Print

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

1) Players will turn in their fortress as-is, at no additional penalty

45 (60%)

2) Players will be given a short extension, dependant on how near they are, and how many players are unfinished

27 (36%)

3) Players will be disquallified from scoring

2 (2.7%)

4) Something else (please explain)

1 (1.3%)

Total Members Voted: 75

[Spartan 117]

I'm not going to be able to judge, sorry.

[Slogo]

I think project naming should be part of the criteria and should be presented before final reveal. I'm really looking forward to Cobolt's projects based on name alone.

I'll name my projects but they'll all be incomplete seeing as there's no way I can finish out my next 8 seasons today (I wasn't able to get any time in yesterday).

Oh well, if I can just complete a little more of what I have people will be able to see where I was going with it all.

On a side note does anyone else think 8 years is too long? Doing years 1-5 is pretty fine, they go by quickly as you have less dwarves. But doing 5,6,7,8 are significantly slower paced if you are trying to do intricate work while keeping 100+ dwarves busy. I'd say I've been spending something like 50-75% of my time paused queuing up new walls or orders for the dwarves in 105. Meanwhile if you don't keep all the dwarves busy you won't reach your full potential (see Martin's map for what I mean by potential). I know right now I have 1.7million wealth but if I were to get to year 8 I'd probably be right around Martin's, my wealth is low because all my dwarves have been consumed building, mining, hauling, and only a skeleton crew making actual valuables.
In the future I'd vote for 6 or maybe 7 year challenges rather than 8.

[Boksi]

I'm still here, I'm just lurkeeeeeng, just lurkeeeeeng.

[Martin]

Yeah, 8 was pretty long. From a survival sense, I think everyone has that assured as soon as they survive their first siege. 4-5 years should be sufficient. This one needed to be harder on the survival side, but it's nearly impossible to get a site which is challenging over an extended period just due to how the game works now. Maybe the next version will address that.

The constructions really didn't take much time for me - I'd pause and then designate a level on pretty much all the constructions at once. I've got a decent system for that now. The collapse was horrible, though - particularly when an entire level of water was draining and the framerate would drop to about 1, but that was pretty unique to this project. When I was channelling, that seriously sucked from a pause/unpause perspective, but I came up with methods to address that. I'll write them up this week.

I did almost all my wealth in the final year. 5,000 iron bolts and another 1,000 copper/bronze ones. Native aluminum furniture. It adds up fast.

[Albedo]

Iron plate mail, too, if you've got the smith for that.

I'll name my projects ...

If not "name", at least a label.  Judging "the tower on the left" vs "the project in the tower on the left" can get confusing between judges.

On a side note does anyone else think 8 years is too long? Doing years 1-5 is pretty fine, they go by quickly as you have less dwarves. But doing 5,6,7,8 are significantly slower paced if you are trying to do intricate work while keeping 100+ dwarves busy.

There are ways to keep population down, and Created Wealth is not (afaic) a "survival" criteria.  However, this is exactly why I could not compete - with more years you are not only testing the competitors, but the competitors' computers - and while "I" might be up for it, my tubes-and-hamster-wheel PC ain't.

The RL time was good - this shouldn't (imo) be a speed/marathon challenge, a month of "every night, every weekend" - but the DF time was just too much (and for many competitors as well, it seems.)

[Slogo]

Maybe it's just unique to my projects then. The way everything hit for me it was difficult for me to plan out very large amounts of mining (though I could have done better I suppose) especially since I'd occasionally need the miners free for other tasks (obsidian farm notably). On top of that my masonry projects involve a lot of scaffolding building/removal so there was a lot of deconstruct floor -> construct wall -> repeat. Then all the little things that pop up like mandates, canceled jobs, furniture placement, etc.

Another thing that hurt me was that my dwarves weren't in their final residences until about mid 105 so that also added a lot more setting up and moving stuff later on.

There are ways to keep population down, and Created Wealth is not (afaic) a "survival" criteria.  However, this is exactly why I could not compete - with more years you are not only testing the competitors, but the competitors' computers - and while "I" might be up for it, my tubes-and-hamster-wheel PC ain't.

I was under the impression that highest 'baron' level achieved and created wealth were also worth points for the fortress. Even if not I need all the dwarves I have. I'm very easily employing the services of all 100 dwarves, most of whom are masons or miners.

[Martin]

I didn't move my dwarves into housing into pretty late on. I've found that the more mundane things (like installing furniture) you can put off, the better. Your population will go up, their agility/strength will go up so they work faster, and the mundane stuff will go much faster. Early on focus on the things that are serialized - the stuff that needs to be finished before you do something else. I always seem to hit windows later on where dwarves are a bit idle because the masons haven't quite finished a tower level or the miners finished digging a place out. That's when I have them plop down furniture or haul some stone, that kind of thing.

[Vieto]

rather ironically, housing was one of my projects XD

[Slogo]

Yeah that's pretty much how I did it. Dwarf time-wise my stuff is going great, ahead of schedule even. Which is surprising considering that my stockpile layouts were horrendous and haphazardly laid around (even now they're pretty bad).

[Jim Groovester]

I won't be able to finish. Sorry.

I was really looking forward to submitting the final map, too, but I didn't have enough free time with a computer.

It was still very fun to give it a go, and I learned a lot during the process.

[CobaltKobold]

Ugh. First, a cave-in bug(sans mining, levers, or d-n) knocked 4-5 (I don't know HOW so many fell in, since it was on a single-tile walkway) into a tile of magma, then a small error on my part caused some dwarfs to go "Hey let's let out this magma" and kill as many more, then DF segfaulted on me. there is no backup save from spring.

ABEND Green Glass Tile Floor END Rough Alunite Block Wall END Dwarfx10 ABEND DF ABEND DFM2qualify(CobaltKobold)

You will be seeing the map when I'm done anyway, though.

edit: and now, a zoom bld crash. ARGH

[Albedo]

Ugh. First, a cave-in bug(sans mining, levers, or d-n)

The only "cave-in bugs" that I know of are due to a delayed cave-in that was inevitable to begin with - you dug or removed the wrong tile, you just had a grace period.  (I ~think~ this can sometimes happen when floor-bars are involved, not sure.) (Could be wrong, tho' - if I am, love to know what the known C-I bugs are.)

[CobaltKobold]

One's not a bug but a race condition-if you deconstruct the orthogonal floor (if it's the only support) that someone's using to construct, they'll not cancel the job, so it'll construct (floor) without support, which dwarfs usually avoid on their own.

The one that's a bug is that a couple of walkable things (retracting bridges, grates) don't support constructions on their own, and dwarves ignore this, so you get insta-cave in on finishing construction if you go floor-grate-floor, say.

Retracting bridges do support retracting bridges, though, so the 10-square limit isn't real.

another crash. I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS WINTER FOUR TIMES 

[Martin]

One's not a bug but a race condition-if you deconstruct the orthogonal floor (if it's the only support) that someone's using to construct, they'll not cancel the job, so it'll construct (floor) without support, which dwarfs usually avoid on their own.

The one that's a bug is that a couple of walkable things (retracting bridges, grates) don't support constructions on their own, and dwarves ignore this, so you get insta-cave in on finishing construction if you go floor-grate-floor, say.

Yeah, that one will bite you hard. I probably spend more time working around that than almost anything else.

Retracting bridges do support retracting bridges, though, so the 10-square limit isn't real.

Are you kidding me? How did I not know this?

[ventuz]

I had ideas going around, downloaded map and see if I'm up for it...

I get this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

*** STARTING NEW GAME ***
** Loading Fortress **
The Stray Dog (Tame) has been struck down.
x2
The Stray Dog (Tame) has bled to death.
Dakost Mebzuthreg, Miner/Smith cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Erush Bavastkol, Cook cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Ducim Sodelisul, Farmer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Catten Kekimasmel, Woodcutter cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Tosid Deduknanir, Engineer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Erush Bavastkol, Cook cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Mebzuth Ineths krith, Overseer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Ducim Sodelisul, Farmer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Catten Kekimasmel, Woodcutter cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Tosid Deduknanir, Engineer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Mebzuth Ineths krith, Overseer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
The Stray Dog (Tame) has been struck down.
Ducim Sodelisul, Farmer cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Erush Bavastkol, Cook cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Ast Sarveshgusil, Miner/Weaver cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
Catten Kekimasmel, Woodcutter cancels Store Item in Stockpile: Interrupted by Fire Man.
x2
x3
The Stray Horse (Tame) has burned to death.

Now I dunno if I'm up for it anymore.

*edit haha, I just realized too late, on wrong month I guess.