Inspired by a certain conversation, I became intrigued as to how difficult I could possibly make the game, assuming the only goal is survival. Here's the succinct rules I settled on:
No foodmaking.
No traps.
Melee only.
Final destination.
That is, no farming, hunting, fishing or plant gathering. Caravans are my first and only food and booze source. No traps, cage traps or otherwise. No crossbows, siege engines, or anything similar. I found a 2x2 location in a goblin area (ensures early sieges? Yer goddamn right!) and made a huge 9x9 tunnel to my main rooms. No bridges, no doors, no running. I will meet the goblins head-on, or die trying.
To make things bearable for myself, the area is rich in chalk with a magma pool and, it turns out, iron. Also, I toned down arrow and bolt damage to 1/10 of its default value - this setup is already stupid, I don't need to make it crazy. To compensate I removed the [BABYSNATCHER] tag from the goblin civ. Every goblin "caravan" will be a full-on siege.
Play by play:
Year 1: Fairly uneventful. No running water, so I quickly dig reservoirs to drain the surrounding ponds - just in time too, they started evaporating at the end of spring.
Six of my starters were assigned productive jobs, and the last given a set of steel plate and hunting so he'd hold onto it. Of course, he up and gets mauled by a cougar while I'm not looking. Yellow lower body, brown lower spine. Ouch.
Food is holding out well. After emptying the dwarf caravan, I've stored ~300 booze and ~200 prepared food.
Spring, Year 2: Spring comes, along with 17(!) migrants. I assign most to pump ahrn for eventual military use, and fill out my moneymaking schemes with the rest.
A month later - fucking goblin siege! Twenty lashers led by a crossbowman! And my single suit of armor is ON THE GODDAMN WOUNDED GUY! Shit! I recruit all my pumpers to the military, and set them to lie in wait in the stairwell. Half run to grab random pieces of semi-armor, and half the rest are asleep or eating. Alright!
Shit! They can shoot through the goddamn stairwell! There goes that plan. You, the one guy who showed up to my squad station orders! Charge!
So, yeah. A mass recruitment later and the gobbos are barely chased off. I'm left with just fifteen dwarves, two yellow wounded (counting the fucker still wearing the steel plate). Of my original seven a miner, my trader, and the wounded guy are the only survivors. I've lost all my war dogs, though Armok willing their puppies will carry on their memory.
Summer, Year 2: Eight guys just arrived. Things are looking up. The human caravan never arrived, I guess the siege went into summer and scared them off.
I decided to field promote two newbies into the military, and kitted them out with plate. I'm risking training injuries, but having well-equipped guards is worth it.
A fey mood gave me my first artifact and legendary stoneworker. Looks like I'm going swordsies with obsidian.
Autumn, Year 2: I breached the magma pool and began rewalling to scare off fire imps. There's some mineable obsidian here - excellent.
The dwarven caravan arrived with over a thousand meat and fish. Hot damn. Some booze too - current stocks are 1200 food, 500 drink. I paid for it all with narrow giant cave spider lacy underthings. Note to self: when buying meat, ask for everything but purring maggots, cave crocodiles and giant anything. Too expensive.
Wounded guy got up! Prayse Jaysis fer this great mirahcle! More importantly, he took off his armor. Finally! Another pumper gets it, current military 3 wrasslin' recruits, 8-12 pumpers. Hard to estimate as I didn't keep track and they aren't all official pumpers yet. Wounded guy gets a mining pick instead.
It's not fair to just call him wounded guy. After all, he's been through a lot. His new name is "'Welfare' Zimkelonul, Professional Cripple."
And to top off an already excellent season, more migrants! Current pop: 31. I'm gonna need more pumps.
Spring, Year 3:
On ya'll's advice and my standard paranoia, I made a small winding tunnel in my entrance that's never more than one square long. I'm betting I can stack more guys at the end than will wander through at once.
Word must have got around, because the goblins came! The fight:
In my corner, eight wrestlers, kitted out in full steel plate and wielding exceptional or masterwork obsidian swords.
In theirs:
12 Goblin Macemen
8 Goblin Hammermen
6 Goblin Bowmen
1 Goblin Macelord
1 Gob Spearmaster
1 Gob Crossbowman
...and a partridge in a friggin' pear tree.
First casualty: my legendary stonemaster. Shit. Well, he made a good couple dozen awesome swords, proving his worth many times over. Rest in peace, whatever your name was.
The spearmaster arrives first, and just plows through my armored squad. No contest. He finally gets stabbed by one of the last surviving members. "Bottleneck?" Feh! It just concentrated the victims for him!
My backup pumpers engage his hammermen. When there's only two left of them, I issue a general recruitment call in a last-ditch attempt to swarm them and scare them off, which eventually succeeds.
I'm down to eight guys. Three are red-wounded, two are yellow. I'm left with a wrestler, a carpenter and a peasant. If I don't get some migrants toot sweet, I'm screwed harder than a japanese schoolgirl in a tentacle manga.
The peasant keeps trying to set a meeting with my miner/mayor, who's got a yellow and nowhere to rest. So the meeting starts, then he blacks out and it cancels. Eventually my legendary miner with a pick is going to tantrum, and when he does the peasant will be right there. Boy's got the stupid, I can tell you that much.
My armorer went crazy, muttering about "drums in the deep." My miner goes dehydrated and miserable. My woodworker finally finishes carting corpses and makes a bed for the miner. Things are looking u-
And my wrestler, the red wounded one, goes berserk. Yes, he's still wearing steel plate - taking it off wasn't the highest priority. Yes, he's still holding a masterwork obsidian short sword - yeah, that one's my fault. He scythes his way through my wounded sparing only the miner, who blessedly hadn't been moved yet and is still dying of thirst down a corridor. So he does.
-Withered-
Your settlement has crumbled to its end.
Next time: reclaim!
Things I've Learned (will be updated continuously)
- If you make sure to buy out each caravan, food can be easily come by. My first attempt, I spent too many starting points stocking up on food. A little more booze, 70ish food, and the rest put in dogs would have helped more.
- Having your fighting area separated from the rest of your fort by a shaft of sunlight and "Dwarves stay inside" will not stop civvies from rushing in to loot corpses and dying. Manually forbidding everything that falls is still the best way.
- Corridors suck. They put your guys on an even footing with theirs, and there's many more of them. If the gobbos are allowed to spread out a bit, that's more sites of engagement for your troops.
- Swarm. Goblins stagger their entrance. You don't have to. The more of your guys occupy a single area at once, the better your odds. It doesn't matter if they're fresh recruits or even civs just called up, they'll help.
- Don't bother with pumps. Your guys need war training ASAP. A few sparring injuries are acceptable losses - bed them outside to spread out the gobs.
[ May 16, 2008: Message edited by: InquisitiveIdiot ]
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Topic: Dwarf Fortress: Hard Mode (Read 2602 times)