Print

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

[Shima]

Well, I lack a real life, but I also lack the ability and/or drive to make a community fort as well.

[Skid]

Smoke signals turned out to be another supply party headed north, our escort party met them just as a large pack of wolves sprang on them from ambush.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

All our brave warriors helped slaughter the beasts and guided the travellers inside.  Well, most of them anyway. One of their guards got a good look the scuttlers and decided to try his luck with them. Idiot. We'll have to remember to salvage his armor from the river eventually.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The trader himself was a really creepy old fellow with a scraggly beard and wild eyes.  He kept muttering to himself and demanding a fair trade, then refusing to part with more than a few items. We finally wrung a few pieces of cloth, leather, and booze out of him for a few coffins and the underwear of a kobold.  We didn't even bother to escort him out.

6 refugees arrived from the north shortly thereafter. They said that the camp to the north was wiped out by horrible monsters and wanted to shelter with us.  Listed and assigned, as follows:

Herbalist(Male): Assigned to farming, brewing, cooking, replaced Boddin.
Dyer(Male): Took up mining, mechanics, and masonry.
Potash maker(Male): Named Sargent Pepper and assigned to axe combat.
Hunter(Male): Recruited to crossbow patrol on the walls.
Armorer(Male): Nothing yet.
Craftsdwarf(Female): Also unassigned.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Over the winter we dug out individual rooms for the founding dwarves, dug a moat around the fortress, and discovered a magma pipe far to the northeast.  Despite the dire predictions of the new immigrants no orcs have appeared so far.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

------

And so spring arrives.  Here is the fort as it currently stands:
http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-6552-thebarricadeofboulders

About 29000☼ wealth, 13 population, 2 dogs, 3 puppies, horse, muskox, and running low on drinks.

Questions:

How shall we deal with the fire imps? There are about 4 of them down in the pipe. I'd personally go with a row of cage traps backed up by marksdwarves.

Dig more comfortable living space or exploratory mining for iron?

How should we treat the elves when they show up?

Who wants an immigrant and what should the two unassigned ones do?

[Ancient Thingy]

The fire imps should be pretty easily taken care of with the cage traps if you place them around the perimeter of the pipe with a few marksdwarves watching. If any survive the bolts you could try training them when the dungeon master comes. Guard fire imps ftw.

I think that mining for iron would be a better choice seeing as we might be expecting some unwelcome orcish visitors soon. Better unhappy dwarves than dead dwarves. Armorsmith could help Everett with getting some armor and weapons up for the military. The craftsdwarf could start churning out cheap rock crafts for the next caravan in exchange for booze and food or iron.

[Skid]

Oh, also, does anybody have some great ideas for 3 tile wide entrance defence?  I'd like to do something more interesting than 20 rows of weapon traps so something that uses pressure plates or levers as a trigger would be preferable.

[Shima]

I have an interesting form of 3-tile defense, but you need the tunnel to be long to pull it off.  Make the walls on either side 1-tile drawbridges, with fortifications behind it, and airlock-style drawbridges on both ends.  Let an enemy force enter, hit the lever 1, the corridor locks down, hit lever 2, the walls drop (Because they're 1-tile, no atom smashing), and Marksdwarves within can let fly.

[cowofdoom78963]

build a collapse trap, nothing can bypass the mighty collapse trap.

[Ancient Thingy]

I'm hopeless at fort defense strategies, but what I do think would be a good idea would be mini archer towers/subterranean barracks placed at intervals around the map (not too many in case of resources, 2 or 3 should be enough to begin with if spread evenly out). Each one would essentially be a little 2x2 or 3x3 two storey building accessible only through underground tunnels branching off from the main fort. Ideally there would be a well, ammo, armor, and food, but that's for the later game. Archers would be posted at the top and there could also be a little door at the front for the melee troops to charge out. Maybe looking something like this.

. = floor
< = up stair
> = down stair
o = fortification
# = wall
O = door 
X = up/down stair     
                   
z-1:
                ########
                # .......... #
######### .......... #
tunnel..........     <     #
######### barracks#
                # or range#
                # #######

z0:

#O#
#X#
###

z+1:

ooo
o>o
ooo

(can you place fortifications over doors?)

[Skid]

You can place fortifications in empty air so long as they connect at some point. They function like walls except with no floor on top. I'm going to go with a pressure plate activated bridge and pit trap for the first line of defence with marksdwarves overlooking it. All our melee units can mop up the survivors.  Later once we've got extra dwarves I'll look into putting some bunkers across the rest of the map.

New update will be posted around midnight (PST) tonight.  I think I'll try to stick to a Tuesday and Friday update schedule.

EDIT: My internet connection just went insane so it'll have to wait until tomorrow morning. :| It seems like the whole universe is out to get me sometimes.

[Ancient Thingy]

Heh, no worries The fort is going awesome by the way, keep it up!

[Skid]

Sargent Pepper got his first action playing guard while we gathered more wood for beds. His first kill removed three limbs from one of the scuttlers and threw it clear across the pond.



Another unexpected band of refugees arrived bringing our population up to 26. Most of them were tasked to cleaning up the rocks littered all over the fort and turning them into blocks.


One of them almost immediately snapped and demanded a jewellers workshop. He then proceeded to gather up most of our rubies and glue them together. The result was a rather pretty floodgate. We placed it in the dining room where bored dwarves could eat overripe mushrooms and stare at it for hours on end.


The results of exploratory mining brought us huge reserves of coal, flux, magnetite, haematite, small amounts of copper, and a trace of aluminum.  Iron chain armour is being created for all military dwarves.


Summer brought a small raider band of orcs, probably tipped off by some kobold we let escape.  They were quickly dealt with by throwing the muskox over the wall to lure the orcs up to the fortress and then filling them full of steel bolts. (Yes, that B is a beakdog. I'd never seen one before either.)


The imps took the the chance of our two marksdwarves going off duty at the same time to attack the metal works.  Resulted in three casualties of new immigrants, two fatal. The imps were beaten to death by recruited civilians which leaves two imps down in the pipe.


Construction of the trader's entrance is almost complete.  All that remains is to link up the bridges to the invader drop system, stock the marksdwarf gallery with bolts, and dig the last opening to the outside.

Marksdwarf gallery is one Z-level up and to the left, the floor is three z-levels down, and that irregular one tile wide path leading to the stairs is for anyone who survived the fall down to climb back out and have another run around. Melee units can be stationed around the corner at the bottom to catch anyone who got flung across or was just really fast.

All descriptions of the the artifacts that got made this turn:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[mission0]

I wouldn't use grindfells to keep magma in its place. However it may prove interesting.

[Ancient Thingy]

Yay, first siege of orcs. The armour that they leave will be useful for some melting down into better weapons for the military. Could I see a picture of Boddin's personality/current status?

[Skid]

First of all:

And it happens every freaking 10 minutes.  I'm going to have to start a soap industry just to get you out of my hair.

Second:


Bomrek went moody, grabbed a single bar of iron, and spent an entire month in the workshop forging a beautiful plate metal armor from it.  We all decided to save it and give it as reward to the first dwarf that reached champion weapons skill.

Artifact details:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Value:132000☼

Everett was more than a little irritated about the whole matter since I took him off of armor forging duty entirely over it.  He let off steam by decapitating a fire imp that popped out of the magma channel at that moment. Did it with his bare hands too.



By that time the orcs had gotten bored waiting around outside for us to open our gates and had wandered off to find easier targets. I took that opportunity to finish digging the new entrances and went out to cut some more lumber for the fortress.  I would have had Sargent Pepper accompany me but as soon as he saw me enter the barracks he threw himself onto his bed and complained of horrible back pains and showed my a tiny cut on his hand that he said required bed rest. (Brown upper back injury and yellow finger injury total.) I said that he could rot in that bed for all I cared.  Boddin was happy enough to come to the surface and kill scuttlers.



The first baby native to the fortress was born to the legendary gem setter Kosoth.

   

The orcs returned in force, two squads from each side of the river.  All civilians retreated to deep underground and the military took up their positions.

Movie: http://mkv25.net/dfma/movie-1579-flipbridges

The orcs were repulsed with no losses to our troops.  Boddin and Sargent Pepper descended into the pit to kill stragglers. We awarded Kolir the title of "The Lessened Gallows of Razors" some time during the drunken party that followed.  There is no official record as to what it means.

Could I see a picture of Boddin's personality/current status?

Gladly. Here you go.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Shima]

Looking good.  What's Kolir's stats?

Also, idea to make the pit more deadly: spikes.  Lots and LOTS of spikes.  Fill the whole thing up with upright spikes.  That should prove fun for them, and really show who earns their right to survive.

[Skid]

Not a bad idea, we are practically swimming in iron, or even steel if we want to wait for it to be processed.


Also, FireHeart is now a legendary engraver and Skriz is a legendary miner.