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[mirrizin]

[x-posted with someone else] Wow, yeah. I like how this played out (is playing?) And good points all around.

It's a funny tension. On one hand, if you're going to bother to have actual food production be a part of the game, then of course it should be a meaningful thing beyond "slap down some farming zones and pay it no mind for the remainder of the fort's existence." At least, I dunno, require occasional fertilization or something?

On the other hand, this is Dwarf Fortress, not Sim Farm. Want to talk about boring games...*

Though, on another level, I have to say that there are times I really appreciate boredom. I don't know y'all, but IRL I'm not the kind of person who usually has the time and energy for a constant barrage of existential threats. I don't really want a game that requires that kind of attention because my life doesn't usually let me give things that kind of attention. Probably with this in mind, I always set up my fort so that turtling is an option.**

Though after that footnote...the boredom and stability can be its own challenge, maybe. Even in the old games, like Boatmurdered, if you read closely, they were very intentionally playing it like a role playing game and making decisions that made absolutely no sense from a strategy POV because it made a good story. This was not an incredibly hard game even then, I suspect. The players made it exciting themselves by taking these weird game mechanics and taking it as an inspiration to do crazy things. DF really is a game where you can make it be what you want. But you have to make it, mod it even if you've got that skillset (I don't.) Want to do BoatMurdered? Play like maniac, and insanity will ensue. Then read closely how it played out, and you've got a story that'll blow people's minds.

Heck, I play carefully and I have a few pretty good yarns, usually starting with a forgotten beast and ending with a massive tomb.

Increasing the pressure may spur creativity, but sometimes I think it could also stifle it. There's a reason most fantasy novelists don't write stories that accurately describe medieval life, because medieval life for most people was incredibly limited. You could spend your whole life working the same patch of land in the same little town...

Like a bunch of dorfs living in a hole in the ground, never venturing more than a few acres away from the entrance.

On another level, talking to my wife about this, had a little brainstorm.

Medieval life was boring because the pressure to survive required very strict patterns of behavior. Why do people spend 90% of their time shoveling dirt? Because the pressure to survive requires that. Threats don't always create creativity by themselves. Often they create boredom because you *have* to do the optimum thing to survive, or you die. And so keep doing the optimum thing until you die.

I do think that any game suffers from this, but I've seen it in DF a lot. Read the wiki, find solution, implement. Sometimes it takes some work, but it's doable, and if you ratchet up the pressure, you just get more and more routinized. Commercial games do this all the time. It's really disturbing when you notice yourself doing it. Carrots and sticks.

For real creativity, there needs to be an element of the unknown. The gap where you don't know what is going to happen frees you, under pressure, to explode into something incredible.

What DF lacks, I think, for some, is a sufficiently large unknown. Sieges are not that hard to figure out. Forgotten Beasts get closer, but even they can be routinized if you're sufficiently creative. That thing that shall not be named has been tamed, if you simply look up the appropriate board game. I do not know if any coded game, in the presence of the internet, will ever be able to overcome this shortcoming, but at least we may be able to play mindful of it.

Dude. That was a pretty cool thought process. Thanks, y'all, if only for that. Stuff like this is one reason I love this game.

* Actually, I think economics, in a big way, are a potential pressure source that isn't utilized much at all in DF. After the first few years, I can buy the entire trade caravan on goblin crap and manufactured rock crafts. Who on earth pays that much for clothing that was ripped off the mutilated corpse of a troll?

**And that said, if I ever had to turtle, I'd more likely quit out of boredom or frustration. Has anyone ever played a fort that was in turtle mode for very long? It sounds like a really perverse challenge fort. How long can you run an entirely internal operation where nothing happens but a pack of dorfs quietly going about their lives in relative peace and harmony? Hell with the dwarves, could you stay sane?

[vjmdhzgr]

**And that said, if I ever had to turtle, I'd more likely quit out of boredom or frustration. Has anyone ever played a fort that was in turtle mode for very long? It sounds like a really perverse challenge fort. How long can you run an entirely internal operation where nothing happens but a pack of dorfs quietly going about their lives in relative peace and harmony? Hell with the dwarves, could you stay sane?

I quite like keeping much simpler, lower population fortresses compared to most people, where for over half of the jobs there's only one dwarf, with some repeats on the ones where skill only affects the speed of the job. As a result I also don't have much military, or enough equipment to be constantly giving out to them. As a result, back when sieges were actually regular I'd mainly just turtle up completely underground until my there dwarf militia was skilled enough and in full masterwork steel before I really fought any sieges. I find it enjoyable. It's a very different game once you go past around 50 dwarves, which is the most I've ever really had. One that I don't like as much, so I enjoy hurtling just fine. The work and planning going into crafting a beautiful fortress with almost every tile covered in an exceptional engraving, and every piece of furniture similarly made of exceptional flux stone. That's the main thing I work towards, along with some occasional other goals like building a castle outside, or walking off every cavern layer to make them all safe, eventually leeading up to mining adamantine and getting some masterwork adamantine stuff, though I've never gotten that far.

[Amperzand]

I think the above mention of the unknown is a very important thing. The unknown, whether it be mechanical or seriously weird procedural stuff, is far more interesting than the known. Perhaps a wider range of procedural content.

[Nullsrc]

-snip-

This is how I like to do it as well. Low population forts where I spend an insane amount of time creating a structure I like to play with, and doing my best to keep everyone occupied.

The real beauty of DF is that everyone can play it and find their own ways to make it harder. Feel like invasions are too easy? Change the population at which they arrive, or something similar. All of these little parts really fit together in a way that creates a game that caters to the self-driven and self-motivated player.

[PatrikLundell]

@mirrizin:
Turtling? Yes. I've turtled for a year (several times) while an overwhelming undead force (60 undead vs 30 untrained, unarmored, unarmed dorfs) bumbled around aimlessly along the embark edge. Is it frustrating? Yes, very. The constant spam of cancelled hauling jobs is extremely annoying, and checking back to the surface every few seconds to check that they're not actually filing into my fortress is a pain.
Is it boring? No. I've got 3 caverns to secure. I've got candy to mine. I've got beautification to make. I've probably got FBs to eliminate. I've got babies to make (but I always fail to make couples nevertheless). I may also have some other projects to take care of (like a pump stack).
The surface is just one of several arenas on which to do stuff.

[taptap]

Has anyone ever played a fort that was in turtle mode for very long?

Not exactly turtling, but evil, desert surface and no goblins arriving pretty much made my 40.19 fort turtle mode. Over 70 years old by now, I played with opened lower caverns (of two) for most of the time, cavern fauna almost died out (guess since I have too much cavern animals - draltha and cave crawler breeding, two trapped forgotten beasts - on the map). For a time I had to abandon the cavern to the forgotten beasts, which probably wiped out several cavern species, which died in droves back then and have not been seen since. There is more wildlife in the first cavern, but it is mostly closed. It took me very long to arrange marriages initially, but now I have 1st generation dwarves die by old age and the first 3rd generation dwarves are born. (It was 24, 32 soft pop cap for long time, when I got the first children numbers surged up to 48 dwarves, my absolute cap.)

What kept me busy? The fort has a clock (halted atm), a lovely obsidian factory (with some overcomplicated logic to operate it with a single lever, that I need to pull seven times), a tank for fluid logic applications, magma and water plumbing for most floors, a self-designed minecart based magma elevator (not as efficient as other setups available, but my own), minecart testing grounds, several silk farms (cave spiders, giant cave spiders, FB), social engineering with dwarves + lots of other stuff I tested out. I also had two accidental floodings from which I had to recover.

[mirrizin]

Well, that kind of proves my previous thought that making the game more "dangerous" wouldn't necessarily generate more creativity.

No disrespect to turtles, though with my current playstyle, I think I'd find it difficult to stick with, at least a first. 

That said, I'm tempted to go to the suggestion page and suggest earth elementals (more likely earth demons) as a new threat, perhaps an addition to the HFS. Goblins who can dig earth (but not stone?) got nothing on this.

[PatrikLundell]

I, for one, would find digging invaders coming from any direction to be rather annoying, as they would either require you to set up a well armored militia (hard with a low pop fortress depending on goblinite for metal), or spend a lot of effort securing your fortress against them. If they're slow enough (so you have time to get defenses in place) they might not be that much of a threat (provided, of course, you're notified of their appearance and know where they are, rather than being notified only when the umber hulks breach the walls). Otherwise they'd force you to spend a lot of effort on countering them, such as digging your outer fortress perimeter one tile larger and build walls there and floor everything at the lowest level, with the cavern/magma workshop shaft protection being a royal pain. Apart from the work, it would also constrain your fortress expansion and may ruin your carefully laid out beautified fortress' charm when they uncouthly destroy your masterworks engraved wall.
As with most anything, if it can be disabled, I don't have anything against it being available.

A major difference between the HFS and the umber hulks is that the former is a passive threat that won't be activated unless the player activates it, whereas this is an active threat more akin to FBs. If the threat would be activated by the player (such as digging, hitting a wall of some substance that stops the digging, and actively proceed, thus releasing them, possibly by breaching a fourth "pocket cavern" with access out of the map causing the threat to migrate to the embark on breach lured by the fresh air, I'd find it much more agreeable). Some kind of "reward" (possibly along the lines of candy, or even an addition of useful/interesting new critters to be there or entering the map) for releasing the threat would induce more players to take the risk.

[vjmdhzgr]

I really like the minor additional threat of digging invaders, but I think Masterwork DF did it the best way in one old version of the mod, back when you couldn't have two of the only three playable civilizations active in the same world because kobolds weren't supposed to dig stone. There was some experimental option that would make it so if invaders couldn't find a way into your firtress, then it would secretly assign them a remove construction job on any constructed walls in the way, with the type of constructed wall affecting how long the job took. I like just being able to remove constructions because there's no way to clean up after digging invaders dig into your fortress but are then dispatched. There's no way to put those natural dirt walls back, or make it so that one tile in the whole z level can be an engraved wall again. Maybe if there was some way to do so, or if their digging didn't destroy blocks but was some weird form of moving through them then full digging would be okay? But I think just removing constructions is a god way to handle this, though it would have to include bridges.

[mirrizin]

Having made the suggestion post, if I were to do such a thing, I would definitely make it a feature of the HFS and not something that would just occur. I don't like the idea of making extreme threats of this magnitude involuntary for the player. Maybe make one in ten demons or so an earth demon...

And even then, like I noticed before, I can already imagine what some solutions could be. It'd be another reason to do the old "build your entire fortress on top of a single support" trick.

Maybe there's a good principle: Establish a feasible game as the "norm" and make it up to the player ot make it more difficult rather than making the basic game more difficult by default.

[Ghills]

[x-posted with someone else] Wow, yeah. I like how this played out (is playing?) And good points all around.

It's a funny tension. On one hand, if you're going to bother to have actual food production be a part of the game, then of course it should be a meaningful thing beyond "slap down some farming zones and pay it no mind for the remainder of the fort's existence." At least, I dunno, require occasional fertilization or something?

On the other hand, this is Dwarf Fortress, not Sim Farm. Want to talk about boring games...*
'''snip'''
**And that said, if I ever had to turtle, I'd more likely quit out of boredom or frustration. Has anyone ever played a fort that was in turtle mode for very long? It sounds like a really perverse challenge fort. How long can you run an entirely internal operation where nothing happens but a pack of dorfs quietly going about their lives in relative peace and harmony? Hell with the dwarves, could you stay sane?

I only ever play turtle forts.

I find military strategy games boring at best - gain dudes, kill things, rinse, repeat. It's not half as interesting as building megaprojects and funky fort designs.  Plus, DF's military interface is like a torture device designed by someone dropping LSD.  I will probably quit the game if military ever becomes required, because it's not fun for me at all.

There's tons to do with a turtle fort. My proudest accomplishment was a fully trapped, multi-story 3D green glass maze and color-coordinated bedrooms that paid attention to owner preferences. If you think that's not a challenge, you've never tried it.

[Ghills]

Having made the suggestion post, if I were to do such a thing, I would definitely make it a feature of the HFS and not something that would just occur. I don't like the idea of making extreme threats of this magnitude involuntary for the player. Maybe make one in ten demons or so an earth demon...

And even then, like I noticed before, I can already imagine what some solutions could be. It'd be another reason to do the old "build your entire fortress on top of a single support" trick.

Maybe there's a good principle: Establish a feasible game as the "norm" and make it up to the player ot make it more difficult rather than making the basic game more difficult by default.

That's the situation we have right now. People complain about it because they want to get challenges delivered to their doorstop, complete with goblinite, instead of deciding what they want to do and embarking/setting options accordingly.

People are saying 'embark somewhere without enemies if you want to turtle'.  But it's also just as valid to say 'embark somewhere near necro towers and goblins if you want constant sieges'.  Players who pick bad embark locations for what they want aren't a reason to change the base game.

Some people want more deadly megabeasts or random attacks - there's init and world seed settings for that, have as many megabeasts as you want! Again, no reason to change the game.

It's astonishingly easy to change the siege settings so that goblins show up right sharpish. No need to change the game itself.

People complain about constructions being permanent - well, they mostly were permanent in the timeframe/fantasy DF is emulating. We have way more building-destroyers in DF than ever existed IRL. If a player wants enemies with good explosives and excellent digging equipment, I'm sure there's a mod to add that.

If Toady wants to add a init setting for contruction permanence that would be OK - the important point is to not limit the playstyle options to cater to a specific playstyle.

TL;DR
There is absolutely no reason to change the base game deliberately to cater to one playstyle.  People who complain about a lack of challenge just aren't using the options open to them. Maybe because they're new and don't know about the options? It's still super annoying.

[Stragus]

That's the situation we have right now. People complain about it because they want to get challenges delivered to their doorstop, complete with goblinite, instead of deciding what they want to do and embarking/setting options accordingly.

People are saying 'embark somewhere without enemies if you want to turtle'.  But it's also just as valid to say 'embark somewhere near necro towers and goblins if you want constant sieges'.  Players who pick bad embark locations for what they want aren't a reason to change the base game.

That sounds great, except it doesn't work! I'll quote myself from another thread:

"After the totally uneventful first game, I sure was ready for some action! And so I generated about 60 world maps (in parallel, running 16 instances of DF to use all CPU cores), with Beasts and Savagery set at "Very high", and finally found what seemed like an impossible challenge: a crippled Dwarven civilization, a nice starting location right next to a cluster of 20 dark pits and 2 dark fortresses, without a single dwarven fortress nearby."

As you can guess, nothing happened in 4 years, at which point my fortified military outpost became the capital, the monarch arrived, and I gave up. I was right next door to the goblins! Where were they? They should have been ambushing my wood cutters, harassing my workers, launching skirmishes, constantly probing my defenses, if not plainly dying at the fortress walls (goblins usually live short and violent lives). I thought I had picked a pretty good location for a survival challenge.

Without external threats, DF becomes The Sims with dwarves, which I'm sure is fine for some people.

[PatrikLundell]

The number of goblin sites nearby do not, in themselves, increase the challenge as enemy civs don't attack in parallel from several sites. To make sure you actually get a challenge you should embark right next to a necromancer tower with goblins nearby and on the other side (so the necro won't target them instead). You should also make sure the goblin sites are actually populated by goblins, and, preferably, use legends mode (I'd export to legends viewer) to check that the sites actually contain a healthy number of goblins.
Also, unless you change the parameters, goblins only attack you when your population has reached 80, which it probably just did when you quit (it sounds implausible that your fortress became the mountainhome and the monarch moved there in that short time. Rather, the old monarch probably died and one of your dorfs was appointed).
You can also embark in evil biomes and get rewarded with reanimation and evil weather, deal with the caverns and the FBs appearing there, and dig deep and greedily to release the HFS.

Losing generally is the result of stuffing up (or trying new things), rather than being utterly crushed by wave after wave of blood thirsty and cunning enemies.

However, DF is rather slow paced, so if you want a constant fight for your life from the embark onward you've got the wrong game, and is probably better served by an RTS.

[KillzEmAllGod]

I really had fun not building bridges or cage traps (or any other type of trap), will attempt to wall off but that's normally too late.
Lost about 70 dwarfs to a dragon (did attempt to cage trap the dragon it burned them all), a fort before that died to 8 goblins.
Most of the winning is due to min maxing and exploiting.

Well its good to see that some people have worked out how to get sieges, someone should really update the wiki page for it with tips on where to position a fortress to get enough action.

Artifact update should bring much needed invaders.