The Dwarf Fortress Thread

[Polycarp]

If I have to pull it up by the time I see the invading army I am in trouble (since bridges take awhile to go up) hehe.

Judging by this, you haven't had a goblin ambush yet.  Have fun with that!  :axe:

[Nomadic]

That doesn't sound good...

well the caravan has come and gone and I have my nice iron anvil plus other goodies. And now migrants :D

To top it all off I just struck gold and microcline (yay). This is proving to be alot of fun. Next up I need to figure out a way to setup a screw pump so I can pump water out of a room with the flip of a switch (going to have the entrance be floodable). Now for some walls though...

darn you carp... darn you and this addicting game.

[Polycarp]

That doesn't sound good...

I won't spoil the surprise, but let's just say the goblins will be giving you a little surprise of their own (or two, or ten) if your site has access to them (it probably does).

Check the DF Wiki for proper screw pump operations.  It might take a few attempts to work out the system, but once you've got it you can pump anything anywhere with just a bit of power.

[Nomadic]

Well now that the caravan is through and the migrants have arrived my drawbridge is up for the time being which means that unless there is such thing as an aquatic goblin I am safe (unless I get some irritating kobold archers; hmm that wall would probably be a good idea).

[Neubert]

I picked this up yesterday or the day before, but hadn't seen that there was going to be an update. I have already started by following one of the wiki tutorials.

Is anyone else using the "prettied" up version with the better graphics?

(Also Carp, I couldn't figure out how to use the Regional Prospector - maybe because I am using the other version?)

[Lmns Crn]

Nomadic, using better quality mechanisms for the lever and linkages will make things like bridges operate more quickly.

(Also Carp, I couldn't figure out how to use the Regional Prospector - maybe because I am using the other version?)

Regional Prospector is the only "cheat" I use for this game. It's weird to use, because it has no interface or anything like that. Here's how it works.

Start Dwarf Fortress, and leave the program at the initial "Create New World / Start Game / Continue Playing" menu. Now, run Regional Prospector only once. It will not appear to do anything right away, and that's normal.

Now, when you start a new fortress, you will see new symbols on the local map screen. Blue tildes are underground water (cave lakes or cave rivers), red tildes are magma, grey octothorpes are chasms, and light blue squiggles are Hidden Fun Stuff. So, you can deliberately site a fortress on ground that you know to include any of these features, and know in what general part of the landscape you should be digging around to find them.

[Neubert]

Ah, alright. I thought I should start it after the world had been generated.
I suppose "Hidden Fun Stuff" can be veins and so on? :)

[Lmns Crn]

Ah, alright. I thought I should start it after the world had been generated.
I suppose "Hidden Fun Stuff" can be veins and so on? :)

You run it when you are at the DF title screen, but it doesn't do anything unless you are starting a new fortress. It only affects the "choose a location for your fortress" screen.

As for the Hidden Fun Stuff... weeeellll, you should probably just dig around in a mountain biome until you find some for yourself. I don't want to spoil it, and you probably wouldn't believe me anyway. :yumm:

[the_taken]

Invader path finding is evil. They don't spawn at the edge of the map and try to find a way into your fortress like caravans and immigrants do. Invaders spawn with a path to your fortress. So if you keep the drawbridge up, they will spawn past your moat.
What you want to do is have only a single path to your fortress at all times, and control it with duct tape. I prefer simple reusable death traps like The Goblin Liquidator, or Smashing Surprise. Lets me allocate what would otherwise would be soldiers to more important tasks, like glass making.

[Polycarp]

Invader path finding is evil. They don't spawn at the edge of the map and try to find a way into your fortress like caravans and immigrants do. Invaders spawn with a path to your fortress. So if you keep the drawbridge up, they will spawn past your moat.

I don't think this is true; I'm fairly sure all goblins and kobolds spawn at the edge of the map, but only in places where they can path to your fortress.  Keep in mind that goblin ambushes, snatchers, and kobold thieves are invisible until they are revealed by a dwarf, a pet, or a cage trap.  Kobolds can bypass traps too.  A group of goblins that appear suddenly near your fortress didn't spawn there, they've been walking there and just got revealed by one of your units.

Spotting one member of a group reveals the whole group, so a single cage trap in a choke point can give you advance warning for ambushes.  War dogs on restraints can guard areas too, though the guard dog will probably get killed if it reveals an entire ambush.

Sieges aren't invisible and will march in quite obviously from the sides of the map.  If there is no way into your fortress, however, they will lay siege and wait around outside until you surrender, come out and fight, or let them in.  It's generally best to keep a way open to your fortress, but to guard it heavily.

Here are some pretty good fortress defenses I made:



The second, little picture is the next level up.  Notice how the engraved pathway on the left (first floor) handles all traffic until danger is detected; then, I can pull up the drawbridge and force invaders to go through the lava zig-zag.  The zig-zag forces invades to walk through multiple traps and run the gauntlet of ballistae and a "reverse battlement," the second-story structure that lets marksdwarves fire into the back of any goblins trying to navigate the lava maze.

Ideally I should have made the maze longer, as currently the ballista crewmen only get about one shot off before they panic from the goblins getting too close.  The rest of the defenses, however, work very well.  Notice that the engraved hallway is wide enough to allow the caravan in, so I can close the drawbridge behind them and protect my visitors from ambushes while we're trading.  Cage traps in the engraved entrance stop any child-snatchers, and a guard dog on a rope in the central hallway sniffs out any kobold thieves who try to make their way into my craft stockpiles.

[Nomadic]

Nice, looks very good. I have 3 cage traps lined up along the inside of my drawbridge and am currently working on hooking up mechanisms to flood my entrance if anything gets in. I will probably also push a tower up through the surface above the barracks with fortifications on top so that if anything gets through the bridge I can flood the entrance and then move up and snipe them.

[Lmns Crn]

My favorite defense so far was set up on a map with terraced cliffs, so that invaders had to zigzag up a few levels of mountain to get to my true entrance, passing traps and checkpoints along their way. I had a bunch of enclosed mini-fortresses blocking the path up the mountain, and could use levers deep inside my main control room to raise drawbridges to block each one, or divert soldiers through underground tunnels to emerge in the mini-gatehouses, or take up archery positions in impregnable marksdwarf towers. In addition, each mini-fort featured unique traps and other passive defenses.

I had realized that the breeding rate of my dogs was getting out of hand. I had close to a hundred dogs running around at one point, chewing up processing time and making everything run slowly. So I trained them all as war dogs, stuffed them into cages at one of the gatehouses, and linked the dog cages (and two raising bridges) to pressure plates located just inside the far end of the place, where invaders would cross them just before exiting the seemingly-empty building.  The pressure plates raised bridges, trapping the goblins inside, and released all those war dogs to tear them to bits.

It was a little impractical, and not as efficient as some of my other defenses, but the dog trap was a lot of fun.

[Nomadic]

That is incredibly evil. My base is kind of set up as a small thing right now. I think what I may do is push down and out from underground and bring up impregnable archery points and several layers of defenses up to the main drawbridge. As a last resort if I can find some I am going to make an adamantine door that I can swing shut if I get trolls or megabeasts showing up.

[Lmns Crn]

I'm not sure whether door materials have any bearing on whether or not they're destructable. I am fairly certain that some creatures can tear apart constructed items like doors, and some creatures cannot, and that materials are... well, immaterial. :yumm:

Interestingly, the new update is now out. I think it was released today. You may want to wait before installing it, since there's a bug that causes sleeping dwarves never to wake up, meaning that all fortresses are doomed. The fix should be coming pretty soon on that, though.

[Nomadic]

According to the wiki adamantine doors are impervious to trolls and (if I recall correctly) megabeasts.

UPDATE: omg we have WARCARP! forget adamantine doors the dreaded warcarp will make even a dragon run to its mommy.