WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!OBLIGATORY PREFACE:Angelcrux is a fort situated on both a terrifying glacier (complete with reanimation and thralling clouds) and on a vault, courtesy of DFhack's embark-anywhere. Also it's near three towers and dwarves are extinct outside of the fortress. In addition, there is light modding to replace goblins with bugbears (big hairy goblins), make humans a bit more norse-like, and give dwarves a few new weapons.
A lot of time has passed (both in real life and in-game) since I last gave an update on Angelcrux. The fort is just celebrating its 70th birthday.
Here's what's been going on:
The cavern invasion project is pretty much finished. The sub-project of flooring over the majority of the caverns is the only part left, and has been a low priority thing going on for a decade or two.
The hell invasion is long since done and over with, and it went unfortunately poorly. The initial wave was defeated using spikes, but some stray demons (perhaps remnants of the initial wave, seeing as regular demons don't try to get up into the fort) were able to get in to the fort and inflict significant civilian casualties, all due to my own carelessness of forgetting to lock hell back up and leaving the fort semi-idle. I still have yet to actually invade hell, but the clown car is defeated.
Casualty report:
- 6 deaths
- 1 crippled marksdwarf, retired. (missing leg made him unable to pick up ammo because of his crutch)
- 1 Bruised ego
In more positive news, the invasion gave me three decades worth of food and an absurd amount of bone, a good chunk of which I just turned into bolts to let my marksdwarves destroy.
There have been two more deaths, both of age, outside the demon incident. First was the old queen, Lolor, who was promptly replaced by Atir Cloisterthrows, the seventh daughter of Lolor. Rakust still did end up making a move: shortly after Lolor's death he claimed the position of General, perhaps denoting that the final remainders of the Celebrated Glazes (my civ) outside of the fortress have all perished.
The demon incident was actually quite some time ago (about two decades), so all losses have been replaced with new children, who are already of age just finished with their artifact spree. Quite a few useful artifacts came of it, foremost among them the fort's third slade warhammer. The fortress mechanic died at an inconvenient time (any child to replace them will not have any potential spouses), so I've chosen not to fire up the honemoon suites, and so far no new child has been born, leaving the fortress population at 39.
Oh right, and one more unfortunate incident: when Urvad, the mechanic, died, his reanimated corpse was close to the animal pastures and killed off the only ram.
My future plans still remain fairly unchanged: I will construct an obsidian farm and conduct a full invasion of hell, then move on to claiming the surface. However, there is one notable addition that I might pursue: guildhall honeymoon suites. Currently, when a dwarf dies, their skills are lost and the next generation needs to start over from scratch, churning out low quality items for ages (since I often have only the occasional need for said skill). But! If I can have an apprentice training program by locking two dwarves in a guildhall together, I can quickly and effectively train up a new generation of workers so that I can preserve skill over the ages. I've already tested the effectiveness of such a plan with weaponsmithing, armorsmithing, and architecture, and have been able to turn the entire fort legendary in a matter of just a few years. It seems like a master/apprentice program will be more effective than locking two unskilled dwarves together and letting them figure things out, but both should be usable if I have unexpected deaths of my artisan workers rather than them passing of the predictable calamity of time.
With everything else taken care of, I think it's high time for a tour of the fortress. A fair amount has changed since I last gave a full overview of the fortress, which was an awful long time ago.
Starting from the top:
This is where I've made entering the fort easier for interlopers. No wagon support yet, but the indoors pathways into the fort mean that the aspiring merchant can get in from near the edge of the map without getting husked or murdered by any stray zombies that might be on the surface.
Few layers below that is the paths into the vault. The top one was carved first and was abandoned when the majority of the fort was lost to undead, but now there's just two redundant paths into the vault. The little connector thing was made to try to get some divine metal from a few corpses that were in the northern passageway.
Quite a few layers below the paths to the vault is where the fort begins. The leftmost cicle is where I first started toying with minecart trap ideas, and houses the second of my three mirco-reactors. It's a pretty quiet floor besides the food stockpile.
Next up is the main food layer of the fort. Pretty much everything here is related to the food industry. In the caverns themselves is some of the mechanics for the mist generator, and to the top left is the marksdwarf range, where I used to just throw wooden and bone bolts at that yak calf soot zombie for years. Haven't seen much need to keep training the marksdwarves intensively, so it has sat unused. Oh right, and the original stairway (still used) into the fort is up in that corner too. Just north of the wall is some of the road that has been installed over the majority of the caverns.
One more layer down is sort of a buffer layer. It's fairly active, holding the central atom smasher, the well, the hospital, the temple, the tombs, and the workings of the first micro reactor next to the mist generator, but is pretty quiet for a layer in the middle of the fort. Top left is just above the original minecart grinder, and has the machinery that powers it.
Just under is the beating heart of the fortress. The minecart grinder in full (with the temporary block-maker's circle just south), the tavern, the main barracks, the lever room, the mason's and mechanic's circle, one of the main gates into the cavern layer, and the first mini-grinder, the one that protects the southeast caverns. The empty cavern to the north was once a lake, and is the only part of the caverns that I both want to floor off and have yet to floor off. Overall, this layer has been pretty unchanged over the years, minus the extreme bloat of the lever room.
After that is the second core layer. This layer wasn't originally so large, but has slowly grown to become almost as important as the layer above it. It houses the forges, craftsdwarves workshops, misc crafting circle, archery range, library, gate to the southeast caverns, honeymoon suites, queen's quarters, and the second barracks. The central corridor was one lost during the undead invasion, so the big main corridor to the west was dug to give me access to some forges again. Then I decided it was a convenient place to stick a bunch of stuff, and so stuck a bunch of stuff there.
And then the last (and newest) main layer of the fortress. I moved the carpenter's circle down here, made an artifact hall for all the ones that I can't use, made a third barracks for civilians, stuck some more noble rooms for our liaison, and have made a guildhall area to the east. If I make guildhall honeymoon suites, that will be the area I make them.
Even further below that lays the adamantine mines. Much of it is from around the time of the demon incident (year 341, as opposed to the current year 360) and has sat unused since then. I haven't needed adamantine much, but eventually plan to invade hell through the northeast vein.
It's the best vein for an invasion due to its location atop a hill, which will make building down a bit easier. The hill has an un-ramped side, so it also makes the location more secure from interloping demons.
Backtracking up a little is the minecart filler. Handy little contraption, and I've repaired it since the reclaim of the fort, where it was damaged due to building destroyers.
And the most important part of any fortress! Its dwarves! I don't really have much need for all these laborers, so most of the time the entire fort just kinda chills, doing nothing but maintaining themselves. It's a good enough population cap though, if I went too much smaller an incident like the demon incident might have destabalized the fort beyond repair. Plus I'll need expendable workers for the future, so. I'll probably need a few positions to be re-filled eventually, though, and may also double up on many of my craftsdwarves.
DEMOGRAPHICS:Angelcrux stands at 39 population and 148 million wealth, and is 70 years old.
Births ( 8 ): Nish Pagechanneled, Ilral Specialceiling, Iton Paddletraded, Sigun Gloriesceiling, Sibrek Scupltceilings, Iton Delightgilt, Oddom Perfectlancer, Fath Coastbridges
Deaths ( 9 ): Lolor Packedpainted, Queen and Engraver; (Age)
Catten Vaultcities, Mason; (Demon incident)
Rovod Paintedringed, Weaver; (Demon incident)
Urvad Hatchetair, Mechanic; (Age)
Kubuk Pickcalls, Marksdwarf; (Demon incident)
Catten Axescours, Farmhand; (Demon incident)
Solon Romancerims, Furnace Operator; (Demon incident)
Kivish Boottips, Miner; (Demon incident)
Fath Coastbridges, Infant. (Demon incident)
Happiness: 3 happy, 36 ecstatic
QUESTIONS:And lastly, two questions.
1. Should I pursue supersoldiers? Rakust & Co are incredible warriors, but they're still just dwarves. I don't see myself needing supersoldiers, but it would be an interesting project: the creation of the best warriors possible.
2. Seeing as these updates are pretty long reads, should I make a thread for Angelcrux?
Author
Topic: What's going on in your fort? (Read 6198886 times)