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[Sowelu]

I was having a conversation about this very topic last night...  What gives DF so much replayability is that you have a bajillion options of different things you can do, and you just don't have the manpower or dwarf-skills or resources to do all of them early on...so you have to choose between a bunch of different options, many of which are essential for survival.

Having all those options lets you replay it a lot, and it goes different each time--but once you have more population and resources, it's easy to do everything you need to do, all at the same time.  And then forts start becoming very similar to each other, mainly differentiated by the challenges they're faced with...which is not much at the moment, besides "what sieges are going to hit us" and "how much ore is in this mountain".

Later stuff is going to be awesome!

[Erom]

Yeah, no water no soil is pretty brutal. I haven't been able to get a stable no water/no soil/no trade fort. I don't see how you would do it - aren't you doomed to thirst to death? No water/no soil already has you relying exclusively on trade for drinks and plants to brew.

It's a good challenge though. You have to ration and plan, get as much animal related food as you can so you have plants left to brew, any wounded dwarf is a goner unless they heal within 1 season (and the season boundary is relatively soon). You also have to kill seiges aggressively, since a missed caravan really hurts. And you have to make sure you always have enough trade goods on hand.

Doing it in an undead biome makes it really hard, since the only animals you'll have are whatever you traded off the elves plus what you start with, and chance are if you don't have soil you're in an area where the only caravan you'll get will be dwarven.

[LumenPlacidum]

Yeah, no water no soil is pretty brutal. I haven't been able to get a stable no water/no soil/no trade fort. I don't see how you would do it - aren't you doomed to thirst to death? No water/no soil already has you relying exclusively on trade for drinks and plants to brew.

It's a good challenge though. You have to ration and plan, get as much animal related food as you can so you have plants left to brew, any wounded dwarf is a goner unless they heal within 1 season (and the season boundary is relatively soon). You also have to kill seiges aggressively, since a missed caravan really hurts. And you have to make sure you always have enough trade goods on hand.

Doing it in an undead biome makes it really hard, since the only animals you'll have are whatever you traded off the elves plus what you start with, and chance are if you don't have soil you're in an area where the only caravan you'll get will be dwarven

It's not entirely impossible except without items.  Your initial supplies can last you for a little while.  In that time, you can hunt the local goats to get meat.  That meat can be used in traps made from the wagon wood to (hopefully) catch a purring maggot.  The purring maggot can be milked for dwarven milk, which can be imbibed, I think.

Otherwise, I can't imagine how you'd get fluids for your dwarfs.

[Archaeologist]

I hope to see in future versions of DF...

- Bigger Sieges, and more determination.  Whether the Goblins just have more courage, or the presence of lashers and local leaders there to encourage them, I want to see the Goblins attack relentlessly when they do siege.  A 80 Gobbo siege isn't that dangerous because they come from every direction and rarely arrive at the same time, and quite often just sending a few crossbow Dwarfs to pick a few off is enough to scare that squad off.

Hopefully with the new crossbow mechanics it will be much more difficult to scare them away.

 - For refugees to show up in later forts.  If I abandon my fort during HFS, or maybe even a Goblin Siege, or perhaps I just abandoned it out of boredom, it would be nice to see the refugees show up later whether as immigrants, merchants, etc.

[Zironic]

I can already see people making creatures with fiery skin layer, thin muscle layer, then alcoholic insides that explode when connecting with fiery skin layer via injuries!

[Aegis]

Cut off all the food/booze/clothes/booze/beds/booze supplies and watch as your dwarfs go mad... Who will be the last one to survive? He must eat the corpses.

[Tormy]

I hope to see in future versions of DF...

- Bigger Sieges, and more determination.  Whether the Goblins just have more courage, or the presence of lashers and local leaders there to encourage them, I want to see the Goblins attack relentlessly when they do siege.  A 80 Gobbo siege isn't that dangerous because they come from every direction and rarely arrive at the same time, and quite often just sending a few crossbow Dwarfs to pick a few off is enough to scare that squad off.

I am pretty sure that sieges will be much more challenging in the future. There are many threads in the suggestions subforum regarding enhanching the siege system. [Siege Camps, tunnelers etc. etc.]
Also, hopefully we will be able to modify the siege system ourselves in the future.
Some example TAGs:
[MIN_NMBR_SIEGERS:150]
[MAX_NMBR_SIEGERS:300]
[SIEGE_PETS:YES]
[SIEGE_ENGINES:YES]
[SIEGE_TUNNELERS:YES]
etc.

[ToonyMan]

There will be so many, they could climb each other to get inside you're fort!






*laughter*  *?*

[Archaeologist]

There will be so many, they could climb each other to get inside you're fort!


*laughter*  *?*

b
C

Wall + ramp.

Materials:  Goblin Corpse

[Noble Digger]

Dwarf Mode and Adventurer Mode complement one another marvelously. Don't overlook the game's Legends screen, which becomes available after your fortress crumbles. Search through the history of your dwarven civilization and learn about all the various attacks against your capital. Investigate the goblins that harassed you for a decade, learn the name of their leader, train yourself to legendary status and attack their capital, with the ultimate goal of dethroning their demonic leader.

As for your fortress, a mature fortress makes for an excellent and ambient tomb. As a previous poster suggested, build lots of deadfall traps, tunnels, secret passages, levers, pressure plates, magma and water pipes and pumps with switches to turn them on and off. Make a zelda-esque puzzle for your adventurer to navigate, wherein a false move floods the fortress with magma, ceasing all hopes of future exploration. Require the adventurer to spill water onto magma to make a bridge. Hide monsters and rig cages up to levers, creating exciting and death-defying experiences for the adventurer.

Then, upload the save file and give forumites directions to your old fortress site and challenge them to clear the labyrinth. You'll have to come up with a goal, of course, and don't forget that loose items (furniture, goods, armor, etc) get scattered when the fort is abandoned. Only buildings and placed furniture stay where they are, so you can't hide a bunch of treasure behind locked doors (it'll still find its way out). If you were awesome (if) you'd make a lever at the deepest terminus of the labyrinth, and whence pulled this lever would collapse hundreds of supports within the fortress and destroy it all, ending the deathtrap that has beckoned and claimed so many adventurers...

[Archaeologist]

Too complicated, and training always takes me forever....

Plus you have to tinker with the init to get traps in adventure mode.  If there was a more clear cut way to make a dungeon I'd love to try but it's too vague.

Also, what if you wall stuff in?  Does it still stay where it originally was?  Like, make a treasure horde room, and then before the Gobins/ Demons/ Humans/ Carp overtake the fortress, wall it away.  Dig out room with ample amount of surrounding rock, smooth, add treasure, Wall off entrance and add several layers of Block walls around it so as to prevent suspicion.  For Higher points, secretly make it part of the foundation for a large tower.

[PTTG??]

I think it still gets moved around, unfortunately. Be nice if items pathed around when abandoned.

[Skorpion]

I always resort to terraforming. And extending my curtain wall to cover it. My last successful fort ended up with me starting to drain every single pool on the map into one by use of screwpumps.
But then it bezerk spiraled.

[Archaeologist]

I've only ever had a single fortress ever tantrum spiral.  That was because apparently the single most popular Dwarf in the fortress got killed by a Goblin Snatcher that had snuck into the second story I was making, and thus popped right out into the middle of the fort's most populous passageway. 

So not only did a snatcher penetrate into the heart of the fort, and then kill someone right in front of everyone, then everyone flipped out watching the Goblin get murdilated.

"OH GOD THERE IS A BODY AND OH GOD STUFF"

[Archaeologist]

Once again in a triumph of Dwarven ingenuity, the noble workers of Mörulenkos, or "PagedTakers" as humans would butcher it, have completed a unparalleled planning and engineering.


Several years earlier the Dwarves had stumbled upon a giant chasm, a bottomless pit, inside the bowls of the fort.  Amazed at the size and depth of the chasm, they eventually realized that it reached all the way to the top of the mountain, save for two layers of rocks.

Many Dwarves argued what should be done with this.  Some said that it should be turned into a vertical spire hanging like a great stalactite.  The others thought the risk of the chasm too great and unnecessary in it's expense and scale given that their earlier plan for a arena had failed miserably.  Others insisted that this would be the perfect opportunity to complete the Water resevoir atop the mountain, which could be turned into a waterfall.  They however fell silent the moment other Dwarves asked how they would manage to finally figure out how to construct and operate a perpetual motion device for pumping out of the river all the way to the top of the mountain.

So in a fit of Dwarven brilliance.... they decided to simply carve it out, and let it fall, thus turning the chasm into a giant sky light. 

Never mind that a giant bridge had been constructed halfway down the chasm, or that many dwarves would likely be injured (as was the case with the last massive construction/ mining/ collapsing/ channeling project...

In order to commemorate the channeling of the last ounce of stone, the recent migrants to the fortress, including 3 peasants, a Gem Cutter, a Dyer, and a Soap Maker, were ordered to form a celebratory "guard" and take station in the center of the bridge.  They were not informed of the project that had been at work above them for the last year....