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[Torrenal]

Some of my personal tips for more fun forts:

Gen worlds with more megabeasts and less metals.  "We gotz us the latest in high tech arms.  Steel?  Ne're 'eard of it.  We use this stuff here: Bronze!"
Gen worlds for shorter periods of time.  You may gen worlds with more megabeasts, but its no fun if they die out before you start a fort.  And there ain't nothing near as fun as trying to use bone and wood bolts kill a web spewing horse analog made of stone.  (Pro tip: Once a megabeast has webbed your militia, it will dispatch each member with one well placed kick to the head.)

Turn up savagery.  I'm having to settle brawls here with rhinos and badgers (Honestly, that last badger didn't impress.  Killed with a single punch from the first dwarf to stumble into it).

//Torrenal

[Treefingers]

You haven't lost in SimCity (or the current gold standard, Cities: Skylines) if you stop at an idyllic, rural hamlet and just let that sit. You also haven't lost if you attach a handful of pieces from a whole bucket of Lego, say "I made a chair!" and walk away. You also can't lose when bowling alone.

But not-losing and winning aren't the same thing.

Play DF to win. Intentionally maximize the value of mood projects. Figure out how to defeat sieges quickly and brutally so you don't miss caravans. Maximize the personal wealth of even your poorest dwarves. Sapphire encrust everything. Train, tame, and breed only the most exotic war animals. Don't just kill, but capture megabeasts and turn them on your enemies. Develop legendary tradesdwarves to the point that all non-masterworks are garbage to you. Design rooms carefully, with great attention to layout and ceiling heights, wall textures, and materials. Make creative use of natural embark features (tall cliffs, split-level aquifers, freeze-thaw cycles).

These aren't even megaprojects. It's about playing the game really well. When your goals are high, you don't need halls piled with corpses to lose. And it's in striving for perfection that I most often have "fun".

[Salkryn]

You haven't lost in SimCity (or the current gold standard, Cities: Skylines) if you stop at an idyllic, rural hamlet and just let that sit. You also haven't lost if you attach a handful of pieces from a whole bucket of Lego, say "I made a chair!" and walk away. You also can't lose when bowling alone.

But not-losing and winning aren't the same thing.

Play DF to win. Intentionally maximize the value of mood projects. Figure out how to defeat sieges quickly and brutally so you don't miss caravans. Maximize the personal wealth of even your poorest dwarves. Sapphire encrust everything. Train, tame, and breed only the most exotic war animals. Don't just kill, but capture megabeasts and turn them on your enemies. Develop legendary tradesdwarves to the point that all non-masterworks are garbage to you. Design rooms carefully, with great attention to layout and ceiling heights, wall textures, and materials. Make creative use of natural embark features (tall cliffs, split-level aquifers, freeze-thaw cycles).

These aren't even megaprojects. It's about playing the game really well. When your goals are high, you don't need halls piled with corpses to lose. And it's in striving for perfection that I most often have "fun".

Which is fine, if you're the type who loves to do that sort of thing, but I think the problem is that a lot of us aren't that sort of people. We all build and refine our forts to the degree we're comfortable with, but some of us want to get to the Silly !!Dwarf!! Antics (TM) that Dwarf Fortress is famous for. I personally came to the DF community after reading Boatmurdered and laughing my head off, and I've always wanted to experience some of that level of insanity. Having a fort start out innocuously enough, but then having the place slowly slide down into madness, magma, and elephants is a thing that a lot of us WANT to happen at some point. Losing is Fun, and I think sometimes the purpose is just to find a way to lose in the most interesting/amusing way possible while still having at least attempted to establish a mighty fortress.

[Zuglarkun]

Here's my perspective, for whatever it is worth. I only started playing during 34.11 and for me sieges are everyday affairs, forgotten beasts and megabeasts can be handled, but I'm still working towards clowns and such. I don't consider myself a DF veteran so I can't speak for anybody. But for me, there is enough depth in the vanilla game that I haven't yet resorted to using mods. Mind you, a vanilla game =/= a vanilla world embark. For me, I've gotten good enough that the vanilla gameworld embark doesn't really offer that much of a challenge, but custom world gens are another kind of beast altogether and offer another kind of challenge. I have yet to complete my plan of touring all the different kind of biomes and making a ☼memorable legendary☼ fort in each of them, and by ☼legendary☼, I mean Flarechannel levels of epicness.

I agree with Treeflingers here. 'Winning the game' depends on your definition of winning. Its the difference between the shortsightedness of stopping at a ledge of the difficulty curve and calling it a plateau, or climbing on in search of more challenges. That's the appeal and challenge to a diamond/ spade like I consider myself as. This is part of the reason why I got into community games, because the challenge isn't to survive on your own skill and cunning but to let go of control for a few years and come back to a fort that is ravaged by the whims of a player base that isn't necessarily as skilled as you are in certain aspects of gameplay and still finds the game tough and challenging. Then from there you have to try to rebuild a stable foundation from their messes within a game year, or try not to mess things up too much for the next in line. It makes me feel like I'm a newbie all over again.

Edited for clarity

[Stragus]

You haven't lost in SimCity (or the current gold standard, Cities: Skylines) if you stop at an idyllic, rural hamlet and just let that sit. You also haven't lost if you attach a handful of pieces from a whole bucket of Lego, say "I made a chair!" and walk away.

I have reached 614k pop in the original Sim City. And this isn't a chair, but here's a Lego table of about 8000 parts:
http://www.bricksync.net/legotable004.jpg

I don't mind self-defined goals, they can be fun. My main issue is that all DF documentation promises a hard game, and it clearly isn't.

And I would enjoy the game far more if there could be military-oriented challenges, instead of just being a minor distraction.

[mirrizin]

I think I'm basically in the same boat as Salkryn to the point of also having stared at around 34 and seeing something very ideal about the FlareChannels approach. And also in the not having the timespace to actually play with that degree of ambition.

Far as the trade depot goes, in a crisis, I could weaponize i by sealing both drawbridges and then flooding the entire chamber. Of course, after two small sieges, I'm not sure that'll be necessary as the army has, so far, managed to wipe out every invading force with no casualties.

I like that DF really does give every player a chance to branch out and figure out what they wish. I also think the military stuff could be tighter. I was also surprised, when I raised my drawbridge, to see that the goblins still milled around stupidly instead of climbing the wall. I guess their hands are still too full of weapons (don't you need a free hand to climb?)

Meanwhile, I've been too busy building the fort, and as a result I've got two (2!) forgotten beasts waiting for me in cavern 1 (and counting? ah ha ha). One of them spits webs. That could be Fun, when I finally get around to it. But maybe I'll build a library first.

[cochramd]

A way to challenge yourself if the default game does not do that is modding on how to increase the odd of losing by making the game harder in opposition of increasing the odd of losing by giving your fort self-handicaps (make no wall, no trap, don't train military too much, embark near those overpowered undead tower,  evil terrifying surrounding embark etc..)

Code wise, i think the "losing is fun" will really happen once Toady will get to his military dev plan
www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html
( scroll down to Improved Sieges )
And as invaders can be turned off, everyone still win, the guys that want martial challenge and the guys that want to oversee their fortress without the war side being a threat or denaturing their map with digging.

Anyways, some modding ideas you can easily implement

- make every animals and every non-dwarves creatures willing and wanting to murder your dwarves in a "Boatmurdered" atmosphere .
This can be done by adding
[CRAZED]
[NOFEAR]
to every creature definitions in the raws , just don't add [CRAZED] to your dwarves or you'll not be able to play a fortress (game would end immediately after embark), take time, but when you're going to see a bunch of previously harmless and pacifist groundhogs suddenly rushing toward your fortress with murder intent, it's hilariously worth it.
You're not going to look at those things moving around your map with the same eyes.

- Add many variants/clones of the goblin entity from the entity_default.txt , this would help to make more enemies to your civilisation, making your fortress being sieged much more, in order to not give you much room to breath and put then some pressure on you.

- Give your enemies the ability to siege you (much) earlier by editing the entity_default.txt for the dwarven entry, change
So according to this, to increase the challenge against gob siege, you may want to change
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_POP_SIEGE:3]
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_PROD_SIEGE:0]
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_TRADE_SIEGE:0]
into
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_POP_SIEGE:1]
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_PROD_SIEGE:1]
       [PROGRESS_TRIGGER_TRADE_SIEGE:1]

So gobs may be willing to siege when
- you reach 20 pop
- or you reach 5000¤ of created wealth
- or you reach 500¤ of exported wealth

instead of being willing to siege only when you reach 80pop (+/- somewhere near year 3 of your fortress)

There are certainly much more modding possibility to improve the difficulty for your own fortress fun.
That or go look for mods like the fortress defense one.

Now there's the problem of walls, despite climbing is a feature, siegers will not climb the majority of time, so turtling in will still defeat every siege attempt, nothing much can be done there without handicaping yourself with holes in wall and etc ...

My problem is that I've got an excellent and extensive trapline, but the bloody gobbos turn around and leave after I've killed only half of them. How do I fix that?

[omega_dwarf]

I think this is a good conversation, all around, good points on all sides. I do find myself getting bored sometimes, personally, and without the time to make a true stab at a megaproject anymore, although I have in the past. Certainly I still pursue perfection. But the bottom line is that Toady is creating more of a simulation than a game; he got rid of the regular sieges from 0.34, for instance, because it seemed too "gamey" to him, even though a lot of people liked it just fine. He's not making a game that he necessarily thinks will appeal to everyone; he's making what he wants to make, and he's doing it at his pace, in the order that he wants to. And once he finishes the darn thing, this will be a silmaril of games.

My word of advice is patience. Every release brings new things to learn. This game will be in active development for a decade or more. Coming up, the artifact release and especially the start scenarios release sound like promising sources of fun, true fun, and the latter could remove some of the self-imposed roleplaying people often do to keep themselves happy, and make it canon.

[MDFification]

Speaking for myself, I think this thread fundamentally misunderstands what DF is about.

DF was never intended to be a grueling, Dark Souls-esque game where high difficulty is an intentional design feature. DF is, at its heart, about generating stories - from the earliest ideas Toady had to the more recent updates, it's always been about the game providing players with immersive and interesting stories. DF will be, in its finished state, a fantastic game in terms of generating epic, immersive stories and sating our lust for novelty and exploration - how difficult it will be however can't be so easily predicted, as Toady hasn't really talked that much about how hard he wants the game to be beyond saying that he wants it to be accessible.

DF got this reputation for being uber-hard while it was still in extremely early alpha, and we're not that close to 1.0 yet. The first versions of DF were full of incomplete features (the DOOM TIMER for example, or a random but easily avoidable instance where every corpse on the map rises from the dead at once) and buggy animals (carp and murderelephants were unintended effects of early creature builds) that made the game unreasonably hard. It just so happens that the stuff that made the game artificially hard (i.e. the old strength system) is being phased out earlier than some of the stuff that makes the game artificially easy (i.e. the improved sieges have yet to show up, traps are still broken, dwarves won't care about seeing a loved one get eaten alive if they have enough gold things to look at and farming has ludicrous yields).

I love difficult games (and tend to be a little masochistic with my fortress placement) but the key to enjoying DF isn't expecting to be constantly challenged, it's to, and Bay12 Forums won't like to hear this, care about your dwarves. Or at least pay (possibly malicious) attention to them. If you constantly try to find interesting life stories, you'll end up feeling like your fortress has character. Letting remarkable individuals sit in a hole and twiddle their thumbs will feel like a failure to you then - they need defeats and victories, and you'll give it to them! Losses will hurt, accomplishing things will make you want to boast, and DF will suck up all your free time forever.

[Treefingers]

Have I just become unusually skilled at picking start locations/years, then? I take it for granted when I pick an embark that it will have crazy animals, a challenging environment, abundant MB/FB, frequent sieges, etc. I mean, I do put some thought into it. But I can still get a fun location with a vanilla gen.

Like MDFification said, DF was never intentionally tuned to guarantee a reliably Boatmurdered-esque experience. Also keep in mind that much of what was entertaining about Boatmurdered (and many other succesions) came from playing quite badly, usually for the sake of voluntary roleplaying.

Avoiding all the !!fun!! stuff is stupidly easy: safe biome on a tiny, warm, forested island. Should be able to survive that without even digging, if survival's all you're after. So anything more challenging than that is a challenge you've given yourself. And once you admit that you're already making your own challenges, well... it just kind of snowballs from there.

[Salmeuk]

I've looked about ever since I first played DF back in 2007, and I have still never found a game attempting anything close to what DF is. The copycats fall to the wayside after a few hours of diversion, but nothing quite hooks me like DF. This is why I always end up drunkenly ranting about how emergent storytelling is the most important feature of this game.

I mean, getting down to the philosophy of games, most end up as weird simluation-but-not-really-when-you-get-down-to-the-nitty-gritty skinner boxes that serve to keep you interested (or rather, distracted) from the unreality of their mechanics. They promise you the experience of commanding an army or living in a fantasy world or fighting space aliens aboard some abandoned ship, but due to the nature of the video game concessions are made to the technological capabilities of your average consumer desktop. True simulation is impossible, they say. Starcraft doesn't simulate individual marine bullets, nor does Fallout come close to accurately depicting the sort of social relationships that might develop after an apocalyptic disaster. One uses a series of predictable mathematical interactions between units to symbolize the fight between a space marine and a horde of zerglings, while the other throws a mature sense of reality out the window and replaces it with ridiculous, trope-ified 'encounters' that read like summer-break fanfiction. Some games fall into a gross spectacle of explosions and overdone tropes, and I'm no hipster when I say they pander to the masses (looking at you battlefront).

So back when I found out about DF I was too young to verbalize all these thoughts but I knew immediately it was different, because it promised that simulated reality no one else had done. Instead of making the simulation less complete, Toady dared to make the graphical depiction of that simulation absolutely un-appealing to the 3-d stimulated eye. And, ultimately, it's still impossible. He isn't simulating atoms.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

he fucking thought about it though lol

Yet, he's already changing the way people think about video games and the purpose of their creation. DF is one of the most influential games of the past ten years, you only have to look at the smorgasbord of indie colony-em-ups available on Steam.

I remember, I almost gave up when I started playing, because who in their right mind would play a game where you have to imagine everything? How could I ever learn to appreciate a "d" as a dog? Why would I struggle in lonely frustration with a game that my friends would never play, when I can just spend $50 bucks on some 3-dimensional, exquisitely shader-ed and absolutely unthinking soldier-simulator? I mean, 300 code-lackeys sweat their little hineys off making this thing and it's gorgeous! You can even shoot terrorists!

I spent the first few years playing to win, so to speak. New versions came out, and I felt the same way as many posters here. The game lacked that completeness that came with other, more popular games. The feeling that my actions had "true" purpose, or contextual purpose. You know what I mean if you've ever talked to a serious starcraft (or MOBA) player. They talk the meta like no other, and since every little bit of advantage in needed to win there is an absolute purpose to every little mechanic.

It just isn't the same for DF. I've seen this time and time again: new player reads wiki and learns the ropes of the game. Finds that when push comes to shove, the game's meta can be easily broken by playing carefully. Sieges aren't really threatening with a drawbridge. Farms can produce indefinitely. Legendary soliders are OP, ballistae "aren't good," and why would I not equip my dwarfs with 3 chainmail hauberks, 2 shields, and 5 cloaks?

DF has none of that meaty game-iness so popular with my generation, and this is a turn off for many. It just isn't ready for that sort of mechanical balance right now, and should it come I imagine it won't take care of every little crack in the meta.

I'll leave you with an analogy. There is a mountain near where I live, named Mt. Constitution. Rather piddling when it comes to these sorts of things, this mountain has two ways to the top: you can hike for about four hours up grueling switchbacks and forested hillsides, occasionally sneaking a peek at the absurdly beautiful San Juan Islands. You're sweaty and sore, perhaps more tired than anyone has a right to be, but then you've made it! You're at the top! The shining Puget Sound waters look like a storybook, and you seriously consider forgetting everything and living the rest of your days at the top of this earthen remnant. Somehow, the glaciers failed to grind this chuck of rock like the rest of the land and here you are, thankful that grating ice was particularly lazy those last few thousand years. You've lived a little, used up some of your short existence (count out your probably decades on just two hands!) in a rather pointless endeavor considering society at large, and yet you're happy. You know it was worth it. You know.

Or, you can drive. It takes less than twenty minutes, and the parking lot at the top of the mountain accommodates all sorts of vehicles. Step out of your japanese-made contraption, then tromp the slightly-too-low wall at the edge of the bluff and look out at the same beautiful island chain the hiker sees. Perhaps you exchange a glance with one of those silly hikers, in their silly shoes and wearing their silly packs.

"What a load of nonsense. It was just so easy my way! What's so great about this place anyways? Last time I listen to that damned travel guide. Hey, lets go, I'm hungry again. . ."

[PFunk]

Lets be honest. If extremely efficient underground farming, impenetrable draw bridges and OP traps didn't exist this game would be far more difficult to overcome into endless equilibrium.

I think this game will make a return to being far less survivable once the current defenses get nerfed as necessary. I'm pretty sure there are plans to make bridges easier to circumvent, though I don't know what Toady's plans are for farming which seems to be a bit too easy. One guy farming part time can get you overstocked on whats needed for food and booze in a single year to last you well through years of migration. Two guys can turn 3 plots barely big enough in size for a couple nobles' rooms into something that'll feed a population much too big. There's also the lack of seasonal variation in output. There are no food crises as long as you get the foundations up. Food not rotting ever in storage takes a lot of pressure off you as well.

Right now with impenetrable defenses and endless food and booze you basically don't need to defend your fortress. You can decline to fight and the sieges can't really wear you down. There is no reason to sally out and break a siege. Given the brutality of the rest of this game that's something that should change I think if only a little.

[cochramd]

Lets be honest. If extremely efficient underground farming, impenetrable draw bridges and OP traps didn't exist this game would be far more difficult to overcome into endless equilibrium.

That's like complaining that every game is too easy when you play it on easy mode, use cheap exploits and don't even bother gathering all the collectibles, beating all the bonus bosses and achieving all the achievments. Yes, Toady should nerf cage traps and it's ludricrously easy to defend oneself with bridges, but no one is pointing a gun at your head and demanding that you use them. I myself only use cage traps when there are animals I want captured alive for domestication purposes, and never use bridges in my defenses; the first 3 or 4 years of my most recent fort's life was a mad dash to build a colossal stonefall trap trapline to defend against the goblins, and the rest of its life has seen that trapline extended and upgraded with weapon traps. Then in year 10 I was scared shitless when a titan showed up and my trapline did me no good whatsoever. And it seems to me that any means of food collection produces more than you actually need, but I see food stability as an opportunity to mess around with unnecessary projects, like taming cavern creatures and casting obsidian living spaces.

[Tryble]

One guy farming part time can get you overstocked on whats needed for food and booze in a single year to last you well through years of migration. Two guys can turn 3 plots barely big enough in size for a couple nobles' rooms into something that'll feed a population much too big.

As mentioned already, you can impose limits to simulate a more realistic challenge.  Unskilled farmers produce significantly less food, so by allowing all dwarves to farm, you'll probably need 100+ farm tiles for 100 dwarves.  Force yourself to place these farms outside the fortified walls on the surface, and perhaps limit the max size of your food/booze stockpile to about half a year or one season's worth.  Now, sieges will seriously drain your resources if you wait them out, and you'll be forced to combat back-to-back sieges.

Alternatively, use doors instead of raised bridges for your main entrance, giving you the ability to hold off small assaults just by locking the doors, but when trolls appear you'll only have a short while to prepare for battle.  You can use the ramp trick to create a path wagons can cross, but other creatures can't.  Put a reasonable limit on traps, especially cage traps.

[Glloyd]

From reading the OP, it sounds like you've just set your bar for winning too low. My personal end goal for my fortresses is to (many years down the line)get the king/queen to come and breach and defeat the HFS and colonize hell without using stuff like the dwarves checkerboard and whatnot. Also, turtling is boring, my dwarves are made to fight. This is why in my last fort of217 people, about 60 or so were soldiers of some kind.