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[Jazz Cat]

So, I keep browsing through the forums reading epic tales of sieges and famines and were-carps and whatnot, and I'm realizing that I've never actually lost a fort. I've never been sieged, never had my fortress razed to the ground by a megabeast, never had a vampire infiltrate my fortress... I did once get attacked by a hill titan, but the trading caravan guard killed it before I'd even gotten my civilians into their burrows. Every last one of my forts has been retired after turning into a city-planning sim.

So what's a good way to make the game more dangerous? Admittedly, I haven't exhausted all my options yet (I haven't really explored the caverns too thoroughly or dug down to the magma sea), but I'm still a little disappointed that I haven't encountered much FUN. I've even lowered the population trigger down to 20 for sieges on all the other civilizations.

It seems like the consensus is to embark in an evil/terrifying biome, maybe with a tower; export a butt-load of wealth, camp out near big goblin civilizations, and so on, but is there anything I can do to raise the base chance of things actually happening (oh, although I am definitely going to be sending out raiding parties in the new update to piss off the goblins.)? A mod to generate more megabeasts would be great, or one to make it harder to feed the dwarves or something along those lines. Any other thoughts?

[anewaname]

Lowering the population trigger for sieges might not have done it in the 43.05 version, there is an issue with goblins only launching sieges from their closest site to the closest opponent (or similar), so if your fort was closer to the 50-goblin dark pits than to the 5000-goblin dark fortress, then you run out of goblins quickly, and if that human site was closer to the goblin civ than your fort, the goblins would focus on the humans.

If you have been setting up massive trap-corridors and such, pick some defenses that you relied heavily on and stop using them. I had a fort with self-enforced policies of "no cage/weapon trap corridors" and "no lever'ed bridges". The goblins sieges were met by military dwarfs in kill-zones..

I don't know if the siege launches from enemy civs are still effected by that bug in 44.02.

[Chief10]

One thing I like to do is to increase how likely dwarves are to go crazy. Dwarves going insance was a really serious concern in older versions, but very unlikely to happen these days. Doing this make it so you can't just let them sleep on the floor/go hungry/see dead friends without consequences.

In Creature_standard.txt, change:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[PERSONALITY:STRESS_VULNERABILITY:70:85:100] (format is min:mid:max)

I think default is 0:50:100, not sure. Also not sure how it would work in the new version.

Another easy thing to do is advance world gen, instead of normal world gen. Raise the number of werebeasts really high.

I also haven't had a vampire since version 34, so I'm very interested to see if others have insight into this.

[Urlance Woolsbane]

The latest version effectively allows you to declare war on any of your neighbors. Just raid their sites until your dwarves get noticed, then wait for the inevitable siege. I got attacked by humans, which I don't ever recall happening in previous versions.

[Fleeting Frames]

Huh. Did you usually kill and rob human caravans?

[Urlance Woolsbane]

Huh. Did you usually kill and rob human caravans?

Perhaps not regularly, but frequently enough that I recall no consequences. Granted, that could have been due to a lack of survivors, but I somehow doubt that. Regardless, it's much easier now.

[Findulidas]

Embark on difficult places with high evil rating, next to big goblin areas and towers. Use no traps. Evil biomes next to evil oceans can be pretty fun without traps. You can also embark with very little to help you. Ive done all of these im diffrent combinations and its sometimes quite a hectic start. Although undeads have been nerfed several times unfortunately.

[MCreeper]

1. Play masterwork on 34.11 version, totally awesome, unlike new one. If you want constant siege, you can play as warlocks, they are warring with everyone and get a siege on... First autumn?
2. Embark just nearby dark fortress and raid them until goblins notice your dwarfs. I think bug with siege armies coming only from closest enemy settlement is still not fixed, so it is only way to get actual sieges.

[Robsoie]

About sieges difficulties.
While one of the new feature of df2014 was the ability to climb, i never observed any invaders trying to climb my walls (despite walls were not polished) in 40.x , 42.x and 43.x , forcing me to basically not make walls if i wanted a challenge.

I have yet to get my fort sieged in current version, so a question to anyone that did : have you noticed if invaders are finally able to climb your walls or if it's the same problem as in past 4x.xx versions ?

[PatrikLundell]

About sieges difficulties.
While one of the new feature of df2014 was the ability to climb, i never observed any invaders trying to climb my walls (despite walls were not polished) in 40.x , 42.x and 43.x , forcing me to basically not make walls if i wanted a challenge.

I have yet to get my fort sieged in current version, so a question to anyone that did : have you noticed if invaders are finally able to climb your walls or if it's the same problem as in past 4x.xx versions ?

I definitely had goblins climbing to the roof of my 3 Z level high courtyard in 0.40.09(? a fairly early version of that arc anyway). It's not a matter of siegers ability to climb as much as them having a reason to do so, which basically means seeing something in a location they can reach by climbing and then go into attack mode (which is what enables usage of climbing). Having the siegers see your citizens/livestock through the open drawbridge before you close it may be a sufficient reason to cause them to climb. Having your marksdwarves on the top of the walls will cause them to climb (if they're quick enough, as the dwarven morons will jump down fairly quickly either when running out of ammo or their target moves out of reach).
Windows might entice climbing, but then the windows have to be protected against building destroying trolls.

[Findulidas]

have you noticed if invaders are finally able to climb your walls or if it's the same problem as in past 4x.xx versions ?

Yeah, they climb. Although not so frequently. Also not if they are riding anything. If you do a 5 high wall then its usually safe I found.

[Jazz Cat]

With regards to not using traps and walls: Do those make a pathing issue? My fortresses tend to be enclosed underground areas with one entrance, and the entrance is usually enclosed with walls/doors and has an impassible line of traps behind it. I've heard somewhere that to be sieged, enemies need a path from the border to your dining hall; would a wall of traps prevent them from pathing there? Or is it a matter of having things visible - ie, if all my *«≡furniture≡»* is underground, the goblins can't see it and don't think I'm worth sieging? I think my biggest problem is that I've spent so much time on the wiki that I'm radically overprepared.

...I don't really want to give up my traps, though. It's too much fun planning elaborate labyrinths full of pitfalls and magma.

[Findulidas]

If you arent prepared to challenge yourself then your forts probably wont fall. Homestly as ot is now its hard to get tantrum spirals and internal collapses anyway.

[Jazz Cat]

If you arent prepared to challenge yourself then your forts probably wont fall.

Yeah, that's what bugs me. I'm trying to find some ways around that.

[gchristopher]

The 40.X an forward versions of Dwarf Fortress do an extremely poor job of presenting the challenges that were reliably present in 34.11. Specifically:

- Goblin ambushes are gone. (Not sure what happened to them.)
- Sieges are still frequently a casualty of "world activation" where other sites might draw off sieges from your fort, or they might not arrive successfully. (Some steps have been taken to mitigate this, but even if you adjust all the siege triggers, the game rarely achieves the frequency and reliability of sieges that it once had.)
- The new stress-based dwarven psychology means, in practice, that dwarves are either destined to go insane and cannot be kept happy, or will not break as long as you keep up a bare minimum of happy thoughts. An individual dwarf's propensity to stress is pretty much the only stat that matters.

In short, Dwarf Fortress has had a lot of changes that are very interesting and sound neat, but the resulting gameplay has suffered, because the new systems do not actually produce as good results as the older ones. DF is not as good a "game" as it used to be from that standpoint, even if it does many new and interesting things as a simulation.

The main hope is that Toady will eventually circle back to gameplay, balancing, and tuning the game with an eye to bringing it back more in line with the gameplay experience that was the basis for its appeal, but that is probably years away. That makes sense, because with each major release cycle, he's adding entirely new systems that would each probably necessitate another round of game balancing.

As others have suggested, the best approach is to self-impose challenges to increase difficulty, with whatever building and military constraints make it feel hard again, or else explore mods once they catch up with the current version. The siege unreliability will continue to be a disappointment, sadly. It's worth noting that the newer versions have fixed a lot of annoying bugs, so I'm not sure I'd recommend going back versions either.