And there's the tech tree, which I feel was a very original idea. Nothing against flavor mods (their great in their own way - variety! Makes the DF experience more varied, and makes for cooler stories to tell friends.), but it was really the tech tree here that got me in. To be honest, I must say that I was a little bit skeptical at the choice of races at first, mostly at the 'meowkin' race. But I got used to them and their excellent autumn caravans, since dwarven caravans are crammed with bars of metal, cages of sabre tooth tigers, zingers and fancy ores I ordered the year before. The meowkin caravan brings me the 'normal' trade goods of cloth food and exotic animals for the zoo.
(made sabre tooths and zingers embarkable but expensive pets since I couldn't find a trace of them down in the caves)
I'm also looking forward to those crystal windows. But make them a little hard to get, else there really is no need at all to look for sand on embark.
Just had one pretty cool goblin siege. Cool cuz I was able to inflict heavy casualties with some different tactic than 'CHAAARGE THOSE ENEMIES WHO GETS PAST THE TWO LINES OF WEAPON AND CAGE TRAPS!'.
The 5 squads or so of goblins and their ogre and troll buddies milled around my raised drawbridge gate, their unarmed general in the middle of the hoard. Then the bridge opened. Instead of armored, dwarven soldiers screaming bloody murder pouring out, there was... an empty corridor with a tall ceiling. The ogres and trolls roared in triumph, their simple brains sensing no trap but slaughter and destruction awaiting them, led the assault, charging in, three getting snagged by a cage trap. The goblins advanced warily behind them.
However, just as they began to reach the doors at the end of the corridor, the sounds of grinding mechanisms reached their ears. Out of the ceiling, hatches opened, and zingers fell into the horde. The height of the fall instantly killed and detonated the creatures. Almost an entire three squads of the goblins, and almost all of the ogres and trolls were paralyzed by the blinding light or poisoned and unconscious from the noxious gas. The doors then, unsurprisingly, swung open to reveal a small army of taunting and screaming dwarven soldiers, who charged the broken goblin horde. The crossbow goblin squad and their spearmaster leader, who had been coincidentally at the back, immediately broke for the way out, only to watch, horrified, as a raised drawbridge part of the wall behind them lowered, releasing a large pack of lean, sabre tooth tigers, who descended upon them in a maddened fury.
It took me an entire season to clean up all the dead goblins and their severed lower bodies.
Anyway, now that my attempt at storytelling is (thankfully) over, I can say that all of the above were true. The goblins and their -10 star general came into the main corridor, I pulled the lever which opens the hatches above, dropping the zingers a couple of z levels onto the goblins. Two of the zingers I dropped died instantly like I said, but the one zinger who broke everything on its body and survived was killed by an axe goblin, dooming the gobs next to him (hehe). Since I was using the first raws for the zingers the flash and putrids were quite overpowered (I had manually removed the frag, pyro and ice). Then I ordered my 15 melee dwarves clad in iron with assorted mithril, damascus and vanilla steel weapons and shields to attack.
I had thought the crossbow gobs were a concern, but I laughed when they just fired a few (missed or blocked)shots and tried to run. Then I pulled the lever which releases the caged tigers that was in a room (sealed by a raised drawbridge)right at the side of the entrance, surrounding the goblins and effectively massacred them. The goblin general was, sadly, not caught in a trap for my amusement, but at least I had the satisfaction of reading the report of a sabre tooth tiger gnawing at him here and there, then getting his head smashed in with an =iovium war hammer=. I lost 4 sabre tooth tigers, 3 zingers and no dwarves to this siege.
Best siege ever.