Hello there and I'm sorry to hear that you're having no joy with Dwarf Fortress (DF) at the moment.
I normally wouldn't really take time out of my day to help someone enjoy a game if they're not; I'd normally just think "Meh - not my problem." However, DF did exactly the same thing to me and I'm therefore inclined to actually lend a hand, which I hope that I can.
DF is one of those games which requires you to make your own fun and I don't actually think that this is your problem. I personally have the hunch that you've got the creativity to actually have fun, do stupid things, launch goblins from catapults (read: drawbridges that are down and then raised to fling them hilariously), etc, create a 'Hall of Idiots' wherein you encase dwarves that have done stupid things in solid obsidian...
However, I recently returned to DF and found myself in the same boat as you, nearly. I don't have an issue with survival, really, as I'm now very good at getting all my supplies underground, digging a reservoir for year-round water from a well, build a snazzy great hall and make everyone happy, fortify the above-ground so that I'm not threatened by anything, even building destroyers.
That's where you and I appear to converge in our experience of DF. When I get to this stage, which takes a good number of hours sunk into a game, I'm already "tired" in a way and find myslef sighing, looking at the clock and wondering what I'm doing with my life... this is because GETTING to this stage is such a battle (mostly against the interface and with most of the time spent cursing the use of weird keyboard shortcuts and irksome placement mechanics, not to mention dwarves who seem to get ecstatic pleasure from being the biggest bunch of utter retards that have ever existed and MALICIOUSLY cocking up whenever it is even theoretically possible.)
So, I'm going to make some suggestions that have made my gameplay a LOT less of a b@stard:
1) If you've not already, download the Lazy Newb Pack (I've trialled this in windows so far and it works a charm.) You seriously, seriously, NEED Dwarf Therapist in order for DF to not be just a massive nightmare of management which could be a full time job. With this, migrant waves are the joy that they ought to be, once you've spent the time setting up custom professions, instead of the "Oh my good God" events that they used to be, setting individual labour preferences for 30+ incoming migrants, one at a time for HOURS... and woe be thine if you want to CHANGE a certain kind of dwarf to doing something slightly differently! I hope you remembered all of the ones you wanted to change on the God-awful-interface list! Seriously, Dwarf Therapist - use it, spend the time necessary to learn how to work it, because as soon as you do, it's as if a bear trap has just been taken off each leg and you can now run in the fields and play!
2) Appoint a dual bookkeeper/manager. These jobs don't seem to really take much time, and so one dwarf can easily do both. Once you've got a manager, all you need to provide is a lot of facilities (workshops) for your dwarves to toil in. Your manager can then be spoken to instead of individual workshops. This manager will divide up the orders you give between the workshops available and, best of all, if a job keeps canceling (my most frequent one is "Cannot process plants: need bag"), then the task doesn't just vanish, your manager will keep re-applying the request for "process plants". This may continually fail, because there may be no bag available, but at LEAST you keep seeing the report of the cancellation at the bottom of the screen, instead of spending 40 minutes watching your incompetent little pillocks running around without any progress in processing plants, which may well be destroying further plans you have down the line. The repeating message of there being no available bag will therefore remind you to put in an order to your manager for "Cloth bags", which will be automatically assigned to the clothier's shop(s). This is honestly another GODSEND which lets you get on with pratting about and overseeing and having !!FUN!!, instead of playing the part of a borderline-suicidal supervisor looking after morons who need their noses wiping for them. That's not what gaming is about! Get a manager. As soon as you can. They only need a crummy (meagre) office to do both jobs in, which is basically a chair. Honestly, the earlier you get a manager, the earlier you can start playing the game.
3) Don't hold back from killing and maiming your own dwarves. It is immense fun and releives the tension that the game often twists you into with its peculiarities / bugs and often woeful AI. If you read the wiki, you'd almost be convinced that a tantrum spiral is only one quiet mouse fart away, when it comes to how much dwarves can deal with any disturbance at all in their lives. In my opinion, there's so much scaremongering on the wiki as to how easy it is to lose a fort, that I sometimes don't blame people for being scared off the game. Personally, I have atom-smashed (by drawbridge) several dwarves who have displeased me, kids, pets etc. and the most that I've ever had is one or two dwarves (usually parents or spouses) go berserk and quickly end up pureed by my military, maybe after overturning a statue. Therefore, go ahead and release your frustrations upon the dipsticks that you're saddled with babysitting! The next time Urist McBellend cancels that vital bit of defensive wall because he wants to use the logs he's standing on which occupy the same square as the wall you desperately need, teach the little crosseyed, nose-picking, earwax-licking, gormless buttmunch a lesson! Burrow or squad-move him into an atom-smasher drawbridge while the bridge is down, slam him once up against the wall by folding the drawbridge up on him. Give him an in-game nickname (so you don't lose track of him), and allow him to be fixed up by the hospital, but every time Urist McBellend does something else pillock-witted, put him in for another bridge smashing. He'll learn or die, and both are funny to watch. Engrave him a slab and put it in his bedroom, reminding him of his dispensibility to the fort, possibly one slab per gargantuam ballsup that he's responsible for - essentially a soreboard of his rampant moronicism, for your later perusal when he finally loses all structural integrity and dies in the "Stop being a sh!twit" device... I've found myself deliverately following my more moronic dwarves around, HOPING that they'll give me an excuse to brain them again in the "You've been a tw@t" machine. Get personal. Get petty. Be as immature as you wish real life would allow you to be.
4) Regarding the military, spend the time setting up squads, uniforms, weapons etc., but don't bother getting too carried away with making an "answer for everything" loadout. I've found that a load of decently-armoured dwarves armed with short swords are usually adequate. Set up another squad for ranged combat with quivers and an archery target each in multiple designated barracks. Bazillions of wooden bolts can be ordered using the manager (see point 2) so that you can easily replenish ammo stocks. I've also found that, once you've got a proper surface-side fort out of which you can pelt your enemies with bolts, not much is a threat, even when I've been using bone / wood bolts, and anything that seems impervious to this will eventually get bored or walk in front of one of my outward-facing atom smashers. With the number of enemies you get in sieges and with how easy it is to get a whole load of high-value trade goods, its easy to trade for enough metal to arm and armour everyone you care to. If you truly want to be self-sufficient and not open the airlocks for anything other than migrants, you can always use the smelting method for making metal from nothing (see the wiki.) Therefore you could trade for a wee bit of steel (something expensive that smelts into a lot more than it should) and just repeat until everyone's got steel. It may be an exploit, but I think that the amount of buggering about that is required to make steel in DF allows me to guiltlessly use said exploit.
With these suggestions, I hope that you can get back to the drawing board for goblin gauntlets and other creative ways of enjoying DF with a reduced amount of arbitrary busywork that the game would otherwise force you to do.
I'll pop back on the forum and write more if you find that any of this works for you. Hope it helped somewhat.
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Topic: How to Enjoy the Game Again? (Read 2915 times)