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[gchristopher]

This was a very refreshing post, and deserves full answers.

First, some arguing:

Frankly, if you're trying to min-max dwarf fortress you're doing it wrong.

Absolutely NOT! I've had hundreds of hours of fun in dwarf fortress working on maximizing the destructive potential of water cannons, elaborate cat-based anti-stealth systems, semi-automated cave-spider cage trap labyrinth/silk farms, magma cart spirals, self-cleaning syndrome-stopping wash stations, minecart timed danger rooms, trade depot defenses, and minecart-based swimming training systems. And each of these topics has depths yet to be explored. For example, even though Larix has exhaustively deconstructed minecart mechanics, very few have used his insights to create even more clever designs.

I look forward to value-brainwashing libraries and somehow elaborately weaponizing tavern visitors.

The first mistake you made was reading the wiki. You could have the most FUN if you tried to learn the game by trial and error

I did the same thing, exhaustively reading the available resources. Some people just like to play that way. Discovery is fun, but trial and error to find something that's already exhaustively documented feels awfully pointless.

Almost everyone else is getting sieges. What's the population of the fortresses?

I'm skeptical still. Some people were reporting sieges even in 40.X, and until a lot more testing happens, it seems premature to say that sieges are really fixed back to some level of Fun analogous to 34.11 and earlier.

Yeah, reanimating biomes are the bee's knee corpses. If you want unforgiving DF, they're where you want to go.

This is true, but carefully test a particular biome for what interactions you get. Each biome can have either evil rain (mild syndromes), evil clouds (moderate syndrome or thralling, which is severe), and may or may not reanimate. It's random, and even with dfhack, hard to reliably find the hardest evil biomes.

The biggest problem with reanimating biomes is probably still unresolved: undead do not reliably path into fortresses, eventually killing the game due to a glut of undead at underground map borders, each one pointlessly consuming CPU trying and failing to path anywhere. Reanimating biomes reliably suffer FPS death in 40.X, and Toady hasn't announced any fixes for that in 42.3.

Towers, I've not had so much luck with, though they might be more dangerous in the new version.

Towers should reliably get you a few invasions of undead plus a necromancer or two, but are not renewable resources and once you kill the necromancers (which happens easily in trap hallways without even seeing them, since they're sneaky), they will stop producing any challenge.

Yeah.. I'm desperately hoping that a (soon!) dev cycle will be dedicated to !!FUN!!.. Poetry, dancing, scholarly deeds.. All amazing gameplay elements, but not very dwarfy, and not very good harbingers of flaming, toxin-soaked, jaw-gnashing FUN..

Yes! Don't hold your breath, though. Toady seems to be out to build a simulator of everything, and what we consider Fun is generally emergent behaviors of that simulator, not necessarily pre-planned gameplay goals



Okay, on to an actual response to the OP.

First, I strongly suspect that goblin and kobold visitors are still broken. Prior to 40.X, ambushes and sieges were randomly generated events that generated attackers from pre-set populations, or from thin air, if necessary. Now there is a complicated mechanic of your site being selected as a target, then the attackers actually reaching your site. It doesn't sound like there's anything marking your site as special so you get more interaction than any other dwarf sites. All-in-all, there's a lot of reasons to be skeptical that the new system will reliably generate the same level of challenge as the old, even with one bug identified and fixed in 42.1. It was a hard thing to validate even when we knew there was a bug! (40.24)


Yes, you've made a great observation. Dwarf Fortress has such an obtuse user interface and so many things to manage that starting it isn't feasible without a tutorial, but those tutorials are also complete enough that if you are diligent, a fortress will simply succeed as long as you don't hit bad luck on embark. However, that's still possible! I've had vultures and a giant scorpion effectively end a deser embark. In evil regions, you get an even better roll of the dice for a quick end, regardless of how well you plan, because a group of undead can conceivably path to you immediately after embark.


As for feeling "cheated," there's two ways to think about it: first, yes, the vaunted difficulty of Dwarf Fortress is reliably defeated by obsessively following a number of well-documented procedures. However, really, think about just HOW MANY things you had to do right just to keep them adequately fed and in booze, with housing and trap hallways and not cooking the seeds and just being able to navigate every menu to make that happen! You can still lose a fort from inattention to an unhappy dwarf triggering a tantrum spiral.


Recommendations:

I second the idea of moving to an evil biome. Make sure it's got some good interactions before sticking with it. (Kill something and see if the hair comes back to life, wait for a evil cloud and send someone into it to see if they thrall.) Then reload or reclaim and experiment with ways to clean your traps faster than the dead fill them up. If you don't want to include near-impossible corpse destruction, embark on the edge of an evil area so at least you have some space that doesn't reanimate. I like minecart impulse-ramp circles for undead-smashing cyclotrons that never jam.

Build a squirt gun, cave-in engine, obsidian trap, or other truly extreme method of self-defense. Then at least you've REALLY ended any possibility of an invasion reaching you.

[Skully]

Personally, I like really, *really* hard games. I am several different types of masochist. 
Fortress Defense is pretty dang good. For reasons I don't particularly understand all the FD races I've encountered in my most recent world are peaceful to my civ, but with some proper dwarfy torture I think I can fix that.
I rely super heavily on traps. I find having a huge hallway of ballistas and spiked balls and spike traps on repeaters to be incredibly satisfying.
My most recent project has been trying to figure out how to automate flinging weaponized sieger corpses back at their friends. Progress is slow but fun.
I also frequently make my own ludicrously hard enemy civs to fight (like "dragons" with steel armor and a nasty attitude that come in huge waves) just to kinda set my own doomsday alarm clock. Eventually they'll just come and vaporize me and I need to start over (or just use a drawbridge and wait for the spikes to *eventually* take them out).

question that I just randomly thought of: Since now there's an invader cap in the init, does this mean that there was originally no limit (which I doubt) or that we can now modify the limit that already existed? If the second one's true that could make some fun zerg rushes on your insane computer over there.

also just dig really deep. there's fun stuff down there. I've never actually gotten to the HFS, even though I've been obsessively playing this game for like 5 years now. My computer sucks and by the time I get down there my FPS is sad and I start over. Now I mostly stick to tiny forts close to the surface and rely on goblinite.

I want to make a super aggressive unicorn civ now. that would be hilarious.

[99Hedgehog]

You're being too careful.

[Urlance Woolsbane]

First, I strongly suspect that goblin and kobold visitors are still broken. Prior to 40.X, ambushes and sieges were randomly generated events that generated attackers from pre-set populations, or from thin air, if necessary. Now there is a complicated mechanic of your site being selected as a target, then the attackers actually reaching your site. It doesn't sound like there's anything marking your site as special so you get more interaction than any other dwarf sites. All-in-all, there's a lot of reasons to be skeptical that the new system will reliably generate the same level of challenge as the old, even with one bug identified and fixed in 42.1. It was a hard thing to validate even when we knew there was a bug! (40.24)

The problem with a game like Dwarf Fortress is that it can be hard to distinguish bugs from features. Why should the Goblins care about your little, out-of-the-way outpost, when there are far more opulent, closer fortresses to sack?

That said, judging both by the experiences of both myself, and of others, with the new version, I'd say that forts are definitely more on the greenskins' radar. That sieges, however small, seem to be a certainty for most players, as opposed to a rarity, says something. They might not be fully fixed, but they're at least getting there. It sounds to me like the OP has been rather unlucky in that regard. Perhaps a thriving civilization makes a more attractive target for the gobbos?

I should add that the 'bolds seem more frequent, as well.


On a different note, if there's one aspect of the game that is decidedly too easy, it's the Vanilla learning-rate of Dwarves. Someone should really perform !!SCIENCE!! to discern the most realistic tractability-settings. If I weren't sick all the time, I'd try to make a mod that including that, in addition to other !!FUN!! means of making the game more challenging.

[davsim]

Reanimating biomes aren't fun, they just add more tedious micronagement.

[Urlance Woolsbane]

Reanimating biomes aren't fun, they just add more tedious micromanagement.

That rather depends on one's tastes. One Urist's tedious micromanagement is another Urist's delightfully challenging need for attention to detail. Judging by the OP, I'd say that Stragus is likely to consider it the latter.

[Robsoie]

A little martial summary of my current 42.x fortress as it got more than 10 years of life regarding goblin activities.

Start :
- Embark right next a dark fortress (so no mountain breaking pathfinding, a bug that was in 40.x)
- Civilisation of the fort being at war from the start
- Dark fortress have more than 10.000 gobs
- Made sure there was no tower, undead are simply broken anyways and where's the fun with only turtling.

213 - the founding , nothing happened
214 - A gob was killed, probably a thief
215 - A Giant attacked and got killed as fast as he came
216 - An Ettin attacked and got the same fate as the Giant before
      - first goblin siege +/- 40 troops came and were annihilated
217 -  2nd goblin siege +/- 60 troops came and were destroyed
218 - 3rd goblin siege +/- 40 gobs that didn't actually stood a chance
219 - 4th goblin siege finally a worthy one of +/- 270 troops, though they didn't really had a chance by the time
220 - nothing happened
221 - A Bronze Colossus attacked and was annihilated in a few minutes
      - 5th goblin siege , +/- 60 troops , annihilated before they could hope to have a chance
222 - 6th goblin siege , +/- 30 troops, a joke
223 - nothing happened
224 - nothing happened out of the rise of the first dwarven superhero

Now for a comparison to 40.x , here was my best df2014 fortress ever in term of goblin activity
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=145797.msg6363302#msg6363302

Observations :
- from my test it's obvious 42.x sieges are vastly improved but still not the threat they were in 34.x and previous
- but they still take a long time to come (probably related to the default progress trigger that has the pop 80 as the siege trigger in the entity raw, i didn't experimented with lowering the siege pop trigger to 2 or 1 to see if it really make a difference or if it's broken) , not that much different than in 40.x actually
- 42.x goblins can now come finally in great number (my 270+ troops siege was great) and mounted, so much better than pathetic gob "army" in 40.x
- gobs still do not have trained troops in 42.x, so they will only field weak soldiers, and considering than by year 3 of -normal- (non exploit) training, you can have possibly a legendary by then, the gobs will stand no chance at all, regardless of their numbers as you will have more and more legendary with time while they will still field weak troops
- gob army are now gobs+mount+trolls+various other species traitors , while previously it was only pathetic few gobs.
- didn't observed a single goblin ambush i 42.x , and never saw a single one in 40.x , do they even exist ? they were great threat in 34.11 and previous, by coming early.

I think what's needed is  :

- either gobs will get the ability to train troop with time to get at least a few weaponmasters (like they did in 34.11 and previous), or they get the ability to have better protection (usually they only have either a metal mask or a helmet and sometime a shield but no real other armor thing) , because they have no chance against your highly skilled armored dwarves that have some good weapon.

- if gobs will never train troops, at least slow down dwarven -normal- skill gain during training, it's just simply not a challenge to see a sieges when you know your legendary dwarves will kill a dozen of gobs by turns.

- real goblin ambush returns, it was a great way to keep the player cautious in the early years

- semi megabeasts aren't a challenge unless you didn't planned for an early military training

-megabeasts by the time they come will only be utterly destroyed by several legendary

I think there should be a skill level cap on training, legendary + level of skill should only be gained by actual battle.

Now the alternative if you want a challenge would be to ignore gobs and embark near a tower for the undead invasinos, but undead are still so broken (in 34.11 and previous they weren't) that the only way to reasonnably deal with them is turtling or trap everywhere in corridors, not that fun to me.

[Naryar]

You haven't had a single siege, faffed around with magma or evil biomes, dug through an adamantine tube, had a forgotten beast into an undefended fortress or had a necromancer siege. Of course you had no fun.

Hell, you're at your second fortress.

And yes. Get Fortress Defense.

[Speakafreak22]

Next time you build a fort, use legends viewer (In the Lazy Newb Pack) and make sure goblins are doing well in your world. While building your fort, make as much wealth as you can. I find making trap components (Serrated disks are my favorite) brings in a ton of wealth. Get your population up and you should get some mega beasts and sieges. Also piss off the elves as much as possible: Cut down a ton of wood on the map, try trading them wooden crafts, and kill one or two of the people they bring with the caravan.

Sidenote: Is fortress defense updated yet?

[Naryar]

Sidenote: Is fortress defense updated yet?

Yes it is.

[Beeskee]

It can be FUN to run a "safe" fort for a while too. Those can go for decades, and demands from nobles and other dorfy interactions will generate FUN on their own.

That said, if you want more combat, go for an evil embark like everyone is recommending. Check the civ screen before embarking to make sure you have some hostile civs nearby. Edit: Or just have some Delicious Candy.

I started playing again, my new fort is a "safe" one, I embarked on elfy lands for the Unicorn meat (and entrails, heart, liver, sweetbread, etc - yum!) and sun berries, but I forgot to check the civ screen, I realized too late that I have no goblin civs nearby. At least, none that are hostile. No human civs or traders either. I have been getting human and goblin visitors along with dwarf visitors to my AWESOME TAVERN OF AWESOMENESS. It's awesome. Plenty of dancing room, and huge food and booze stockpiles, plus nice engravings all around really help matters. That generated some fun too, at least one minor brawl happened. So you can have fun in a safe fort, but the evil embarks in range of a hostile civ will give more combat overall.

[Stragus]

Thank you for all the replies!

What was your population?

After the monarch arrived, the population was at 200. This minimum population of 80 to be attacked appears way too easy... (I probably had my gate tower built and 40 dwarves in training at that point).

Generating world maps with savagry set to "high" can backfire, because possible opponents may get killed during worldgen in the more dangerous world. It's more reliable to use a standard worldgen, but then choose a dangerous location within that world.

Thank you, I'll keep that in mind. Still, I had specifically picked a world where the goblin civilization seemed to be thriving, while the dwarves were crippled and barely survived in a corner of the world, and I established myself right next to the goblins... so that may not have been the issue.

Tell me, did you encounter any Forgotten Beasts, any Titans? Did you find the Magma Sea? And speaking of Forgotten beasts, if you want Goblin sieges (which happen fairly frequently, in the current version) to be insanely difficult (assuming they bring mounts, which they will, usually), try the following:

Was a Wereloris a forgotten beast? Eh, probably not, but it's all I encountered, besides giant hamsters and the like. I may try the edit you suggest, although some mod others have suggested also seems very promising!

The first mistake you made was reading the wiki. You could have the most FUN if you tried to learn the game by trial and error.

I would like to agree, but it's practically impossible to play without the Wiki. The game itself doesn't provide any information, it took me forever to realize that magnetite was actually iron. Not to mention having to guess what "Process Plants", "Process Plants (vial)", "Process Plants (Barrel)" and "Process plant to bag" actually do (Farmer's Workshop)...

Download the Fortress Defence mod, sounds perfect for your tastes. Lotsa sieges.

That mod does look very interesting! Thank you very much. They even have a "Challenge" mode, and a "Bonus" on top if that wasn't hard enough. Oh, I very much like the sound of that!

Yeah.. I'm desperately hoping that a (soon!) dev cycle will be dedicated to !!FUN!!.. Poetry, dancing, scholarly deeds.. All amazing gameplay elements, but not very dwarfy, and not very good harbingers of flaming, toxin-soaked, jaw-gnashing FUN..

I couldn't agree more. These elements are fine for people who just want to build peacefully, but the game is currently lacking for those looking for a challenge. I want to experience the !!FUN!!, the game should crush my puny beginner's tactics so that I can strive to do better next time.

If there was a gameplay mode where the difficult just constantly increases with time and wealth, I certainly would be addicted to it! Just imagine the last stand of the dwarves in a world falling into darkness... and after a few years, your fortress is the only one (perhaps) still standing in the world.

First, I strongly suspect that goblin and kobold visitors are still broken. Prior to 40.X, ambushes and sieges were randomly generated events that generated attackers from pre-set populations, or from thin air, if necessary. Now there is a complicated mechanic of your site being selected as a target, then the attackers actually reaching your site.

Yes, I had read about that system before starting my second fortress. And that's also why I had established myself right next to the goblins (20 dark pits and 2 dark fortresses!), with any surviving dwarven civilization very far away. Frankly, the goblins shouldn't have had anything else to attack.

I'm okay with the concept of the player choosing the desired "difficulty level" with his starting location. It could then range from perpetual peace to an impossible challenge, and I *thought* I had picked an impossible challenge; that was certainly the intent. Sure, I could have picked a metal-less tundra/glacier in an evil biome on top... but I think something is broken with that world simulation. What were these goblins doing?

I second the idea of moving to an evil biome.

All right. I'll first try the Fortress Defense mod (on challenge + bonus), and see how that goes.

Personally, I like really, *really* hard games. I am several different types of masochist. 

Ah, you aren't the only one. I want to be utterly crushed, I want the game to slap me in the face and laugh at my grossly inadequate tactics! I want the intellectual stimulation of having to figure out what can be improved, what weaknesses can be corrected, what new crazy ideas have any hope of working (including the mentioned squirt gun, cave-in engine, obsidian trap).

The problem with a game like Dwarf Fortress is that it can be hard to distinguish bugs from features. Why should the Goblins care about your little, out-of-the-way outpost, when there are far more opulent, closer fortresses to sack?

I placed myself right next to the goblins (2 world map tiles away), and other remaining dwarven fortresses were half-the-world away. I think the game should accept such a player isn't expecting to survive the first year, and deliver what was expected.

219 - 4th goblin siege finally a worthy one of +/- 270 troops, though they didn't really had a chance by the time

Nice! That does sound quite fun, so goblins can mount a serious challenge after all. Considering that you only had 3 losses, I'm hoping it's due to your most impressive tactics rather than goblins just being ridiculously weak.

Thank you all, I'm now hopeful this Fortress Defense Mod will deliver a real challenge!

[mirrizin]

There are always conducts, or at least that's what they were called in NetHack...

So, yes, if you read the wiki and follow the well-trod paths, it's not too hard if you pay attention to what you're doing. 

If standard juggling is too easy for you (and that's understandable) then start dropping the ball on purpose,*

I find that I can wipe out any siege with ease by employing a trap corridor. So, no traps. Not sure if it's true in the current version, but I noticed in previous ones that archers are incredibly powerful. Suppose your dorfs have a religious tradition that the only honest way to kill a gob is by weapon. No archery towers. If that's too easy, then move on and no drawbridges. No burrows to protect your civilians. No tunneling underground.

These are all still doable, but I think they add another level of challenge and if you get crazy enough you can find a way to make a pretty exciting fort, if it survives.

Of course, proper challenge is a balance, and I think at a certain point you make the game unwinnable, but maybe there are ways you could handicap yourself that would make it reasonably exciting?

*Thanks, W.C. Fields

[Stragus]

There are always conducts, or at least that's what they were called in NetHack...

True, but Nethack is already hard enough without trying to follow any conduct! I have ascended once at Nethack on alt.org, I'll forever consider that a lifetime achievement...

Are archery towers really too effective? I have read somewhere that walls can be climbed... Of course, if walls/floors can't be destroyed, then it's possible to build a bunker without any entrance whatsoever, which would be an issue.

I still haven't seen much battle, but in a well-balanced game, I would expect that each kind of defense has its weaknesses:
- Trap corridors should only be good against small targets (a dragon wouldn't care if you drop a little rock on it)
- Walls should be vulnerable to siege engines and ethereal creatures passing right through them (very appropriate for some undeads!)
- Soft soils should be vulnerable to digging goblins and whatever else
- Archery towers should be vulnerable to siege engines and ineffective against opponents wielding tower shields
- Drawbridges could be vulnerable to infiltrators (ethereal, flying, whatever) pulling the lever at the most unfortunate time
And so on...

In my humble opinion, *that* stuff should be the focus for development instead of libraries, taverns and temples.

On a slightly unrelated topic, let's assume one would like to build an outdoor fortress for an extra challenge. I found the information lacking regarding outdoor crops... It seems that if you grow asparagus for example, cooking it produces no seeds. Is forcing dwarves to eat raw asparagus the only way to produce new seeds? Is there any way to obtain seeds from the raw vegetables, while still providing cooked meals to one's dwarves?

[mirrizin]

There are always conducts, or at least that's what they were called in NetHack...

True, but Nethack is already hard enough without trying to follow any conduct! I have ascended once at Nethack on alt.org, I'll forever consider that a lifetime achievement...

Are archery towers really too effective? I have read somewhere that walls can be climbed... Of course, if walls/floors can't be destroyed, then it's possible to build a bunker without any entrance whatsoever, which would be an issue.

I still haven't seen much battle, but in a well-balanced game, I would expect that each kind of defense has its weaknesses:
- Trap corridors should only be good against small targets (a dragon wouldn't care if you drop a little rock on it)
- Walls should be vulnerable to siege engines and ethereal creatures passing right through them (very appropriate for some undeads!)
- Soft soils should be vulnerable to digging goblins and whatever else
- Archery towers should be vulnerable to siege engines and ineffective against opponents wielding tower shields
- Drawbridges could be vulnerable to infiltrators (ethereal, flying, whatever) pulling the lever at the most unfortunate time
And so on...

In my humble opinion, *that* stuff should be the focus for development instead of libraries, taverns and temples.

On a slightly unrelated topic, let's assume one would like to build an outdoor fortress for an extra challenge. I found the information lacking regarding outdoor crops... It seems that if you grow asparagus for example, cooking it produces no seeds. Is forcing dwarves to eat raw asparagus the only way to produce new seeds? Is there any way to obtain seeds from the raw vegetables, while still providing cooked meals to one's dwarves?

I've ascended a half dozen or so times, once you figure out one it's a little easier. My wife has ascended vegans.

I haven't played the current one much, but I noticed in the past that archers were significant game changer. I'm thinking of a famous early fort (beautiful, massive constructions are one thing I admire in this game) and he'd boasted of never using traps or more than a couple squads of archers. I think he also claimed he'd intentionally made sure there was no way to hermetically seal the fort, which I think changes the game a lot. Make lockdown impossible and suddenly it gets a lot more interesting.

Again, I haven't looked *hard* at surface crops in the current game (which have exploded compared to previous versions) but in previous versions it was pretty much the same as underground crops, you just had a different selection to choose from, which you had to either forage or pick up from traders. Strawberries, fisher berries, rat weed, some others... If you could protect the farm, it was pretty secure. Surface forts have definitely been done as a challenge piece, though having been done, you could probably work it out in advance by copying someone else, though with the advent of climbing...

The idea of goblins who could dig is pretty scary, or the ability to destroy constructions. Cage traps were also discussed as a good target for nerfing (and I recall that they have been more recently.) It has struck me also that with a sufficient trap corridor, goblin sieges are a cakewalk. More effective siege engines, that'd be nice on both ends.

I think DF is a lot of what you choose to make of it. If you think drawbridges make the game too easy, then choose never to build one.