I haven't seen much discussion of the empty wagon challenge, which is a pity since it's a lot of fun. Essentially, this is when you start with an empty wagon and seven unskilled dwarves. This is not quite the impossible challenge it seems; in fact, it's my favorite way to start a fortress. Even though it may appear that you do not start with some of the essentials needed by dwarves to operate, like alcohol, tools, or any way to get materials needed to build workshops and constructions, you can still be sitting pretty by the time the fall caravan arrives. Here's my usual modus operandi:
- You will not have alcohol since you will need the precious three logs you get from deconstructing your wagon to build workshops and eventually a trade depot. My experience has been that you MUST pick a map with surface water that will not evaporate or melt in the the course of the spring and summer. Running water is better than stagnant for the purposes of dwarf happiness but is not entirely neccessary.
- Streams and rivers are probably out since you won't be able to cross them (no materials to spare for a bridge) and your initially unskilled dwarves will be easy pickings for waterborne nasties. Stick to a map with a brook and settle near it so that your dwarves aren't always going on long hikes to drink.
- You are starting with an empty wagon, but this does not mean you are empty handed! Before you send everyone off to fish or wrestle unicorns, remember that you are starting with three logs and two pack animals. Build a butcher's shop and a tanner's shop and now you have two bone stacks, two meat stacks, two leather and two tallow stacks. Things are looking up! Pull down the butcher and tanner's shop and build leather works, a kitchen and a craftsdwarf's shop. Now you can do all sorts of fun stuff!
- Where you go from here depends on your playstyle. If you find that constantly tearing workshops down to build new ones is annoying, you can bring along five or six additional logs at embark; in my experience this saves a lot of exasperation and remains true to the spirit of the challenge (they'll only cost 10-20 dwarfbux in all, about the same as bringing a no-adjective skilled dwarf).
- I usually pursue the hunting and animal products production cycle, which uses six kinds of workshops and works best by training up six dwarves:
A Hunter, who I start with leather armor, a leather helm, a bone crossbow and bone bolts, all of which are produced from the byproducts generated by slaughtering the pack animals. As long as you can keep her supplied with bolts, she will skill up quickly in Marksdwarf, making her a lot less vulnerable to getting hurt (at first, she is the dwarf most at risk of injuries). Don't make your mayor the hunter! She could easily die before the caravan arrives, and in any case it could be a pain in the ass to get her back to trade at the depot when the merchants come.
A Butcher, who will slaughter the game from the hunter. Butchers skill up very slowly since it takes a long time to butcher wild animals and the process doesn't grant many skill points. (Tame animals are butchered instantaneously for some reason.)
A Tanner, to tan hides for leather. Tanning doesn't take long but tanners need to be unoccupied as long as skins are coming in or they will rot. My tanner usually gets really tough by leveling up his social skills during the waits between skins.
A Leatherworker, who will gradually create a full set of leather armor for the hunter as more and more skins come in. Once the hunter is fully kitted out, my leatherworker usually makes waterskins (biggest profit margins and skill increases) or bags (which will be needed if you end up moving on to a surface agricultural cycle after the wagons come).
A Bone Carver, who will make bone bolts and skull totems, as well as bone greaves and gauntlets for the hunter once he's in full leather. Bolts are vital for continued hunting success; skull totems are a decent trade good (and the only real use for skulls). The bone carver will be busy all the time; the leatherworker makes one item from each animal, while the carver must make two or more (A skull totem and at least one bone item depending on how dismembered the critters coming in are.)
A Cook who arguably has the second most important job after the hunter. Your dwarves will be generating a lot of unhappy thoughts- no chairs, no tables, no alcohol, sleeping on the ground, getting rained on, no weapon racks to admire, etc. etc.- and +groundhog tallow roasts+ are one of the few ways you can make them happier. The cook will always be busy rendering fat and making meals, and as long as you don't deplete the local wildlife, you will have way, way more food than you need. This is good- you can trade cooked meals with the caravan for way more that you will get for skull totems and leather trinkets.
Your seventh dwarf will not be involved with the cycle at all unless one of your other dwarves dies. You can keep him as an unskilled hauler, have him fill in for dwarves who go on break, set him to gather plants (which will quickly get him to legendary on a forested map and provides a bunch of raw materials for when you get brewing set up), or have him fish and the tanner clean the fish.
When fall comes around, I disassemble my workshops, build a trade depot, and wait for the caravan. It's a good idea to stop the hunter from hunting as nobody will be able to process the corpses and she will use up all your bolts.
If you are lucky, you will be able to trade for a pick and a battle axe, at which point you can proceed as you normally would. If the merchants don't bring them, don't panic! You still have a lot of options-
If you only get an axe, you can still make tons of workshops our of wood as well as bins and barrels, which will make agriculture a lot more feasible. If I only have an axe, I usually switch from hunting to cultivating a rope reed plot, which will supply you with cloth (a trade good), alcohol, and food (from seeds and alcohol). If the caravan brought metal ores or other rocks, you can make a quern or a millstone and waterwheel and get a dying industry up and running simultaneously. Goods made from cloth are very valuable, since dying that your dwarves perform has quality (dyed cloth brought by caravans is always lowest quality.)
If you only have a pick, you can move your fortress to the safety of the underground and start a rock products industry, or make use of the numerous leather bags you have by now and start milling longland grass, cave wheat or sweet pods to make incredibly valuable cooked foods. You are still shit out of luck when it comes to alcohol, since you still can't really make barrels. Buy all the barrels, barreled goods and alcohol you can get from the caravan, and make do refilling the barrels as best you can once they empty. Try making two separate food stockpiles, one only for drinks, and set the maximum barrels of the other stockpile to zero so that your barrels don't get filled up with food.
If you don't get a pick or an axe, you won't have much to trade with the elves except maybe some plants and plant-based cooked food if you have an herbalist; otherwise, everything you make will have bits of animals in it. It's a struggle if you don't get either tool, but you shouldn't have any trouble surviving the winter if you keep hunting. By the time spring rolls around, your hunter will likely be a legendary marksdwarf;seize whatever you want from the elves with impunity.
So tell me, how do you guys play the empty wagon challege? Is there a radically different way of surviving besides shooting up dozens of critters?
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Topic: A few thoughts on the empty wagon challenge (Read 2365 times)