While experimenting with reclaim mode, I accidentally found a way to seriously ramp up the difficulty of certain kinds of maps. I mention it in passing in the Terraforming thread:
http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php?topic=23559.0but I thought the discovery was so interesting that it deserved its own topic.
The idea behind terraforming was to send in an advance team of dwarves and alter the the terrain to my liking, and then use reclaim mode to settle the newly shaped land. It's kind of like using embark mode as a map editor.
It is also possible to send in a team of dwarves to make certain kinds of regions far more dangerous for future expeditions. I call this technique (ahem) "terrorforming".
This is how it works. Whenever you reclaim a map, any creatures that are linked to special features get respawned. It doesn't matter if the original monsters are still alive or not, every special regional tile gets an additional load of monsters. By successively reclaiming and abandoning feature-rich maps, you can create hordes of bloodthirsty monsters.
So far, I've found that the following features work:
Chasms
Caves
Underground Rivers
Underground Pool
Magma Pipes
I don't think that this works with HFS, since I'm pretty sure that they are generated by a special script during play, and not placed during map generation. I'm not positive about this.
"Naturally" appearing creatures don't get respawned.
If you check the terraforming thread, you'll see that I was able to populate a feature-rich map with hundreds of monsters very easily. It's a really
fun site now.
Terrorforming is pretty easy to do, but if you want to create specific effects, it requires some technique. My original idea was to terrorform a map, and then try to settle it with a standard seven dwarf expedition. This is harder than it sounds, because reclaim mode automatically gives you a number of dwarves proportionate to the number of monsters on the map, maxing out at 35. What's more, the past generations of failed reclaimers will litter the map with cast off items, which might not be desirable if you're trying to emulate a "virgin" settlement.
What I do is use my very first embark team to construct a Dwarf Crusher. The Dwarf Crusher consists of two 10x10 drawbridges placed on flat ground, placed side by side and both linked to a single lever placed directly in front. You can then draft everyone and station them underneath the crusher. Undraft a single dwarf and have him pull the lever. This will completely destroy all of the stationed dwarves and their gear. If you put a meeting area in the kill zone, there is an excellent chance that the civilian lever puller will reenter the kill zone just in time to get pulverized.
The Dwarf Crusher will remain on the map for future generations to experience and appreciate. You can easily crush entire reclaim parties with this thing with only a minimum amount of effort. A few notes:
1) When reclaiming, the lever starts out forbidden. It took me forever to figure this one out.
2) The Dwarf Crusher will age and decay over successive expeditions if it doesn't get used. If you want to keep the crusher, but don't want to bother with crushing each and every intermediate reclaim party, be sure to pull the lever once every other expedition, or it might not be there later when you want it.
3) If you don't get all of your dwarves, the survivors are likely to tantrum and will probably destroy the Dwarf Crusher. If you miss a few, it's probably best to quickly abandon the fort and accept a minimum amount of clutter from the survivors then to lose the crusher.
4) You can further reduce clutter be having your intermediate reclaim parties bring no gear with them. Create a profile to make doing this quick and painless. Don't forget to use a normal setup when doing your final embark!
5) The final thought of most of your dwarves will be "admired a well designed bridge recently."
The other, more serious obstacle is reducing your final reclaim party to seven without losing your chosen seven to insanity. This is hard, because with 35 dwarves, everyone will start out with about a dozen friends. What I've found works is to let the dwarves idle for about a minute. With so many dwarves confined in such a small space, they will socialize very, very quickly. After about a minute, almost half of your fort will have taken lovers (if the wagon's a rockin', don't come a knockin'). This will promote them to "ecstatic." Select three lucky couples and one undersexed dwarf (if the mayor is single, he is ideal for this, because being elected mayor gives a lot of happiness), and get them the hell away from the Dwarf Crusher. Execute everyone else and hope that they can handle it.
You should now have a band of seven over sexed, suicidally depressed dwarves in a barren wasteland filled with several hundred monsters that are still crapping out the remains of the last dwarven expedition to come here. Congratulations!
Other ideas:
Instead of using the Dwarf Crusher, you can try feeding your unwanted dwarves to the monsters. Undraft them so they drop their weapons and armor, and then set up a meeting area in monster central. Every monster that kills a dwarf will get named, which is cool. I don't know if this makes them more powerful, but it certainly makes for more interesting engravings.
Author
Topic: Terrorforming (Read 1936 times)