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[Sergius]

Here's the dealio: I just started playing the .19 version (so can't comment on whether it's easy or not yet). I like the (realistic) fact that you don't find every single mineral under the tiny embark area that you've chosen for your fortress. But I also hate that for engine / memory / FPS limitations, you're forced to choose an area for your fortress and be unable to leave for any purpose. You may have the bestest possible ore mine two tiles away in the world map, but simply there's no way on Earth(ly dimensions of unicorns) to ask the dwarves to establish or tunnel (more dwarfy!) a mining camp there: everything has to be mined from under our living habitat.

Maybe that's the way we're headed eventually (haven't checked the devnotes). I mean, real civilizations didn't pop up as cities with mines and farms right next to/under them. Those were usually satellite settlements. I'd like if our "Fortress" was our main city, and we could create other small villages/mines/farms around it, within a certain distance, with "some" micromanagement (where to dig, what to build) but without people having to actually live there and time passing differently there, so that our Fortress isn't being neglected in the meantime. And once in a while, we'll get a "caravan" of our own stuff, that isn't traded but merely deposited there. Sieges would probably mean that we're cut off from these sites. A random event could mean something Fun has happened to one of these sites too.

I don't know how tunneling and mining would happen in those sites, but I'm guessing that they would be procedurally generated and the amount of minerals would eventually run out.

If that were the case, I'd be more than happy to have limited metals on my embark area... as it is now, if we have nothing but tin and humans only want to sell us lead (and two bars every year...), we're screwed.

EDIT: BTW, it would also be cool if we had that "reclaim" gameplay on satellite sites. Like, sending 50 armed dwarfs because the miners "dug too deep"?

EDIT2: Just pointing out that this is already how the worldgen city "sprawl" works. Only not for Dwarf Fortresses that we create.

[Hyndis]

I don't know what you people are smoking, but having to gen 5 worlds just to find one that lets you embark with an iron anvil is not "realistic" or "fun."

I'm going back to my metal-abundant fort in .18 where every single iron ingot went towards fighting off the six simultaneous sieging armies.  I'd rather have my dwarves fight for immortality versus hordes of goblins, furies, and nagas than versus a featureless block of gabbro that covers the entire embark.

You guys can fight all you want over "realism" in a game with dwarves, elves, and dragons, but please try to stop sapping the fun out of it for everyone else.  If I want to play a fantasy game and build a tower of gold 50 levels tall with iron spikes and aluminum gargoyles, I shouldn't have to search for a week for the right embark because someone complained that being able to find resources "isn't realistic."  You know what else "isn't realistic?"  Demons.  Minotaurs.  Magma fountains.  Creatures that become MORE productive when drunk.  There are a million points I could make about things that are unrealistic that nevertheless make the game more fun, but all of them seem to have been ignored in this update.  Epic fantasy is not about realism.  There is a very important difference between "believable" and "realistic" that seems to have been glossed over.

The reason we all love Dwarf Fortress so much is because it's so open ended.  Comparing the possibilities for players to have fun between 0.31.18 and 0.31.19 is like comparing a Toys 'R' Us to the Andromeda galaxy.  "Realism" is driving a stake through the heart what makes this game great.

TL;DR
WTB my fun metals back.

/agree!

If you don't want to build a giant pyramid of gold, then just don't build one? The option to build one is what is important. More options is always better for more gameplay. Also, gameplay always trumps realism. Always.

I don't mind minerals being scarce, however the current implementation is just poor. If minerals are scarce then there are some other things that need to go along with it, such as:

1)  Being able to import huge amounts of materials from caravans, rather than the 3-4 bars of metal per year with the other 98% of the caravan being full of useless junk even though you only request a specific item and nothing else.
2)  All metals listed on the embark screen for that map, similar to biome info or the listing of stone layers. Just list the metals present and allow the player to decide where to embark.
3)  Ability to send dwarves off map to prospect for, find, mine, and ship back the desired material.

[Babylon]

Metals were a bit too easy to obtain in .18, but .19 is incomplete without the caravan overhaul.

Also, there should be a "random embark" option, which at the very least completely randomizes your starting location.

Just click embark on whatever comes up first, it's pretty random.

[Babylon]

Scarce metals not only add a unique new challenge they're vital for trade to work properly.  What I hate is the vague embark screen.  We should be able to know before investing a bunch of time into a site if it is the sort of site we want or not.

[JarinArenos]

/agree!

If you don't want to build a giant pyramid of gold, then just don't build one? The option to build one is what is important. More options is always better for more gameplay. Also, gameplay always trumps realism. Always.

I don't mind minerals being scarce, however the current implementation is just poor. If minerals are scarce then there are some other things that need to go along with it, such as:

1)  Being able to import huge amounts of materials from caravans, rather than the 3-4 bars of metal per year with the other 98% of the caravan being full of useless junk even though you only request a specific item and nothing else.
2)  All metals listed on the embark screen for that map, similar to biome info or the listing of stone layers. Just list the metals present and allow the player to decide where to embark.
3)  Ability to send dwarves off map to prospect for, find, mine, and ship back the desired material.

Then I recommend you go back to .18 and wait for the rest of the caravan arc to progress. .19 is the first step towards some of what you're requesting. It is by no means supposed to be a finished - or even a stand-alone product. It's there for testing and letting people see how things are progressing. Seriously, it is really not worth all this bitching. You don't like the metal scarcity, that opinion has been very clearly stated. This isn't even a "DF is a beta, deal with it" post. It's ".19 is little more than a preview for the next set of releases, so we can test features". Settle down and see where it's going.

Picking a version is just one more element of this giant sandbox we play in.

[sambojin]

I still like the way the game is heading. But even though I did start the post (and claiming that the new style was was "Da roxxor") I can understand peoples' frustrations. You do have to be pretty specific on what type of site you want in the site finder. Even when you have been, you might get squat. Even when you've got a good site, you might get some severe limitations on what you can bring/trade for from your civilisation. I'd never even used the site finder before this, just because I could see what kinds of rock the top few layers were. Now it's a lot harder (impossible) to know what you'll get even with the finder.

This isn't a retraction of the OP. I'm starting to see though why people are annoyed compared to 0.31.18. I tend to think that there will be a middle ground between the two in the end. A few more minerals, but not the .18 mother-load style, and better caravans to back them up. How many versions we'll wait for this is another story.

I guess the game DF is more like a game now. You can still "try" and do anything, but you might not be able to. This is the challenge of a game that's randomized. It does feel more like a game than the sandbox that it used to be. And a hard game at that.


DF : Not just a sandbox for mental masturbation any more.

[Dahka]

Without steel the only way to effectively fight goblins is using traps. This could be weapon traps, spike traps, or traps involving levers or other machines.

Otherwise you're going to be taking too many losses against the goblins fighting them with equal or inferior weaponry. The goblins get up to 80 new soldiers every year. You don't get 80 new dwarves. They win by attrition.

not true, you know you dont need just to s-a-k to send a squad to kill the goblins right? one of the things I enjoy in this game is the possibility and challenge to overcome these numbers. they got more goblins? build a bridge and retract them to send the goblins to a river and finish the rest. They dont have bowmen? send the marksdwarfs. They hame bowmen? send your best copper armored and shielded dwarfs on the front to distract and a handful of bat crazy dwarfs naked with obsidian swords on the back. But most importantly, just experiment new things and fail, its a great way to learn, and not just about the game.

[sambojin]

I've said some fairly foolish things as questions on these forums from time to time. Fun questions and all, but it feels that I'm starting to notice something.

The minerals you get on embark in 0.31.19 are starting to look a lot like the minerals that you'll get in your site? I'm probably very, very wrong. But civilisation randomisation really doesn't seem to account for this. Mining/minerals in your embark site does in some ways.

Is this our little cheat? No really decent ores on embark means there's none on the site?

I'm probably just going to have some more "Exceptional Human Beer" and stop posting. I swear.

A lot.

[Langdon]

I've been playing since the 2D days, and I've just gone back to my old 40d methods. Namely, stripping caravans of every single piece of metal, and using what I can.

I'm playing an ore-less fort (nothing in the ground except a few scattered gems in the caverns) and have survived for over eight years now, with a six-dwarf squad almost completely clad in steel. Gobbies don't have access to iron though, so in the first few years I'd gotten by fine with bronze and bismuth bronze (parent civ doesn't have access to iron, so no anvil on embark, but another dwarf civ I'm trading with has steel).

Right now I have loads of copper and bronze, all from smelting goblin equipment and metal crafts from the caravans. I have a distinct lack of gold or platinum, and the little silver I have goes to making warhammers. I have enough bronze that I can afford to waste it on bolts for practice, and my metalsmiths are busy studding everything with copper. My countess has to make do with brass furniture, though, as I don't have much in the way of precious metals, so I have to make up the difference by studding everything she owns with loads of gems (by micromanaging the jeweler's workshop). Still, with enough artifacts, she has her royal-quality rooms. Even the mayor and captain of the guard sleep on jewel-studded masterpiece beds.

I did lose my first few moody dwarves because I couldn't get rough gems until the caverns, but that's mostly due to me being too lazy to get glassmaking up and running early.

So. Not much different from one of my older 40d forts, except its harder to get invulnerable champions (early on I'd lose half the squad to ambushes from time to time, but now that the Countess has gotten Teacher skill up to Adept, they all have Competent Dodging or better now, and don't fall as easily to archer gobs).

It is fun, about as much fun as my best 40d forts. No gamebreaking bugs so far. (Wild birds making a beeline for your extra nest boxes is funny, and not really a show stopper, unless you consider easy food to be a gamebreaking bug). The quantum large clay pot storage is also useful when hauling roasts to the trade depot - one large pot holds 30-50 thousand dwarfbucks worth of food, which is usually enough to buy out the caravan. Easily avoidable by not making large pots.

I haven't fully exploited the other features (next fort will be a clay-brick aboveground village probably). And I am still playing on the very first worldgen I started after downloading .19 (second fort, though, first fort died to tantrum spiral after forgotten beast).

[Aoi]

So I'm finding the whole 'scarcity of metal' thing kind of interesting-- then, in my latest fort, I emptied about 20 floors [on a 3x3 embark] and found absolutely nothing of note other than gems. So I fired up dfhack to take a peek at what resources I have available... exactly 17 [safe] blocks of candy.

...Time to hope for caravans with decent stuff.