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Author Topic: Critique my fortress!  (Read 777 times)

GameHat

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Critique my fortress!
« on: July 23, 2007, 11:13:00 pm »

Hoping this upload is correct:

I present to you, HachetGlazed!

HachetGlazed, 1062

Year is 1062.  Fortress has been running for about 8 years now.

I'm at just about 200 dwarves.

My main problems:

1) Siege weapons still useless.
This is the first map I've tried to use them.  I have five operators set to do nothing but fire with the catapults.  Most are getting up in skill, but in a siege a year or two back when I set the ballistae to fire they couldn't hit anything.  Maybe I need better components?

2) Smelting/Smithing slow
It gets done, but takes a while.  I think having the main living/dining areas too far away hurt this.

3) Food production/processing all messed up

Anyways, I'd love some decent advice on how to build my next one.  I'll probably keep this one going for a bit, but it sure isn't efficient right now

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Mechanoid

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Re: Critique my fortress!
« Reply #1 on: July 23, 2007, 11:27:00 pm »

Have all of your smiths live next to the lava. Just be sure there are guards, otherwise they'll die a horribly firey death at the hands of magma men and the like. Also make sure they arn't allowed to haul ANYTHING. That way they'll always be available (unless they're on a break, in which case activating and deactivating them kicks them back to work)

Take your ballistae and put them at around where the trade depot is. Set your seige operators to the same standards as the metalsmiths, and make sure their beds are close to the weaponry and also gaurded. As well, since they arn't military, they can and DO get freaked out if the enemy gets too close, so use a channel that can be filled on-demand with water (or lava, whichever) to make them:
1. Stay the hell away from your operators
2. Line up for a nice torso splitting


For food... Turn those plump helmets into booze, and then cook it. Again, make sure your cooks and brewers arn't doing any hauling jobs.

[As a final note, make sure you turn that giant green glass bridge into many smaller 1-peice green glass bridges... One tantrumming dwarf, and everyone on that comes crashing down.]

[ July 24, 2007: Message edited by: Mechanoid ]

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Quote from: Max White
"Have all the steel you want!", says Toady, "It won't save your ass this time!"

GameHat

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Re: Critique my fortress!
« Reply #2 on: July 23, 2007, 11:32:00 pm »

Haha, yeah

Chasmed some clothing earlier and a clothesmaker flipped out, destroyed 2 of my 3 bridges across the chasm

Brought everything to a halt for nearly a year till I could get it back up

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GameHat

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Re: Critique my fortress!
« Reply #3 on: July 23, 2007, 11:35:00 pm »

Also - I actually had decent stores of food and alcohol previous to this year

However - I have like 5 seperate food stockpiles, got sick of it so skipped farming for a year to try to bring random stores down.

I'm trying to think of a way to get it all set up efficiently:

1) Cooks/Brewers have easy access to necessary ingredients

2) Prepared meals stored centrally

3) Pig tails nearer the weavers

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Fieari

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Re: Critique my fortress!
« Reply #4 on: July 24, 2007, 11:15:00 am »

Forget destroying bridges.  Your fortress terrifies me.  The roof is being held up by matchsticks!  A tantruming dwarf could easily take out any of those supports, and once that happens, the roof will fall!  Trolls too.  Of course, in both cases, the resulting cave in may help take out the violent person, but it'll also take out anyone nearby, it'll also cut off travel routes, and worst of all, it can destroy yet MORE masterworks.  If you engrave the floor, for instance, any masterwork engravings will cause tantrums.  But anything masterpiece nearby is in trouble!

I'd add more pillar to the main hallways, just in case.

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RPB

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    • http://rapidshare.com/files/70864746/scardagger_winter_1059.zip.html
Re: Critique my fortress!
« Reply #5 on: July 24, 2007, 02:00:00 pm »

Yeah, your fortress could really stand to be a lot more compact. You've got lots of unused/underused rooms and hallways spacing everything out. If you want to have some wide open rooms just for aesthetic purposes, place them outside of all your vital living and work areas. Don't bother carving out extra rooms for stockpiles (unless you need overflow space), use all that space you have around your workshops. Your forges would be working a lot faster if you used the empty space around your forges for storing ore and metal products. Ore is HEAVY so you want it close at hand so your smiths don't have to haul it very far.

Also consider piping some water over and getting farms going on the east side of the chasm so you have food available for metalworkers.

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Haedrian

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Re: Critique my fortress!
« Reply #6 on: July 24, 2007, 05:10:00 pm »

Looks cute ^_^

Don't like the insane amount of rocks/ores lying around on the floor though...

And personally I HATE supports, they're far too risky.

Also you have a gap in the magma defensive perimeter (to the south), and any creatures which pop up from the river have a good chance of turning up right next to your sleeping quarters. = Ouch.

Otherwise looks nice, and far better then anything I've come up with...

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puke

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Re: Critique my fortress!
« Reply #7 on: July 24, 2007, 07:14:00 pm »

what are those red X's ?  did you make BINs out of IRON?  on a heavily forrested map?  tell me it isnt so.

I agree that its very big and very spread out.

I do like how you have so much room for traffic to flow.  probably never have traffic jams and dwarfs walking over each other.  also, its nice how each dwarf seems to have their own room.  i almost never develop that well, i tend to pack them in barracks.

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Veroule

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Re: Critique my fortress!
« Reply #8 on: July 24, 2007, 08:46:00 pm »

Make a smaller farming room between your nobles bed/private dining area and the river.  If your farmers are halfway good that one small area can provide enough booze making stuff to cover 200 dwarves.  Use your current farming area for herbalism (gather plants).  Also clear all the ore and stone out of those areas, trees will hide under the stones and not get cut.

Siege engines are currently bugged.  They select thier range based on the closest unit in a plane from map edge to map edge.  So if you have a squad of goblins somewhere way to the north right at the face then the range will be set that close, instead of relative to actually hittable units within the cone of fire.  Take your catapults apart and reassable them facing a wall where you need to clear some stone.  Then set them firing.

Overall I think your pretty much screwed.  You could look at my fortress ClearCopper for an idea of just how 10 dwarves can rapantly over produce just about everything given some time.  When I made the sheriff go insane and lock everyone in thier rooms, and talk the 10 working dwarves into checking out a wall section for a floodkill; the food was up to 20k eatibles and 5k drinks.  Far too much, but that is what happens with a large shrub area and legendary herbalists.  Especially when there are only 25 mouths to feed.

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