Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Psieye]

I had a dream last night...first person DF and i had a DFhack exe that let me turn all civs hostile to me. I wish it were true.

While not first person perspective, DFhack can let you take control of one of your soldiers during a siege. Turning all civs hostile to you doesn't even need hacks, just raw modding. In fact, just grab a mod that has already done all that for you, chiefly the Fortress Defence mod.


OP, read the latest DF Talk transcript.

[Wannazzaki]

I had a dream last night...first person DF and i had a DFhack exe that let me turn all civs hostile to me. I wish it were true.

While not first person perspective, DFhack can let you take control of one of your soldiers during a siege. Turning all civs hostile to you doesn't even need hacks, just raw modding. In fact, just grab a mod that has already done all that for you, chiefly the Fortress Defence mod.


OP, read the latest DF Talk transcript.

I mean just run it after your fort is established with trading etc to convert everything to hostile/at war with. I don't want to START at war with everyone. That would be brutal. I also meant not to me specifically, just my fort.

[khearn]

I largely agree with the OP. Sieges are too easy to defend against. There are so many ways to neutralize sieges. The trading is also broken. Flooding the market with one item should devalue that item.

And yes, I know that improving them is on the todo list, but we have no idea how many years it will be before that happens. I'd rather see some of the game breaking imbalances dealt with than see werewolves and vampires and zombies added. They'll also probably be found to have major imbalances that allow players to easily avoid/weaponize them.

I'm hoping the trading issues will be dealt with before too long, since Toady has said he's working on the Caravan Arc. But instead we're getting undead.  Oh well, it's his game, he can do what he wants with it.

And yeah, I can dig deeper and face the clowns. But they're broken, too. The first time I opened the circus I wiped out the whole crowd with no losses. A locked hatch is 100% effective to stop them while you arrange for a cave-in. Or a hallway with repeating spikes. Or an obsidianizing checkerboard. But has anyone really survived against the clowns with just a straight army? One that wasn't manufactured in a danger room? Digging deeper just runs into the same kind of issues.

It really boils down to the only real challenges in the game are the ones you put on yourself. So, given that, what are some self-imposed rules to make the game harder, without completely changing the goals? I'm not talking about the challenges page on the wiki. Most of those are major changes like living completely aboveground. I'm talking things like not ever completely locking your entrance. Things that make the game harder, but don't change the entire flavor. It would be nice to come up with a list of things that people could pick from as they want to make the game a bit more challenging.

Here are a few that come to mind:
Economic:

• Make no more than X of any one type of trade good per year so you can't just spam out rock mugs.
• No selling goblin clothes to caravans. I often find myself buying everything I want with just this stuff. Too easy. Either atom-smash it all or dump it in the magma.
• No selling any goblinite at all. Melt down the metal and make something new with it first.
• No selling anything (imported).

Military:

• No cage traps
• No weapon traps
• No more than X traps of a particular type (or all total)
• No dodge-pit traps.
• No dodge-pit traps deeper than X z-levels. So you still have to deal with survivors, but they're just tenderized first. With X=1 they'd just be stunned, X=5 will have damage, but most will be alive. X=10 is 100% fatal, so keep it below that.
• No long trap hallways. No more than X traps in any given route in.
• Only use masterwork mechanisms. This limits your trap usage early on, but once your mechanic gets good it's not really much of a limtitation.
  
• No lockdowns. There must always be an unlocked way into your fortress.
• Limited lockdowns. Nothing that a building destroyer can't get through (i.e. no raised drawbridges). And no more than one layer of destroyable defenses. This gives you time to marshal a defense, but you can't hide inside forever.
• No danger rooms.
• No using caged prisoners for training.

I'm not suggesting that anyone would do all of them at once. Just pick a few and see how it goes. If you get wiped out, pick fewer. If it's easy, pick more next time. Many of them have an X that you can pick to make things harder or easier.

[thistleknot]

no repeating spike traps?

And I say don't limit yourself.  What point is that?  You can make any game hard by limiting yourself.

However, I think Toady probably expected not being able to use the xploits (such as stripping enemies of armor in cages) that are used.

And on another note.  Toady probably expected the militia (without training rooms) to be the answer to every siege.  So if playing DF the "real dwarfy way", I guess meeting sieges with militia is the true answer.  Yet I have never truly figured out how to do that.

[Togre]

It really boils down to the only real challenges in the game are the ones you put on yourself.

In my mind DF is really just a sandbox game.  Yeah, it's one messed-up sandbox, but there is no real goal and the only "winning" that is achieved is when you remember WINNING=!!FUN!!   I don't think the point of playing DF is to conquer something hard, but to have fun.  For some people that means a challenge, for others super-ingenious structures, for others torture and other !!SCIENCE!!, and for wimps like me, using what ever advantage I can get to survive.  That's fine.  DF has the ability to cater to all these mind-sets.

I'd suggest to the OP that he decide what makes him enjoy games and then tackle DF with that in mind.  If he goes for a challenge, sounds like he's got some great suggestions here.

[Necro910]

I agree, and Toady's seems to agree as well, judging from the goals page and DF talk.

I think Toady was talking about making traps more difficult to set up, needing multiple tiles and all that. Actually, when I first learned that traps existed, I assumed they would require multiple tiles! I expected that if I wanted a spinning disc (what's the difference between 'disc' and 'disk'?) coming out of the wall, I'd need to build a trap that, well... came out of the wall. Like a mechanism on both sides of the wall, or something. I also assumed I'd need power for all my traps (how does it spin otherwise?), so held off building them until I'd learned about power.

Then I found they were easy to set up. Really easy. 

I'd assume that the spinning blades are powered by the step. Let me explain:

A goblin/troll/etc. steps on a plate. The plate coils a spring/cog/whatever and that spins it. The dwarves probably made a more efficient way in a similar manner.

[Psieye]

And yes, I know that improving them is on the todo list, but we have no idea how many years it will be before that happens. I'd rather see some of the game breaking imbalances dealt with than see werewolves and vampires and zombies added. They'll also probably be found to have major imbalances that allow players to easily avoid/weaponize them.

I'm hoping the trading issues will be dealt with before too long, since Toady has said he's working on the Caravan Arc. But instead we're getting undead.  Oh well, it's his game, he can do what he wants with it.

Hmm, were you around since the 40d days? I get the impression you weren't around for the last long wait for the next release, or for this one. Are you aware of why we ended up getting undead? Trace back the devlog history (not just the summarised list).

But see, this has boiled down to different perspectives on DF. You want Toady to fix some game imbalances so things are more realistic and harder. I wouldn't be surprised if Toady thinks he doesn't have a game at all until release 5 when time actually moves in the world instead of the frozen charade we have now. The original meaning behind "Losing is Fun" can only be had in a very limited way until the world is unfrozen.

My point is, the list of things you are unhappy with in DF is much shorter than Toady's list. It's more agonising for us because he's the one seeing day by day progress while we are left wondering when we can get our hands on the new stuff. But since the act of making a release is a major timesink, I can understand why Toady wants to make big releases followed by essential bugfixing rather than lots of lesser releases.

[JackoftheBox]

I kinda enjoy the game being not too hard, it gives me the freedom to really do the things I want with it, be it building a megaproject, a hermit challenge or just flooding the world with magma. If I'd have to constantly worry about survival in a normal embark, I couldn't do any of these projects. Sure the game could be a bit more challenging but for me at the moment clowns and megabeasts are enough.

[Tevish Szat]

This is something that I discovered myself: Simply surviving -- building a place where ~200 dwarves can live in peace and security?  It's easy once you get a handle on the basic mechanics.  Build traps, wall in, perhaps danger room a competent military if you're feeling the need to deal with trapavoiders.

But that's not playing Dwarf Fortress.  Playing Dwarf Fortress is taking on as much ‼fun‼ as you think you can handle, then taking on some more because it's exciting.  Playing Dwarf Fortress is making everything that becomes easy a little bit harder.  It's setting challenges you don't know if you can overcome.  It's building megaprojects, running scarce minerals, high savagery, and hostile climates, fluid engineering, and mining adamantine blind because you like to live on the edge.  Playing Dwarf fortress, having the infamously hard ‼fun‼ is about choosing awesome over practical, setting goals and trying to reach them in a spectacular fashion.

You can tell yourself that you want a secure pasture with a stone wall and a gate around it, and safe and decently organized tunnels below.  You can set that as your goal and be decently sure you'll make it.  Alternatively, you can set your goal to be having a massive edifice crowned with an idol in the shape of a screaming skull that can spit up a torrent of lava at your whim, with palatial chambers for your favorites in the world below, and have no idea whether you'll get there.

Congratulations on reaching the point where you can strive towards the second.

[Loud Whispers]

Vanilla - Build above ground, and ONLY above ground.
Dig deep, REALLY deep. Have fun.

Mod - Install fortress defence mods or Cthulhu mods and what not.

[Azure]

Give kobolds noeat and nodrink so they survive woldgen.
Give gobbos trapavoid

Copy-paste the raw entries to taste.
Enjoy x ambushes/season

I have a fort that is practically stuck at 30 dwarves because if a patrol misses a gobbo they wipe out merchants and migrants before they can get to safety.(i have 3 sets of goblins and a kobold)

[dwarfhoplite]

The game is actually quite difficult with low minerals, do not seal yourself in, do not use weapon/cage traps, don't do rock goods, don't use danger room

[Teneb]

The game is actually quite difficult with low minerals, do not seal yourself in, do not use weapon/cage traps, don't do rock goods, don't use danger room

And, if you are feeling suicidal, make your fortres in the third cavern layer. And by that I mean embarking, digging all the way down, setting up shop there and hope no FBs come until you are ready (but they will anyway).

[ohgoditburns]

Building topside is actually harder IMO.

[Teneb]

There are no FBs, GCS, blind cave ogres or *gasp* crundles topside. Just saying.