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[Swivelguy2]

I agree that defining "cheating" in a 1-player sandbox game is pointless.

But these are the rules I'm playing by on my current fortress, to make it more fun/Fun:

- No farming (too overpowered, too easy)
- No livestock farming (again, overpowered) - except for war dogs, and max 1 dog per soldier
- No sealing off the fortress - always at least TWO 3-wide paths in
- Maximum of 1 simple trap for every skill level (novice=1, etc) of mechanic my dwarves have, total
- No cooking of booze or selling of food
- No reclaiming of quantum-dumped items
- No "outdoor" underground area abuse for avoiding miasma and/or cave adaptation
- No atomsmashing
- No siege engines
- No impenetrable mega drowning traps, etc
- I turn the economy off. It's just too broken
- No screw pump gyms (not that the meeting-area gym is any less effective)

And finally, one that my dwarves decided, not me:

- No sparring without losing an eye

[Maulrus]

I do only two things that could be considered shady:

-dumping unlimited stone on 1x1 zones
-undesignating and immediately redesignating dining rooms and wells to end parties that are occupying a dorf I need (I like to think of this as the grumpy mayor walking in and stopping the party)

[yuriatayde]

I also too as well agree that "cheating" isn't exactly a term that fits with DF, sense it's not a game with goals so much as a sandbox with tools to play with. However, I do find some things that just take some of the enjoyment out of the game, so I try not to do them whenever possible.

It is Cheating to:
*Modify raws to make goods free or more easily accessed. (rock = sand, rock = wood, nothing = something etc)
*Use 1x1 Dump sites as storage.
*Disassemble Trade Depots to get the goods (I had no idea it would do that, I swear!)

It is NOT Cheating to:
*Modify the raws to create a Fun reaction, or to remove an annoyance. (Thermonuclear Catsplosion)
*Learn that cats don't explode until you free them from the cage, and then use this new information to make a lever-operated nuclear detonation to destroy your enemies.
*Opt out of ANY military use, and instead depend entirely on the overpowered weapon-traps (this WILL be a cheat in the next version, but in 40d the military management is just too much hassle and annoyance)
*Use cage traps
*Cheat in any way, so long as you have some excuse to keep yourself from feeling bad about it.

[nenjin]

A cheat is only a cheat if you're claiming that you're playing a vanilla game of Dwarf Fortress. Since many don't do that, and this is a sandbox game, cheating is a flexible term.

So, cheats in a vanilla DF game:

Messing with the pop cap/default Fun in the .ini
Messing with RAWs
Savescum
Walling yourself in
Trap fields large enough to kill/imprison an entire siege force, whether they do or not.
Atom smasher used for defense
Training every dwarf to near legendary wrestling in less than a year. Wrestling advances are broke, and Toady knows it.
Viewing hidden tiles with a visualizer

Not cheats in Vanilla DF:
Hauling circles to provide jobs and wealth to your dwarves.
Using 3rd party tools to reveal important information about your dwarves. (Skill and attribute levels.)
Using 3rd party tools to streamline functions already in game, like job and gear assignments.

Cheats that I regularly use because it's the kind of game I want to play at the time:
-Pop cap control
-Savescum

Things that probably won't be cheats in the next version:
-Walling yourself in (better sieges, more threats from within your fortress)
-Traps (will probably be addressed in part by the siege workup)
-Wrestlers (training is going to get revamped)

[Jude]

In a purely single player game the term "cheating" loses all its meaning, especially in a game that's meant to be modded so much. It's the same as Morrowind.

Anyway, crossbows, plump helmets and traps are all cheating!

[darkrider2]

Cheating:
- walling off the fort completely (or making levers and doors/bridges that block it off entirely during a seige)
- using atom smashers against enemies (garbage management is fine)
- editing the raws in ways that are stupidly overpowered
- mega food mixing

not cheating
- killing traders (I would put this on cheating but its just so fun!)
- crossbows (they already have haxor-like powers though...)

[Psithief]

Cheating:
modding, even if it only makes the game 'harder'.

Not cheating:
everything else.

Too much effort:
savescumming
atom smashing
anything to do with ice

[darkflagrance]

Not cheating: pretty much anything

Cheating: playing without size 10 giant spiders that spew webs all over your soldiers when they siege, as well as three different orc-equivalent entities, one of which feels no pain and another of which throws fireballs.

Along with size 60 wildlife that occurs in packs of 20 and has four tusks.

[Itnetlolor]

Depot disassembly while the trade carts are offloading/ready to trade. That's a big no there. All that free crap you can get.

[Aspgren]

Depot disassembly while the trade carts are offloading/ready to trade. That's a big no there. All that free crap you can get.

I agree with you there. I've done it only twice.

Once to see what happened  and then my dwarves hid in horror ... expecting retribution. But none came.
Second I ... well I marked all my items and managed to give them away on accident. So I stole everything back... but in the spirit of honesty I dumped most of my ill gotten gains in the garbage.

[tfaal]

Depot disassembly while the trade carts are offloading/ready to trade. That's a big no there. All that free crap you can get.

I agree with you there. I've done it only twice.

Once to see what happened  and then my dwarves hid in horror ... expecting retribution. But none came.
Second I ... well I marked all my items and managed to give them away on accident. So I stole everything back... but in the spirit of honesty I dumped most of my ill gotten gains in the garbage.

Y'all do realize that, from an entity standpoint, this is exactly identical to seizing all their stuff, right? Every civ keeps a log of what they send and receive from your fortress. If their taking massive losses, they might start a war.

[TheBeardyMan]

Not cheating: adding gender specific [SPECNAMES] to creatures that you're trying to breed so that you can see their genders in the assign to cage menu.

[Aspgren]

Depot disassembly while the trade carts are offloading/ready to trade. That's a big no there. All that free crap you can get.

I agree with you there. I've done it only twice.

Once to see what happened  and then my dwarves hid in horror ... expecting retribution. But none came.
Second I ... well I marked all my items and managed to give them away on accident. So I stole everything back... but in the spirit of honesty I dumped most of my ill gotten gains in the garbage.

Y'all do realize that, from an entity standpoint, this is exactly identical to seizing all their stuff, right? Every civ keeps a log of what they send and receive from your fortress. If their taking massive losses, they might start a war.

Aha! So my instinctive newbie reaction of making lots of bolts and crossbows and hide all dwarves in the main building for 6 months was correct!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

no it was very wrong

[LoneJedi7]

Cheating: Save Scumming

Not Cheating: Everything Else.

[100killer9]

Depot disassembly while the trade carts are offloading/ready to trade. That's a big no there. All that free crap you can get.

What if you can't trade with them due to a stray merchant that got ripped to pieces?
…
And then chasm what you weren't going to trade for, plus the value of the traded goods?
EDIT: So playing Dig Deeper is cheating? I think only modding of the game to make it easy is cheating. Except maybe cat bug fixes, adding [trAINABLE], and other stuff.