[Dwarf Fortress] With amazing HD graphics!

Rami

Make sure you are setting ammo for them and enabling it for use in training (use wooden bolts for training obv), and make sure the target range is facing the right way and the room is a decent size.

TheKoolEagle

yeah i have ammo and everything designated, the good news is they will shoot enemies, they just won't train.

gunna make a new fort (my other new one crashed last night and will probably go danger room route, it always gets messy with pets/babies getting in there

edit: has anyone found a good way of identifying vampires? My next fort goal is to have my fort be mostly vampire by making a well of undying

KiTA

TheKoolEagle wrote:

yeah i have ammo and everything designated, the good news is they will shoot enemies, they just won't train.

gunna make a new fort (my other new one crashed last night and will probably go danger room route, it always gets messy with pets/babies getting in there

edit: has anyone found a good way of identifying vampires? My next fort goal is to have my fort be mostly vampire by making a well of undying

"Well of undying"? What?

Apparently the most sure fire way of IDing vampires is to check for two things:

If they ignore nicknames, they're a vampire.
If their history information has contradictory stuff ("I'm 50 years old, and have a 90 year old son") they're a vampire.

If they're the last one alive after eating everyone else, they're a vampire.


In other news, apparently were-creatures won't attack each other when berserk. So you can have an entire fort full of were creatures if you'd like. Furthermore, upon going were and turning back, you're healed to full. This includes severed limbs and other unhealable injuries.

So if you get a were-infection at your fort and spread it around...

TheKoolEagle

how to make a well of undying:

step 1) build several upright spear traps around a well
step 2) shackle known vampire next to the well
step 3) stab the vampire several times so his blood goes all over the place
step 4) throw a party at the well while everyone drinks the water
step5) ???
step 6) profit

KiTA

Does that actually, er, work?

Wyvern

Campy wrote:

Wyvern wrote:

Rami wrote:

I usually give a dwarf from my starting 7 some ranks in shields and hammers and he becomes my first soldier and squad leader. Then when they spa they will almost always train in hammers, shields and dodging because he is able to give lessons. They'll also gain ranks in armour and then that will be taught and before you know it, competant military!

The last time I tried that I wound up spending a lot of time watching a very expensive squad leader standing around with a job description of "waiting for dancefighting demonstration" or something equally asinine. Maybe I could avoid this if I very carefully avoided recruiting anyone with even the vaguest aptitude for (nominally) military skills in order to maintain a monopoly on the teaching role.

I believe there is a certain setting within the military menu. Something like number of soldiers required to train, though not as obvious as that. *I think* that if you lower that number you should get less dorfs with the "waiting for x training" activity. It's been a long while since I've played, so hopefully one of the other forumites can point you in a more clarified direction

I was always under the impression that that setting governed the number of dwarves who were considered on-duty at all in months marked for training. Are you saying that it actually controls the number of dwarves required for every individual demonstration? If so, I'll have to be sure to experiment with it more the next time I play.

TheKoolEagle

KiTA wrote:

Does that actually, er, work?

sources on bay12 forums says it does.

My marksdwarves don't even go for waiting for training, only soldier (no orders) even though i have them set to train

Quake Matt

TheKoolEagle wrote:

how to make a well of undying:

step 1) build several upright spear traps around a well
step 2) shackle known vampire next to the well
step 3) stab the vampire several times so his blood goes all over the place
step 4) throw a party at the well while everyone drinks the water
step5) ???
step 6) profit

That is fantastic.

But if everyone in your fort became a vampire, who would they feed on? Let us know when you find out!

TheKoolEagle

Quake Matt wrote:

TheKoolEagle wrote:

how to make a well of undying:

step 1) build several upright spear traps around a well
step 2) shackle known vampire next to the well
step 3) stab the vampire several times so his blood goes all over the place
step 4) throw a party at the well while everyone drinks the water
step5) ???
step 6) profit

That is fantastic.

But if everyone in your fort became a vampire, who would they feed on? Let us know when you find out!

so long as migrants come i don't think anyone will go hungry

Zephiran

Quake Matt wrote:

TheKoolEagle wrote:

how to make a well of undying:

step 1) build several upright spear traps around a well
step 2) shackle known vampire next to the well
step 3) stab the vampire several times so his blood goes all over the place
step 4) throw a party at the well while everyone drinks the water
step5) ???
step 6) profit

That is fantastic.

But if everyone in your fort became a vampire, who would they feed on? Let us know when you find out!

I'd say it carries some considerable drawbacks, in the sense that dwarves still require alcohol to stay productive. Since Vampires don't ever booze up, they can't in fact, it makes them suffer the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal the moment they arrive at your fortress. Thus, they're horribly inefficient workers. If you get a Fortress full of them, you'd never have to produce any food or booze, which frees up a good chunk of your workforce, but they're still slow as shit to do pretty much anything. They'd be a fearsome fighting force and should be kept pretty much permanently in the military where they'd surpass pretty much anything else.

If you can make a Barracks of the Undead, seal it off from the rest of your Fortress and make everyone in there a Vampire, you'd have a strong force to call upon during a siege that doesn't pose a threat to any of the regular dwarves.
Furthermore, you'd never have to worry about production slowing to a halt since your other dwarves are still getting their drink on and are unaffected by any alcohol deficiency slowdown.

EDIT:

And, of course, you could always sate the thirst of this "Blood Squad" with a sacrificial dwarf every now and then. One of those troublesome, demanding specimens oughta be a prime candidate, dangers to Dwarven Society shouldn't be coddled in prisons anyway and filthy immigrants looking for a handout won't find it in the quarters of the Blood Squad.

KiTA

Worse, with no non-vampires to feed off of, they gain DOUBLE sluggishness, for both no booze AND no blood. They won't die, but they'll be slow as hell.

Wyvern

TheKoolEagle wrote:

My marksdwarves don't even go for waiting for training, only soldier (no orders) even though i have them set to train

Good news: this was apparently a known bug which is fixed for the next release (mentioned in today's update here). It might be a day or two before that version is actually available for download, of course, but at least you can stop worrying about it.

TheKoolEagle

Wyvern wrote:

TheKoolEagle wrote:

My marksdwarves don't even go for waiting for training, only soldier (no orders) even though i have them set to train

Good news: this was apparently a known bug which is fixed for the next release (mentioned in today's update here). It might be a day or two before that version is actually available for download, of course, but at least you can stop worrying about it.

yay archery will be fixed, boo the vampire nickname bug will be out, seriously there needs to be a good way to deal with vampires, like an alert after so many dorfs are killed

Henroid

Is wrestling still the preferred method of training military dwarves so that they're goddamn incredible?

mr_mich

Started learning this last night with the LNP. At 3AM I decided to call it a night, and hadn't gotten too far in the beginner's guide.

I can tell this is going to suck away free time.

TheKoolEagle

yeah dwarf fortress is by far the most complicated game i've ever played, and I always come back for more.

I really need to donate like $100-200 to toady for this game, because it has been a staple of my gaming since it was 2d

edit: oh yeah gunna be a bit on the vampire fort, I embarked to a sinister region where a barn owl corpse ate one of my dwarves, then he reanimated and killed my military dwarves, then they reanimated and killed everyone else.

mr_mich

I wasn't able to get Stonesense to work; I guess it's not ready for the shiny newest version yet.

What can I expect from it? Does it take time to render screenshots at interval, or is it a rough real-time 3D view of what's happening?

TheKoolEagle

it updates any movement every .2s by default i believe, just looks nice really, not really a tool needed for running a fort, just a nice app

Zephiran

Henroid wrote: »

Is wrestling still the preferred method of training military dwarves so that they're goddamn incredible?

Not quite. Dwarves still benefit from all sorts of cross-training methods, but for most instances you want a good mix of military dwarves with a number of different weapons. Marksdwarves are good to have against enemies that infect dwarves in melee with poisons and diseases. Shit, they're good to have in any fortress against most things since they should be out of harm's way most of the time and thus last longer. Then you might want a few dwarves to use bladed weapons for enemies that are most easily dispatched by strategic dismemberment tactics, or if you can't get your hands on much superior weapons grade metals but do have access to silver, you might want make some Hammerdwarves or Macedwarves. Shit, you're probably going to do well keeping a few blunt weapons users around no matter what since they can be really destructive. Then you're also going to want a couple of Speardwarves for situations where you need a good solid impaling weapon. There's a use for every kind of Dwarf in the military, but unarmed Wrestlers tend to get fucked to shit pretty easily these days since they just can't compete with a number of various different foes.

Wyvern

On the subject of weapons, the basic distinction between them seems to be that swords/axes are the best when your targets are unarmored or are wearing armor of a material weaker than what the weapon is made out of (but are almost incapable of penetrating armor of equal or greater strength), maces/hammers don't lose much viability against strong armor (but are less efficient against unarmored foes due to their tendency to cause non-fatal wounds instead of horrible instant death), and spears are something of a compromise between the two, dealing more damage than blunt weapons against weakly-armored targets (but not as much as edged weapons on average) while being not entirely incapable of hitting an armored target (but doing so less often than blunt weapons). I think spears might also have a special advantage against very large creatures, since they're able to penetrate down to vital organs when other weapons might just be lightly damaging their skin or fat.

Basically, the better your weapon material is, the better edged weapons are relative to blunt weapons. If you're stuck working in copper than you probably shouldn't even bother with swords and axes; if you've got steel then blunt weapons aren't as important. In the common situation where you're relying primarily on iron, you probably want a mix of all three types. That's what my strategy tends to be, at least.

Zephiran

Of course, one might argue that the most Dwarvenly way to go about the Military is to just give everyone Masterwork Warhammers for maximum Plump Helmet Points/ Beard Cred.

TheKoolEagle

you can also be a whore like myself and only train crossbowdwarves, and then seal yourself up save a dog/cat/baby as bait outside and let the goblins come

TheKoolEagle

damns, i've jumped the gun and imprisoned a vampire in a 1x1 pit with 10 wooden training spears as an upright trap. Unfortunately since they suck so much they are just levelling up the vampire, hoping to make him go crazy and strip naked, or not being able to dodge while underwater

Demiurge

A friend of mine dropped a vampire down the magma pipe and because memorial slabs are broken the Vampire's ghost started haunting his fortress. It's also feeding off his dwarves!

KiTA

TheKoolEagle wrote: »

damns, i've jumped the gun and imprisoned a vampire in a 1x1 pit with 10 wooden training spears as an upright trap. Unfortunately since they suck so much they are just levelling up the vampire, hoping to make him go crazy and strip naked, or not being able to dodge while underwater

In like 2-3 years of having my army in a training room, I never saw them get hit once, even when they were pants on head retarded at the whole armor and dodge thing. The only time I saw blood was when animals or babies showed up, and they were torn to shreds in seconds.

As a thought -- Marksdwarves in a danger room -- what exactly does that train up? I ask because if I'm seeing this right, it's... wrestling?


My military finally destroyed their first goblin invasion. Ran up and just absolutely tore them apart. One single dwarf took out 7 goblins by himself. He now has 3 freaking names!

What I've decided to do with the military guys for the time being is set them all to crossbow users and tell them to hunt when off duty.

furlion

Marksdwarves in a danger room, assuming they are holding a crossbow, will train up Hammers. They use the crossbow like a hammer in close combat and the parrying with it train up the skill.

Blood Drive

My latest foray into the dwarf world has yielded peculiar results. I have cows popping into a mass of about 14-16 teeth. Also all the animals seem to just fight each other for no particular reason every once in awhile. They do this even if I separate them into different pastures according to species. I also have managed to drain quite a bit out of the lake I am next to thanks to two test pumps stacked on top each other. the top pump is one level above the lake and just spraying back into the lake but apparently this destroys the water instead of dumping it back in.

Also, raining blood is awesome even if it is a bit messy.

Henroid

Gentlemen. An incredible link fell into my lap. A story of a fort with art akin to a children's book. Read, and be amazed.

http://www.timdenee.com/bronzemurder.html

Shimshai

Good old bronzemurder. It's where Vic got his avatar.

Henroid

This is just so good. I'm getting jazzed up to play this game all over again.

http://www.timdenee.com/oilfurnace.html

KiTA

My current fort is doing fairly well. I found TWO different cave systems under my fort, and a batch of adamantite that goes for like 100 Z levels.

My group of 10 military dwarves have successfully fought off two separate 100+ invasions (elite goblins with mounts, christ) by themselves. The first time I lost 20 dwarves cause they ran straight at the invaders to pack up the stuff the invaders showed up with (er, what), the second time I lost no civilians cause I used burrows to lock their dumb asses in the mess hall 7 Z levels down.

First invasion I had one dwarf take a single cut to the chest, he was out and about after getting stitched up. Second invasion one of my dwarves took a hit to the shoulder, and another one... Vanished. Completely vanished. No death message, no body, nothing. His gear is gone too, so in my mind he speared one of the goblin mounts which panicked and fled the map or something.

Still, the second invasion was probably the last, as with it came the Goblin King and an Elite Demon, which we stomped into paste. I hope they try again though, melting their armor and weapons is easier than mining.

I've got a few Adamantite weapons, nothing super special yet. One of my guys decided to make this though:

Misenshal, "The Hazy Buds," a adamantine shield
Basic Value, 1339200
This is an adamantine shield. All crafsdwarfship is of the highest quality. It is encrusted with clay loam. THis object is adorned with hanging rings of adamantine and menaces iwth spikes of birch and chestut. On the item is an image of plump helmets in elk bird leather.

I finally have a handle on military screen, it still sucks ass though. Looking forward to next bugfix, wherein instead of a single group of 10 legendary dwarves, I'll go with a squad of legendary melee dwarves and a squad of legendary marksmen dwarves. So far with just 10 legendary dwarves the biggest invasions haven't slowed me down.

Taken out 3 forgotten megabeasts and a minotaur, which I'm guessing was a titan? Not sure. The closest I came to losing was trying to go after a Giant Cave Spider -- stupid thing stunlocked my entire army. Fortunately a random idiot being chased by a megabeast caused the spider to turn around, leaving one of my military dwarves a second to rush forward and cave it's head in.

One of the forgotten megabeasts was butcherable. They then took the entire stack of meat to the kitchen, and made a stack of 400 Forgotten Megabeast Roasts. Jesus christ.

Unfortunately it's slowed down to near unplayability by this point. I'm not sure why, I suspect it's some sort of pathfinding problem in the cave systems underground. I'm capping off a magma moat I found around -45 or so to move up to magma furnaces, but it's so damned slow.

Mojo_Jojo

Dwarves now being listed as missing rather than just dying is hilarious. I had an water flow issue that led to half the central staircase being flooded. I was informed constantly that dwarves hadn't been seen for a week, all I had to was scroll down and I could find them just fine! All in a cavern recess, at the bottom of a growing subterranean sea.

Also, ravens were the cause of so many interruptions to my herbalists and lumberjacks. It's a fucking bird, just ignore it.

Rami

You can't ignore any wildlife in dwarf fortress. When Carp haul themselves out of a river onto dry land to chase down and swallow a fisherman, you can't afford to make any mistakes.

TheKoolEagle

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=102276.0

really great tips for embarking, makes me look at what i take and how it is not so great

DisruptedCapitalist

AFAIK the Carp "bug" was fixed in version 31. Which is too bad. Now I guess Vampires will have to be our "fun".

Henroid

Do tileset mods still exist for this game? I really can be arsed to figure out the ascii all over again. Let alone be confused by it.

Amikron Devalia

Yes.

I suggest anyone looking to get into DF get the Lazy Newb Pack:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=59026.msg1319616

It has a collection of the tools, a couple tilesets, and a launcher with an easy way to edit some options.

Zephiran

Henroid wrote: »

Do tileset mods still exist for this game? I really can be arsed to figure out the ascii all over again. Let alone be confused by it.

Sure there do. I use the Mayday tileset because I think it's the most vibrant:

http://mayday.w.staszic.waw.pl/df.php

The wiki has a wide range of tilesets at your disposal, however:

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Tileset_repository

Henroid

What's this mess about marksdwarves not being able to train?

TheKoolEagle

Henroid wrote:

What's this mess about marksdwarves not being able to train?

its a bug in the current version, just set any marksdwarves you want to be hunters, that will train them up until you need them, they operate properly in combat.