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[Rutilant]

Since the game is mostly about making your own goals and fun, I try and give myself some guidelines and rules to keep it interesting - aside from my basic 'no atom smashing sieges' and 'no exporting *roast*' - such as a tower fortress where I have to fit everything into a horizontal area, or a communist rum and sugar baron where I'm only allowed to export, you guessed it, rum and sugar;  things like that.

What do you folks do that might make an interesting embark?

[ISGC]

make it entirely above ground
build a roofs, floors, walls and make a moat and a palisade around.

[Girlinhat]

"Failure to strike Earth"  Embark without a pick.  Stay that way.
"Fallout Bunker"  Build no more than a 5x5x1 structure above ground, perhaps taller if you want to add ramps so it looks cool in Stonesense.
"Armok's Realm"  Bathe every single tile in blood.
"Ice Charades"  Entire fortress is made of ice.
"Know Thy Enemy"  Get 100 kills using a Goblin-Cap training weapons, not counting stripped prisoners.
"Sherwood"  Use only crossbows.

[Urist Da Vinci]

"Sherwood"  Use only crossbows.

"Second Amendment"
-Mass produce crossbows, bolts, and quivers for your population.
-Assign several non-miner, non-woodcutter squads of 10 crossbow-armed militia who have no barracks, don't train, and act like civilians. NO archery ranges!
-Watch as said civilians go about their day to day routines, unless they tantrum/berserk, or spot an enemy, at which point they will open fire. With stormtrooper accuracy, of course.

[Girlinhat]

Oh good lord that sounds like fun!

Urist McArmedCivilian cancels drink: interrupted by groundhog!
Urist McBystandard has been shot and killed!
The groundhog has been shot and killed.
Urist McArmed Civilian has been struck down!
Urist McCaptainOfTheGuard is fighting!

[bobhayes]

Since the game is mostly about making your own goals and fun, I try and give myself some guidelines and rules to keep it interesting - aside from my basic 'no atom smashing sieges' and 'no exporting *roast*' - such as a tower fortress where I have to fit everything into a horizontal area, or a communist rum and sugar baron where I'm only allowed to export, you guessed it, rum and sugar;  things like that.

What do you folks do that might make an interesting embark?

I am not yet at the level of skill where I SUCCEED at this kind of thing, but one I often try is the no-death fort. If a dwarf dies, I have failed and have to restart. I think I've managed to go a couple of years at best. Extra Gandhi Mode: goblins and enemies count. Cage-trap and keep them alive, or lock them out until they give up and go home. Vegan Mode: no killing animals either.

[Keldane]

Earlier today I attempted to embark in an evil biome using a version I found in the modding forum that allowed me to start with 70 dwarves. The catch? I simply hit "Play Now", which gave me the same skills and resources that the regular version gives. It wasn't as challenging as I had expected, however; the only reason the tantrum spiral became a tantrum spiral, instead of one crippled dwarf flipping out harmlessly is because I went out of my way to generate the tantrum spiral (I had never seen one firsthand before). If I hadn't, the fortress not only would have wound up being successful, but would have wound up being successful far faster than any of my seven dwarf forts due to having sixty-three peasants to shape as needed.

The one theme I keep coming back to as one I want to attempt - and that is difficult for me to properly attempt - is an above-ground castle city. Exports would be food and crafts, primarily, with as little actual mining as possible, and tens of thousands of units of stone bought on embark to facilitate this. A dedicated military would be mandatory, which would mean importing weapons and fuel - no mining means no local ore, bituminous coal, lignite, or magma, and trees take a long time to grow, especially at low FPS, limiting the usefulness of burning them to fuel the forges. The problem I keep having is the digging restrictions. It's always faster to excavate a fort than to build it on the surface, which makes digging really, really tempting.

[zephyr_hound]

I'm building a castle right now, a proper one designed on principles of medieval castle defense. It's a massive megaproject and I've only just completed the infrastructure of the keep. Eventually there will be an inner keep, an outer wall with guard towers, a barbican, POSSIBLY a lava moat (I am on a glacier with four levels of ice so that may be interesting to pull off) and I'd really like to get some extra buildings like a cathedral in there. I expect it to take up all of my 4x4 embark. The blueprints are professionally drawn on the back of a Galaxy chocolate bar wrapper

When it does finally get completed I hope that it'll be a super long running fort, with sieges throwing themselves yearly on the impregnable walls and being rebuffed by the steel clad military.


I like megaproject themed forts. I was doing really well with a 5x5 ocean embark building a bridge between the mainland and an island (proper suspension-style bridge, support pillars sunk into the ocean bed, two dwarves maimed but none killed!) but I stuffed up the save while messing with mods, so that one's gone

[Artzbacher]

Earlier today I attempted to embark in an evil biome using a version I found in the modding forum that allowed me to start with 70 dwarves. The catch? I simply hit "Play Now", which gave me the same skills and resources that the regular version gives. It wasn't as challenging as I had expected, however; the only reason the tantrum spiral became a tantrum spiral, instead of one crippled dwarf flipping out harmlessly is because I went out of my way to generate the tantrum spiral (I had never seen one firsthand before). If I hadn't, the fortress not only would have wound up being successful, but would have wound up being successful far faster than any of my seven dwarf forts due to having sixty-three peasants to shape as needed.

The one theme I keep coming back to as one I want to attempt - and that is difficult for me to properly attempt - is an above-ground castle city. Exports would be food and crafts, primarily, with as little actual mining as possible, and tens of thousands of units of stone bought on embark to facilitate this. A dedicated military would be mandatory, which would mean importing weapons and fuel - no mining means no local ore, bituminous coal, lignite, or magma, and trees take a long time to grow, especially at low FPS, limiting the usefulness of burning them to fuel the forges. The problem I keep having is the digging restrictions. It's always faster to excavate a fort than to build it on the surface, which makes digging really, really tempting.

Some talented guy made a megaproject using a modded workshop of sorts, that "made" cloth into stone. Needless to say, he traded for a lot of cloth in order to simulate buying stone. I can't remember the name of the fort, though.

[cog disso]

Red vs. Blue: build two perfectly symmetrical aboveground forts, one out of bauxite and one out of cobaltite, assign dwarves to each fort and underground spaces appropriately. Devise some sort of clever pond based trap that will destroy the fort if the water is allowed to dip below a certain level, so that pond filling has to always happen, and a lull in pond filling due to chores/activity will result in death for that specfic team.

[Nazguran]

Enslave elfs in an underground fortress made entirely out of wood and keep them inside until they forget the light of day and start vomiting if somehow they manage to escape.

[sammiched]

Haunted fortress
No coffins, no slabs. See how many ghosts you can get and how long you can put up with their shenanigans. I'm up to 40 ghosts with a live population of 54

[The_Fool76]

Seven dwarf hermit challenge.  Use burrows to isolate all starting seven dwarves from each other in their own mini-forts. 

Have them 'fight' over the immigrants and trade caravans to see who can lure and devour kill the most of their fellow dwarves.  Keep score.

[Hungry Elephant]

Here sear sir you can find numerous idea on themed embark

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Challenges

[Psychobones]

The one theme I keep coming back to as one I want to attempt - and that is difficult for me to properly attempt - is an above-ground castle city. Exports would be food and crafts, primarily, with as little actual mining as possible, and tens of thousands of units of stone bought on embark to facilitate this. A dedicated military would be mandatory, which would mean importing weapons and fuel - no mining means no local ore, bituminous coal, lignite, or magma, and trees take a long time to grow, especially at low FPS, limiting the usefulness of burning them to fuel the forges. The problem I keep having is the digging restrictions. It's always faster to excavate a fort than to build it on the surface, which makes digging really, really tempting.

I'd fix the stone issues by embarking on a mountain and digging the mountain flat. That way you get your stone.