Starting numbers at our little fortress were at around 42 dwarves. Time seems to move quickly here, so please excuse me if my updates are brief and more far between than they normally would be.
The first thing I did upon arrival was getting oriented. As I walked in, the dwarves pointed out an 'atom smasher' that they were quite fond of, but I really had little idea what they were talking about, so I decided to just leave it for the time being. The setup was definitely not how I normally do my forts, but it seems to have its advantages. My main confusion was at the lack of bedrooms and the orderliness of the stockpiles. My first concern was with the bedrooms, though, since I like my dwarves to have a place of their own to sleep. I decided to go with a fairly easy
setup (map link) that added over 50 rooms. In Spring there was a small ambush (just one or two groups) that surprised me, but they went down quickly and ended up being only the tip of the mountain.
A lot happened in Summer. Caravans arrived (more than one at a time!) but when I looked at our stockpile we seemed to have a lot of the necessities and very little to trade, so I just let the traders rest before they moved on. Unfortunately, ambushers decided to come with these caravans and there must have been some following each of the caravans, since there were definitely a lot of them. There were relatively minimal losses (only a dwarf or two), which was surprising but definitely a good thing. Also, the first wave of migrants for the year arrived, bringing our numbers to the low 60s.
Fall started out with a bang as one of the dwarves was possessed. The dwarf was able to complete a horse leather cloak that was pretty impressive, but couldn't remember any of it.
There were multiple possessions and other strange moods throughout the year, but this was the only of the three to go to completion. The third hit just as winter turned to spring again, but his demands seem to go beyond our capacity to provide, so I hope the next leader can meet them. Anyway, back to fall. By now the bedrooms had been completed for a season and half and another project had been completed, as well as an operation to fill out the number and types of workshops. Craftsdwarf workshops had been built and some peasants from a new wave of migrants were given the task of turning mined stone into trade goods. This second wave of migrants brought us up to about 75 dwarves. Then we got attacked again. This time they just kept coming and coming and, even though our military performed admirably, we lost 6 dwarves to the assault.
Winter was very uneventful compared to Summer and Fall. The main focus was on reorganizing stockpiles and making sure things were all set for the next overseer. There was one more small ambush that was easily dealt with and that was pretty much it. I hope the next leader doesn't have too much trouble with the ambushers. We have managed to capture some of the ambushers over the course of the year, so they may want to have some fun with them. Also, some elephants were captured in the cage traps, so we tamed them and they are caged in the dining hall with the rest of the animals. They did start breeding before they were caged, so we have some elephant calfs in the cage if I recall. That's a program that could be used for many different aspects of the fort. The military suffered some losses but I did not replenish the numbers, so that should probably also be done at some point (most of the dwarves are wrestlers, so it would probably be easy enough).
All right, that's it for my year at Quickaxe. Good luck to those that live in the fortress as well as to those who pass through!
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Topic: High-FPS Succession fortress - Quickaxe (Read 8014 times)