User:Mixtrak/Strategy

This strategy is as much for myself as for anyone else, as a place to work out my thoughts and as a reminder when I start a new fortress. That said, I welcome comments and edits - please feel free to say something on the "Talk" pages or, if you think you can improve things, just be bold and go ahead and edit the content page. I can always roll back or edit further. The strategy is currently undergoing playtesting, and will be continually updated. Once it's in a fairly stable and tested state, I'm hoping to make a video series to complement it.

First, a word to the overconfident. This strategy is based on a fairly nice location. There are plenty of resources on the wiki to help you achieve this kind of beginning scenario, which I'll briefly revisit in the next section. Such an embark constitutes the easiest way to learn how to manage a fort - a task sufficiently complex that you should certainly not hasten to make further challenges for yourself. The basic gameplay provides quite sufficient fun for most beginners. Do not scoff at making things a little easier for yourself at first.

The main reason to start (relatively) easy is the complexity and interconnectedness of the different facets of fortress management. An Overseer must simultaneously manage, among other things, the security, industry, happiness, military, administration and diplomacy of the fortress, and do so based on a solid understanding of the underlying game mechanics. Learning all these things and their interactions at once is extremely difficult, so tilting the scales a little in your favour at the start makes sense. Based on that fact, this guide assumes a "nice" embark. However, by and large this guide avoids exploits or cheese; the partial exception is the moderate use of (insanely overpowered) cage-traps.

The other focus of this guide is basic strategy and, crucially, the underlying reasons and thinking. Information on the game mechanics is not generally covered here since it is so comprehensively covered in the wiki - it's easy to find out how to catch a fish - and so I focus on higher-level question such as whether, when the time comes to strike the earth, you should catch fish (generally not, in my opinion). These strategies integrate a lot of moving parts - various and context-dependent costs, risks, needs and benefits - so it's best to initially learn them in a somewhat formulaic way. Consider this a kind of "worked example", which should help you develop a more flexible understanding of the fundamentals, so you can begin to generalise and adapt them to more challenging embarks. However, you should ideally first go read, at minimum, the quickstart guide, and probably also the starting build pages. Some of this guide may contradict them, but they're an important orienting read. Don't worry if you don't retain everything - it's a slow process of immersion.

Finally, a disclaimer about prescriptivism: as the old Overseer curse goes, "have fun". There are innumerable ways to play the game, so if you're not enjoying something in this guide, go ahead and try something different. The guide should produce a secure and durable fortress so you can fully explore the core game mechanics (military, economy, sociology, exploration etc.), but some players have more esoteric goals. Whatever powers your minecart, friend.

Part 1: World, site and embark

Part 2: Get inside, get secure!

Part 3: Defence and self-sufficiency

Mixtrak (talk) 03:55, 3 March 2017 (UTC)