is a game that's based very much on imagination.  If yours can't come up with a reason why a party of brave pioneers, banished prisoners, or other challenge embarks may exist, then may I suggest switching to a game more like UnReal World, which is also quite challenging, but holds your hand as to the reasons why your PC is doing what s/he's doing?

[GavJ]

What is an example of a roleplaying rationale for embarking in an evil, husk dust-filled, waterless biome, with no equipment, and with the rule of not using equipment to dig or cut trees even when it is available for you to purchase and even when you're already purchasing other things from the same caravan that are much less likely to aid your survival? AND still feeling an obligation to save caravans' lives even when suicidal? AND refusing to farm or brew anything for your own sustenance for some reason?

I guess you could just say "insanity" for almost any situation. But if so, wouldn't the proper RP way to play the fort be to just sort of randomly hit buttons and pursue odd goals in an insane fashion, not to follow an intensely logical and strategic set of choices to attempt survival?

[WoobMonkey]

Banished exiles.  Hardy pioneers.  Religious heretics.

It's not my job to be your imagination for you.