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[vanatteveldt]

I finally decided to go back to DF, my last playing was well over a year ago, I think half a year before DF2014 came out.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had somehow remembered all the little details like building a fort, getting farming running, using the alt+W workshop automation etc. I love the new trees!

I've now played 3 years in game or so, breached the first cavern, and have a semi-functioning iron military.

So I have two observations that I wonder whether they are general or I just have a bad embark / did something wrong:

1) FPS seems to be worse than in DF2012, even though I have a more modern computer. Is that true? Sometimes the game just drops down to what feels like 20FPS for no apparant reason (I have only 80 dwarves atm)

2) There seems to be decidedly less action: no snatchers, no sieges, no ambushes. I've killed some wildlife and cavern creatures for my military to have something to do, but it's getting a bit boring. Should I just wait longer / create more gold status?

Thanks for any replies!

[QuakeIV]

Yeah, I recommend worlds on the small side.  World gen now continues during fortress mode, meaning you can in theory actually impact the state of the world somewhat.  (goods crafted by your fortress showing up elsewhere in adv mode, etc)  Outpost liasons will give you vague reports about how things are going for your civ (they have been known to leave out fairly major events).  It also means that if you have a huge world the game is much slower than 2012.

[Boss Fist]

Regarding less action, this has the potential to significantly limit the fun if you don't get a good world or a decent embark site.
Compared to 40d, when kobolds and goblins pretty much sprang up everywhere like vermin, they now need to actually maintain a functioning civ if I understand correctly, so you need to embark right next to a successful goblin empire to get anything. You can literally go years with no trouble whatsoever while your trap minefield and special magma pit go completely unused.

I have had good results with increasing the number of civs, and whenever a diplomat tells me a goblin horde rolled over a fortress I rejoice because the world might actually get more interesting. Current fort is now giving me goblin sieges, but my soldiers all became heroes before that happened.

[Psieye]

Compared to 40d, when kobolds and goblins pretty much sprang up everywhere like vermin, they now need to actually maintain a functioning civ if I understand correctly, so you need to embark right next to a successful goblin empire to get anything.

To elaborate, before DF2014 siege participants were magically conjured into existence. Now they actually have to be born (in worldgen) then travel to your fort from wherever their origin is. The goblin leaders may decide that even though your fort is richer and better known, some random settlement closer is a better siege target this time round.

[Vattic]

There is also an army pathing bug Toady says he's squashed for next version. No idea how much impact the fix will have. You'll still need to embark on the edge of the dwarven homelands facing your enemy.

I hear you can get some fps back on longer forts by retiring and unretiring, but expect some strangeness and bugs. Still strange that whatever is causing this can be reset like this.

[Robsoie]

For the slower gameplay, i believe there are probably some problems with the pathfinding that has to deal with the new trees, the walls , the holes etc... as everything can climb in df2014 , though most of the time they either don't (never saw a single goblin climbing my simple 1 tile high wooden walls) or fail at doing it correctly (i saw numerous cases in fort with my dwarves climbing up on a wall or on a tree for reason of their own and being unable to climb down by themselves, getting stuck up there until they die from thirst unless you teleport down with dfhack).

Hopefully next version will bring back the lost fun and fix some of the bugs that get in the way of it..

[pisskop]

Yup.

But its definitely got better.  And it'll eventually get even better.

[vjmdhzgr]

It seems like there's a new thread about how there's less goblin attacks every week.

[pisskop]

Now that Ive fixed my bugs, I've had 3 sieges from them, plus 2 FBs and 2 ambushes in this latest fort.  And 2 werebeasts.

They arent as threatening as 34.11, but Im not terribly bored with it.

tbf, the old method was more fun but less 'world-friendly'.  I want a 'DF Blitz mode' where you can trigger crazy sieges, but this method can work, with work.

So Im torn between awesome funtimes for no reason and a more real world.  Worldgen is like a game in itself.


Pedit:  what would be really fun is if we can finally get soveign lands and have to deal with geopolitically defined kingdoms and such.

[Finn]

Now that Ive fixed my bugs, I've had 3 sieges from them, plus 2 FBs and 2 ambushes in this latest fort.  And 2 werebeasts.

Can you elaborate on "fixed my bugs"?  What did you do?

[pisskop]

Now that Ive fixed my bugs, I've had 3 sieges from them, plus 2 FBs and 2 ambushes in this latest fort.  And 2 werebeasts.

Can you elaborate on "fixed my bugs"?  What did you do?

My own personal raw bugs.  Also, I did add a second hostile babynapping civ.

[Robsoie]

It seems like there's a new thread about how there's less goblin attacks every week.

It tells how much this impact people own fun while playing df2014 fort mode.

[IRON_GAUNTLET]

Toady should add an option for magical sieges, or at least make it modifiable in the ini. I don't know what kind of stage we have reached that realism makes things easier, but we are in it, and we want 500 goblins in full steel armor filling the magma pits with their bodies and using them to climb over our walls to engage us in a fierce and glorious battle.

[BoogieMan]

About less action..

I've not tested it yet, but I think there is a command in DFHack:

force siege EVIL

So if you have the population/weath requirements, and an evil goblin civilization exists in that world, that will force an attack. Not as good as being surprised.. But I suppose you can decide what chance a siege will happen yourself and roll a die or flip a coin each season.

I've had good luck with Undead Sieges (maybe because they don't wander the map and conquest?) but Undead are brokenly overpowered at the moment so it's not a substitute.


A smaller world does seem to help, but it doesn't matter what kind of PC you have, at times the game can get slow. I recently upgraded to a 4Ghz Core i7 that turbos up to like 4.5Ghz, 16GB of the fastest RAM with the lowest latency I could find and while it did make a nice improvement it didn't make as much difference as it does for other games. I had a savegame that was 22FPS on my older PC (huge undead siege) while my new system doubled to 44fps. Much better but still a bit slow, and that was a fairly young fort. World Generation, however, is WAY faster. Many times faster.

 Best thing I can suggest is read about how to design your fortress to maximize performance, that seems to help more than anything really.

[Slogo]

Any alternative to magic sieges would just be uh better version of what we have now.

One of the problems is it seems like no matter how close you embark to Goblins they still consider a ton of potential sites for where to attack regardless of distance. So they end up sieging a bunch of random forts in priority over yours. It also seems like the goblin civ, while warlike, is still a little tame by comparison.

Instead it'd be nice if goblins (or civs in general) would consider an area within their influence (basically anywhere that's far closer to them than other civs) and when looking to send siege parties they would focus exclusively on defending their lands first. Then if you wanted goblin sieges constantly you could just embark in goblin territory and they'd be attracted to your fortress as a very high priority over raiding NPC fortresses.

Or just in general a stronger weight towards fortress proximity when considering sieges. Right now encroaching on enemy territory just doesn't really elicit much of a response at all nor a priority over other potential targets and that's part of the problem.

Encroachment should also shift populations to be more warlike. Goblins have the pop numbers to siege for years and years, but if they lack numbers its because they goblins are all millers and what not. Instead when you encroach on their land they should convert the population to soldiers that can keep raiding you year after year.

It'd also be nice if you could somehow force world simulation to only occur at seasonal changes for performance reasons. Just have the game queue up any notable migrants/visitors/sieges at the start of the season.