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[synyster31]

So I was playing my 1st game that I really got my militia up and running, albeit one squad. After a while some goblins attacked so I sent out my militia to attack them. I won but lost about 3 men in the process. Almost immidiately after the siege all hell broke loose! I have got people murdering, dying and going insane left, right and center! I think this is the end of this game but is there something I did wrong to cause such a remarkable collapse?

[TurboSlug22]

Hello!

Glad youre digging into DF

You expereinced some !FUN! in the form of a tantrum spiral. This happens when a loved one dies and the surviving lover flipps out about the loss. Things get ugly tempers flare and fights break out and more people get injured and die and the cycle repeats. The best way to mitigate this sort of situation is to keep dwarves happy so when devastating things happen, they stay  above that critical happieness threshhold and dont lose their S*** when things go south.

This means youll want to build lots of high quality statues tables and chairs in your meeting hall, have a dwarven mist machine (water wheel making splashy goodness) a variety of drink and food for your dwarves to choose from, dyed fresh new clothes, high quality engraving, artifacts for them to observe, private beds/rooms to sleep in, etc. Do these things and you can mitigate loss from tantrum spirals

Having a leader/mayor with high pacifier/consoler skill helps some too i think

[Tacomagic]

You have been lucky enough to have experienced Ye Olde Tantrume Spirale.

[Koremu]

You are experiencing a Tantrum Spiral.

Basically, your surviving dorfs have been upset by the deaths of your fort guards (and weren't happy enough beforehand) so they are expressing their upset by tantrumming - throwing things, breaking things etc. As they do so they are making other dorfs upset.

In the short term, you need to separate your dorfs as much as possible, get any that are reasonably happy somewhere apart, and get them booze & high quality furniture to keep them that way.

In the longer term you need to think about ways to keep your dorfs from socialising too much, and either promote extreme happyology or else utterly horrify your dorfs into unresponsiveness.

You can recover from a spiral. I encourage you to try, because even if you fail it'll be good experience for next time you have to deal with one.

[Deboche]

It seems to happen more often and be worse in this version of DF, I think.

I had to deal with one recently because I lost a miner to a cave-in and then got attacked by gobbos. I just put all the civilians into 2 makeshift squads and sent them out there against the ONE gobbo who hadn't got caught in a trap. I expected him to just run away but he killed 2 dwarves before dying.

Anyway, I'm experienced enough with tantrums to do a little bit of damage control and everything was fine.

[RagingDragon]

Oh boy, nothing better than hearing about other players tantrum spirals.

It's crazy/amazing how they can spiral totally out of control. I'm recovering from a mini-tantrum after one of my dwarves in a fey mood went berserk because I couldn't find them the right materials.

He ran around socking people in the head until he'd managed to kill a farmer and an animal trainer. Luckily I had just drafted my first marksdwarf, who happened to be nearby, so he took care of the out of control dwarf quickly.

Still, the dwarves all had friends and family, so moods started going all over the place. I queued up a bunch of lavish meals and tried to diversify my booze while putting my engravers to work making things nicer for everyone.

Another thing I've been trying is just not having a meeting hall. Make sure you have dining rooms so your dwarves will eat, but just don't make them meeting halls. Not sure how well it's going to work, but at least my dwarves are a lot more productive without throwing a month-long party every five minutes!

[Solon64]

Dwarves only throw parties when there is a room designated from an item to throw it at.

You are able, using (i), to designate meeting zones free of any items.  Such meeting zones will never be used to throw parties.

They still carry all the risks of meeting zones though, i.e. dwarves socializing and, I shudder to say it, making friends.

[thegoatgod_pan]

Tantrum spirals are the forest fires of dwarf fortress: horrible destruction leading to forest health since the survivors are traumatized and toughened and will bear with whatever horrors may come in the future.

Let it burn out, close the entrances letting danger in and let it burn out

[synyster31]

Haha thanks guys, i like the 'tantrum-spiral' name. Yeah I imagine they were not the happiest bunch anyway as it wasn't the most luxurious fort!

I'll see how far it goes, I did have about 70 dwarves so I wonder how many will survive. The only thing is I can't build coffins very quick to bury everyone that dies because of the panic, which causes more 'horrified' dwarves! Haha