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[Scraggletag]

Part 2

The waterfall was surprisingly easy to weaponize.

I knew that water at depth 7 doesn't move objects or creatures around. But I wasn't sure if I could get creatures to willingly walk through shallower water. A previous thread told me what I needed to know. Creatures would walk through water of up to depth 3, but not through water of 4 or more. I watched the very end of the waterfall for a minute. The stream thins out a bit as the water approaches the cliff. Right at the edge, it was mostly 1's and 2's with an occasional 3. I didn't see a single 4 get to the tiles right at the edge, so creatures should be willing to path through it (and get thrown off the cliff when they get there).

All I really had to do was build an alternate entrance which made creatures try to walk right at the edge of the falls. Fortunately, I had already settled in the area between the cliffs and the river; the stream was the northern boarder. With hostile territory on the north and my fortress on the south, an alternate entrance going through the edge of the falls was easy. I dug into the south side first, placed a retracting bridge over the ramp that led into my fortress then dug into the north side. I linked a single lever to both the drawbridge at my main gate and to the retracting bridge over the deathdtrap alternate entrance; when you pull the lever the main gate closes while the alternate entrance opens.

Here is the video I promised. I haven't seen a single ambush yet so I tested it on some migrants. None survived. Most of them drowned, a couple died on impact. Some of the animals they brought with them were severely wounded from the fall, but it seems animals know how to swim and therefore didn't drown. I still have to finish the exit path, so that creatures who survive the fall don't sit in the river forever and frighten my haulers. If it had been an actual attack, I would have ordered my squads to their posts while the civilians run and hide.

Hopefully some of those migrants will turn into ghosts. I've decided to make this fort look as evil as possible (in dwarf fortress, that means red, purple and black). I'm still letting the glumprongs grow and I've even started to build the perimeter wall from black bronze. The roads, bridges and furniture will be made from red stones. A nice haunting will add to the atmosphere.

I know it's not a very dwarfy trap, but I just didn't need to put in a bunch of pumps and bridges and levers and whatnot. Besides, I've been there and done that. I'll add to the dwarfyness latter. I need a means of shutting off the water flow so I can recover the goblinite. I'll probably also add a means of quickly draining the river once the water is shut off. Not sure yet how to fit some magma in, but I will if I can.

Weird. I just tried to replicate your world using just the IronHand DF 18, but although the world was called "The Windy Dimension," it looks completely different. Are you using any mods?

Got an ocean called "The Waters of Moisture" though.

No mods. I'm just using the tall and narrow tiles from one of the older vanilla versions (I grew up playing 40d). I did change several values in the world gen info, so make sure you copy and paste all of it into world_gen.txt. Using just the seed numbers probably won't generate the same world. Has anybody else had trouble generating the world? Are you sure IronHand didn't change anything?

[Uristocrat]

Sounds fun!  There's a nice 6-z waterfall on this map in a good embark location, so I may just have to try that with my fortress....

[Tarran]

Ha hah, wow, I feel sorry for those migrants. That is a quite effective trap.

Going to have to try that next waterfall embark I get.

[CapnUrist]

And here I just tried (and failed) to make a cool gate/portcullis over a bridge with mine.

The problem wasn't controlling the waterfall; it was digging into an aquifer from the side, without drowning every miner that attempted it, and then making it walkable.

And then I realized I was screwed anyway because once winter came around, the river would freeze, and the aquifer would flood my fort without its path out of the tunnel into the river.

[TolyK]

I am now gonna use this. I've made flooder traps before (dozens  ) but this is one of the most original i've seen. I'll see about making it more effective in terms of stopping the flow...