Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Stragus]

I played some Rimworld and the contrast in difficulty is astonishing. Rimworld has challenge-driven AI that throws events at you every time things start running smoothly and starvation is a major risk. There is really no comparison to Dwarf Fortress in terms of difficulty, and currently Rimworld better exemplifies "Losing is Fun". You can do your absolute best to build an unassailable settlement, but it will break down without active risk/reward decision making. I'll play Rimworld into the wee hours of the night like I once played Dwarf Fortress, there is no "I'll just fix this crisis" gameplay loop.

Dwarf Fortress needs to take a cue from other sandbox management games in the genre and introduce challenge-driven events. If fortress stress is consistently falling, thieves, invaders, diseases and wild animals need to be given a kick towards your fortress. So far my biggest fortress-killer is boredom, and I farm outdoors, shun traps, leave the drawbridge down and abscond from danger rooms. I should be facing deadly threats, instead I'm yawning to death.

That Rimworld game does look very interesting! Thanks for mentioning it.

I especially like the clear emphasis on a "Storytelling AI" as DM (Dungeon Master). It inevitably produces more interesting stories, a richer gaming experience centred on the player, than a raw simulation which can quickly become unbalanced.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Dwarf Fortress doesn't need to do anything. We make our own stories, we aren't given them by the computer. However, if you have a specific suggestion, post it IN THE CORRECT FORUM. Not here or in this board.

[FrisianDude]

Woah, shaz that sounds as if you've never had a well-armoured web-throwing strongly bitey fb

[khearn]

The big difference between DF and a challenge-driven AI or DM is that if the AI decides it needs to send a siege of 500 goblins to challenge you, it just dips into the bit bucket and pulls out enough 0s and 1s to create 500 goblins, and throws them at you. It's a black box with your fort (or whatever you are running) on the inside, and the black on the outside. The AI can just create anything it wants to keep you challenged without having to worry about how that affects the rest of the world, since there isn't a "rest of the world".

DF, on the other hand, models the entire world. It tracks how many goblins are in that dark tower that's been attacking you. After sending 300 goblins at you last year, the tower might only have 400 goblins left, so it's simply can't send 500 this year.

This may not be the game that you want, but it's the game that Toady is building. He's building a world simulator, not a tower defense game. Now, hopefully he'll realize that the game isn't as interesting (or as ‼FUN‼) as it used to be and do something to give the sieges a little more umph. He knows that he makes his living on player donations, and if the players all get bored and quit donating, he might have to get a regular job. But he also has his vision of what he wants to make, and I don't think he'll give that up to satisfy people who want something different. I respect him a lot for what he's doing, and I hope he's able to figure out a way to both create what he wants and create something that users want. It's like trying to walk a 1 tile wide path over a 20 z-level pit, with spiked wooden balls swinging at you from time to time, it's tough to keep everything balanced.

Maybe just doing something to increase goblin population would help things. That could be done by making them breed faster, making them mature faster, or making them train faster. I suspect that any of those could be modded in as things currently stand.

He has plans at some point in the future to do a major overhaul of armies and sieges, but I'm not sure how high that is on his list, and could take years.

[PatrikLundell]

I seriously doubt lack of goblins is a problem, or that they need to breed faster. My pocket worlds tend to have 40000 goblins and a few hundred of each of the other races in the few lucky cases where all races survive world gen.
As usual, I don't mind exported parameters you can tweak, though.
Higher difficulty is probably better generated by quality rather than quantity, i.e. higher skilled enemies and better equipped enemies (armor can actually help survival a fair bit).
It's a bit difficult to provide a reasonable rationale for why the enemy should level scale by sending under equipped recruits in small numbers early on and then gradually increase the skill/equipment/quantity, though (and most games don't try). One possibility is that goblin ethos should require them to prove themselves in non cakewalk battles, and a similar one might be to have some kind of honor stating that their forces should be slightly inferior to that of the enemy for the increased glory reaped from victories. A third one might be that they want to fatten their victims before slaughter to get more of the kinds of stuff they can't (or won't) produce themselves.
On the other hand, one would expect goblins to be at least as cheaty and back stabbing as real world humans [Well, you know, it turned out to be only 20 unarmed farmers, but I can ensure you the reports said there were 2000 axe lords in gleaming blue armor riding dragons. The scouts providing the faulty intel have been executed, of course, but their incompetence shouldn't tarning my well deserved honor of a bona fide victory]...
One would also expect the leaders who have a broader interpretation of that honor to dominate the upper levels of such a society.

[Robsoie]

DF, on the other hand, models the entire world. It tracks how many goblins are in that dark tower that's been attacking you. After sending 300 goblins at you last year, the tower might only have 400 goblins left, so it's simply can't send 500 this year.

That's the theory, but it looks like in practice it does not work like that with gob sites, it looks like the adventure mode "respawn bug" from 40.x related to gob sites, is existing in 42.x fortress mode.

After more than 20 years (i just run DF in the background when browsing the net as nothing happens most of the years that need your attention anyways) of my dwarves destroying sieges after sieges in 42.x, and the gobs having lost between 2000 and 2500 gobs/trolls/beak dogs roughly in total, after retiring my fort temporarly, it appears that the dark fortress next to me has now more gobs/trolls/beak dogs they ever had before my dwarves started to kill gobs by hundreds yearly.

Basically, gobs never lack the numbers to send a siege to you.
What they lack is skilled troopers, as in all those years of my fort getting sieged, i never saw any weaponmaster, meaning that as the dwarves get many legendary with time, the gob opposition is then becoming more hopeless every years.

Fortunately, in one of his replies Toady mentionned that he had noted this, so hopefully we'll see some improvement in the future in the composition of the gobs armies.

I hope there will be some kind of internal faction stuff going too in the future, as now that gobs/bandits/etc.. can join dwarves fortresses, it would be very interesting to see the possibility of some kind of 5th column going on in your fortresses undermining your fortress defenses and dwarves willingness to fight for you and being convinced to turn their weapon back against your loyalists when the situation get bloody.

[Urist McVoyager]

A few points that came to me as I read this thread:

1. Battle in this game, currently, seems less suited to an actual military thing and more towards gladiating. Which is pretty damn sweet if you turn your attention less toward Defenses and more toward an Arena to fight in.

2. Has anyone played with the goblins' attribute caps and learning rates? I know Dwarves have a hefty boost (which can be altered in the Raws if you're so inclined) so maybe giving goblins a boost could improve sieges.

3. From what I remember of Toady's funding, the majority of it actually comes from whales (casino speak for big spenders.) rather than the masses of low-paying players. So even if MOST of the player base bails, if enough of those whales are satisfied with Toady's work, he'll never have to heed the fans' suggestions. The low spenders are icing, not cake.

I was getting bored of the game. Right up until that Arena realization. I get an information overload off of it and just can't keep up with all the micromanaging of getting a good team set up and finding a place for everybody. So I'm just not going to care about that anymore. I'm going to try embarking with a couple good squads and starting gear for them and set the entrance up with an arena.

[fomori]

Personally, I went back to 0.34 for a while during DF2014. I'm having fun with the most recent patch, though, its quickly fixing itself

[twwolfe]

You can do what I've done and go back to 40d on a lark. I've discovered all i knew about that version i have completely forgotten, thereby guaranteeing me lots of !!FUN!!

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

1. Battle in this game, currently, seems less suited to an actual military thing and more towards gladiating. Which is pretty damn sweet if you turn your attention less toward Defenses and more toward an Arena to fight in.

Quite true. Sieges aren't meant to be challenging in terms of "the entire army storms into your dining hall", it's supposed to be "you starve because the farms are outside." Until farming is improved, sieges will be easy. Maybe not even then. But fighting is indeed more fun than !!FUN!!.

2. Has anyone played with the goblins' attribute caps and learning rates? I know Dwarves have a hefty boost (which can be altered in the Raws if you're so inclined) so maybe giving goblins a boost could improve sieges.

I do not believe learning rates affect goblins in worldgen, as they do not really "train". Natural skills could help, but they're bugged in the current version IIRC.

3. From what I remember of Toady's funding, the majority of it actually comes from whales (casino speak for big spenders.) rather than the masses of low-paying players. So even if MOST of the player base bails, if enough of those whales are satisfied with Toady's work, he'll never have to heed the fans' suggestions. The low spenders are icing, not cake.

Sounds like a job for Science! Perhaps ask Toady the average donation and standard deviation? (He's a mathematician, it'll be easy as long as he kept adequate records for the last month or so.)

I was getting bored of the game. Right up until that Arena realization. I get an information overload off of it and just can't keep up with all the micromanaging of getting a good team set up and finding a place for everybody. So I'm just not going to care about that anymore. I'm going to try embarking with a couple good squads and starting gear for them and set the entrance up with an arena.

Finally, someone in here who got bored and didn't immediately start complaining to us about how awful the game is! Thumbs up to you, good sir, for finding what is fun or !!FUN!! for you.

[Henry47]

It's a bit difficult to provide a reasonable rationale for why the enemy should level scale by sending under equipped recruits in small numbers early on and then gradually increase the skill/equipment/quantity, though (and most games don't try)

I imagine goblins send in weaker forces at first for the same reasons you don't sent the military to deal with an unarmed burglar.
 1-Its excessive overkill, 2-Its a waste of the larger, stronger forces valuable time. 

Of course, goblins don't care about overkill,but the waste of time and resources would still definitely be a concern. Large army's are expensive to move and run, so why waste them attacking small settlements in the middle of nowhere when there are far larger, more juicy targets to loot and pillage?

[FrisianDude]

tbf, trying to starve a population which can live off of underground crop almost indefinitely is a fool's errand

[PatrikLundell]

It's a bit difficult to provide a reasonable rationale for why the enemy should level scale by sending under equipped recruits in small numbers early on and then gradually increase the skill/equipment/quantity, though (and most games don't try)

I imagine goblins send in weaker forces at first for the same reasons you don't sent the military to deal with an unarmed burglar.
 1-Its excessive overkill, 2-Its a waste of the larger, stronger forces valuable time. 

Of course, goblins don't care about overkill,but the waste of time and resources would still definitely be a concern. Large army's are expensive to move and run, so why waste them attacking small settlements in the middle of nowhere when there are far larger, more juicy targets to loot and pillage?

Sending a single policeman to deal with  half a dozen robbers is plain stupid, as is the goblins' consistent sending of inferior forces that fail to achieve their objective, and failure to learn that after their first failed siege should award them with the [EXTREMELY_SLOW_LEARNER] tag. They can sort of be excused for the initial failure given the ease with which they wipe out dorfs during world gen, though.
It's true that sending the whole army is expensive, but it's even costlier to lose part of the army without reaching your objectives. You also tend to get bigger losses if you're only slightly stronger than the enemy than if you're considerably stronger.
Unless you're under threat from a different direction, NOT sending the whole army can be wasteful, since you're paying for it without it doing anything (they certainly don't seem to use the time to train), and battle experience is very hard to gain while training.

[cochramd]

I just want to pop back into this thread to say that I've just had 4 forgotten beasts and a siege all in one year. The fourth one isn't dead yet, and he's a firebreather. Wish me luck!

[Henry47]

Sending a single policeman to deal with  half a dozen robbers is plain stupid, as is the goblins' consistent sending of inferior forces that fail to achieve their objective, and failure to learn that after their first failed siege should award them with the [EXTREMELY_SLOW_LEARNER] tag. They can sort of be excused for the initial failure given the ease with which they wipe out dorfs during world gen, though.
It's true that sending the whole army is expensive, but it's even costlier to lose part of the army without reaching your objectives. You also tend to get bigger losses if you're only slightly stronger than the enemy than if you're considerably stronger.
Unless you're under threat from a different direction, NOT sending the whole army can be wasteful, since you're paying for it without it doing anything (they certainly don't seem to use the time to train), and battle experience is very hard to gain while training.

Good Point, my line of argument(and analogy) would indeed make far more sense if the goblins starting attacking your settlement when it was still very small, and it would therefore have minimal defences, rather than only attacking when you have 80 dwarves and would therefore generally have fairly good defences already set up.