Hi!
So i've been playing with Fortress Defense alot lately, it really makes the game for me. My experience is similar to alot of the recent posts - i embark with 2 soldiers, level 5 teacher and weapon skill, i break squads into smaller groups for extra sparring and make good use of my teachers, i station marksdwarves on small hills while my melee dwarves fight below, i don't use traps or danger rooms, etc etc. Some forts i don't use any walls or doors whatsoever, and just station everyone at the top of my staircase, but things usually get too chaotic with the way that dwarves love to chase enemies and ignore station commands, especially when some enemies find themselves on incredibly cowardly mounts ><
I'm still adjusting things to find the optimum difficulty - inevitable defeat at the hands of what i consider to be realistic and nearly-possible sieges, before FPS becomes an issue. For example, i turned off war elephants because it doesn't make sense to me that an animal is clad in steel but has no rider. Does someone just slap some steel on an elephant and then kick it up the ass to send it off to battle?
But to counter-balance, i try to embark in areas with plenty of the civ's that i haven't turned off, preferably with my civilization at war with at least one of them.
Anyway, to that end, i have a couple of questions:
1) I've noticed that while most enemies are stated to use a particular type of weapons-grade metal, all of my enemies arrive with a random assortment of all weapons-grade metals. I seem to recall reading somewhere (about kobolds, i think maybe) that when an invader doesn't have access to the metal they've been assigned, they will just use anything, so that they have something rather than nothing. Is there any way i can get around this issue to better balance the sieges and remove some of the "RNG" factor (Hammer Lord with a silver maul = uhoh, Swordmaster with a silver sword = lols)? Mods i'm using include FD, Phoebus graphics, and some custom milling/brewing reactions, nothing else. I've played on worlds generated to year 5 and to year 125, no apparent difference in enemy metals.
2) Being that i turn off some of the civs, would it be possible to mod the other civs to attack more often - ie. Every season, instead of just eg. spring/winter? I noticed the readme gave this information, but not how to change it. (see edit below)
3) Further on that point, would it be possible to make certain civs only attack within a certain timeframe - eg. within the first 5 years of a fort, and never again after that? I love having a squad of beak wolves show up in early winter, but 5 squads of them showing up 5 years later is 1) obselete by now due to my dwarves skill/equipment 2) less fps due to pathing and mass item clutter 3) annoying because my dwarves chase them all over the place and wind up out of position and 4) somewhat unrealistic if you think of dark stranglers and beak wolves as scavengers similar to kobolds (which i like to).
4) Finally, bit of a random question but considering the nature of this mod i thought you might know - is it possible to mod the game or a world in some way to literally turn on war between 2 civilizations? I love the vanilla feel of the game and don't like to change things too much - i would love to be constantly sieged by humans and/or elves, but my attempts at slaughtering caravans have yielded no results, and i've yet to gen a world in which the dwarves were at war with the humans or elves.
If you can't be assed answering some/any of that, don't worry - if i really care, i'll probably figure it out myself
Thanks again, this mod is seriously epic win.
Edit: Ok, i think i found the answer to my second question - in the entity files, the ACTIVE_SEASON setting, right?
Now my question is: if i change this (or other settings) in both the main raws and the data save raws, will it take immediate effect, or will i have to gen a new world? Also, any further information you could give me on civ settings relevant to !!Fun!! would be appreciated - like the PROGRESS_TRIGGER_ setting for example
Edit 2: Heh, right after i post this, top of the page there's a "when do i have to gen a new world" thread. Incase anyone was wondering - entity changes require new world.