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[kaijyuu]

Maybe you're playing it too much like simcity, where your goal more or less is just to stay in the black and keep everyone happy each year.

Have a different goal than making an efficient fortress. Build up a super military and underground defenses, and assault HFS. Maybe build an interesting fort design. Make a giant tower of soap. Something besides efficiency.

[Shrugging Khan]

Real happiness requires some kind of megalomaniac obsession. Like Nietzsche (might've) said: "What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome."

You can't have that feeling for very long in DF if you don't set absurd goals.

[monk12]

It is worth noting that right now, DF is less a game and more a toy. It's pretty easy to set up an impregnable, self sufficient fortress right now. The best way to get enjoyment out of DF is by indulging your creativity, either by building elaborate megaprojects and aesthetic fortress layouts, or by limiting yourself in some way to try and do the same tasks in other ways.

I've been working on elaborate trap designs, myself- I'm still a n00b at mechanisms and plumbing systems, so big drowning traps and water towers is proving a good mental challenge for me. Personally, I'm eagerly awaiting the next big steps in the Army Arc and Caravan Arc, so that fighting is more challenging and more meaningful, as well as having caravans bring me things I can't do without. Right now there are only a few things I can't get by without, but once the world has more stuff in it then imports/exports will have meaning. Particularly, I look forward to there being more kinds of crafts that have uses other than trading away.

[saru]

....
I'm not really looking to make the game harder.  It's more that as it goes on, I keep asking if what I'm doing is any good.  Sure I can make a crazy efficient fortress, and fill my stockpiles with 50 of every item, but what's the point?

It's like dining rooms.  For 100 dwarves, should I put tables and chairs for 30 at a time?  50?  All 100?  How about 2?  It doesn't seem to matter. o.O

Why make beds?  Sure, the dwarves will get a bad thought without one, but that's easy to fix with a well placed waterfall or seven.
....

That's part of the issue, really. There aren't many built in metrics. Created wealth is kind of silly to measure by. Happiness is all fungible, so a huge-ish dining room stuffed with high quality furniture somehow cancels out grueling work, grubbing in the dirt, and your spouse and friends all being brutally murdered in front of you and their corpses left to rot and create a thick disgusting haze.
So mostly when I play I just set minor goals for myself. Stuff like for every dwarf there's a table in the dining room, and at least a smoothed 3x3 room with a coffer and cabinet.

However, back to your original post, what? Two hours? Literally? How much in game time passes during that time?
Of course, I don't feel like my fort's really going at all until I'm filling 31x31 stockpiles with bins and all those bins with finished goods, and I have magma coming to my fortress level, which I always put near the surface.

I suppose what I'm saying is that the only thing that makes Dwarf Fortress exciting for me is progression towards goals that I've set for myself.

[Hokan]

This is the point where you invent your own stories and make the fortress real. Sort of like RPing, but by yourself and without any of the crappy typing you normally have to do.

[slink]

This is the point where you invent your own stories and make the fortress real. Sort of like RPing, but by yourself and without any of the crappy typing you normally have to do.

I loved this!   

You are so right, although I never minded the typing.  Some of the other people were pretty awful, though.  RPing by yourself cuts out a lot of silliness, at least other people's silliness.   

[That guy]

I'd like it if DF eventually tracked voluntary player conducts like Nethack.

I think the immediate answer to boredom is embarking in a place with scarier wildlife. In 40d I build a fort based around a constructed wall around the foothills of a mountain that was pretty much impregnable by goblins, even when the sieges got epic (8 squads per siege or so). There was also a chasm that ran along the foothills that was entirely covered on the surface except for a very wide, hard to cover spot where giant cave swallows would fly out and cause Fun. My dining room, barracks, statue garden and target range were all on the surface after a while.

[Hokan]

I'd like it if DF eventually tracked voluntary player conducts like Nethack.

I think the immediate answer to boredom is embarking in a place with scarier wildlife. In 40d I build a fort based around a constructed wall around the foothills of a mountain that was pretty much impregnable by goblins, even when the sieges got epic (8 squads per siege or so). There was also a chasm that ran along the foothills that was entirely covered on the surface except for a very wide, hard to cover spot where giant cave swallows would fly out and cause Fun. My dining room, barracks, statue garden and target range were all on the surface after a while.

You just inspired me.
Build a wheel of fortune style wheel, with two smaller wheels inside and a pointer extending from the middle to an end. The inner wheel has a material, (or material type) the second has various megaprojects and creatures, and the outer wheel has random fragments of scenarios, such as "Urist btes the dust," or "while seven dwarves drink." Spin the wheels enough and you'll find inspiration.

[Bronimin]

-

[Shrugging Khan]

Scary embarks aren't that scary, really. Sure, Giant Desert Scorpion wanders in and stabs a few of your hunters to death, shame. Giant birdy kills a kid, fine.

It's always small amounts of collateral damage, nothing that can't be handled easily.

[jester]

A constant flow of small wounds can be a problem for any fort though

[Shrugging Khan]

Bah. Put up some additional beds and name some loitering idler a new medical dwarf.

[zeki692]

Dead Thread Revived! Online play might be Fun...

[Urist Imiknorris]

Start digging.

[Xenos]

Magma+tall tower+network of pipes+map strewn with globs of molten copper, charred bits of iron, piles of bone ash=