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[Martin]

Overview
DF Masters Competition is a Fortress Mode competition held between Dwarf Fortress players, who compete for points in a predetermined scenario. Players earn points based on completing objectives, and based on scoring by their peers. Each scenario will have unique rules and scoring methods, but in general scoring will be based on things like constructions and specific challenges, and will also be judged on traits such as the organization, beauty, toughness, and originality of the fortress.

This round will work as a hybrid between the judging of the previous two competitions and the honor system challenge of the DF Masters Challenge in that competitors will still upload maps and there will be judging, but there will also be an honor system reporting for some items and some measures will be objective that can be taken from various screens. Everyone is trusted to follow the rules.

Round 3 will begin with competitors who have 3 weeks to construct their fortress. They have exactly 8 in-game years to build their fortress, after which they must save their map file, and upload it to the DFFD for peer review and judging. Judges then grade each competitor's fortress, and the winner gets forum fame and the admiration of dwarves everywhere.

DFM1 Competition
DFM2 Competition
DM Masters Challenge

Round 3 Theme: Trailblazer

Round 3 is a true master challenge, not because of the embark conditions, but because of the unknowns of a new game version. Players start with little understanding of the new version and have to adapt quickly without the benefit of other's experience to serve as a guide. As such the focus is on making the most of the new features, the larger number of subterranean levels, creatures, and so on. It is expected that contestants will pave the way for new knowledge and serve as guides for other players. There are several scoring areas, some subjective, some objective, and are listed below. If this challenge was run today in d40, it wouldn't be difficult. The challenge begins now!

Rules and Guidelines

• Competitors must use the one of the two maps file provided here: DFM3 Embark Map 1, DFM3 Embark Map 2. It is STRONGLY recommended that players use the 2nd map as the first one is nearly impossible due to undead issues.
• You have exactly 8 in-game years to build your fortress and prepare it for judging, from Spring (1st of Granite) 1051 until Spring (1st of Granite) 1059 for map 1 or Spring (1st of Granite) 551 until Spring (1st of Granite) 559 for map 2.
• Make sure to save a backup copy for each Spring of every year of your fortress. These will be submitted with your final fortress. These are not used for scoring, and are instead for charting each competitor's progress, and for emergency rollbacks as described below. Players will also need to upload their fortress maps to DFMA.
• Savescumming is NOT allowed, though competitors are encouraged to save seasonally as new versions can be buggy. You may roll back one season if you encounter a bug. If your fortress crumbles not due to game error, you may roll back only to the previous Spring save.
• Aside from graphics-related mods, you must be running the standard, unmodified version of Dwarf Fortress indicated, as found on http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/. Again, because this is a new version, there may be frequent bug releases and competitors will be allowed to move to newer releases. (I'll provide guidance on this as we go along.)
• Enemies, sieges, and hostile animals must be able to path into your fortress at all times. This means that you may not have your fortress completely sealed during an attack, such as with a dry moat and drawbridge, or even by locking doors. Traps halls that will kill every enemy are allowed, so long as enemies can find a path through them. The ONLY exception to this rule is if you haven't yet bridged a river, chasm, or other map feature, and an enemy is on the opposite side.
• The following game features must be active:
  [TEMPERATURE:YES]
  [WEATHER:YES]
  [INVADERS:YES]
  [CAVEINS:YES]
  [ARTIFACTS:YES]
  Rent may be on or off. Economy may be on or off. There are minimal if any changes to economy, so there should not be much to explore there. Competitors may adjust the popcap and childcap, but some of the scoring areas will benefit from larger populations, so a low population may put a fortress at a disadvantage. There are likely to be more details added here once I see the init file.
• Competitors may not use any utilities such as reveal, tile editors, stat editors and so on.

Goals and Scoring

1) Build a subterranean monument to Toady in appreciation of the new version. The size and nature of the monument is left entirely to the player, but it must be subjectively considered the most significant project and be in some way thematic and fully contained below ground. Incorporate new subterranean features into the monument. Scoring will be judged on a 1-5 scale each for aesthetics, use of new terrain features, utility, and dwarfiness. 20 points possible awarded by judges.

Judges will be looking for innovation here. What was discovered and incorporated? How were new features exploited? How magnificent is your offering to the creator of worlds?

2) Assemble a military. Scoring will be judged on a 1-5 scale each for overall utilization of new military features, and preparation and organization. Competitors will need to report a few of these details to assist the judges, and fortress offensive/defensive design will be considered. Two final objective scores will be given to the top 5 most powerful militaries as measured by the number of elite soldiers and their skill levels, and to the top 5 most effective militaries as measured by kills with a penalty for killed civilian dwarves, merchants, and wagons. 5 points if you breach the HFS at least one year prior to the deadline. 25 points possible.

Judges will be looking for thoroughness here. Is there adequate weaponry? Is there a quartermaster? Sparring equipment? Logical squads with leaders? Proper barracks and equipment storage? Patrol routes?

3) Assemble a medical team. Scoring will be judged on a 1-5 scale each for overall utilization of new medical features, preparation and organization, efficiency. One objective score will be given to the 5 most effective medical teams as measured by dwarves that receive treatment and survive to the deadline (remember, in order to get treated, they need to get injured). Competitors will need to report a few of these details to assist the judges. 20 points possible.

Judges will be looking for thoroughness here as well. Is there a hospital? Is there enough medical equipment for an emergency? Do you have skills across medical disciplines? Are you prepared for long-term care of wounded? Can you handle a large number of casualties and can you get them from the battlefield to care quickly. Consider that this will probably be better judged if the hospital gets used, so don't be shy with your military.

4) Fortress operation. 1-5 points will be awarded to the fortresses with the most satisfied unique nobles (Some noble types create new positions as soon as one gets filled - only one of each type will count). Meet all of their specific demands for rooms and furniture (ignoring production orders) and they count. Appointed nobles must serve in the position for the final full year of the fortress. 5 points to the fortress with the most nobles, on down. 1-5 points will also be awarded to the fortresses with the best justice system as based on the number of prison days unfilled and the number of beatings undelivered. Fortresses must have enough chains/cages and a captain of the guard to qualify. 10 points possible.

No judging here, just a straight measure.

5) Other. Overall rating of the fortress - Up to 5 projects or experiments that were impossible under the previous version. This could include utilization of poison, new types of traps or defenses, innovative solutions involving subterranean features (removal of water, use of magma). Let's expand the wiki. Scoring will be judged on a 1-5 scale. 25 points possible.

Judges rate each of the following categories on a 1-5 scale:

• None (0/5) : Effectively nonexistent.
• Poor (1/5) : Not very good, it needs serious work.
• Fair (2/5): Moderate, but could use some improvement.
• Good (3/5): Nice, though it can be made a little better.
• Great (4/5): Very nice, it's everything it needs to be.
• Superb (5/5): Amazing, it goes beyond expectations.

Because we're learning as we go, and bugs and bugfixes may impact things, some changes to scoring and the goals may surface early in the competition. Surely there will be questions that need answering by me.

The competition starts now, April 2. Because of the problems with map 1, a new deadline of June 13 has been set.

Signups
Players may sign up as either a judge or contestant as in previous challenges, just reply below. A scoring guide will be provided for judges.

Competitors

• realmfighter
• Kelwyn
• Unintelligent
• smjjames
• Krelos
• S.K. Ren
• nil*
• Eztuzt
• wagawaga
• warhammer651
• Jim Groovester
• gumball135
• barconis
• Carpman
• Arathel
• Zore
• bmaczero
• Lidhuin
• Jetsquirrel
• Meta
• Urist Mcinternetuser
• purplearcanist
• Brisk
• darkrider2
• wilsonns
• Ultimarr
• Akhier the Dragon hearted
• Neyvn
• Jimmy
• kilakan
• Kipi
• Solifuge
• Moontayle
• Pineapple Skitter
• Josiwe

Judges

• abculatter_2
• Slogo
• Imp
• hachnslay
• Retro
• tbino
• Huggz
• Urist Imiknorris

[Martin]

Known issues
There's a bug affecting underground farming. You cannot farm on underground soil - it must be muddied first. Aboveground farming works fine. There are a LOT of other bugs and I'm sure Toady will knock them down quickly, so keep your eye on the bugtracker.

Weather is a problem (rain kills dwarves) so feel free to turn that off until the bug is fixed - but it should be turned back on once the bugfix is in place.

The saves are much larger than 40d - from about 8MB to now 40MB. That will probably require a change in the rules for fortress submission since DFFD has a 100MB max and I don't want everyone creating 4-8 files there. We'll come back to it later.

What will the site be like?

Download and see. Nothing too challenging, but rumors are that it might be haunted.

What about embark profile?

Everyone will embark with the same profile which I will select. No, you can't pick. No, I don't care what you like or don't like. Rest assured you won't be facing 7 milkers and a wagon full of lye. It'll be a rounded set, suitable for survival. Equipment will be similar. Nobody should be wanting for a pick or an axe. Nobody will be completely happy with my decision so just suck it, a wagon will arrive shortly.

When will this start?

It has started!
 
Question regarding rule #6: does this apply only to above ground, or to underground features too? If we breach an underground layer or HFS, are we allowed to wall it back up or must we leave it open?

Underground features as well since this version presumably exposes the underground to be a peer to the surface. More specifically, at any given time the majority of your dwarves (including non-military) must be able to path to ALL exposed map edges including the bottom of the map, except when blocked by natural features. That doesn't prevent having some dwarves locked off somewhere like in a lever room or something like that, but if some nasty wanders onto the map from the side surface, the side underground, the magma pipe, underground river, HFS, whatever - they must be able to motor in and massacre the majority of your fort. You can cage them, put traps before them, and all sorts of things - but you cannot block them outright using constructions.

To add more detail to this since questions have come up. The objective of this rule is to eliminate 'failure to path' as a defensive strategy. So long as the enemy has somewhere to path to (and presumably your dwarves to them) then you are in good shape. Now, this isn't designed to prevent active traps. If you cage them, you're good. If you drop them off a bridge into a pit, you're good. Basically, you need to do something *active* to them to take them off of their path. Closing a bridge doesn't count because the action is on the bridge, not on the invader, but knocking them off of a bridge is okay. If you endeavor to create a flooding chamber, sealing the chamber cannot also seal the fortress.

There will be times that you'll need to temporarily block pathing - digging channels and so forth before bridging. That's inevitable, but keep the time to a minimum. For example, during DFM2 I built a large glass viaduct over the collapsed map that blocked pathing. Before I collapsed the map, I had enough glass block available to build the viaduct and had 30 masons designated, so it was built as quickly as the game would permit.

Can graphic sets be used?

Yes. Any character/graphic changes are perfectly okay as they don't impact gameplay.

[Realmfighter]

I'm in as a player, just don't expect me to remember about this when the new version comes.

[Martin]

Player or judge? I'll message people.

[Kelwyn]

Count me in as a player!

[Untelligent]

Figuring out how to do something new quickly (not necessarily doing it WELL, mind you) is one of my strong points; count me in as a player.

[smjjames]

Sounds interesting, I really want to explore the new caverns. Not to mention it bieng my first DF succession game.

I'm not exactly big on doing big projects quickly, but I'm up for the challenge.

[Martin]

It's not a succession, it's a competition. You're on your own for the duration. Everyone has the same map and has to do something with it (with goals established).

I suspect there will be a zillion successions starting up with the new version if that's what you were looking for.

[smjjames]

Oh, still interested in the challenge since everybody will be trying different avenues and stuff.

I'm thinking of doing extensive cavern exploration.

Oh yea, we'd better establish rules on modding ASAP because I just had the thought of putting speed: 0 on my dwarves.

Edit: I would also like to experiement on stuff, so my fort will probably be seeing alot of that.

[Martin]

I'll post the rules soon. Look at the DFM2 rules as they'll be close if not identical. Basically, no modding at all so no speed=0.

[smjjames]

What about the use of stuff like Dwarf Therapist? I know Dwarf Companion and such would be out.

Also, I'm thinking of using the Mayday graphics (JUST the graphics) if possible, with the economic stone mod as well since the economic stone mod just makes management easier.

Anyways, yea I had that thought because I use it all the time to speed up cleanup or something and others could go even further.

[Krelos]

Sounds exciting, count me in! Player.

[smjjames]

Would it be ok to add the [PET] and [trAINABLE] tag to most creatures?

I looked at the rules and I know it says to not use dwarf manager, but all dwarf manager and dwarf therapist do is make it MUCH easier to manage the labor stuff.

Edit: Sign me up as a player, if that wasn't clear already

[Martin]

Would it be ok to add the [PET] and [trAINABLE] tag to most creatures?

I think first out of the chute, we should keep the game as vanilla as possible (especially as we don't know the full impact of doing that), but I'll consider permitting that for future challenges.

[smjjames]

Would it be ok to add the [PET] and [trAINABLE] tag to most creatures?

I think first out of the chute, we should keep the game as vanilla as possible (especially as we don't know the full impact of doing that), but I'll consider permitting that for future challenges.

hmm, good point.

I'll probably still make horses, donkeys, and mules mortal and able to die of old age if they haven't been changed in the new release already. Although since I gave them the same range as cows and other larger animals, 10-20 years, it wouldn't make a difference whether or not I modded that since the challenge is only 8 years. Besides, I think the whole age formula thing is changed now.

So, yea I get your point there.