User:Dwarvenjames

About Me
I tend to like single player D&D games and Civ-like games, so DF is one of my favorites. Wizardry was awesome, Ultima II and IV, Elder Scrolls Morrowind and Oblivion, Alpha Centauri, Civ in general... But I also like quirky or indie games. Katamari Damacy (yes it's bizarre) and Portal are pretty awesome. Actually I like Half Life 2 so much I played through it a second time just to get the gamer points. I played EQII, but once you hit level 90 you just run the same dungeons/instances over and over, and I need more variation than that (even though I have a great guild). DF has some consistencies (caverns, FBs, etc.) but it's always different.

I admit I use a tileset. I like quirky, but I like images too. If I play Rogue-likes I'll play one with graphics.

I play in Win XP so I can use Dwarf Therapist, but I do it in Parallels on my Mac.

Thoughts on Design
I think I make my fortresses too horizontal, but I realized I like to see what's going on as much as possible in one view. I think paths would be shorter with a more vertical approach, perhaps a column or an ovoid(?). I have been trying to make a sphere around the trade depot, for short paths when goods need to be moved, which is good for moving goods from storage to the trade depot but not always so good for moving goods to storage in the first place. I like how there are design decisions to be made, but the game isn't forcing you to make them, it's just part of the game. In Fallout: New Vegas, there were times when the writers force you to make a choice, and there is always a negative outcome (like in one vault, save the people below by venting the nuclear waste out the top which kills the farmland, or save the farmland and kill the people). This can be done realistically, but it often felt forced and unnatural in F:NV. In DF, there are always decisions to be made, but there are no narrative points where the game stops and forces you to make a decision. Yes you will have to carve a fortress out of the rock, and there are decisions to be made about that, but the game will just keep on running (unless you pause it) while you sit there trying to decide between a nice pre-planned design and how organic you want to go by chasing that vein of ore.

I try to keep some parts of the fortress separated from others (entrance, caverns) via choke points. I like the idea of the archers' tower, but have yet to implement one well.

Future Additions (that I wouldn't mind seeing...)
0.31.19 added a lot it looks like! After watching the animated kids' film, The Secret of Kells, which is a great film, I'd like to see scribes and bookmaking. Hides for vellum, dyes for ink, wood for covers, gems and metals to encrust books... the materials are all there, just needs a new skill, a new building (the scriptorium?), and some new objects (vellum, books...). I know, I know, dwarves don't read books, they read great sagas off the stone walls carved hundreds of years ago about great dwarven conquests. But humans, those snooty elves, and dwarven nobles like books I bet. Hmm could have a bookcase, made out of stone, metal, or wood even.

Fortresses
First and second went nowhere as I was a total newbie (as we all are at the beginning) and made newbie mistakes that I quickly realized (thanks to all the help and tutorials out there, without which I would not be playing).

Third was pretty good. I somehow picked a peaceful site, and things went well for a long time. Squads trained themselves up. My first caverns! That mysterious downward-leading slope (or whatever the text is exactly). One drawback was that I didn't learn enough about defenses (for fortress #4). Eventually had major pathing problems in the caverns, but fixed that with major mining and forbidding doors. Then had dwarves insist on taking the downward slope where an FB was happily ensconced, they wouldn't stop getting killed (tried forbidding the bodies and items, no luck). Drained two pools to get at FBs, picked up a syndrome, lost most of my squads, the remainders were eaten up by the FB in the downward slope.

One day, after two hours of tweaking stuff left and right to deal with the Dwarves' Dance of Death (with the FB in the slope), the game crashed and I couldn't deal with doing it all over again. Gave up on the fortress. Learned a bit about building walls outside, an archers' tower (did not do a good job, my archers got all shot up), and amusingly had the baroness I got to appoint die of thirst after being appointed. She was so happy she forgot to drink. Also learned about soap and the hospital. Lye and potash still vex me, but I have only read about them once or twice. I had used some cage traps near the entrance and they caught everything that came through, so I decided traps were not fun, which was a big mistake. Found the lava and did some obsidian farming, but messed it up at first by not using a lava-proof mechanism (or floodgate).

Fourth fortress: Nice little internal build with a great archer's tower. Lots of goblins in the area, who decimated my green squads and killed wave after wave of migrants. Didn't have enough in the way of defenses. PULL THE LEVER!!!! (For the drawbridge.) Oh... Oh that's what happens when everyone dies... Oh dear.

Fifth, Zocolerush, v. 0.31.16: So far, so good. A few Titans, FBs, the first cavern levels are totally dry and devoid of plants and trees (bummer) but not troglodytes and mole dogs (which I keep calling "mole rats" like in Fallout). Second cavern level has the downward slope, water, plants and trees, and FBs. Slope goes down to a huge lake level. 4 legendary miners were down there digging out gems and they all decided to stay and they all died. I tried several things to get them out (activate squads, set burrow restrictions...), nothing worked. Maybe should have sent a rescue mission by way of making a stairwell parallel to the slope, but don't know if that would have worked. They were all "hunting for small creature" (which would cancel with the burrow restriction, but then reset when the burrow restriction was lifted). Actually one dwarf did this in fortress #3, he went to the bottom of the slope, sat there, and died, but I was still kinda new at the game and didn't notice until after. Have some traps, bridges, and other things set up for entrances. Built a nice entrance with a water-surrounded walkway but it's far enough from the main action (near the headwaters of some streams that made some nice narrow gorges) that the dwarves don't use it. It did save the human liaison once, though, which was good, as the previous one was killed when he came on the map three squares from a kobold ambush. With that I sent a squad out to get the kobolds, they were halfway across the map, the human caravan arrives on-screen and a few moments later a goblin siege. The dwarves, humans, and goblins were all about the same distance from the entrance. This was going to be bad. I recall the squad, half of them see goblins before getting inside--oh maybe if I had de-activated the squad and set the burrow restriction (then they would have run and not fought). Dang. But anyway. One squad valiantly fights, I send the other good squad out to help. In the end I lost 11 dwarves, and half the caravan made it in, but the half that didn't was upsetting enough to the surviving traders that they all left without trading. Oops. I have tame grizzly bears! Just recently. This will be good once they all mate with their brothers and sisters, and I have horribly in-bred killer grizzlies. My wood burners are half-elf, I think, they hate burning wood, even after tweaking their tasks so it's all they should be doing (besides sleeping, eating, and drinking--oh that explains...). Made some pumps for water. How zones decide how many fishing squares are there is beyond me. I know water level is one factor, but there seem to be others that I haven't figured out. As of this writing, have yet to find lava or adamantine. Update: Found lava, 60 levels down. A syndrome killed about half my dwarves, though (from ~110 down to ~55). They catch it, feel ill, take ten steps, and drop dead. Uncontrollable cats and children, I tell you, they love to play in the blood of Zocolerush's defeated enemies. Now they are dead too. Finally found adamantine, and.... fun! Oops.

Sixth, Sakzuldegel, v. 0.31.25: So many new things! Accidentally embarked to a location with no ores except tetrahedrite, galena, and (lower down) cassiterite (with adamantine of course, and lots of gems). No human merchants (yet?). Surprisingly more doable than I thought, but I did have an entire squad of under-armored (boo, copper!) dwarves die at the hands of lashers (terrible, I know, all ten bit it). Amusingly, one of my dwarves was knocked into a pond by a goblin and died, so the other dwarves couldn't reach his body, so he haunted the fortress until I noticed, and the next winter I had to mine his corpse out of the frozen ice (this worked, I wasn't too sure it would). Bought a panda. It died. Oh they need bamboo. Am mastering the art of the atom smasher, the death pit (for caged goblins, but my archers don't always shoot them), and just caught a giant cave spider so need to read up on silk farms.

Further: I have discovered that if you hit the first cavern but then seal it off, the FB's pile up and then when you accidentally breach the cavern again in a corner you hadn't revealed (so that you could drain a pond a get a dead dorf) all eight of the FBs will rush up the staircase you made for them. Epic battle in a narrow hallway, though!

Later: I have a fortress where the land is at about 145, the first cavern (dry, no flora) is at about 120 down to 95 (seems tall, starts lower than usual?), and the second cavern (with water and flora) starts at about 93 (they almost overlap!) and then has chimneys down to what might be the third cavern at around 45. This is not the "downward slope", and it is difficult for me to clearly distinguish the 2nd cavern from the 3rd, there is an odd intermediary space in-between with few slopes, a floor, and another chimney down. Haven't seen lava yet.

And: Oh look, the water is coming up through the hole I made in the floor. That's odd, the reservoir I made is below the hole. Oh the river that feeds the reservoir is a z-level above the level with the hole. Aha. Oh it's flooding the floor around the hole, that's interesting. What well-programmed water physics! Oh wait... The stairs... NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!