Print

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

[JTDestroyer5900]

Ok so, I've watched a few playthroughs(Papa Joel got me interested in this with his videos) and looked at the wiki, and I have a few questions. Firstly, when I was generating a world, some places were called "Dark Human Pits of ____" or "Dark Elven fortress of ____" and, if my assumptions are correct, then Goblins must have added them to their tribes and the Goblins all died off. Curiously, I chose to start as a Muskox man(apparently integrated in with Elven society) and I could spawn in a "Dark Elven Pit," which was basically a Canyon with nobody in it and I eventually got lost and restarted. Secondly, made a new world and was allowed to start as a Slug man, and I could start in either a Dwarven hillock or Fortress. Now, I chose the hillock b/c it said I was a worshiper of a dwarven goddess of death and I thought I could possibly become a necromancer by somehow appeasing the goddess instead of having to fight a necromancer and his legion of zombies. Anyways, I couldn't find a way to escape the hillock(it was a oval underground chamber, I assumed that was a hillock). Now, I saw a little map thing in the corner, and I assume that shows what is above and below you on the Z-axis, and when I got underneath the structure on the surface I couldn't find a way to climb upwards. Also, what is a good length of history and a good world size? My Laptop is pretty decent, but it started slowing down around year 160 on a small world, and eventually I got to year 260-ish before I decided to stop. Any other advice would be appreciated 

[Shonai_Dweller]

Dark Pits as a site add the name of the civ who controls them. If elves take over a pits, either through war or just because they'd been abandoned and elves felt like moving in, they get called Dark Elven Pits.

Right now it's annoying to start in a pits or a camp as it disables fast-travel (bug reported on the tracker).

You should be able to escape a hillock through either a door or a trapdoor in the roof. You'll need to push 'up' to climb out (same key as z-level up in Fortress mode, I think. I've remapped my keys so don't recall - hit '?' for a list of controls).

On my laptop I play at around 300 years or so on a medium world. Takes a while, but there's lots of interesting stuff going on. Advanced Worldgen has a setting to stop worldgen once a certain percentage of beasts have been killed. I use that to make sure the world is still kind of fun when I start.

But yeah, interesting worlds need more time. Experiment.

[bloop_bleep]

I think there's been a longstanding bug where it is sometimes impossible to get out of dwarven fortresses because there is no connection from them to the outside. Maybe this is related?

You can also use advanced worldgen to control the quantities of megabeasts, night creatures, etc. with great precision. You might want to, for example, set "number of bogeyman types" to 0 to remove all bogeymen from the world.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I think there's been a longstanding bug where it is sometimes impossible to get out of dwarven fortresses because there is no connection from them to the outside. Maybe this is related?

You can also use advanced worldgen to control the quantities of megabeasts, night creatures, etc. with great precision. You might want to, for example, set "number of bogeyman types" to 0 to remove all bogeymen from the world.

Not really, that's mostly been fixed and is to do with how fortresses specifically are generated. Op just needs to find the 'up one z-level' key. Next release makes it even easier to find the fortress door apparently.

[Uzu Bash]

Underground site generation still has bugs, so it's still possible to gen in a room cut off from the rest. Sleeping/waiting an hour might reshuffle it in your favor. If not, there are so many percussive maintenance methods to make the game just fucking work but aren't guaranteed to work that you might just pick another civ to spawn from and leave fortresses for later.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Underground site generation still has bugs, so it's still possible to gen in a room cut off from the rest. Sleeping/waiting an hour might reshuffle it in your favor. If not, there are so many percussive maintenance methods to make the game just fucking work but aren't guaranteed to work that you might just pick another civ to spawn from and leave fortresses for later.

In a hillocks? Are you sure?

[Uzu Bash]

Underground site generation still has bugs, so it's still possible to gen in a room cut off from the rest. Sleeping/waiting an hour might reshuffle it in your favor. If not, there are so many percussive maintenance methods to make the game just fucking work but aren't guaranteed to work that you might just pick another civ to spawn from and leave fortresses for later.

In a hillocks? Are you sure?

Now that you ask, no I'm not sure. I've never needed to escape from a hillocks.

[Dragonunion]

For the classic dwarf fortress mode is it not really important.

But for adventure mode its more a question which world size you use and what your system specs are.
reasons for long history:
+ more things to discover
+ better developed civilisations
negative on long history:
-your computer needs longer for the world generation
-more free disk space required

I make only a short history with 150 years because my laptop is really bad. But i often stop at 100 years. That's enough for an interesting history with many sites and conflicts and do not need much time. You have all things that you need in your world and the most evil creatures still live.

Edit: I see you have a good computer. So there you will not get problems with the specs.

[mikekchar]

Generally speaking (all else being equal), goblins will take over the world eventually.  Sometimes they get killed off, but it's pretty rare in my experience (and requires understanding the advanced world gen options to pull off consistently).  The longer the history, the stronger the goblin population.  Also, longer history means that there will be less mega beasts because they will get killed off (and they don't replenish, to my knowledge).  For interesting adventure mode, you usually want to strike a balance between going long enough to establish history, conflict, etc, but short enough that you aren't just trolling through sites that have been conquered by goblins.

150-250 years is often nice, but I've also played 5 years which is cool because there is lots of wilderness to explore.  And if you like fighting goblins (or sites that were conquered by goblins), then going out 500-1000 years will give you that :-).

It is unfortunate that there is no real way to make an impact on the history in adventure mode.  You can kill all the inhabitants of a site, but you can't ruin the site.  So it means that even if you kill everybody, nobody will go to reclaim the site.    And there is no particularly easy way to retire your adventurer for 50-100 years and see what's happened to the world.

[Uzu Bash]

^ It's apparent to me that you haven't generated enough max size world with max size history to make any general statements about how it "eventually" unfolds. You're only marginally right about the marginally lower megabeast population.

You can ruin a site, and you don't have to wipe out the population, only the site government. An NPC insurrection can do that while you're right there. And sites will be reclaimed so quickly that you won't be able to maintain a claim on it without remaining in the throne room at all times. Immigrants and visitors will continue arriving, relatives of the nobles you killed will be back. If you can't ruin a site by wiping out the entire throne room, that means the ruler has his seat of power elsewhere.

Why don't you do a little research and find out about your worlds before making assumptions and discarding them? You might learn how worlds actually function.

[mikekchar]

Thank you for pointing out when I'm completely wrong.  Always good to hear from someone with more experience than me.  It would be nice to do it a bit more gently, though ;-) 

But, it's very interesting about the ruined sites.  I've tried quite hard to do that and I have not succeeded.  I've even gone to a ruined site filled with nomads, claimed the site and then handed over the site to one of the nomads, hoping that would "unruin" the site.  But alas, it did not.  Now there is exactly 1 person living there, but the site is still ruined.  I'll try again to ruin a site. Just so we're on the same page here, my goal is to turn the site marker into a mu.  I know that insurrections can do many things, but that's not my character (I've never been successful in inciting an insurrection, either).

[Uzu Bash]

In order to restore a site from ruin, you have to enter the seat of power, usually the room with the throne. In this version that's been implemented in towns, hamlets, and your own sites if you zone a Main Hall (hillocks may have one in the Civic Mound, I haven't tested,) but unfortunately not fortresses. You can make the claim any time before or while you're in the seat of power.

Ruining most settlement types is as easy as killing the ruler, but places where there isn't an identifiable seat of power, the rulership selection seems to take place distantly from the site. That includes dark pits and forest retreats, possibly hillocks. Wiping out everyone residing there doesn't seem to do it. Camps won't become ruins this version, yours or worldgenned camps.

[mikekchar]

Very interesting.  Thanks!  I was finally able to ruin a hillocks and all I had to do is kill the administrator.  But I think the problem I have been having is exactly what you say.  In some places the seat of power is not identifiable or the required noble is absent for some reason.

I've noticed that when I claim a site, the group you create is under the government of the original builder of the site.  So I'm going to experiment with trying to revive a dying civ by reclaiming their ruined fortress, making it a mountain home, ruining some nearby occupied hamlets, and possibly assasinating any nobles that happen to have dual citizenship with the occupying forces.  I have serious doubts that it will work, but it will be fun :-)

[Uzu Bash]

I've noticed that when I claim a site, the group you create is under the government of the original builder of the site.

That's not always so; My current adventurer has revived two ruined cities, the first was labeled a criminal group with no civ even though I was a member of the civ it belonged to, the second became part of my adopted civ though the site was originally of another civ. A previous adventurer claimed a city as a nomad and it became an independent city-state even though the civ's lawgiver continued to rule from there. It's not clear to me what makes the difference.

Also, the seat of power isn't implemented in dwarven or dark fortresses, so no way to make a claim stick.

[mikekchar]

That's incredibly interesting... I wonder what the difference is.  I'm guessing it depends on where you came from.  I will have to experiment some more.