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[mareck]

Today i started my first team game with a friend.
It did not go so well, he started by playing the first year, then i got the game.
I am a programmer, everything should be efficient by standard.

When i got the fort nothing really matched. Firstly i found a unguarded back door that a Kobold had used to get into the fort(On a map loaded with trogs and ratmen). There was no defenses, 4x4 rooms for workshops(3x3), no design used for the fort and only 70 booze.

I got a shock and started fixing the fort, making it all efficient, correcting room sizes(3x3), controlled farming, a BOOOZE industry and 'some' traps.

He did not take a liking to this as i was removing his design and called the game off. Now my question is, should i have left the fort in disarray or was doing the dwarvenly thing the right way to go. ?_?

[Demonic Spoon]

THis is the fun of succsession games, you have to deal with other peoples wacky designs. You don't like his designs but you don't quit you change them. IF he doesn't like your designs and quits then tough for him.

[Gergination]

I agree, the whole point of succession games is trying to manage people's various ideas about how things should go.  This usually leads to hilarity and/or a great deal of fun.  Especially when magma and unmarked levers are involved.

[dragnar]

Yeah, think what Boatmurdered would have been like if everyone actually agreed on how to build!

[Kravick]

I'm with the OP.  I'm just to damn much of an OCD efficiency nut to try team or succession games.  Its not so much everything has to be OCD perfect, they just have to make sense.  Everything must be built from blocks, everything that can be in bins/barrels must be in bins/barrels, entrances trapped, must have custom stockpiles set up near workshops/farms, workshops must fit inside their properly sized rooms (3x3 5x5 etc), EVERYTHING must be smoothed and I absolutely refuse to put a stockpile on an unsmoothed floor.

The only time I ever deviate from this is when I am setting up temporary walls, workshops and stockpiles on the surface to get things started when I first embark.

Of course if I ever did decide to play a team/succession game I'd just keep telling myself, "Unoptimized forts are "FUN"!" and I'd make the best of it.  I wouldn't quit simply because something doesn't go my way or it isn't perfect.  I would certainly try to fix what I see as broken but if someone did the same to my designs I wouldn't quit ether.

[Frogwarrior]

Is it really that inefficient to have larger than 3x3 rooms for a 3x3 workshop? I mean, I put my workshops in 5x5 rooms so I can put custom stockpiles RIGHT NEXT to them, and I never have to worry about running out of space.

[XSI]

When in a successiongame, I find it to be usual for people to build on eachother's designs, not remove them, it's part of the Fun when they leave a big hole somewhere.

Besides that, I feel if someone changes things during his/her time in the fort, then that's their business. Don't like their changes, then simply revert them when it's your turn again.

I always build chaoticly, yet it all makes perfect sense to me, I can only imagine it drives the other people who view my forts insane trying to figure out what goes where, especially with rooms inside other rooms, stairs going everywhere, and other things placed all over the place. Yet, to me, it's the perfect design, it's always smoothed, and made of blocks wherever possible, and I never fail at optimising efficiency if I go for it.

I spend most of my turn making a monument to myself though.

[Frogwarrior]

When in a successiongame, I find it to be usual for people to build on eachother's designs, not remove them, it's part of the Fun when they leave a big hole somewhere.

Besides that, I feel if someone changes things during his/her time in the fort, then that's their business. Don't like their changes, then simply revert them when it's your turn again.

I always build chaoticly, yet it all makes perfect sense to me, I can only imagine it drives the other people who view my forts insane trying to figure out what goes where, especially with rooms inside other rooms, stairs going everywhere, and other things placed all over the place. Yet, to me, it's the perfect design, it's always smoothed, and made of blocks wherever possible, and I never fail at optimising efficiency if I go for it.

I spend most of my turn making a monument to myself though.

Hehehe, making a monument is always necessary. I recently had my first ever turn at a succession game, and I was more impressed my what was missing than what was disorganized - there was no dyeing, no shops, no labels on the levers, and despite one person's ambition to build a clear glass ceiling over a hole in the ground, NO ashery.
(And no giant room for my personal avatar complete with lava moat and goblins to knock into said lava moat, but I remedied that RIGHT AWAY. )

I even contributed to someone else's megaproject, a massive pump stack for the purpose of filling an entire hollowed-out mountain with water, to the point where when I found the underground river I even did the work of diverting it over the chasm.

But my proudest accomplishment was building a mural of a dwarf, giving the raspberry Westward. Mocking the goblins is ALWAYS a good plan.

[sdu]

I'm with the OP.  I'm just to damn much of an OCD efficiency nut to try team or succession games.  Its not so much everything has to be OCD perfect, they just have to make sense.  Everything must be built from blocks, everything that can be in bins/barrels must be in bins/barrels, entrances trapped, must have custom stockpiles set up near workshops/farms, workshops must fit inside their properly sized rooms (3x3 5x5 etc), EVERYTHING must be smoothed and I absolutely refuse to put a stockpile on an unsmoothed floor.

The only time I ever deviate from this is when I am setting up temporary walls, workshops and stockpiles on the surface to get things started when I first embark.

Of course if I ever did decide to play a team/succession game I'd just keep telling myself, "Unoptimized forts are "FUN"!" and I'd make the best of it.  I wouldn't quit simply because something doesn't go my way or it isn't perfect.  I would certainly try to fix what I see as broken but if someone did the same to my designs I wouldn't quit ether.

>< How is making everything smoothed and built from blocks optimizing a fort? It sounds like a really inefficient use of dwarves time meaning a fort is running un-optimally (is that a word?) which in effect means your head should explode from all the time you put in to un-optimizing your forts, given your OCD status.

Bleh, who needs sentences when you can do it all in 1 paragraph?

[Skorpion]

My design strategy works well for succession games. The turn I had a while ago ended up with me losing a whole load of dwarves putting handrails on the chasm bridges, giant bats, and mining accidents, and starting a forest fire.
Then I re-sited the trade depot and set up a drowning system with typically unlabeled levers. Although I posted a guide to them.

Next time, I'm putting in a 'fuck the world' lever.

[Jude]

Ugh, I don't think DF would be enjoyable if I had to have pre-planned, efficient designs for my forts. I just let them grow organically. Also, smoothing everything is the polar opposite of "efficient." It accomplishes nothing, besides making your dwarves think the rooms are a little nicer, and wastes LOTS of time and dwarfpower.

[Frogwarrior]

The only advantage I can think of to smoothing everything is that it builds up detailing skill. That, and it looks a lil' cooler.

[Jude]

That's true, I guess if you just put one or two dwarves on smoothing duty, soon they'll be able to transform any room into a royal-quality via engravings.

Just wish you could engrave constructed walls. Is that on the list to get fixed in the upcoming release?

[mareck]

Smoothing i leave until the fort is completely functional.
Its not necessary but it is a goal factor so it should be done.
Room size, content and layout has a vast effect on the efficiency of a fort.
Having large wasteful rooms for your workshops takes up a more space, therefor pushing ur major stockpiles away, increasing walking time and thus the time per task drastically.

I don't mind doing inefficient work. Just don't do it in the core of the fort. Having an empty pyramid outside really does not bother me.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

If a little thing like the whole setup being changed bothered your friend that much then he's not really cut out for succession games. also being efficient is not bad and what you did was make it a little more orderly from your point of view. really what you did is what every succession game has done to it every other turn.

one more thing, did you ask him why what you did ruined it? was it just how you changed the setup or did you make some megaproject he had planned impossible?