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Masterwork:Orcish Quickstart guide
Always remember that losing is fun! If you're a Dwarf. Orcs are out to win. Remember folks, winning is fun.
Orc Fortress is a mode of the Masterwork mod. Orcs are powerful warriors, but they will need all their skills to survive relentless attacks from the Elves, Dwarves, and Humans. Orcs are equally at home in surface settlements or in deep strongholds. Orcish workshops include tribal and artisinal crafting, mass production factories and pits of industry, and mystical places of power. There are also a wide assortment of buildings that Orcs can only access after trading for the technology, or pillaging it from their enemies.
If you are an experience Dwarf Fortress player, this guide will hopefully tell you all you need to know to get started successfully leading the Orcs. See also Ghoshash Snazaga, Perplexing-complexity the Cleaver of Ignorance, an Orc Fort tutorial community fort.
Choosing Masterwork & World Settings
WARLOCKS don't make good allies, due to their unstable and dangerous relationship with magic. Be warned, when visiting they are likely to attack other traders or even raise corpses from your refuse pile!
The first thing you will need to do is choose some Orc friendly settings in the Masterwork launcher.
Masterwork Settings which affect only the Dwarven entity or creature won't have an effect on Orc Fortress; this includes most of the Workshop settings, and Castes. Masterwork settings which affect the World or non-Dwarf animals *will* impact Orc Fortress: this includes Harder Farming, Mining, Aquifers, Grazing, Weather, all Materials, all Creatures, all Cavern settings, etc. Therapist also works fine with Orcs. The Orc Fortress custom workshops and reactions are generally balanced assumed Harder Farming and Harder Smithing being both ON. Other than that most any combinations should work fine.
When it comes to other civilizations, Humans, Dwarves, Elves and Drow, and Automatons will all be powerful enemies. The cavern civs and Fortress Defense races will attack you too; note that the "medium" tier are about a match in raw size and strength.
If enabled, Deep-drow, Chaos-dwarves, Human Bandits, and Ashland Elf rebels are potentially friends and will have unique crates and blueprints to sell you, along with a nice selection of other goods. Goblins tend to visit often with lots of cheap supplies that can help in the first year or two. Wild Orcs and Frost Giants can be trade partners too.
Embark
Don't be afraid of aquifer embarks! Orcs have lots of tools available to make strong above ground forts, starting with the arms from the Tribal Warcrafter and Fletcher, and Boneyard for mechanisms. Trade for cheap raw materials from the Goblins. Use the Drydock to raid the Elves for wood, the Dwarves for metal, or the Merchant's Guild to found a caravanserai and expand your purchasing options. Use the Orcish Factory or Goblin Sawmill to stretch your supplies of clay and wood farther.
The Taiga Orcs are survivors of hostile frontier lands, and can cultivate special Orcish plants. They grow in autumn and winter months. These plants are a bit expensive to take on embark but it is worth considering; they do grow in tundra as well as other boreal biomes. In taiga or temperate woodlands, you can plant these in an annual rotation along with another spring/summer crop.
Orcs have some unique animals: the orcish dire wolf is a good value for a hunting/war pet to embark with. Other orcish pets include taiga sabrecats, which are powerful war beasts. Arctic condors are useful for hunting, vermin control, or simply patrolling the skies for ambushes. Steppe aurochs are an extra large cattle.
Skills and Equipment
It's pretty safe to embark without an anvil if you choose. The tribal warcrafter and fletcher can make fine weapons without one, if needed, enough to get by for a year or two until the forges (or raiding docks) are online. Picks, axes, food, and perhaps a bit of cloth or rope are still key to embark with, but don't stress too much about bringing lots of extra booze -- orcs don't generally need alcohol to get through the working day.
Check your castes! Common Orcs, Uruks, and Snaga can all handle most jobs interchangeably although you probably want to reserve any melee gear or skills for the Uruks. If you happen to get a specialist orc or two in your embark crew, you might want to tailor your skill selection to their unique aptitudes: Dreamwalker (medical skills), Corsair (trade skills), Artisan (leather/bone/smithing), Ologs (stone).
This might be a nice place to link to some embark profiles, both the bundled ones and maybe ask people to share some others too.
A New Camp
Food and Shelter
Orcs can do a lot with leather, bone, and blood at the Tribal Craftsorc and Fletcher, so you might want to get Ranchers or Hunters industry going early. Embarking with some birds or ranching animals is usually more efficient use of points than paying for leather or quivers directly.
Security
Serious attacks early in year two! Talk about options to gear up. Tribal warcrafter and fletcher.
A Growing Stronghold
Orcish Industry
Molten Pit and Factory
Mass production, economize on coal, burn saplings, resize looted gear
Corsair Raiders
The Raiders Drydock is used not only to strike back at the 'Free' Peoples and grab some loot, but also to round up goblins, steal blueprints and codexes -- things that unlock more powerful buildings or abilities for your Orcs. To support the Drydock you'll need a source of rusty iron coins, ballista parts, plenty of wood, and also Weapons. Exchanging bounties at the Freelancer's guild is usually the best source of coins, but you might also mint coins from rusty iron bars you get from Molten Pit or Goblin trading partners. If you are short on wood but have plenty of cloth and pulleys, consider sail-powered Xebecs instead of regular Longboats. If you don't have junk weapons laying around, forge weapons with the smallest materials requirement like daggers, or save on materials by batch production at the Orcish Factory.
Get migrants and caravanserai
Ramp up raiding as you can support it
Schemes for getting enough coins, weapons, and ships
Target different enemies for different goods
Migrant Camps
Discuss from a macro view what the camps do
Stone, Sawmill, Textile, Tracker: Convenience/mass production
Tinkerer & Poisoner: new capabilities
Labor camps: turn food into raw mats
Warband
Once you have your basic set up above is a branch point where you could choose to branch off in a lot of different directions. This could be decided by the raw materials you have on hand, the skills of your warriors, or the prevalence of different castes in your Fortress.
Choose a strategy to gear up.
- Plenty of bronze and iron -> Mass production at factory?
- Plenty of gold/agriculture -> Mass mint or sell at Caravanserai for bronze/iron/weapons?
- Plenty of food/hunting -> Labor camp for other raw mats?
- Plenty of wood for ships -> Double down on raid docks?
- Mithril or wolfram and the alloy mats -> hurry for Damasc forge?
- Lots of Dreamwalkers -> Build places of Power and Arcane Forge; trade for spellbooks?
- Lots of Corsairs -> Get guns and ammo?
- Short on metal, but silver, volcanic, or cavern mats? -> Trade for Outlander tech?
A Powerful Clanholding
Artisan Crafting
Damasc (mithril, wolfram, cobalt); Tinkerer (brass, lead)
Caravanserai
Decluttering the fort. Mostly at the farmers' and arms bazaar.
Actually buying stuff! Expensive but useful. Anvils, foreign weapons, basic supplies especially useful for metal-poor or aquifer embarks. Convenience items like pulleys and ballista ammo.
Ransoming Captives.
Orichalcum.
Seeds.