i take care of my dwarves.i always have industries that need even unskilled labour. i am spread out, all over the map, on many many z levels. i'm built to house, feed, and put to work over 200 dwarves. there is always something to be done, and there are not nearly enough dwarves to do it. i'm at about 140 total dwarves, 30-something being children. so i have half the workforce i need to go back to active expansion and construction. only "critical" industries have been running.
what happened to my dwarves?
goblins. wave after wave of goblins. they siege almost every season.i thought that when their demon showed up, in the second siege, "hey, i'll be ok now, they'll have no leader when he leaves the map." despite him indeed no longer being listed on the civ screen, i suspect he is pulling the strings behind the scenes. giant squads of goblins spawn from every edge of the map. they bring herds of herds of trolls and ogres. they invariably bring a squad full of marksgoblins, and usually a lasher squad to back them up.
over the past six years, my military has gone from a mighty 50 melee dwarves and 30 marksdwarves, all at least competent in their skills, and usually in more than one combat skill, to ten scarred veterans, three raw recruits, and 4 3 marksdwarves (forgotten beast fly just slammed one marksdwarf against a wall, splattering him)
i dont often kill cats, my fortress is a sprawl, and i need the vermin control. as someone else pointed out, they also make a good kobold and goblin thief alarm. i cage puppies till adulthood, to keep them safe. i keep large packs of war dogs pastured in front of my entrances to protect against stealthers, and also to help my civilians make it inside if they get caught outside when a siege descends.
i do raise alpacas for wool, milk, and meat.
i use a mass-crypt approach to burial. each "cell" is the classic "5x5 workshops surrounding a 3x3 stairwell" design.each of the four 5x5 chambers are stocked with 23 coffins, allowing both pet and citizen burial. the side nearest the door (yes i use doors, usually semi-precious) has only 3 of these coffins. the open corners have statues (usually platinum, but sometimes other materials), one of which is designated as a statue garden. the walls are engraved.in the centeral stairwell at each space that borders a door (4 total) are the slabs of dwarves who's corpses i could not recover.
i have one tomb demanding noble, my duchess. she has an artifact obsidian coffin, placed in the center of the 5x5, with a clear glass statue at each corner (she likes clear glass). the floors are smoothed, and the walls engraved. i am preparing a tomb for my king. so far, i have an adamantine sarcophagus. he'll have statues of the same metal.the private floor of his aboveground keep is going to be solid copper, the metal that was the foundation of our settlement.
by my calculations, i have 322 dead pets and dwarves, perhaps a little less, 300 at the lowest. my max pop was 190. it is year 11 since embark.
the goblins, oh so many goblins. i have large areas of the surface, perhaps slightly less than a quarter of it, covered in assorted goblin corpses, parts, and various other "materials".
my duchess makes unreasonable demands, but i have a nice jail. that and most of my metalsmiths are military as well (she demands gold) they generally dont care about anything. the prisons are nice, engraved. filled with beds, tables, chairs, food and drink stockpiles, and the chains are of valuable metal.
my mayors are good folks. usually ban the export of querns or large gems (depending on the mayor, it's been passed back and forth a few times).
all in all, my fort is like a digital antfarm i participate in in a somewhat limited function.
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Topic: You are all monsters. (Read 73992 times)