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[Kagus]

No, I'm not going to say it.

Anyways, the Oasis challenge is an aboveground challenge, although certain exceptions are allowed and encouraged.

Here's the setup:  find a desert that has an aquifer.  Settle there.  Now, carve out a semi-smooth (i.e., ramps in some places, but sheer cliffs in others) circle down to the aquifer layer, with a slight cratering (circle gets smaller the farther down).  Once you reach the aquifer, channel out roughly one third (or smaller) of the circle and get it to fill up with water.

Now, survive off the oasis.  Active farming is not recommended, but it's fine if you want to. Instead, food is to be acquired by hunting/husbandry and flooding the bottom layer of the oasis to make it muddy, and then harvesting the plants that show up automatically.  I'm not sure if muddied surface ground will yield more wild plants than otherwise, but it's worth finding out.

Housing and other important buildings can either be built outside or carved out of the side of the rings.  Please note that each digging operation should only be one or two rooms deep into the sand.  No grand hallways branching off into elaboraste underground structures.  Treat the side of the oasis crater as the front wall, and dig out the rest of the house or storeroom behind it.

That's all that comes to mind right now.  It looks a bit muddled, but I haven't found a better way of describing it yet.  Maybe later.

[pickupsticks]

Sounds like fun - I'll have to give this a shot!

[Duke 2.0]

Perhaps we could use any bits of land jutting up exposing bare rock as a quarry? Just something for a bit of some for walls and necessities.

Wow, a game where stone will have to be actively mined, instead of a byproduct of base-building.

[Anvilsmith]

For an extra challenge, build everything out of glass.

[Akroma]

this sounds interesting

but I doubt I will find a desert that has enough sand layers (3 at least, for the looks) and an aquifer at the bottom

[nerdpride]

Ooh, Egyptian Dwarves would be an interesting theme.  This looks to be more Arabic, but Egyptian Dwarves would get to do serious farming, quarry out rock for big structures, have a nice separation between the classes, and the like.

[Istrian]

quote:Originally posted by nerdpride:
<STRONG>Ooh, Egyptian Dwarves would be an interesting theme.  This looks to be more Arabic, but Egyptian Dwarves would get to do serious farming, quarry out rock for big structures, have a nice separation between the classes, and the like.</STRONG>

But there already is a natural separation between the classes. As in, those who go under a bridge, those who feed the leader's carp, those who go hunting gorillas bare-handed and half-naked, those who fail stupid mandates, those who give out stupid mandates... All dwarves are born unequals, but they all die equally painfully.

If I'm not mistaken oasises (oasii?) rely on seasonal farming, so it would make sense to be able to farm at least one season every year.

[Jay]

And build a large, multistory building over it.
This looks to be interesting, unfortunately none of my worlds seem to generate enough deserts for me to take part.
Even fewer deserts with aquifers...

[Kagus]

They need relatively hot climates, which have a hard time spawning on smaller worlds.  Just make a stripworld that has a large N/S value and a small E/W value, to keep speeds slightly lower.

It is indeed a pity about not having enough sand layers to make a really interesting oasis (plu.: oases), but at least you'll have something.

I've though about Egypt-style forts for quite some time...  I think I'll try to make one at some point, as I've got a few ideas for it.  Of course, a bearded sphinx is an absolute necessity.  And grow rope reeds along the river for all your loincloths.  It's too bad that big rivers don't flood themselves automatically...

Anyways, this is the oasis challenge, not Egypt.  Water-centric crater for these dwarves.

[Newton]

Sounds like a fun challenge, and I'll see what I can come up with.

[Frankmanic]

I'm tempted to do a variation on this by building into the face of a large cliff and having low technology cave dwarfs modeled after pueblo cliff dwellings. Everything would have to be off the ground, but not very far into the cliff face. Lots of stone clubs.

[Kagus]

Yes, cliffdweller cities have been thought over, but you would most likely have to make the cliff yourself as the naturally-occuring ones aren't exactly suited for such an endeavour.

[dojango]

Does sound interesting.  Keep in mind most oasis cities are also hubs on trade routes, so it would not be out of character to rely on caravans to survive.  Hard to simulate caravans passing through, however... they just swing by your city, and then go back home.

[Newton]

Hmm, I can find a desert with an aquifer on the main map ok, but when I get to the actual map, I can never find it, even though I can build farms on the surface without any problems.

[Derakon]

quote:Originally posted by Kagus:
<STRONG>Yes, cliffdweller cities have been thought over, but you would most likely have to make the cliff yourself as the naturally-occuring ones aren't exactly suited for such an endeavour.</STRONG>

Actually, I've found maps with 56 z-levels (not counting pure sky or pure underground levels). The trick is to find "high mountain" zones adjacent to "ground" zones (as opposed to "low mountain" zones); these happen reasonably often in mountain valleys.

Unfortunately, that particular map had a truly hideous framerate even with just the starting seven dwarves, so I wasn't able to do anything with it.