Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Martin]

I also have the suspicion that the male planter is somewhat shy. He seems to leave the meeting place where he was whenever someone else enters.

I had that problem with one of the females that immigrated in that inadvertently large group - she was busy mining (okay, no free time) and then we were ambushed before the settlement was secured. She killed the entire squad and on the way back for a beer, got ambushed again, and killed all of them.

No matter how little work I give her, the guys won't go near her. I mean, she's totally covered in goblin blood and vomit, so I understand being a little standoffish, but who better to keep the kids in line?

[Mook]

Dwarven personalities actually come into play when determining where they go when idle/on break.  For example, if you have a dwarf with social anxiety disorder/hates crowds, or who feels that people are constantly judging him/her, then they'll always go to their room and stand or just try to go somewhere to avoid other dwarves. 

Might be worth checking the personality of your male dwarves, as they probably are incredibly shy/afraid of talking with others.

[numerobis]

My last-dwarves-in-the-world fortress has a huge wall around a huge chunk of terrain; took three years to build.  Then I gave everybody a year off to... get to know each other, if you know what I mean.  I screwed up at one point and opened a path into my fortress while catching some wildlife; that nearly cost me everything: before any marriages had been consummated, one member of each couple was grievously wounded.  But they both recovered, and 32 years in, I have over 100 dwarves.

[Martin]

Heh. My baby boom (31 children, 36 adults, pregnancy now capped at 100%) is paying dividends. 5 children in a row have gotten fey moods. At this rate they'll all be legendary stone/wood/bone crafters by the time they are adults.

Oh, and the elves just showed up, walked into an ambush, elf camel immediately goes berzerk, kills the entire gobbo ambush and all the elves and pack animals. I want war camels now...

[BloodBeard]

Deathworks:

Do you have Dining tables or anything designated as meeting halls for parties?

[Deathworks]

Hi!

It is strange. Actually, the planter who regularly ran out on people 'does enjoy being in crowds'. I suppose he went to a meeting place, waited there alone, and just as he decided to check, someone else finally entered.

Well, no lovers yet, but the party of the miner was a successs in at least having the female hunter finally get to meet everyone in the fortress (remember, after 10 years, she still didn't know a single soul in the fortress (^_^;; ).

I noticed an odd thing, though. My trader liked to "check chest" - however, not her own chest in her room, but rather the chest in the room of the late miner (^_^;; (the other dwarves regularly visit that room to admire the billon cabinet he had owned in life).

Numerobis: I am glad to hear that things worked out for you. I am really grateful for Toady fixing the healthcare system to what we have now. And, of course, your story gives me hope.

Martin: Well, as long as you have what they are asking for in materials. But this is really interesting.

War-camel? Well, I heard that the real life animals had a temperament, but I never expected them to be that nasty. Single-hoovedly killing an entire ambush group is not an easy deed - did you notice the name of the camel? After all, you can probably look forward to some interesting engravings in the future :) :) :)

BloodBeard: Currently, I have the following meeting areas:

* A simple dining room with maybe 7 or so sets of chairs and tables (the original meeting area created right on arrival in the sand)
* The active well has also been declared a meeting zone.
* A platinum statue sitting on top of the first forge's hut declared a statue garden
* A decorated gold statue surrounded by tin statues as an open-air statue garden (this was the location of this winter's party, and I built this just this year).

I have to admit that letting the dwarves take free time is really a challenge. There are so many things I want to build, so many projects I want to continue. As the party ended and the elves arrived, I decided to at least do the digging for future tombs, so that I have some more granite at my disposal (I need it for my plans to expand my fortress to take over more of the map), but I am trying to be gentle and give my dwarves a break. My stores of metal crafts should still be sufficient to buy all the interesting things from the dwarven caravan.

So, all I can do is try to free up my dwarves and hope.

Maybe I can attract some noble for breeding ... I have to check the requirements for the economy (in 2D, I think it was minting coins...).

So, still no marriages, but I am happy with the fortress. Okay, the well is one tile too close to the burial areas, hampering my design a bit, but I think I found a solution looking not too awkward (this time, I had the well go to the bottom of the map to away any accidents :) :) ).

But at this pace, I don't think I will be able to stick with my original plan of writing a small story about the place - there are simply too many small events.

Originally, I wanted to write about this fortress as a place basically created by dissidents/outcasts. The expedition leader, who dislikes authority, felt smothered back in the mountain home by the strong presence of the hierarchy. Hearing rumors of a beautiful mountain in the Elven realms far to the north, she was able to garner royal support for an expedition there (those directly above her in the hierarchy probably also supported this scheme just to get rid of her). Together with her best (female) friend (my bookkeeper) and five other dwarves, she set out, following first general directions given by Elven traders, crossing a lot of land (the Dwarven civ is in the Southern part of a medium map, more towards the West, while the mountain is in the Northern part more to the East) and then finding their goal with the help of the local Elves (the encounters with the Elves teaching them to respect their skill with the bow and the wilderness).

Actually, the immigrants also fit in nicely with this idea as one of them was also anti-authority.

Oh well, next time maybe.

Deathworks

[Martin]

Martin: Well, as long as you have what they are asking for in materials. But this is really interesting.

War-camel? Well, I heard that the real life animals had a temperament, but I never expected them to be that nasty. Single-hoovedly killing an entire ambush group is not an easy deed - did you notice the name of the camel? After all, you can probably look forward to some interesting engravings in the future

Feedbeguils the Parched Handle the one-humped camel, d. 236

Mean bastard. Killed 5 other camels, I think it was.

And I found my underground river - it's 20 z-levels above my pasture area, and right next to the volcano. There's a separate underground cave lake just north of it at the same level. I might dump the river into the volcano and scumsave just to see what happens. They're only about 15 tiles apart.

I had one fey mood right after the camel massacre. No mention of him. Maybe the next one. I've been averaging a bit more than 2 moods per year, which is pretty remarkable. I wonder what controls that? Short of someone demanding adamantine or pitchblende in their mood, I shouldn't have a problem. I'll try and post the fortress tonight. I need to make some space for the ungodly large files that DF outputs.

[Rysith]

I had one fey mood right after the camel massacre. No mention of him. Maybe the next one. I've been averaging a bit more than 2 moods per year, which is pretty remarkable. I wonder what controls that?

It's around 50% a season that you have the requirements (enough underground space dug out, and enough dwarves). Check the wiki for details.

[Deathworks]

Hello!

I figured I would do a little update, even though things are going slowly. Right now, my own computer is running Winter 2025. Still no new lovers, and at the moment, I am really working my dwarves very hard.

The thing is, the pool feeding my well is relatively small and the "pipeline" to the reservoire is very long, meaning only little really arrives. In addition, I have found that I have extremely little rain on this map (sometimes just one shower per year, and the showers are barely enough to raise the pool a single level in each tile).

First thing I did was add a floodgate so as to avoid draining the pool completely when I open its floodgate as the pool would never refill from rain water only (IIRC, after opening the floodgate, the pool dried out completely, and I had to order it to be filled with water from the well after a big rain shower to get above the 1/7 mark again). However, I miscalculated this (really stupid mistake), so it doesn't help that much.

There is a pool of about 8 tiles size nearby, and I have started digging a connection channel (watching the water supply closerly).

However, my biggest project is connecting a 6 tile pool via an aquaduct with the pool. Except for iron grates to cover its top, the aquaduct is ready now, all I have to do is wait for rain to refill the pool so I can start filling the aquaduct (all in all 6 floodgates in that one).

So, I have been rushing my dwarves into production of stone blocks and building constructions this last year. Let's hope rain comes soon (I have been waiting more than half a year now (^_^;; ) and really does its thing.

Deathworks

[Emmanovi]

Currently, I have the following meeting areas:

* A simple dining room with maybe 7 or so sets of chairs and tables (the original meeting area created right on arrival in the sand)
* The active well has also been declared a meeting zone.
* A platinum statue sitting on top of the first forge's hut declared a statue garden
* A decorated gold statue surrounded by tin statues as an open-air statue garden (this was the location of this winter's party, and I built this just this year).

Just a thought, but I remember trying to make my own no-immigration fort, and I noticed nobody was marrying. I think this was because I was making my own little monastery, and so I had a number of "temples" designated (statue gardens in various shapes). I ended up with dwarves running around from one place to another, and even if they stayed still, there were rarely two next to one another.

If you want to encourage relationships, you could try un-designating all but one meeting area, and leaving just one small one. Keeping people cramped many be a little mean, but it does wonders for relationships in my experience. =]

[Deathworks]

Hi!

Well, after long hesitation, I actually did the undesignating of the meeting areas, leaving only the gold statue and the well as meeting areas.

However, I also couldn't resist and expanded the resources for feeding my well as the original pool was way too small.

For your enjoyment, I have uploaded the current map, Spring 2029 of the fortress to the map archive, along with the embarkment map of 2009 so you can see what I have done. I know, it is not much considering that my dwarves have toiled 20 years on this, but I think it looks okay thus far:

http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/map-4580-wheeledchews
http://www.mkv25.net/dfma/map-4579-wheeledchews

While I still don't have lovers, at least one of my immigrant dwarves has made their first friend. (Sorry for being so vague, but I mix things up too often between the two).

Well, I have a few thousand worth of trade goods and just prepared some metal bolts to sell to the next dwarven caravan (the best trade item under the current agreement (^_^;; ), so I can give my dwarves some time off. I even stopped farming for food, as I still have large reserves of food and drink left, and if need be, I can buy such things cheaply from any of the three caravans.

One of my male dwarves is actually also my biggest worry. Mosus is the only dwarf who likes cats, so he suffers from the burial bug (cats not getting buried). By 2029, I have had several waves of cats dying of old age, and it always drops him to very unhappy. He regularly visits Uvash, my expedition leader, at first crying on her, but later yelling at her to feel better.

In 2028, he even threw a tantrum, and felt better after starting a fist fight. Actually, that "fist fight" was simply him mangling (red wound) the front right leg of one of his pet cats. The cat got killed by a trap half a year later (^_^;;

With the important construction projects by and large finished (I still need a few iron grates for the aquaduct's cover and finish the trade tower with imported stone), a big pile of trade goods in my stockpiles, I think I can concentrate on getting my dwarves to actually start dating.

Deathworks

[Deathworks]

Hi!

I wanted to update people on this as something surprising (but actually unrelated happened). It is now early 2036 and I still don't have a new pair of lovers. I had phases of complete idleness at the fortress, but also a lot of activity. I am getting the feeling that I won't see any lovers with the 8 dwarves currently in the fortress. Well, population cap is 5, so theoretically, unless I have the last 5 dwarves all die of old age in a single year, I guess my hope lies with immigrants (^_^;;

Anyhow, I wanted to report something completely unexpected.

This spring, as the year changed, I got the announcement that the world had entered the "Golden Age". I have to say that I was rather surprised.

I know that changes in the age during play are possible (heard a lot about the adventurers killing megabeasts/wiping out civs), but I never expected this fortress to cause it. After all, as far as I know, the outside world is not simulated by the game, so it must have been something on site.

I am in a world without active goblin civs, so it can not be anything related to goblins. I regularly get visited by kobolds, but about three quarters of them are able to escape unharmed (unless they mess around with a caravan and get slain by a horse (^_^;; ). The fortress itself is not producing that much wealth, even though I am doing a little rose gold and bismuth bronze crafting for trade (however, both of these are imported). I do not have an active military and only one dwarf with a military skill, namely my former huntress.

I did have 2 or 3 dwarves reach legendary status during the last year, but I never thought that a legendary woodworker and a legendary miner would move us into the Golden Age.

I do have one dwarf who has earned an additional name because she has smashed a few kobolds, but that name was gained already a few years ago (2031, I think). She still has no military skill, though (well, it's my trader/bookkeeper who is a legendary appraiser/recordkeeper/woodcutter and has nearly all attribute gains possible).

I guess, the game never ends to surprise you (^_^;;

Deathworks