The Elves arrived. They don't seem to have noticed the results of the deforestation project. I am saddened. Some of the more antagonistic dwarves have been hauling animal carcasses through the trade depot, Our broker, Unib "Ringmirrors" Athelonul, has taken an exceptionally long break to let the boys have their fun. idly the elves have made no comment about this either. Maybe elves are not the prissy tree-hugging ######s they tell you they are in dwarf school, or maybe they've admired our tower and waved to our marksdwarves and decided it isn't worth it. We'll never know.
The trading went well enough. As usual the elves brought almost nothing of value, but we did manage to get a deer for our zoo.
The tax collector has finally found us. He brought a baron, baroness, and hammerer with him. Also some other immigrants, bringing us up to 101. I'll finally get to try out the "special" nobles quarters... Drat. The Baron, it turns out, finds helping others rewarding, and his wife is put off by authority and tradition. I can't hate them. I can't kill them. Yet. The Tax Collector on the other hand is selfish and not easily moved to pity, how do you like your in-room drawbridge Fath Rigatek? The hammerer doesn't seem like such a bad guy either, but he really doesn't care about anything anymore, and the last thing I need is someone beating dwarves to death over unfulfilled mandates, so he gets to admire his own fine drawbridge too.
The "special" noble quarters have been a spectacular failure. The crafty tax collector stood on top of the lever to avoid being flattened by the drawbridge. She will not escape my wrath.
Editing the ini files is not really "beginner knowledge." Your fort needs to reach a certain size before it'll begin attracting invaders, and if you survive that long you should already have mastered the basics.
The tax collector has made unreasonable demands for tin items. Since the baron had just made unreasonable demands for bronze, forcing me to melt my only tin cage, thats a mandate I'm not going to fill. I've decided that now is the time to test my new and improved "special" noble's quarters. I put my plan into action as the hammerer and tax collector slept. The dwarf operated pump was remarkably quick, filling both noble's rooms completely in just a few minutes. One of my legendary engravers suddenly jumped out of bed and dashed towards the crafts workshop, rambling. Its as though the horror being experienced by the two drowning dwarves had seeped into his dreams and given him some gruesome form of inspiration. The tax collector was the first to stop breathing, no one will be punished for not fulfilling his impossible order. The hammerer followed soon after. He wasn't such a bad guy really, even made some friends during his brief stay, but I can't allow him to administer his barbaric form of justice on anyone important. With the grim task completed, I order the floor hatches open to return the water to its reservoir. All the weapons and armor went with it. I really should have thought of that. Meng "Ghostpaper" Ngotolmonom, the legendary engraver with sudden inspiration, begins his construction not soon after. They were menaces to our fort, nay, our <i>county</i> of portalmaze, and yet I can't help feeling guilty about what I had to do.
The Baron has been promoted to Count. His consort has started decorating their tomb with some of her favorite turtle shell items. Apparently she knows that what happened to the tax collector and hammerer wasn't exactly an accident and is preparing for her inevitable demise. I have no plans to off them yet, but maybe their fear will keep them in line.
They were menaces to your fort? They are the purpose for which your fort exists! What is the purpose of the peasantry, if not to cater to those who so richly deserve it?
I recently had a wave of goblin ambushes. These are normally a minor nuisance and this was mostly the same. Unfortunately, one skilled wrestler decided to chase a group of goblins far from the fort while they were retreating. A few bowmen caught up with him and shot him in the chest, knocking him out. All the remaining goblins just walked past him and away from my fort as he slowly died of suffocation. The poor guy drowned in his own blood.
A proud dwarven death. Nothing at all like being killed by a naked mole dog or starving to death in jail (or bed) or being drowned for having the audacity to do your job.
<!--quoteo(post=1675952:date=Apr 16 2008, 06:45 AM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lolfighter @ Apr 16 2008, 06:45 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1675952"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->They were menaces to your fort? They are the purpose for which your fort exists! What is the purpose of the peasantry, if not to cater to those who so richly deserve it?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah nobles are fun. I had a countess, who liked high AND low boots. She just freaking claimed every high and low boot I made. This resulted in my super duper dwarfen, plate protected military to run around without boots <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
Just imagine them joining forces with other dwarves, not from my fort.
Hey, how are you doing. Good, thanks. Wow, thats some really nice armor you get there. Yeah, thanks. All master-work steel plate. Sweet, looks darn protective. Looks and is. But say, why are you running around barfoot?
I just started a new fort. I thought I found a near-ideal location. trees, soil, rock, lava plume... but there were two problems. 1, salt water. I figured I could live with it if my dorfs drank nothing but booze instead of water. seems ok so far. second problem is, there's also a cave right next door to my fort, infested with all kinds of baddies, including a minotaur. I figured, ok, I'll ignore them and they'll probably ignore me... but when some mole rat died in the cave, my entire merry band tried to go get its corpse to toss it in the refuse pile -_- it ended in tears. and dorf corpses.
I'll admit I did a little save scumming afterwards since I liked the map. reloaded the game and the first thing I did was wall off the entrance to the cave =p almost felt like cheating, to wall all those bad guys up in there... once I have a nice military, I'll have them 'train' by clearing out that cave someday...
instead of walling them in you should have fortificated them in. Makes a good marksdwarf practice <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
I also started a new game on an interesting map: visible magma pipe, lots of cliffs, small 2x4 area, underground river, adamantine, unicorns, giant eagles and mammoths. Best part about it is, that I found it in a pocket world,
I settled near the magma pipe, caged most fire imps and men and am now building a giant dam to flood the world. GO ME!
Edit:
Unicorns are ######. Because they constantly interrupted my woodcutters and hunters, I decided to get rid of them and took 7 marksdwarves, because 7 dwarves vs 7 unicorns sounded fair to me. I positioned the squad near the unicorns and then switched to harrass wild animals. Bolts fly, 2 die instantly and the rest of the herd dispersed. My dwarves ran out of bolts are are now chasing the unicorns for a chance of hand to horn combat.
The fleeing unicorns are heavily wounded and I am very confident that I will have killed them all soon. Btw: How long do you survive with a "stunned" liver?
Newsflash: 1 Unicorn remaining, heavily wounded and it seems, that it fled the wrong way <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" /> That fancy looking fellow is my mayor, a great hammer and marksdwarf and those gentle folks south are marksdwarves.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
<!--quoteo(post=1676103:date=Apr 17 2008, 12:01 PM:name=Faskalia)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Faskalia @ Apr 17 2008, 12:01 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1676103"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->instead of walling them in you should have fortificated them in. Makes a good marksdwarf practice <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
I also started a new game on an interesting map: visible magma pipe, lots of cliffs, small 2x4 area, underground river, adamantine, unicorns, giant eagles and mammoths. Best part about it is, that I found it in a pocket world,
I settled near the magma pipe, caged most fire imps and men and am now building a giant dam to flood the world. GO ME!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Now that would be a kinda an awesome addition.
extorting nearby civilizations.
I will flood the world with magma if I do not receive... ONE MILLION Dollars!
<!--quoteo(post=1676099:date=Apr 17 2008, 10:34 AM:name=Gwahir)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Gwahir @ Apr 17 2008, 10:34 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1676099"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->you could have just forbidden those items..<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> you mean forbid all corpse hauling? I didn't want to do that <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
<!--quoteo(post=1676106:date=Apr 17 2008, 12:26 PM:name=DiscoZombie)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DiscoZombie @ Apr 17 2008, 12:26 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1676106"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->you mean forbid all corpse hauling? I didn't want to do that <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> IIRC you can say that corpses outside are not to be hauled or set an area that items in it are not to be hauled....
Won't work. It's a cave, so it counts as "inside." The dwarves give rescuing the mole rat corpse from the clutches of the vicious minotaur the same priority as throwing out the giant cockroach remains littered all over your fortress. You could solve it by not designating any refuse stockpiles at all, but most players would not consider that a desirable option.
Unfortunately, caves/chasms are a problem like that. Unless you want to constantly keep an eye on it and immediately designate the corpse of any creature that dies in there as forbidden (and remember to hunt for chunks and designate them, too), dwarves WILL haplessly stroll in there to retrieve corpses and get themselves killed in the process. Of course, "Bremud Bralikomud, Legendary Armorsmith, has been struck down" will get your attention and allow you to deal with the immediate problem, but the entire scenario will repeat every time anything dies in there.
In terms of game design, I classify this case as "undesirable AI behaviour" and Discozombie's solution as "perfectly viable and legitimate."
miasma is becoming rather annoying, it occasionally springs from my kitchen as a few plump helmets or roasts are left to rot, but this time it was a firefly... and it was an enormous cloud that filled the entire gate area.
I've gathered quite a large collection of animals in the zoo, and since I don't need 6 horses and 10 cows, and I have plenty of food, I've decided to sell a few of them to the next caravan. BTw, does anybody know what conditions are necessary to get vermin in cages? I've got a squirrel and a rat in the zoo, I just happened to notice them on the cage assignment screen once and said "why not?", but I don't know how they got there. Interestingly, they still show up in the menu, but are not marked as being in a cage, even though they are.
The count and countess are growing tired of their (shared) rooms. The count keeps demanding bronze items regardless of the fact that we have no tin (or copper really, we got a few cages, thats it). I may need to off them soon. Then again, I could just let them tantrum and get thrown in prison.
One of the former mayors' wife, marsdwarf Dakost "Gorgeclaws" (AWESOME NICKNAME BONUS!) Eribsinsot, has popped out another kid. That makes 3. She'll be firing that crossbow one handed for the rest of her life.
Goblins ambushed during the dwarven caravan. A few snatchers poped up near the fort as I ordered the draw bridges raised. One of the stupid ######s gets run over by a wagon. The others get totally murdered by the caravan guards. I manage to raise the drawbridges before the goblins get close, but a poor fisher dwarf is caught outside. He starts running as the goblins approach, only to discover another ambush. They chase him, appropriately enough, into the mausoleum where he is torn to bloody bits. That group of goblins seems content to stay there. The other group has decided to stay on the hill above the fort, where my marksdwarves can shoot at them with impunity. Unfortunately they keep running out of ammo and running all the way back through the underground tunnel into the main fort to get more. I'll have to fix that. Eventually they are all killed.
I lower the main drawbridge and have my single swordsdwarf and the remaining hammerdwarves rush out, this convinces the goblins to come out of the mosoleum, then I lower the drawbridge for the depot. The goblins need to run in front of the depot to get to the main enterance and so the caravan guards start picking them off. Then the wagons roll out and run over a bunch of em. The rest are finished off by the caravan guards. The records show that I lost, in total, 3 dwarves. The caravan lost a few more.
During the commotion a miasma cloud broke out in the main food supply. I imagine this is because the refuse pile was outside and dwarves were ordered to stay indoors during the siege. It cleared pretty quickly though. Also, later on, miasma formed outside in the pile of goblin remains. According to the wiki this is not supposed to happen, so I'm a bit confused.
It occurs to me that my marksdwarves may not have been able to shoot the other goblins because they were too high up and the goblins occupied a blindspot. To prevent this in the future I have added some fortifications to the lower levels of the tower.
Anyways, the caravan ran away in fear, so I'll have to attempt to get rid of this junk in the next one. Hopefully its not the elves, I got a feeling they won't buy any of this blood stained narrow clothing or these animals in wooden cages.
I've decided to redesign the jails. In order to avoid future dehydration deaths, I'm going to include a well, buckets, and food, and use chains instead of cages. Hopefully by arranging this properly the prisoners will be able to get food and water without relying on their unreliable friends.
--
I'm going to try and start on the tutorial this weekend.
Ask your clothier to make one of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_carrier" target="_blank">these</a> for your amply bechilded marksdwarf.
Designate an indoors refuse pile. You can designate and un-designate it as you like depending on whether your dwarves have access to the outdoors or not. Or you could have the outdoors refuse pile take from the indoors one, that should keep it cleared too when possible (though I haven't tested that). Put your indoors stockpile in a room with only a single entrance, preferably centrally located. Alternatively, designate the room as restricted (d -> o) and make sure there's a short route around it to prevent dwarves from making shortcuts through clouds of miasma. Make any entrances to the room "airlocks," that is: Door, empty space, door. This will make it virtually impossible for any clouds of miasma to escape the room. An indoors stockpile will create miasma, but it will only be a minor nuisance since it will be well-contained and constrained to a single, rarely visited room. It will certainly be less of a problem than miasma in high traffic areas like corridors, dining halls and food stockpiles.
locallyunsceneFeeder of TrollsJoin Date: 2002-12-25Member: 11528Members, Constellation
So I finally got around to playing it again. I decided to continue with my "fort" even though it didn't really have anything. I finally managed to dig into the earth(I had to use an upstairway on top of an down stairway, I couldn't just designate up/down stairways on top of each other) I cleared out areas for barracks/workshops/stockpiles/etc but found I didn't have any stone because I was digging through white sand. I got a little worried at this point but when I dug down another level I hit Dolomite, the mineral that doesn't cop out when there's heat all about. I placed my workshops and dug a dining hall in the sand(a bad idea in retrospect as I'm sure my dwarfs all have sand in their food), then rooms for my dwarfs(struck hematite and talc!), dug a farm, constructed a trade depot, designated a meeting hall, but now I'm kinda stuck. My farm doesn't seem to be producing enough food as my supplies are still dwindling, and my metalsmith doesn't have anything to do because I don't have an anvil. I made a bunch of stone mechanisms to sell to the caravan but they were too heavy.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
my random notes:
That first level of sand makes for a great farming area as you don't have to bother with any sort of irrigation or anything, just make a massive honking farm.
I tend to have 2 farmers that are set up doing not much aside from farming/harvesting/cooking/brewing (one farmer is a brewer, one is a cook). The brewer will eventually start producing more seeds then you could ever really use. Eventually I redelegate dorfs to either cooking/brewing/farming as I gain more dorfs and can spare them to specialize.
Farming is good, but if your area is well vegetated you can also gather plants from the surface (d->p). I've got 3(!) legendary herbalists from my extensive plant gathering efforts. Just be sure to cook/brew your plants, and of course store them indoors and in barrels, for maximum longevity.
I've just noticed that there is no mayor. Apparently he bled to death during the battle and no one noticed.
I've dug my first official mine shaft 15 z-levels deep in the center of the mountain (this is as far down as possible). Only stuck some junk rock. And microline, which is at least pretty.
Since I'm going to be selling about 10 dogs to the next caravan, and Unib "Ringmirrors" likes them so much, I thought I'd give her her very own Dog in a Cage for her dining room/study.
My first dwarven wedding: The Engraver Rakust Atastendok and the Peasant Zasit Udistkadol. How a Peasant bagged a Legendary Engraver I'll never know.
Ugh. I knew these nobles would be trouble. The countess has a fetish for turtle shell items and mandates their construction constantly. Some poor ###### got possessed recently and guess what hes demanding? Yep, and we're fresh out. How fitting that she decorates her tomb with those shell crafts...
Anyways, I changed my idea for the prison to be much simpler. Instead of a well, I just put a trench in and started filling it with water (via zones). If I chain the prisoners within reach of it, they should be able to drink from it.
While filling it, I was sieged by goblins. 15 macegobos and a bowgobo. I Immediately order everyone inside, and the drawbridges up. Then I notice something, my main entrance can be entered even when the drawbridge is up due to a design flaw. Combined with the fact that winter has frozen the moat, this is not good. I keep a close eye on the horde as it rolls over the hill on its way to me. I construct an emergency wall to block the main entrance, unfortunately 2 dwarfs are trapped on the other side. The fort decides to elect a new mayor to celebrate.
The goblins stop their advance just outside the entrances to my tower, fort, and depot. They could easily get into my tower since no one has pulled the damn lever yet, but they decide to stay just within firing range of my marksdwarves on the 2nd floor. Unfortunately, I didn't put many fortifications on that side of the tower on that floor, and they're only getting in a few pot shots. Then they get into their rhythm and take down 4 of the ######s in a few seconds. The gobos break their ranks and start running... right past my entrances and toward the west end of the map. My marksmen are happy to shoot them in the back from the 5th floor fortifications as they flee. In total, 5 goblins survived, no dwarven casualties.
Shortly after the all-clear is sounded and things get back to normal, the dyer who got possessed goes berserk. Fortunatly all my workshops have doors and I had long since sealed him into his.
The new mayor mandates the construction of Adamantine items. Yeah, thats going to happen.
Another note on food rotting: A cook will tantrum if the masterpiece meal he just made is eaten by mildew and maggots rather than dwarves. Don't rot that roast!
Align, are you sure it's the walking? I'm not saying it's not true, it's just the first I've heard of it. Sure it's not vermin gnawing at it? Because that happens if you don't have cats <strike>creating sources of miasma everywhere</strike> keeping your fortress clear of vermin.
Vermin also make for bad food, and I think it goes bad regardless, but it definitely goes bad faster if dwarves use it for more than going in and out to grab their meals.
Hmm, is food inside barrels safe? Or only relatively safe?
Btw: If you do not want to bother with having to rewater the fields every so often:
square shaped farm One z level above the middle of the farm dig a channel. Place a hatch on that. Build a lever connect lever to hatch pull lever hatch should be now open remove lever then build a pressure plate 1 z level under the channel set it to "triggered by water, reset, 0 - 0" connect the channel to a infinite water source
What happens is that water flows towards the channel, drops through the open hatch and hits the pressure plate. Because the plate is set to 0-0 it will send the open command to the hatch if there is 0 pressure. If there is more than 0 pressure it will send the close command to the hatch. This results in fields, that could be used to farm rice. They also look nice. To ensure that water does only escape through condensation and not through dwarfs opening the doors to the farm you should make farms only accessible through stairs or ramps.
If you want to avoid the condensation loss, just set the pressure plate to 0-1. This will result in a depth of 2. But be aware that you cannot build the farm plots on any field that has water higher than 1 on it. (You can still farm a plot with 3 on it). So Once the fields has been build it is safe to set it under 3 deep water.
Above method can also be applied to ensure that wells at any z level are always full and do not have to be refilled by manually pulling levers. You are also at less danger of having a gremlin flooding your fort, cause he pushed the reservoir level. (I lost my last fort that way)
Edit: It should also be noted, that every glass and water do let light shine through. This makes farming non dwarven crop pretty easy, thanks to glass hatches and floors.
All food left outside eventually spoils. All food not on a stockpile/in a barrel eventually spoils.
All meat and fish eventually spoils if not cooked.
Plants may not spoil on an indoors stockpile (unsure, please confirm) - and even if they do, they do so at a much slower rate - though there are the aforementioned issues with trampling and vermin. I believe plants in a barrel are safe from both feet, vermin and time, but please confirm if you know for sure.
Prepared meals eventually spoil if not on a stockpile or in a barrel.
Comments
The trading went well enough. As usual the elves brought almost nothing of value, but we did manage to get a deer for our zoo.
The tax collector has finally found us. He brought a baron, baroness, and hammerer with him. Also some other immigrants, bringing us up to 101. I'll finally get to try out the "special" nobles quarters... Drat. The Baron, it turns out, finds helping others rewarding, and his wife is put off by authority and tradition. I can't hate them. I can't kill them. Yet. The Tax Collector on the other hand is selfish and not easily moved to pity, how do you like your in-room drawbridge Fath Rigatek? The hammerer doesn't seem like such a bad guy either, but he really doesn't care about anything anymore, and the last thing I need is someone beating dwarves to death over unfulfilled mandates, so he gets to admire his own fine drawbridge too.
The "special" noble quarters have been a spectacular failure. The crafty tax collector stood on top of the lever to avoid being flattened by the drawbridge. She will not escape my wrath.
The Baron has been promoted to Count. His consort has started decorating their tomb with some of her favorite turtle shell items. Apparently she knows that what happened to the tax collector and hammerer wasn't exactly an accident and is preparing for her inevitable demise. I have no plans to off them yet, but maybe their fear will keep them in line.
Yeah nobles are fun. I had a countess, who liked high AND low boots. She just freaking claimed every high and low boot I made. This resulted in my super duper dwarfen, plate protected military to run around without boots <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
Just imagine them joining forces with other dwarves, not from my fort.
Hey, how are you doing.
Good, thanks.
Wow, thats some really nice armor you get there.
Yeah, thanks. All master-work steel plate.
Sweet, looks darn protective.
Looks and is.
But say, why are you running around barfoot?
.
.
.
awkward silence
I'll admit I did a little save scumming afterwards since I liked the map. reloaded the game and the first thing I did was wall off the entrance to the cave =p almost felt like cheating, to wall all those bad guys up in there... once I have a nice military, I'll have them 'train' by clearing out that cave someday...
I also started a new game on an interesting map: visible magma pipe, lots of cliffs, small 2x4 area, underground river, adamantine, unicorns, giant eagles and mammoths. Best part about it is, that I found it in a pocket world,
I settled near the magma pipe, caged most fire imps and men and am now building a giant dam to flood the world. GO ME!
Edit:
Unicorns are ######. Because they constantly interrupted my woodcutters and hunters, I decided to get rid of them and took 7 marksdwarves, because 7 dwarves vs 7 unicorns sounded fair to me. I positioned the squad near the unicorns and then switched to harrass wild animals. Bolts fly, 2 die instantly and the rest of the herd dispersed. My dwarves ran out of bolts are are now chasing the unicorns for a chance of hand to horn combat.
The fleeing unicorns are heavily wounded and I am very confident that I will have killed them all soon.
Btw: How long do you survive with a "stunned" liver?
Newsflash:
1 Unicorn remaining, heavily wounded and it seems, that it fled the wrong way <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />
That fancy looking fellow is my mayor, a great hammer and marksdwarf and those gentle folks south are marksdwarves.
<a href="http://img388.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cliffsrocksr5.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://img388.imageshack.us/img388/2270/cliffsrocksr5.th.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
I also started a new game on an interesting map: visible magma pipe, lots of cliffs, small 2x4 area, underground river, adamantine, unicorns, giant eagles and mammoths. Best part about it is, that I found it in a pocket world,
I settled near the magma pipe, caged most fire imps and men and am now building a giant dam to flood the world. GO ME!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Now that would be a kinda an awesome addition.
extorting nearby civilizations.
I will flood the world with magma if I do not receive... ONE MILLION Dollars!
you mean forbid all corpse hauling? I didn't want to do that <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
IIRC you can say that corpses outside are not to be hauled
or set an area that items in it are not to be hauled....
can't remember atm exactly.
Unfortunately, caves/chasms are a problem like that. Unless you want to constantly keep an eye on it and immediately designate the corpse of any creature that dies in there as forbidden (and remember to hunt for chunks and designate them, too), dwarves WILL haplessly stroll in there to retrieve corpses and get themselves killed in the process. Of course, "Bremud Bralikomud, Legendary Armorsmith, has been struck down" will get your attention and allow you to deal with the immediate problem, but the entire scenario will repeat every time anything dies in there.
In terms of game design, I classify this case as "undesirable AI behaviour" and Discozombie's solution as "perfectly viable and legitimate."
The fortress is now ridiculously food-wealthy, take a look:
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2343/2422883858_5d572f5e2a_o.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
I've gathered quite a large collection of animals in the zoo, and since I don't need 6 horses and 10 cows, and I have plenty of food, I've decided to sell a few of them to the next caravan. BTw, does anybody know what conditions are necessary to get vermin in cages? I've got a squirrel and a rat in the zoo, I just happened to notice them on the cage assignment screen once and said "why not?", but I don't know how they got there. Interestingly, they still show up in the menu, but are not marked as being in a cage, even though they are.
The count and countess are growing tired of their (shared) rooms. The count keeps demanding bronze items regardless of the fact that we have no tin (or copper really, we got a few cages, thats it). I may need to off them soon. Then again, I could just let them tantrum and get thrown in prison.
One of the former mayors' wife, marsdwarf Dakost "Gorgeclaws" (AWESOME NICKNAME BONUS!) Eribsinsot, has popped out another kid. That makes 3. She'll be firing that crossbow one handed for the rest of her life.
Goblins ambushed during the dwarven caravan. A few snatchers poped up near the fort as I ordered the draw bridges raised. One of the stupid ######s gets run over by a wagon. The others get totally murdered by the caravan guards. I manage to raise the drawbridges before the goblins get close, but a poor fisher dwarf is caught outside. He starts running as the goblins approach, only to discover another ambush. They chase him, appropriately enough, into the mausoleum where he is torn to bloody bits. That group of goblins seems content to stay there. The other group has decided to stay on the hill above the fort, where my marksdwarves can shoot at them with impunity. Unfortunately they keep running out of ammo and running all the way back through the underground tunnel into the main fort to get more. I'll have to fix that. Eventually they are all killed.
I lower the main drawbridge and have my single swordsdwarf and the remaining hammerdwarves rush out, this convinces the goblins to come out of the mosoleum, then I lower the drawbridge for the depot. The goblins need to run in front of the depot to get to the main enterance and so the caravan guards start picking them off. Then the wagons roll out and run over a bunch of em. The rest are finished off by the caravan guards. The records show that I lost, in total, 3 dwarves. The caravan lost a few more.
During the commotion a miasma cloud broke out in the main food supply. I imagine this is because the refuse pile was outside and dwarves were ordered to stay indoors during the siege. It cleared pretty quickly though. Also, later on, miasma formed outside in the pile of goblin remains. According to the wiki this is not supposed to happen, so I'm a bit confused.
It occurs to me that my marksdwarves may not have been able to shoot the other goblins because they were too high up and the goblins occupied a blindspot. To prevent this in the future I have added some fortifications to the lower levels of the tower.
Anyways, the caravan ran away in fear, so I'll have to attempt to get rid of this junk in the next one. Hopefully its not the elves, I got a feeling they won't buy any of this blood stained narrow clothing or these animals in wooden cages.
I've decided to redesign the jails. In order to avoid future dehydration deaths, I'm going to include a well, buckets, and food, and use chains instead of cages. Hopefully by arranging this properly the prisoners will be able to get food and water without relying on their unreliable friends.
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I'm going to try and start on the tutorial this weekend.
Designate an indoors refuse pile. You can designate and un-designate it as you like depending on whether your dwarves have access to the outdoors or not. Or you could have the outdoors refuse pile take from the indoors one, that should keep it cleared too when possible (though I haven't tested that).
Put your indoors stockpile in a room with only a single entrance, preferably centrally located. Alternatively, designate the room as restricted (d -> o) and make sure there's a short route around it to prevent dwarves from making shortcuts through clouds of miasma.
Make any entrances to the room "airlocks," that is: Door, empty space, door. This will make it virtually impossible for any clouds of miasma to escape the room.
An indoors stockpile will create miasma, but it will only be a minor nuisance since it will be well-contained and constrained to a single, rarely visited room. It will certainly be less of a problem than miasma in high traffic areas like corridors, dining halls and food stockpiles.
That first level of sand makes for a great farming area as you don't have to bother with any sort of irrigation or anything, just make a massive honking farm.
I tend to have 2 farmers that are set up doing not much aside from farming/harvesting/cooking/brewing (one farmer is a brewer, one is a cook). The brewer will eventually start producing more seeds then you could ever really use. Eventually I redelegate dorfs to either cooking/brewing/farming as I gain more dorfs and can spare them to specialize.
hmph
/me fires up DF again to look at his last fort.
<a href="http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/Indecisive%27s_illustrated_fortress_mode_tutorial" target="_blank">http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.p...s_mode_tutorial</a>
That seems to cover all the important bits, so I've suspended work on mine.
I've dug my first official mine shaft 15 z-levels deep in the center of the mountain (this is as far down as possible). Only stuck some junk rock. And microline, which is at least pretty.
Since I'm going to be selling about 10 dogs to the next caravan, and Unib "Ringmirrors" likes them so much, I thought I'd give her her very own Dog in a Cage for her dining room/study.
My first dwarven wedding: The Engraver Rakust Atastendok and the Peasant Zasit Udistkadol. How a Peasant bagged a Legendary Engraver I'll never know.
Ugh. I knew these nobles would be trouble. The countess has a fetish for turtle shell items and mandates their construction constantly. Some poor ###### got possessed recently and guess what hes demanding? Yep, and we're fresh out. How fitting that she decorates her tomb with those shell crafts...
Anyways, I changed my idea for the prison to be much simpler. Instead of a well, I just put a trench in and started filling it with water (via zones). If I chain the prisoners within reach of it, they should be able to drink from it.
While filling it, I was sieged by goblins. 15 macegobos and a bowgobo. I Immediately order everyone inside, and the drawbridges up. Then I notice something, my main entrance can be entered even when the drawbridge is up due to a design flaw. Combined with the fact that winter has frozen the moat, this is not good. I keep a close eye on the horde as it rolls over the hill on its way to me. I construct an emergency wall to block the main entrance, unfortunately 2 dwarfs are trapped on the other side. The fort decides to elect a new mayor to celebrate.
The goblins stop their advance just outside the entrances to my tower, fort, and depot. They could easily get into my tower since no one has pulled the damn lever yet, but they decide to stay just within firing range of my marksdwarves on the 2nd floor. Unfortunately, I didn't put many fortifications on that side of the tower on that floor, and they're only getting in a few pot shots. Then they get into their rhythm and take down 4 of the ######s in a few seconds. The gobos break their ranks and start running... right past my entrances and toward the west end of the map. My marksmen are happy to shoot them in the back from the 5th floor fortifications as they flee. In total, 5 goblins survived, no dwarven casualties.
Shortly after the all-clear is sounded and things get back to normal, the dyer who got possessed goes berserk. Fortunatly all my workshops have doors and I had long since sealed him into his.
The new mayor mandates the construction of Adamantine items. Yeah, thats going to happen.
Align, are you sure it's the walking? I'm not saying it's not true, it's just the first I've heard of it. Sure it's not vermin gnawing at it? Because that happens if you don't have cats <strike>creating sources of miasma everywhere</strike> keeping your fortress clear of vermin.
Btw: If you do not want to bother with having to rewater the fields every so often:
square shaped farm
One z level above the middle of the farm dig a channel.
Place a hatch on that.
Build a lever
connect lever to hatch
pull lever
hatch should be now open
remove lever
then build a pressure plate 1 z level under the channel set it to "triggered by water, reset, 0 - 0"
connect the channel to a infinite water source
What happens is that water flows towards the channel, drops through the open hatch and hits the pressure plate. Because the plate is set to 0-0 it will send the open command to the hatch if there is 0 pressure. If there is more than 0 pressure it will send the close command to the hatch. This results in fields, that could be used to farm rice. They also look nice. To ensure that water does only escape through condensation and not through dwarfs opening the doors to the farm you should make farms only accessible through stairs or ramps.
If you want to avoid the condensation loss, just set the pressure plate to 0-1. This will result in a depth of 2. But be aware that you cannot build the farm plots on any field that has water higher than 1 on it. (You can still farm a plot with 3 on it). So Once the fields has been build it is safe to set it under 3 deep water.
Above method can also be applied to ensure that wells at any z level are always full and do not have to be refilled by manually pulling levers. You are also at less danger of having a gremlin flooding your fort, cause he pushed the reservoir level. (I lost my last fort that way)
Edit: It should also be noted, that every glass and water do let light shine through. This makes farming non dwarven crop pretty easy, thanks to glass hatches and floors.
All meat and fish eventually spoils if not cooked.
Plants may not spoil on an indoors stockpile (unsure, please confirm) - and even if they do, they do so at a much slower rate - though there are the aforementioned issues with trampling and vermin. I believe plants in a barrel are safe from both feet, vermin and time, but please confirm if you know for sure.
Prepared meals eventually spoil if not on a stockpile or in a barrel.