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[Sil3nt]

Hello,

can anybody explain to me how to solve some minor problems in my current embark please?

1- Trees growth rate??? no matter if i chose an embark site with scarce wooden source to get better FPS, after 3 in-game years my 3x3 map is overcrowded with these damned trees, they almost grow faster than i can cut them 

2- Because there wasn't a water source avalaible, i had to dig down to the first cavern layer and divert part of a lake into a small reservoir, so i could build a well. Then i walled off the cavern. But somehow the cavern biome spreaded all inside my fort  (the embark had very deep soil, like 5 z-levels at least). Except for deeper rock z-levels, i have my entire fortress covered with every possible type of underground fungus, plant and grass  it's the first time i see this very odd behavior, like it spreaded through the well...? Is it possible?

Since these 2 things happened, i dropped down to 50 FPS average, while before i was running smoothly at 100... only 3 in-game years...

Also, i checked before embarking to be very close to goblins (i should be basically surrounded by pits and fortresses, a few map tiles away), and to be at war with goblins (--------), but they didn't showed up yet even with 2.000.000 created wealth... is it normal? I need some goblinite since there isn't iron


Thx for every suggestion!

[PatrikLundell]

1. See this link http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=153848.msg6584913#msg6584913. The first post contains a suggestion, but the lower part of the post contains descriptions of how tree growth works.
2. As soon as you breach a cavern all the cavern fungi spores start to circulate in the fortress. That's normal. As you breach additional caverns additional fungal tree types become available.
3. ---- doesn't mean war, WAR means war. They should come eventually anyway and start a war though. However, unless you've modified the parameters, you need a population of 80 before the goblins are allowed to attack. In addition to that, being surrounded by dark pits isn't a great thing because of how invasion currently works: all invaders come from a single settlement and when it runs out of bodies there won't be any more (well, waiting 70 years can give you 30 raw recruits...). They currently don't know how to recruit from other settlements. If you want large and consistent invasions you should make sure the dark fortress is the settlement closest to you.

[Sil3nt]

Thank you for your infos I didn't know any of those, then goblins aren't coming because I have the Pop cap set at 50 for Fps reasons...

[Luriant]

You can breach a cavern in a fortress, retire, make a new fortress next to the first, and have spores without dig in a cavern.

With advanced world generation, you can change the minimum of population for sieges and titan attacks.
A 50dwarves can have the same fun, but a 120 siege can kill your FPS.

[Thisfox]

Not that long ago, there was a time when all trees gave a single log, and they didn't grow all that often either, so I still value each tree and delight in them growing so thoroughly over my map, cutting them down and putting them in huge useless underground stockpiles, making endless bins of charcoal, just because it's possible. There was a time when my fort couldn't get enough wood for beds, let alone for burning to make metals. I like that they grow back so fast. If you're really having a problem with trees, make some roads through the forest (you can even use logs) three bricks wide so that carts can get through. That will keep everything sane.

The same thing can be done indoors: Before you breach those caverns, make sure that any floors dug in dirt are neatly paved with floors, or even with roads. This is why most forts are dug into the solid rock, with just short tunnels into the dirt for gardening/sandmining/claymining purposes. If the ground is covered in a farm plot, a road or a floor, you won't get a plant growing out of it.

[PatrikLundell]

You can actually change the goblin siege cap by changing the entity_defaults.txt entry for goblins in the save (not world generation) to as 2 (= pop 50) instead of 3 (= pop 80) for the progress_trigger_x_siege field (there are 3 of these, two of them are 0 default).
I normally set all three of the siege triggers to 1 (pop 20, low export value, low fortress wealth value).

You can pave or floor the dirt interior of your fortress even after fungal growth has appeared, so it's no hurry (although if you want to do it completely you'll need to rip up workshops, pave/floor, and then rebuild the shops).

@Thisfox: You're somewhat out of touch with dwarven sanity. Search the fora for the bazillion threads about dwarves stuck/dead/... in trees. That will show you why so many players hate the "new" trees.

[Werdna]

As an old player coming back to the game, I was firmly in ThisFox's camp of sheer wood joy.  It lasted about a month of play.    Now I wish for evil clouds of Agent Orange...

[anewaname]

@Sil3nt
For your FPS problems, you might want to look for pathing issues. With many trees and the caverns opened, but walled off, my FPS has always been most heavily influenced by units try to path to somewhere. You can have 500 caged animals and no loss to FPS, but those 10 puppies that have nothing to do but run back and forth between meeting zones and their parents will cost some FPS and they will interfere with your dwarfs that cross their path. The trees' ground clutter and falling leaves is just a drop in the bucket.

Some players intentionally breach the caverns as soon as possible and make 30x30 rooms in the soil layer. These rooms fill up with moss and indoor plants. Add 30x30 zones and turn on Gather. Enable some military dwarfs' Gather Plant skill. After a season, there will also be enough moss for big grazers to be penned in one of the zones. These zones can replace your original farm and you can create a farm topside for more booze variety.

[Sil3nt]

Thanks to all of you for your replies and suggestions

@PatrikLundell
great, i changed the siege value as you said, can you explain to me the string just above progress_trigger_x_siege? It's the same except doesn't show the word Siege... maeby is the ambush indicator?

@anewaname
the only pathing issues that i can think of could be caused by my sheeps farming, about 15 animals locked up in their enclosure by a tightly closed door... maeby they keep trying to path outside the fences? Otherwise the only animals i have are two war dogs at the entrance of the fort, two cats and nothing more...

[PatrikLundell]

The other set of pop triggers control trade using the same parameter limits. Note that a trade/siege is allowed if one of the triggers is matched. If you look carefully in the file, you'll find the humans have only one of the trade controlling parameters specified, and that means they won't show up during the first summer, but require some trade to occur (which means that a dead civ at war with the elves wouldn't get any human trade). For a few releases the trade value calculation was bugged and always zero, blocking the appearance of humans, but by introducing the two missing parameters and setting them to 1 you could get human traders, although they showed up during the first summer. End infodump...

[anewaname]

If an animal is trying to go through a door, you will see the animal near the door with a "?" flash. Penned animals will only try to leave the zone when something frightens them. Having only 2 cats and 2 dogs loose is quite good.

[Chief10]

You can breach a cavern in a fortress, retire, make a new fortress next to the first, and have spores without dig in a cavern.

That's incredible. Do you know how close your new fort must be to the original to get this effect?

[Sil3nt]

Ok, i had my dwarves building floors on the first z-levels so at least i don't have fungus growing all over the place :p sadly that didn't improve Fps.
If trees aren't impacting too much on performances, than i don't understand how i got to average 40 Fps with a 50 dorfs fort. I have small stockpiles, no laggy tricks (like waterfalls or power wheels), my rooms aren't too big in size... i use dfhack to clean map and owned items every once a while... what else could i do? What could be causing it?

p.s. using caged goblins as living target dummies is a total cheat! I confiscated their weapons and dumped them into a room with my noobs markdwarves unloading a ton of bone bolts at them through fortifications... after a couple hours they were legendary 15+ markdwarves... isn't that a bit too quick?

[anewaname]

@Chief10

That's incredible. Do you know how close your new fort must be to the original to get this effect?

I think it effects the entire biome. I haven't tried the trick. I had found a fun biome with both re-animation and a mucus rain that made living things pass out. The cavern-released-fungal-bloom also started without my having breached the caverns. My fort died and I enjoyed multiple embarks into that biome (new locations each time) and found this in one of the embarks... a hag (Resident) was living in a cave in the soil layer and fungus was growing in that cave. So I suspect that was considered to be a cavern breach for the entire biome and was the reason the first embark in that biome had fungus immediately.

@Sil3nt

p.s. using caged goblins as living target dummies is a total cheat! I confiscated their weapons and dumped them into a room with my noobs markdwarves unloading a ton of bone bolts at them through fortifications... after a couple hours they were legendary 15+ markdwarves... isn't that a bit too quick?

There are many potential "cheats" within DF and different players have different tolerances, and those tolerances change over time. At any given time, most players are using or avoiding certain exploits, because the objective is their own enjoyment and their own storified memories. If you want to embark with a set of objectives and choose to use certain exploits, it can be justified because this is just a game. You are not bound to any socially-enforced Dwarf Fortress player community justice system that dictates the right and wrong way to play the game.  This is a masterwork turkey bone image of a player. The player is running. There are many players. The many players have fake beards and hammers. The many players are chasing the player.

I don't have any better suggestions for FPS improvement. I cap my FPS at 50 and try to improve it when it is consistantly below 40. I wall off areas where I don't want dwarves going. I try to avoid convoluted zig-zaggy travel paths (trap tunnels can be sealed off with a raised bridge *and* a de-constructable wall). I no longer build complicated stockpile chains (the most complicated ones now are the booze/prepared food stockpiles that Give to little stockpiles in the reststops on major hauling paths). There are many different FPS threads, try searching the forums for "FPS"... checkmark "Search in topic subjects only" and use the "Choose a board to search in, or search all" option to select all the DF areas).

[Jerky]

One suggestion for improving FPS that I've heard is to set traffic zones in all open areas and hallways. You choose a single-tile wide path to be a high-traffic area and everything else to be medium or low traffic. That way when the pathing algorithm tries to find the best route to a destination it won't spend as much time considering all the different possibilities.