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[Garrie]

OK so while I have played DF on and off for a fair while now (look at user:garrieirons on the wiki), I haven't been that consistent at it.

What I have found is, when I get to about population 100 or so.... things are running, I've got a bit of a "walled garden" thing happening, if I'm happy to lose my woods-dwarves or the incoming caravan I can close out any incoming siegers.... and the game stops being so much fun. Because the immediate problems become longer term ones.

One thing that is annoying the hell out of me is - in the early game "food is everything". By the time you get a mediocre/decent stone crafter, you can just buy all your food, put a kitchen & still next to the trade depot, then just stop farming, butchering etc. The game just flips on it's head. It even becomes totally impractical to grow food: my dwarves would never get from the awesome dining hall to the kitchen, let alone from the farms to the kitchen.

I have a map that I have compressed and restarted from "embark" several times, it has a deep canyon seperating the east side from the west side, I have the idea I would like to get to a point of having a well enough army to breach into the canyon, then actually go to war on the trogs & GCS that live in the chasm on the other side. I've had my first dragon and it was.... dissapointing. I beat it by wrestling it with "conscripted civillians" after it roasted my legendary soldiers. WTF?

I guess I should add the disclaimer: I am yet to really get pumping truely working, so probably, I am fundamentally a n00b at this game.

Anyway this is meant to be a real thread. so:

What stage do you find to be the most fun?
How do you deal with getting back to that point?
Do you continue to play, commit in-game suicide (eg: flood your farms with magma or similar), or just quit once you get there?

[Aspgren]

I know what you mean when you say you get a "walled garden" and then you're safe.

That's boring and not really fun. So what I do is complicate things for myself. Ideas I have are:

Train only marksdwarves to create a weaker fighting force and thus more epic combat and less goblin slaughter.
Build breachable defences and destructable buildings.
Don't make a military at all just form a militia that will gear up and head to battle with little to no skill.

but really there are dozens of ideas. You could rely entirely on overly complicated traps for your defense, you could aim to have a vegetarian population, you could embark on the most hostile spot you know or install mods ... there's alot of tweaking but that's what you need to do.

or, do as me, don't play at all right now. I'm saving myself for the new release.

Edit: oh and in response to the thread. I think the funniest part of the game is when you're getting things on their feet and suddenly immigrants flood your fort along with siegers.. and then I keep playing until I lose interest for whatever reason.

[Garrie]

I know what you mean when you say you get a "walled garden" and then you're safe.

That's boring and not really fun.

Yeah, my idea was to have a walled garden just at the trading post entrance.... then a series of pill-boxes on a regular grid that I could station crossbowdwarves on. I'm a pretty good way through that.

But then I got to "why don't I join my pill-boxes up? (aboveground)"
Answer: It removes the fun from the game!

[jayseesee]

I usually use Adjust Start to have 10-20 dwarves and no immigration.  Then see what I can do with such a small population, and hope they produce like rabbits if I need more. (Set child year to 5).  For further fun, have an :escape route: out of your fort, that just allows baby snatchers in.  Whoops!  Urist McBreeder cancels Make Baby, throwing tantrum over loss of fifth kid!

[Garrie]

seems to me, there is a very fine balance between dwarves being the most readily depleted resource - and the one you just can't get rid of quickly enough.

[Supermikhail]

I usually use Adjust Start to have 10-20 dwarves and no immigration.

You can do that? Where, I implore you? I don't remember such thing about init. I think that would be a real lifesaver for my relationship with DF, for I am most interested in realistic city managing, and endless (useless (because with annoying skills)) immigrants just ruin my suspension of disbelief. But I usually lose 3 out of starting 7 dwarves during the first year, and 4 dwarves don't make a decent hamlet.
By the way, are dwarven babies capable of growing into well-skilled citizens. I don't recall any children in my forts gaining any skills but conversational and farming.

[jayseesee]

Set pop cap in init to 0.
Then use this program.

Adjust start to however many dwarves you want.  Voila!

They still have kids and all that fun stuff.  Kids grow up to be peasants for me, unless they get hit by a mood (only with 20+ dwarves).  But I find that is rather realistic, of COURSE a child is unskilled at first when they grow up!   And farming does kind of make sense, as we put our kids to work (he he he).

[Garrie]

By the way, are dwarven babies capable of growing into well-skilled citizens. I don't recall any children in my forts gaining any skills but conversational and farming.

The "problem" is,

• Children harvest (assuming "All dwarves harvest" is "on")
• Harvesting awards experience to "planter" skill

So unless they go moody, then by the time they become an adult yeah they will be a planter.
I have had dwarven kids build really cool artifacts and become "Legendary Craftsdwarves", I also find my home-grown dwarves are usually pretty strong due to all the harvesting they have been doing.

[Supermikhail]

Then use this program.

Hmpf, downloading Mono for Windows to run it on Linux.

By the way, are dwarven babies capable of growing into well-skilled citizens. I don't recall any children in my forts gaining any skills but conversational and farming.

The "problem" is,

• Children harvest (assuming "All dwarves harvest" is "on")
• Harvesting awards experience to "planter" skill

So unless they go moody, then by the time they become an adult yeah they will be a planter.
I have had dwarven kids build really cool artifacts and become "Legendary Craftsdwarves", I also find my home-grown dwarves are usually pretty strong due to all the harvesting they have been doing.

So, are there any bad effects to disabling "All dwarves harvest"? I'd think in that case babies are going to grow into legendary blabberers. And my fortresses usually lack vocal professions.

[jayseesee]

I usually keep Only Farmers Harvest.  You get more food/seed and they stack more that way.

Actually, legendary blabberers are good, because their stats will be amazingly high.  I did an experiment the other day where I had a crap ton of food and booze and stuck them in a walled off wagon (read the Real Wagon experiment, I copied that).  Turned out after one year of that, even with the bad thoughts from no bed, no tables, same old food and drink, they were all ecstatic and had legendary in all conversation skills on top of them all having at least a 6 to each str/agi/tough.  Wonderful start of my army.

Then for kicks, I carved them into fortifications.

Yuck, plump helmet, OMG SKELETAL CARP.  Yuck, ale, OMG CARP!

[Supermikhail]

Then for kicks, I carved them into fortifications.

Yuck, plump helmet, OMG SKELETAL CARP.  Yuck, ale, OMG CARP!

Wait, you did what? To whom?

Edit: tweak doesn't work for me... The world is so boring.

[jayseesee]

You have to do it while you are choosing a site.

So while in site finder, open Tweak, adjust start to 20 dwarves and however much cash, then choose carefully and perfection.

[Supermikhail]

My problem is, I believe, related to Mono, not tweak itself (it doesn't launch even on site selection). Unfortunately, there is a zillion of google entries for the error my terminal gives. Oh, I guess I'll just wait until... something good happens either to DF, or to different DF utilities, or me.

Edit: just searched DF wiki discussion page for tweak, and the program requires exactly .Net Framework 3.5 and that's not installable under wine. Or I may be wrong but it still doesn't run.

Anyway, I feel that playing with just 7 dwarves can be good fun.

[nenjin]

Part of the issue is that trading is so imbalanced right now, and is a huge safety blanket for everything you can't, or choose not to provide for yourself.

If traders actually cared what they were buying, and in what amounts, people would at least have to have a game plan to acquire the things they need. As it is, by year 3, you've got enough supplies to trade until the end of time.

In mid-game, I entertain myself by perfecting my military and gussying up my fortress. It's not a challenge, but it consumes time while I wait for my population to grow again. By now I've usually been training reservists for 2 years and are pretty attached to them. My haulers and dumpers start to legendary and I need to start building legendary housing on a large scale. The worry is less "I could lose the game" and more "I could lose someone I actually care about to something stupid."

I suspect the mid-game is going to get a lot more interesting after the patch. Siegers will probably approach your defenses in a different way (like possibly spawning 20 archers instead of 3 archers and 20 useless foot troops.) and have more ways to get around them.

[LordBucket]

in the early game "food is everything".

I can't relate. I've been playing since 2D, and as far as I'm concerned, food production is utterly trivial now. Two dwarves can feed an entire fortress. The early game is no different. Hell...you can bring enough food with you at embark to last the first year without any food industry at all. Who starves to death anymore?

It even becomes totally impractical to grow food: my dwarves would never get from the awesome dining hall to the kitchen, let alone from the farms to the kitchen.

I think the only response to this is: clearly you are doing something wrong. Sounds like you simply have hauling/stockpile issues. Again...two dwarves can feed a fortress without much difficulty.

I've had my first dragon and it was.... dissapointing.

Most combat in the vanilla game is pretty disappointing once you know the game. Try a mod. I recommend Dig Deeper. Be forewarned...orcs will kill you.

What stage do you find to be the most fun?

Roughly the first two, maybe three years of a fort. After that, the game mostly seems to become a lot of waiting.

Do you continue to play, commit in-game suicide
or just quit once you get there?

I just quit. If it's not fun...why continue?