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[Skullsploder]

Aquifers IRL can be dealt with be lowering a sheath around the miners as they dig out the space for it, and a pump simultaneously pipes out the water at their feet. Sounds an awful lot like the pump stack method, so long as you use something non exploity to power it.

[k33n]

I may seam a bit postmodern when I say this, but in single player games the developer intent ends with the end user. No balance, no proper way way to play. Just a sandbox. Just a toy.

[Badger Storm]

I'm probably biased, because I'm an incorrigible save-scummer and DFHack user, but keep in mind the point of games in general is to be fun (not to be confused with Fun),and if you're not having fun you might need to rethink your approach.  I'd rather do something gamey than be frustrated, upset, or bored. 

[FallenAngel]

Fun (and !!Fun!!) are always fun.
I try to maximize fun and get a safe amount of Fun and !!Fun!!.

[Goblins]

A corollary to this question;

Do you guys savescum?  Is that how your fortresses survive so long?

I just started reading about it and I want to know if a lot of people did it or not... I would never do it.

[Burts]

Just play however you like. If you think it is exploity, don't do it.


I personally take anything that would be unreasonable in a realistic but fantasy world an exploit

That includes cage traps (should not be possible to trap a bronze collosus with a wooden cage), super elaborate massive trap designs that instakill any invaders in seconds, danger rooms that train your dwarves to legendary in a few moments and stuff like that.

I guess some people do like power gaming to the max and playing the game at 0 difficulty pretty much, but i don't.

[Aslandus]

A corollary to this question;

Do you guys savescum?  Is that how your fortresses survive so long?

I just started reading about it and I want to know if a lot of people did it or not... I would never do it.

I don't, but I generally don't embark in areas where I would have tons of problems (I won't say never, once I did after a bunch of dwarves got bitten by a werebeast and my workers just couldn't get rooms for them built in time for the next transformation, so I manually crashed the game and tried again, and the next time I got the military to respond faster).

I also leave the game to autosave between seasons because it's frustrating to play for a full year then have the game crash and lose all that progress. It makes it that much more important to get a skilled military and weapon/armor production up fast.

I guess some people do like power gaming to the max and playing the game at 0 difficulty pretty much, but i don't.

It's not always a matter of being powergamey, I almost never find iron or steel on my embark so I have no problem with using metal duping to get my military armed. If you have a problem with making elaborate traps that's fine but generally the payoff is limited compared to the amount of work that goes into making them (really, how often are you going to face a nigh-invincible steel forgotten beast with deadly dust that would warrant collapsing half your dining hall to get rid of them?)...

[bahihs]

For me, fun is to play the game with some level of difficulty and realism. If I lose, I lose (well, actually, I reload...). But if its too easy then I find its not fun, of course that depends on what I'm trying to do. If I'm playing to simulate or playing to create. (In the latter, I don't mind fast-forwarding to a stable fortress so that I can begin construction for whatever project I have in mind).

Tussock, that list is awesome. I'm going to use some of those in my next fortress (some of them seem excessive to me, like levers for doors; but others are almost mandatory, like not building at the edge of the map.

Has anyone here actually tried to play in an aquifer without breaching? (i.e importing all your stone/ores?).

I used to try those methods.
But nowadays I prefer to stay above the aquifer.

If I want to have lots of stones, I simple embark on an aquifer-free area, and there are always underground lakes/seas which I can get unlimited water from.

utunnels, you seem to suggest that you've tried this, is it do-able?

[gunpowdertea]

I see the game as being designed by "make Geology and the rest as realistic as possible" (with some short cuts, strange behaviour of e.g. levers...). So the aquifer is in there because you have that in nature. I usually prefer to get round them by exploratory mining. There is often a spot where you can get through (with the exception of beaches, probably). I do not see any intention on how the game is to be played, obviously the dorfs need to survive somehow and there are several solutions to most of the challenges. As somebody once observed (for role playing games): if you as the DM design a challenge and have three ideas how to overcome it, your players will find one that is completely differnt to yours. In fact as a DM I like to choose a solution presented by the players if intelligent / crazy enough. I see Toady in that role, with the rules of the game deciding on what could work.

Oh, and I also like the list, though I disagree with some things. I actually like using drawbridges, but also portcullis (that can be broken). I feel that building destroyers are much too fast with the building destroying, though.

[§k]

Do you guys savescum?  Is that how your fortresses survive so long?

Savescum makes the game a different game. Epicness is from permadeath. However, my fortress survives because it's too passive to crumble.

Speaking of aquifer, I'd rather think that it's not meant to be penetrable at all, in the same way that evil area isn't meant to be embarked on(no civ spawns in evil area during worldgen), but that's a challenge up to the player, in which quirky use of game mechanism is to be expected.

[gunpowdertea]

If the fortress falls: reclaim! Though the current one I'm playing was barely saved, I cloistered away a single unhappy dorf in a corner of the caverns. The siege left after a while and a small wave of migrants repopulated the fortress enough to start on the cleaning up (200 corpses, blood everywhere)...

[Nikow]

For me, fun is to play the game with some level of difficulty and realism. If I lose, I lose (well, actually, I reload...). But if its too easy then I find its not fun, of course that depends on what I'm trying to do. If I'm playing to simulate or playing to create. (In the latter, I don't mind fast-forwarding to a stable fortress so that I can begin construction for whatever project I have in mind).

Tussock, that list is awesome. I'm going to use some of those in my next fortress (some of them seem excessive to me, like levers for doors; but others are almost mandatory, like not building at the edge of the map.

Has anyone here actually tried to play in an aquifer without breaching? (i.e importing all your stone/ores?).

I used to try those methods.
But nowadays I prefer to stay above the aquifer.

If I want to have lots of stones, I simple embark on an aquifer-free area, and there are always underground lakes/seas which I can get unlimited water from.

utunnels, you seem to suggest that you've tried this, is it do-able?

Yeah, i tried once play without piercing an aquifer (okey, it was my first time with it and i was figuring out how to pierce it alone). With first caravan i got 0 stones, but later... There was a lot of it: food, clothes and some crappy trap components in exchange for stones and wood, i bough a lot of it.

Fort standed (without piercing an aquifer) for 8 years, later, it doesn't metter, because i finaly pierced soil using frozen tiles...

[Goblins]

Well, dfhack or whatever you call it sounds like a boring way to play, and savescumming seems terrible.  I don't mind if my fortresses die; with each death I gain one extra ounce of knowledge!

[Skullsploder]

I am currently playing above an aquifer. I embarked near a necro tower and with the level of immigration I'm getting I can't divert any resources from building the fort for accommodating the peasants into piercing the at least two level aquifer. It does feel very medieval, given that I don't have the resources to properly accommodate everyone so everyone gets tiny huts if anything, and when the siege comes everyone who values life crams themselves into the single secure building in the shambles of a village, the keep, and hopes the food doesn't run out. I have three forges, four smelters and six wood furnaces running constantly to smelt the copper I brought on embark and have been buying up by the ton from the caravans. Copper, by the way, is the highest quality weapons grade material available to me until I manage to be siege free through summer for the humie caravan - my civ doesn't even have tin for bronze, and I have decided for Fun that buying steel from your civ is exploity when your civ has no iron. Most fun fort of mine in ages.

My no nos:
-don't buy steel from your civ if they have no iron (anvils are fine, reistically a copper or stone anvil works just fine, pretend the steel anvils are actually gabbro)
-don't use danger rooms
-don't spam traps, particularly cage traps. A few to capture wildlife or the occasional prisoner of war are fine.
-don't rely on subterranean farms or any egg layers or non grazers for food. It's too easy for even a vague sense of realism.
-don't use cheap super traps like an atom smasher corridor. It's boring. Atom smahing garbage is cool.

-do embark on an aquifer near an aggressive necro tower with only an anvil and 200 urists of malachite.

[Goblins]

I am currently playing above an aquifer. I embarked near a necro tower and with the level of immigration I'm getting I can't divert any resources from building the fort for accommodating the peasants into piercing the at least two level aquifer. It does feel very medieval, given that I don't have the resources to properly accommodate everyone so everyone gets tiny huts if anything, and when the siege comes everyone who values life crams themselves into the single secure building in the shambles of a village, the keep, and hopes the food doesn't run out. I have three forges, four smelters and six wood furnaces running constantly to smelt the copper I brought on embark and have been buying up by the ton from the caravans. Copper, by the way, is the highest quality weapons grade material available to me until I manage to be siege free through summer for the humie caravan - my civ doesn't even have tin for bronze, and I have decided for Fun that buying steel from your civ is exploity when your civ has no iron. Most fun fort of mine in ages.

My no nos:
-don't buy steel from your civ if they have no iron (anvils are fine, reistically a copper or stone anvil works just fine, pretend the steel anvils are actually gabbro)
-don't use danger rooms
-don't spam traps, particularly cage traps. A few to capture wildlife or the occasional prisoner of war are fine.
-don't rely on subterranean farms or any egg layers or non grazers for food. It's too easy for even a vague sense of realism.
-don't use cheap super traps like an atom smasher corridor. It's boring. Atom smahing garbage is cool.

-do embark on an aquifer near an aggressive necro tower with only an anvil and 200 urists of malachite.

I'm the opposite of you.  I just play the game as it was meant to be played, and whatever strategies I find that work I use.  Just no;
-dfhack
-any hacks
-making myself overpowered through third party methods