GitP Dwarf Fortress Succession Game 4: Dwarves on Patrol

[iyaerP]

And even if there aren't any forgotton beasts yet, they are always coming onto the map. Also, assume GCS hidden in the shadows unless you use a cat or something to scout out the caverns for you.

[Luzahn]

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17th Felsite 123:

The annual Elven trade caravan has arrived on schedule. Of course, it is accompanied by a warband of goblin pikemen. Luckily, they tangled with those lost traders on the border, and gave time for everyone to get inside safely.

The elves have a large cargo of big cats. Those could be extremely useful as war creatures. Let's see if the broker actually decides to stop by the depot...

20th Felsite 123:

In other news, conversion of the mining tunnels into a subterranean fortress is going nicely, after the tragic loss of the other delve.

10th Hematite 123:

Our marksdwarf squad, newly reinforced by some skilled migrants, has successfully driven off most of the goblin ambushers. Unfortunately, the scatterbrained fools were buzzed by a giant owl, and decided to focus all of their fire on it, rather than the last group of goblins. Hopefully we can still kill their survivors. No sense in letting them leave with their lives.

Currently, the fort is training its new mighty feline army.

The big cats are as follows: Two female Jaguar, one female Leopard, a male Tiger, a female Tiger, a male Lion, and a female Lion.

Hopefully this will result in breeding an army of war cats. Those Tiger and Lion pairs will be very helpful. These are a good sort of elf, they can stay.

I also bought a snake known as the Bushmaster. He will be my trusty animal companion.

Does anybody know whether war training disables the ability to breed the animals? Wouldn't want to limit the army.

[Gnoman]

I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I've seen war animals give birth before, and the DF wiki doesn't mention such a condition. You might want to ask on the Bay12 forums or their IRC channel to be sure.

[Luzahn]

Yeah, I didn't see anything saying they can't, and I do remember my war dogs from previous versions giving birth. I suppose we'll wait and see.

Any suggestions as to what to do with the cat army? I'd probably assign them to melee squadmembers, but if they die it'll cause the same unhappiness as a dead pet.

[iyaerP]

I put the two that I trained on my turn as watch-cats inside of the gates. I have no clue if they are still there or not. That is my favored use for war animals, putting them on a rope that is right around a corner on a route that invaders need to take if they get past all your traps.

This serves two purposes. It catches any thieves that snuck past all of your traps, it serves as infiltration protection for when the fort gates are open and dorfs are out and about doing stuff, but not necissarily right at the gates themselves, and it protects the animals from being sniped by enemy archers.

Other option is to make a cage in one of the entrances, and tie it to a lever or pressure plate set to enemies only. Stick all war animals inside that one cage. When an enemy steps on the plate, it unleashes the CATSPLOSION. except unlike a normal catsplosion, this one is war jaguars and stuff. I did it with war bears in my sig fort, but it never needed to be used thanks to the unstoppable military, the various other deathtraps, the magma weapon and the drowning chamber.

[Luzahn]

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22nd Hematite 123:

A mining team led by myself has managed to circumvent the caverns and the beast that dwells within for the time being, and we are now beginning exploratory mining in the depths.

7th Malachite 123:

The vampire has struck again, slaying one of our woodcutters. Fortunately, our manager has accused our militia commander. Justice will be done.

27th Malachite 123:

Four migrants have arrived. Poor sods. They've got a legendary butcher with them though. Don't know what that's about, but he's welcome.

6th Galena 123:

kpenguin has given birth to a girl.

12th Galena 123:

Argh, the human traders have bypassed the fortress with their wagons. Presumably the paths have been overgrown, I'll need to begin construction of roads to all sides of the fortress. We have access from the east, but apparently the humans are too damned good for the road.

16th Galena 123:

Ambush! Our jeweler has dodged a couple of bolts, but it looks like everyone will be getting inside safely.

Unfortunately we lack a means to deal with this now. Our melee squads are...lacking.

I suppose we'll just have them blunder into our traps.

26th Galena 123:

Our broker has created an artifact tunic, and is now a legendary weaver. Seems useful.

17th Limestone 123:

The Lava Sea has been located, at -47 levels. A spire of adamantine looks to rise from the center. I will attempt to excavate around it. We could use the weaponry, though a Hellbreach would spell our doom. Best to exercise caution.

Sorry about the pace. I had the year up to the last month, but my game crashed. Here's what was lost, if you're curious:

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23rd Sandstone 123:

A very pale dwarf was wandering the lower levels. Looks like she narrowly escaped death by vampire.

Our illustrious city watch hasn't managed to arrest the vampire yet. I think I'll just drop him in the nearest pit and see if that solves it.

8th Timber 123:

Our resident weaponsmith has forged an artifact silver sword. Not the most useful of items, but it is appreciated. Besides, it ought to frighten our enemies.

The caravan from the mountainhomes has also arrived. Unfortunately, a siegeband of about ten goblins has accompanied it, all of them archers. I'm taking a risk allowing the wagons to enter, but hopefully we can seal off in time. The wagons are already within the outer wall.

26th Timber 123:

We are still besieged, though the dwarven wagons arrived safely. I've managed to purchase an array of steel weaponry, as well as an assorted mix of armors. Hopefully we will now be able to field a melee army.

24th Opal 123:

We have lost Tectonic. Daft fool walked outside the fort during lockdown to pick up clothes. The military was mobilized in a rescue attempt, but she bled out before they managed to engage the goblins.

Presumably being a member of the military prompted her to ignore the orders.

Regardless, the rest of the military is carving a hole in the goblin ranks.

We look to have lost eight dwarves, with more wounded, but the foes have been driven off.

I suppose I know how to avoid that siege now...

And congratulations on your game-crashing sorcery, Tectonic. You get to live. The turn will be completed tomorrow.

[iyaerP]

Yeah, doing the path to the north as an actual paved ROAD was something that I was going to do on my turn if I had had the time. I only learned that they bypass the east road after the human caravan, and then I rushed to bridge the river and clear a path for the wagons to the north before the dwarven caravan could come, but I never actually got around to making it a ROAD road, just a cleared section of ground.

[Luzahn]

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14th Timber 123:

The caravan has arrived. Hopefully they can make it inside before any goblins attack.

The vampire has killed again, but I have banished him to a room in the lower fortress. Once it is sealed up I will have him tunnel into the caverns to be devoured by the beast, or just leave him eternally imprisoned to not waste a pick.

6th Moonstone 123:

The stoneworker has been possessed! He has claimed a craftsdwarf's workshop. Disappointing, but what can I do?

15th Moonstone 123:

We have acquired a good supply of arms and armor from the caravan, but an ambush squad of goblins managed to sneak into the fortress. Luckily, the caravan guard made short work of them with no casualties.

(Looks like the siege became an ambush. Interesting.)

5th Opal 123:

He made a stone toy hammer. Armok damn us, he made a toy hammer.

8th Opal 123:

Glorious! Baby tigers! The army grows mightier with each passing day.

10th Opal 123:

We've also captured a Great Horned Owl. Always good to have some rare pets.

1st Obsidian 123:

Ow. I've fallen down the lava garbage chute while excavating it. Apparently another miner digging above dropped a boulder on my head. My spine looks to be broken. Hopefully they manage to retrieve me.


1st Granite 124:

Year's end. Fortunately I've regained mobility.

Projects are going well. The wall has been completed, and progress on the fortifications atop it are going quickly.

The delves beneath are well-developed, with most stockpiles relocated. The portcullis is also assembled, controlled by a lever.

Adamantine is beginning to be processed, with three veins discovered so far. We've managed to gain four lumps so far without risking breaching any of the veins.

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Fort overview:

1-Aboveground Farms
2-Pastures
3-Portcullis
4-Entrance
5-Forgotten Beast Prison
6-Portcullis lever - upper right

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Under-fortress

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Beast Prison



Vampire Prison

Adamantine Mines

Save is here: Save

Enemies should be made to go around the wall south of the wall grate portcullis and run into the trapline. Also, the passage down is indirect. We should make efforts to straighten it and wall it off once the two beasts in the lowest caverns are dealt with.

We're also insufficiently sealed off in the downward mining shaft, we should cap it off in case we get a flying beast in the second layer.

Overall, a peaceful year. Only about three deaths I think. Damned vampire. (Ignore that alternate reality bit.)

Please post within 24 hours for the next turn.
Anyone is welcome to apply, people who haven't had a shot at this fort get priority.

[Gnoman]

I'll give it a shot, I suppose.

[Grif]

Wow, looks like you expanded the surface fort for quite abit. My hard-built towers are now horribly out of place.

[Luzahn]

Tower is still in a nice place. It pretty much overlooks the entrance path now, it can bombard anyone that breaks through the main gate.

Sadly, it impaired the rigid symmetry that I can't stop myself from implementing. I really do have a problem with doing that.

[Grif]

Tower is still in a nice place. It pretty much overlooks the entrance path now, it can bombard anyone that breaks through the main gate.

Sadly, it impaired the rigid symmetry that I can't stop myself from implementing. I really do have a problem with doing that.

Well... it was symmetrical when I left it.

(Yes, I also have this unquenchable desire to make everything neat and tidy.)

[Wookieetank]

I'm up for a turn.

[iyaerP]

Do we still have a path across the river for migrants and caravans? I can't tell if the bridge up north is still there or not, and since wagons like to come from the left side of the map, that is somewhat important. Also excellent work with getting adamantine processing started. That shall serve us quite well. I don't have time for another turn at the moment, but shall continue to hang around and pester those that do.

On another note, depending if that lava sea drops into magma source blocks under those addy spires or not, we CAN get to all that adamantine that is just hanging out there by flooding it from above to obsidianize the lava around it and make it safe to mine out. I'm DLing the save now to see how feasible it looks.

Edit: Having looked things over, I think the most amusing thing I noticed was how the old mayoral quarters I had made all nice and big and smoothed &etc, belong to our old mayor who isn't in charge any more. Sadly, from what I can tell, obsidianizing the magma sea around our addy spires would be quite difficult as the last cavern layer doesn't seem to have water in it, and a lot of the area around the bottom layer of the spire is semi-molten rock or magma flow, both of which will disintigrate any cavein blocks that are dropped on them. (Obsidianizing the magma sea above would cause cave-ins as the new obsidian tiles drop down below due to having minimal support if any)

It might be still possible, but as to feasible? I cannot say.

Other things I have noticed. All of our war animals are just hanging around inside. Where they don't do much good. A building destroyer2 (ogres, trolls, or any superbeast such as dragons, bronze collossus, Hydra, etc) will wreck our front gates. A master thief can just sneak in due to the easily accessible entrance that goes around to the south. Also, thieves can sneak over all of our weapon traps if the front gate is left open like that. Also the road in now offers a straight line right into the heart of our fortress, where before it used to divert north into even more weapon traps and the military training area, to funnel any stealthed enemies into combat with our militia. We don't need 3x3 access anywhere past the depot, so that wouldn't be an issue.

[Luzahn]

Yeah, the new mayoral quarters are at the end of the main hall. Without a texture pack, it was difficult to look at the engraved areas, so I just dug some new ones. Next player, feel free to put it back. Always a use for some empty rooms.

And I did order construction on a new southern bridge for easier river crossing, but I don't know whether it was completed.

I'm terrible at manipulating magma, and the adamantine discovery was fairly recent, so I was just harvesting the easy stuff. And I'm reluctant to just sacrifice the war animals for alerts, what with needing the breeding pairs intact. Was planning to assign them to our melee squad once its properly equipped.

I think I'd assigned them all to the mayor in the militia as guards in that lost bit of the turn, but when I redid it we weren't nearly as threatened.

[Gnoman]

I've taken the liberty of grabbing the save to update the map.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11544-swordsavior-regiongitp

[Shpadoinkle]

I've taken the liberty of grabbing the save to update the map.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11544-swordsavior-regiongitp

HOLY CRAP IT'S GLORIOUS

Edit: Also, yeah, I'll be available.

[Grif]

I've taken the liberty of grabbing the save to update the map.

http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-11544-swordsavior-regiongitp

Thank you!

I definitely see iyaerP's point there. Restoring the wall and rerouting the traffic to make its way through the militia training grounds would be a good idea. Would give them some live practice too. No sense letting them into the heart of the fort eh?

I noticed we still have a lot of prisoners in cages. Best start stripping them and conscript them as sparring partners.

[Luzahn]

Shpadoinkle, you have the turn.

And hush, all of you. My design is tactically sound and in no was is a result of cosmetic planning overruling the tactical portion of my brain.

I would advise restoring the wall near the depot, I should have restored it before I saved.

Besides, everything over the bridge is just an extra layer of defense, that seal still works fine. Well, that and the southern door, but that's waiting on more traps to be reliable, and can always be locked. The intent of my design was to remove the weakening of our trapline into a 3-wide line by funneling invaders into the single-file passage in the south wall.

It's easily replaced though, or we could just switch to a north wall trapline. I'm working under the assumption that murdering them all in a trap line is preferable to just perpetually sealing them out.

[Shpadoinkle]

Journal of Overseer 'Shpadoinkle.'

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Granite 1
First things first.



Yeah, why am I not surprised?

Another thing: We have 162 eggs, 186 units of meat, and zero prepared meals. This is despite the fact that there is a stockpile specifically FOR prepared meals beneath the dining room. This is despite the fact that we have A LEGENDARY COOK who has evidently been told to spend his time hauling crap around!

There's a huge stockpile outside the... mausoleum (?) that seems to be where dwarves have been told to throw whatever they can't find a proper stockpile for.

The trade depot is full of unworked lumps of clay for no reason I can imagine.

Granite 6

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Expanding the seed shed (storing seeds in barrels is inefficient) and ordered a storage room directly below the farms dug out (as harvesting a crop, leaving them at the farm, then going to get a barrel from the food stockpile, hauling it back to the farm, then returning the barrel to the stockpile it came from is also inefficient.)

Granite 25

Not a whole lot to report. The dumbass mayor won't stop trying to fish from the river, even though I told him not to, so he can meet with the liaison from the mountainhomes.

Progress on completing the city wall and the fortifications on the second level progresses slowly.

I ordered some wood cut from right outside the eastern gate. The stock records show we have 170 logs already but 'll be damned if i can figure out where, and also we seem t not have a wood stockpile anywhere so I designated one in the courtyard.

I also had a roof built over my still because the sun can go to Hell.

[Luzahn]

Noo! my 3x3 grid of 5x5 squares has been broken!

[Shpadoinkle]

Journal of overseer 'Shpadoinkle.

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Slate 17

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Expanding the mausoleum.

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Moving the underground farm plots directly below the surface plots so the dirtsmiths aren't running all over the damn place.

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Finishing up the upper level.

Slate 18

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...

18 of them. At least we didn't get any bloody kids this time. One of them was even a decent Armorsmith.

Slate 24

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Dumed runs afoul of a honey badger while harvesting wood from outside the walls, and teaches it why you don't mess with a dwarf.

[Grif]

Now that you mention it, I found the "improved" dwarf handling of stockpiles to be annoying. Ofttimes they would run around with barrels/bins just to pick up random stuff.

Used to be item -> stockpile -> barrel. Not barrel -> item.

[Shpadoinkle]

Now that you mention it, I found the "improved" dwarf handling of stockpiles to be annoying. Ofttimes they would run around with barrels/bins just to pick up random stuff.

Used to be item -> stockpile -> barrel. Not barrel -> item.

For the most part it's actually improved. It's really nice that dwarves will now grab a bin, haul that to the crafter's workshop, and fill it with mugs before returning the bin to a stockpile (one trip instead of fifty.)

The biggest problem with the new hauling system is the way it handles plants- as you said, it's "pick plant, grab barrel, barrel-> plant, then back to the stockpile." The way to mitigate this is something I've already set up in this fort; have two stockpiles, the first only accepts plants and has max barrels set to 0, while the second is allowed max barrels and is set to only take from links, then have the first one give to the second. After harvesting from a farm plot or bushes, dwarves won't leave plants where they were picked anymore and will instead take them to the first stockpile. Then a dwarf with food hauling enabled will grab a barrel, fill it from stockpile 1, and put it in stockpile 2.

[Shpadoinkle]

Journal of Overseer 'Shpadoinkle.'

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Felsite 14th

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Yeah, fine, whatever.

Felsite 17th

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The zorvin squad is at our front door.

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I ordered The Vigor of Boulders, our marksdwarf squad (an appropriate name, considering they seem to get around to fulfilling their orders at a glacial pace) into the pillbox atop the entrance tower. Only three of the lazy bastards decided to show up. I had the remaining military stationed at the barracks.

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BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!

Those two zorvins seen in the entry hall were injured by bolts and are retreating.

Hematite 2

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Uh... what the hell. Summer heat makes animals do strange things, I guess.

Hematite 28th

11 more migrants arrive at glorious Swordsavior. None with any particularly useful skills, however.

[McDouggal]

Hematite 2

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[Luzahn]

Hehe, it's a horrible frog-cow. Possibly a demon/monster in disguise. I recommend dropping it down the lava chute.

What are those two traps by the bridge for?

Also, nice work on those zorvins. I knew that walled passage would be great for our archers.

[Grif]

Seems to be a lot of unfinished constructions on the outer walls though.

[Shpadoinkle]

What are those two traps by the bridge for?

Presently, nothing. I walled off where they are and just never got around to removing them. Before I built those walls the west side of the river just north of the entry hall was open.

Journal of Overseer 'Shpadoinkle.'

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Malachite 26th
ezum Inethmafol is acting weird. He made a beeline for a clothier's workshop and started gathering all sorts of crap.

Galena 8th

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Great. Whatever. It was a possessed mood so ezum isn't even a legendary clothier now. If he were it might be worth it to set up a textiles industry so he could make rope reed bracelets and crap for trade, but presently it wouldn't be worth the hassle and the slowing down of other industries, plus however long it would take to get a clothier, dyer, and weaver all up to decent proficiency. Besides which, we have tons of moldering clothes from all the goblins, humans, and elves who have died here.

[Luzahn]

Can you put traps on top of constructed floors? I seem to remember that that was a problem.

We may want to leave the south way open for that.