I'm sorry, Bauglir, and I mean this with the utmost politeness, but did you not notice that you're in the Suggestions forum? As in, it was a suggestion, not a commandment written in stone, or a threat to anyone's good time.
Also, I'm not ToadyOne, so why it seems to be necessary to you that I spell out every possible configuration of every single idea I ever come up with, is beyond me.
Go ahead and think for yourself whether or not my idea has any merit.
And then, if you think it does, feel free to run with it. It's a free idea. No copyright attached.
If you don't, why that's fine too.
No, no, really it is. I'm sorry but it does not matter to me whether or not you like my ideas. You or Lego or anyone else not liking any of my ideas doesn't so much as muss my hair. That's your issue, please feel free to deal with it by whatever means you think best, but please try not to drag the whole thread down by those means.
Personally, I still like the idea just fine.
I'm also not beholden to anyone to care about what you think is a good or bad basis for anything I say or do. I can't understand why you'd even think I would? Have you played DF? It's pretty much make it up as you go along. If Lego has a good idea, that he happened to pull out of his ass, then good for him for coming up with a good idea. The fact that I actually used something that's atleast been established within the community for some time, instead of just making it all up on the spot, I would think would be worth a little credit, rather than disdain.
As far as your own idea about the food etc. spoiling gradually, but continuing to do so as the clowns respawn, that seems a lot worse case of painting players into a corner to me, since there won't be anything at all you could ever do to prevent it, with clowns now respawning. The badness would happen over, and over, and over, until yeah, your booze will finally give out, or your steel artifacts finally crumble to dust. If something's going to go bad, let it go bad once, let the player deal with it in some final way, and move on to something else interesting.
Trees grow back, more booze can be distilled and the lack won't actually kill your dwarfs, as long as you have a watersource, more food can be grown, and processed (I never said all the plants, just all the trees-which could still be harvested for wood-and not towercaps at all, and again, it was just a suggestion), and rusty items can simply be cleaned with a little oil, for instance. All that happening at once might be very difficult to deal with, but not impossible. It's hardly "Game Over". And maybe only one of those things happen, or to follow your train of thought, maybe they happen gradually, until you kill say the leader of the first wave of clowns.
See right there how I took your suggestion and adapted it?
This is not a no-win situation. The sky isn't falling. It just takes some creative thinking outside of the tiny little box I provided, to come up with solutions to such a suggestion.