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[Starver]

Often (too often?) I aim to control the territory of the map. My version of Turtling which involves setting up an 'open' fort but with many closable/withdrawable elements such that I can isolate from any one (or more) side of the map if any hostiles arrives that way (while still letting in traders/immigrants if they have the good sense to spawn on another edge).

This requires a lot of walls, ditches, raising drawbridges, retracting viaducts, sally ports, pillboxes, etc, on the surface (which I insist on being thematically like-materialled to some pattern I decide on the day). Though I can do this on an  undulating embark, with both still and running water, it's easier just to find an embark area with as much flatness as possible, so far too many times I end up on a plain (whether desert or prairie, or perhaps something even more exotic, but I do prefer a place with trees and other vegetation).

Below this (and influencing the aboveground/sunk-into-ground layout) I tend to have the same (or nearly so) grid layout throughout each uninterupted stone layer (I increase the worldgen's inter-cavern spacing, to give me far more depth and opportunity) all aligned and connected with the same stairwell footprints - and where there are caverns I carefully pass only the stairwells through that avoid connections (theoretically, or if I'm feeling like it, I'll create further sally-ports sideways into the cavern, but usually leave these unused and sealed except for 'entertaining' the occasional monster-hunter), ending and restarting the others at the points where they don't give access.

I extend all the way to the magma layer to create a magma-industry zone (I may side-tap a magma pipe, if there's a handy one, like I side-tap a handy cavern pool to fill my mid-fort well-cistern - never played too much with multi-vertical liquid-moving methods, just magmaducts and water-tunnels sideways mostly - and I've a reasonably foolproof/meproof method of accomplishing this without too much miner injuries).

I try to create exactly enough industry to use up every resource (I still tend to neglect milking of all the suitable animals I tend to accumulate, I do better with the shearing, and nut-pressing and onwards gets neglected) but I'm always so busy with the micromanagement and extension of digging/ditching/walling/furnishing so some things take a while to set up. (Farming tends to do the primary feeding job, and is often there before I can even arrange a water-supply for non-booze requirements.)


It's rather formulaic, complicated only by the additional elements that have been added since I started to refine it (such as incognito vampires, libraries/temples/taverns, petitions for citizenship, etc) and having to learn how best to deal with them within the scope of my multitude of personal self-restrictions and over-engineering for pointless (or needless) puposes.

I don't think many people would enjoy the results/wish to continue the regime of work if they were to ever take over my games. They scratch a particularly specific combination of itches that I think only I have. But it works for me, if I have enough hours to kill.

[Maloy]

I ended up not playing for several years as I always seem to end up making the same fort over and over again.  I embark with nothing but 2 picks and an anvil, gambling on getting to water and/or plants before everyone dies of thirst.  If I can make it through the first year I'm usually good to go, but I always seem to end up with the same general layout around maximum efficiency, magma forges, etc.  I get bored with the fort around 130 dwarves, once my militia has chewed through a couple of FBs and/or goblin raids and I've exterminated a few of the smaller goblin pits.

Since coming back, I've had fun learning the new mechanics around guildhalls and such though it took a while to remember all the bits and bobs of the military screens.  I keep meaning to explore different ways of doing things or arranging my fort, but somehow I always seem to end up with the same old thing 

I often do too! Efficiency gets priority a lot of times!
A lot of forts I set rules for fort development to keep it interesting
Such as a fortress that has to be built within or above the trees which led to a sort of above ground tunnel network between trees that started to look like cloud city by the end
Before that I aimed for an actual underground city. So instead of mining out passages that are bedrooms  etc they have to channel an entire underground region of the map and have actual buildings on them

My current one we channeled the entire map across 6 z-layers starting from the first time we hit stone on downwards. Only thing I left was 5 towers of stone. All fort activities have to be handled there. The rest of the new cavern layer will be filled with enough water to let plant life grow so it can be a sort of sanctuary forest for our dwarves and their critters


That's all out of character for me though. Usually my goals are more socially oriented. Dwarven civ was destroyed by three goblin civs? Time to bring them back and wipe out a scourge!
Our kingdom is ruled by a dwarf with goblin values and wants to rule the world? Let's make her immortal and actually go conquer the world!

Stuff like that. I just pop my worlds into legends viewer find the stories and run with it

[Syndic]

In no particular order (often parallel):

- Turtle underground. More traps and drawbridges, MORE!
- Conquer the lands above (minus fliers). Wall off section by section! Access through tunnels, closable by drawbridges.
- Set up industries. All of them.
- Play with minecarts. Stockpile all the things. Cuss at the impeding FPS death, try to fight hoarder instinct.
- Breeding programs! Can I get *wild* elephants (...) caught? Those don't need to graze! What big cats will the elves bring me?
- Consider megaprojects. Maybe wall off the map to the top of the sky? Maybe split the fort into isolated mini-forts, one per industry, only linked by minecarts (making sure nobody can traverse the minecart tracks)?
- Start said projects
- get more and more frustrated at FPS loss, consider (but refuse) to limit gameplay fun for FPS optimization.
- start playing other games/read/watch movies on the side while DF runs slowly
- stop starting up DF on the side while playing other games/reading/watching movies

...

- Be reminded of DF, consider the fun it is to play
- Download the newest version
- Turtle underground ...

(OK, so there ended up being an order after all)

[Maloy]

- Breeding programs! Can I get *wild* elephants (...) caught? Those don't need to graze! What big cats will the elves bring me?

I never even thought of that. Here I am with close to 40 tame elephants that I have to constantly save from starvation because no single pasture is big enough and I could've just done something like that!

[HMD Majesty]

We find Our Playstyle typically goes as follows:

Select a Civilization with few to - somehow - no extent Sites.  (For some mysterious Reason, We have yet to find a World with an extinct dwarfen Civilization.)

Found a Fortress.

Bunker the Fortress.

Found a Citizen Militia.  (We have tried forming a standing Army, and it didn't work nearly so well.)

Build the Fortress up for a few in-Game Years.

Retire that Fortress, and found a new One.

Repeat until Something breaks.

[delphonso]

(For some mysterious Reason, We have yet to find a World with an extinct dwarfen Civilization.)

I see you are also a man of fine tastes.

This is basically what I do every time. Dying civs are much more fun than dead civs. Though it would be nice to be able to retire a fortress without goblins immediately filling it with 3000 invaders.

(Dead civs are very uncommon unless the civ immediately gets slapped down before making more sites. My current world has two dwarven civs on the back foot, but both exist because somewhere, one of their members has a camp. And even that is more than some other games I've played. Anyway, here's a few dead civs I made when 47.02 first came out. vjek also can help you in the world-gen cookbook thread.)

[Syndic]

I never even thought of that. Here I am with close to 40 tame elephants that I have to constantly save from starvation because no single pasture is big enough and I could've just done something like that!

If you want to go for something like this, check your biomes to see what is available in them.
I almost always embark with at least one savage biome so I can get giant <whatever>s in my cage traps!

Also of note: if I go that route, I usually keep the wild animals in cages (to minimize pathfinding, and also risk) almost all the time. I have chambers where I release them briefly for breeding purposes, cage-trapped paths out of the chambers making sure I can put them away again.

(Animals in cages can finish a pregnancy just fine, but they don't get pregnant if everyone's caged AFAIK. DO make sure the cage-trap corridor is long enough for all animals you release in the breeding chamber!)

[FantasticDorf]

(Animals in cages can finish a pregnancy just fine, but they don't get pregnant if everyone's caged AFAIK. DO make sure the cage-trap corridor is long enough for all animals you release in the breeding chamber!)

I take time to entertain myself with yeti's and the few cavernous creautres who can't be tamed, troggs and trolls too mainly as a if needs be defensive distraction because they're slow learners and can breed without marriage by simple contact. But be aware they'll be on a schedule to leave en-masse and babies will rush for the exit to the sides of the map.

You can just name-mark the built cage structure for your own reference before you "recollect" the molemarian corpses and such in little itty bits leftover from live training, or/and have a dry-run of a traphalls functionality.

[HMD Majesty]

(For some mysterious Reason, We have yet to find a World with an extinct dwarfen Civilization.)

I see you are also a man of fine tastes.

This is basically what I do every time. Dying civs are much more fun than dead civs. Though it would be nice to be able to retire a fortress without goblins immediately filling it with 3000 invaders.

(Dead civs are very uncommon unless the civ immediately gets slapped down before making more sites. My current world has two dwarven civs on the back foot, but both exist because somewhere, one of their members has a camp. And even that is more than some other games I've played. Anyway, here's a few dead civs I made when 47.02 first came out. vjek also can help you in the world-gen cookbook thread.)

Thank You.

[Maloy]

(For some mysterious Reason, We have yet to find a World with an extinct dwarfen Civilization.)

I see you are also a man of fine tastes.

This is basically what I do every time. Dying civs are much more fun than dead civs. Though it would be nice to be able to retire a fortress without goblins immediately filling it with 3000 invaders.

(Dead civs are very uncommon unless the civ immediately gets slapped down before making more sites. My current world has two dwarven civs on the back foot, but both exist because somewhere, one of their members has a camp. And even that is more than some other games I've played. Anyway, here's a few dead civs I made when 47.02 first came out. vjek also can help you in the world-gen cookbook thread.)

I tried to get a dead civilization that had lost all its settlements and people to three goblin civs. No rulers or anything when I checked legends viewer

but when I started the fort the civilization was still alive
and a couple years later we had all new leaders who were from legends
turns out we had several dwarves still alive who were prisoners of goblins and all near the end of their natural lifespans

but it qualified as still being a living civilization!

[delphonso]

Yeah - in 44.12, I tried to "rebuild the civilization" thing by making forts on an island. The civ was dying, not dead, despite having no living members for 200 years except a single goblin troubadour. Upon embark, a queen and king appeared on the mainland seemingly ex nihilo.

[Bralbaard]

Yeah - in 44.12, I tried to "rebuild the civilization" thing by making forts on an island. The civ was dying, not dead, despite having no living members for 200 years except a single goblin troubadour. Upon embark, a queen and king appeared on the mainland seemingly ex nihilo.

I prefer the same play style and have had this happen as well. You might like to know that retiring and immediately unretiring the site made the king move into the fortress in my case.

[Urist9876]

Reading this forum, watching Twitch or YouTube to get inspired.

Once so inspired, I start working on a fortress to accommodate the new ideas I picked up or want to test myself.

Then I often get sidetracked and rebuild my fortress similar to old ones and quit the project to start over at step 1.

[gchristopher]

I've hit the point where I know FPS death is the only true enemy and my challenge planning a fort is to get as many interesting potential things happening (sieges, megabeast attacks, 15 neighboring necromancer towers, thralling dust, freezing weather), as possible, for as long as possible, before the game inevitably grinds to a halt from the cumulative weight of bugs and world-activation side effects.

Beyond that, I turtle quickly (because thralling dust is a must-have, but also impossible to defend just with melee dwarves, because until washed off, the dust instantly jumps between combatants), and work first on basic defense and caravan protection (typically attacking the map edge with bridges and constructions), and then on Farming All The Crops and gradually building an interesting place for dwarves to live, ideally with a mix of surface and subterranean.

Here's a few common quirks:

- Go through every dorf's preferences and any that prefer doors, hatches, or floodgates are immediately trained as masons. That way, if one of those masons gets a strange mood, the fortress gains a building-destroyer proof entrance. An artifact door will hold off absolutely anything except kobolds, gremlins, and (I think) some newer necromancer experiments that might randomly get [CANOPENDOORS]. Can't emphasize this enough- mason/carpenter strange moods are critical.
- Add [HUNTS_VERMIN] to all the stock giant cat types in the game, and hope I can have a fortress full of Giant Tigers catching mice.
- Embark with piles of All The Colors of stone for color-coded levers and bridges and such.
- MINIMIZE DIGGING, block off unused tunnels, and in general, do everything possible to reduce pathfinding burden of dwarves. Pathfinding is the path to FPS death. This also makes quantum stockpiles a strict necessity, as well as aggressively limiting the total item count and atom smashing as much as possible.
- This also means that the primary occupation of the dwarves rapidly becomes hauling and destroying corpses and dropped items from necromancer sieges, which are much easier to get than goblin sieges now. (Just use dfhack to relocate a bunch of towers nearby, vs. goblin sieges where you have to risk bugs to send an attack to get their attention, and then pray they come back after you.)

From there, my experience is the same as Syndic's, especially:

- get more and more frustrated at FPS loss, consider (but refuse) to limit gameplay fun for FPS optimization.
- start playing other games/read/watch movies on the side while DF runs slowly
- stop starting up DF on the side while playing other games/reading/watching movies

EXCEPT, right now I stopped playing DF because I was trying to design an optimal Squirt Gun defense megaproject, but need to get more clear on my definition of optimal, and also work through a few different minecart quirks before continuing.

[Maloy]

I feel like I'm in the minority for generally doing roleplay-based forts

Like I can come up with cool projects specifically for the fort, but if I can't find something about the civilization or world setting I like and wanna interact with it'll be really short lived