Dwarf Fortress Forum Let's Play #2

[asad3ainjalout]

Assallamu Alaikum,

After my failed attempt to start to a dwarf fortress let’s play, I decided to try again. Same idea applies. I wanted to share my fortresse’s story with you guys, receive feedback and suggestions for what to do etc.

And so we begin.

I have decided this time to show you the world that was generated, ‘The Age Myth’. This world is currently 250 years old. So the picture is too big to upload directly to MG so here is an imgur link.

I thought it would be cool to try a new fortress that came from the same dwarven civilization as last game, Etur Orshet, “The Boulder of Cremating”. Before we start I wanted to see how our civilization started.

The Boulder of Cremating where a dwarven civilization of the eternal universe, they existed when the world started. The first queen was Kivish LÏdmafol, "Kivish Tightness Chambers. (1-53

She only lived to be about 53 years old, killed by the goblin usbu Steelchasms.

Although her rain was only 53 years she accomplished quite a lot. Under her leadership, our glorious civilization founded

• Year 1 -: Throwerhandles
• Year 1 -: Drinkcaves
• Year 2 -: Scalelabor
• Year 3 -: Cavevaults
• Year 17 -: Wirepartner
• Year 25 -: Townkeeper (this is where the killer of the queen was eventually killed)
• Year 26 -: Lashsmiths
• Year 42 -: Slysyrups
• Year 43 -: Siegeboulder
• Year 44 -: Lashringed
• Year 51 -: Lancerdrank
• Year 52 -: Castledivine

The queen died in the defence of Lashringed against The Unspeakable Plagues.

The next leader after the queen was her fifth eldest daughter Solon Equalcities (31-54), she died in the same year to the same faction as her predecessor, The Unspeakable Plagues.

Sadly, her body was mutilated and used as part of a gruesome structure near the fortress Townkeepers where she died defending the fortress.

Before I go on to the next queen, I would like to cover the leader of The Unspeakable Plagues, Quazi Monkeymenaced (?-158). The dude was around since before the universe started. I will just post his accomplishments before the world existed.

Although despite all of his epic accomplishments, the dude died to an elephant.

The next queen was Monom Manorthrone (43-212) had a rather boring reign. She became the queen in the year 55 at the ripe old age of 12. Her father, Domas Ostbomrek “Domas Foldedwhip”, was the eldest son of the first queen Kivish. He died at Lashringed with his mother. Unlike his mother, however, he was a part of that wonderful dwarf sculpture. At least he died fighting. He took down four goblins with him.

Her young age did nothing to deter the elves from attacking Lashingrad.

Thankfully though a peace treaty was arranged, and the fighting stopped. The first 15 or so years of her reign was littered with competitions, recitals, processions and not much else. However she finally oversaw the building of some new fortresses.

• Year 69 Threetomes

The elves attempted another attack in the year of 69.

Which failed and they tucked their tails between their legs and signed the treaty.

• Year 74 Weaveroils
• Year 75 Canyonmint
• Year 76 Tongsheavy
• Year 76 Laborshowers
• Year 78 Ringtangled
• Year 79 Snarlinganvil
• Year 83 Focuscopper
• Year 88 Glovekey
• Year 89 Tongsenjoyed
• Year 90 Slaughterspage
• Year 92 Heatlashed
• Year 92 Squashedochre
• Year 95 Razorlearning
• Year 96 Landwire
• Year 97 Tradecalms
• Year 99 Coalfondle
• Year 100 Thunderedrack
• Year 101 Workempires

OK ENOUGH you get the idea, I am skipping ahead till something more fun pops up. Yah Illahi this queen is dull. I am sure the rest of the dwarves where happy that their third queen was not being slaughtered and mutilated along with the rest of their kin, but it makes for dull storytelling.
This story as been pretty popular at the Inkley festival every, bloody, year since 186.

Anyways the dull queen dies of old age in the Year 212, at the ripe old age of 169. She never got married and had no heirs. With no clear line of succession the dwarves chose not to elect a new queen and just kinda chilled.

In the year 251, the faction The Disloyalty of Castles attacked and took over the fortress Tradednoble. They defected from their faction and started a new civilization called The Dimpled Demon.

In the Year 252 the Disloyalty of Castles attacked the fortress Pickbrushes. Four times their forces attacked, and three times they where rebuffed.
Meanwhile The Deep Seduction attacked Joywheels twice, however failed to take over our fortress. After their failures The Cruelty of Channels attacked and took over Pickbrushes and established a new government called The Single Curse.

And this is where we come in.

---

So guys, I am thinking of building a fortress near where the ones that where taken over our. The story could be that with the loss of our stronghold in that area, our expedition set out to attempt to re control the territory (the game still has not added the ability to launch offensive attacks against other factions yet. Your faction can launch attacks, but we cannot. We can however, reclaim an old fortress.

So what do you guys think?

So to give you guys an idea of where our faction is right now, here is a map of the year 250 with all the factions shown.

Here is a legend of the relevant factions.
The Boulder of Cremation (Us) -:
The Sweetness of Riders (The eleves that attacked us) -:
The Unspeakable Plague (The guys who killed our first two queens) -:
These are fortresses -:

This is where we started btw

I await your feedback.

P.S. I should add that since there is not king or queen, that means our civilization is dyeing and that one of the dwarves in our new fortress will become the king or queen, essentially we are this civilizations last hope. In theory, if I succeed at this fortress, then retire it and start another and another etc, we can grow this civilization back to it’s former glory.

[Wulf]

Hmmm. I can only find our faction on the east side of the map. And East of that is the elves, and south of that are the dudes who killed our queens. I say we settle near the dudes who killed our queens and destroy them.

P.S. Awesome pics.

[roketfiq]

I can finally replyyyyyyyyyy. Also, I love that this site stores your previously typed replies as drafts! Its nuts. Such a great platform for the forums.

[asad3ainjalout]

Well what do you think the next course of action is. So have try to settle near the first badguy faction.

[asad3ainjalout]

Year One of Mountainsteam 18th of Timber, 253

After sweating over the maps, it has been decided, we will settle near the river just on the other side of the mountain range from the enemy city Idamnek. Our fortress will dominate the land around it!

I feel it will be too boring to go through all of the dwarves personalities and stuff, so I will only stick with the interesting ones.

And here is our embark zone.

A nice plateau with a the mountain range starting to rise up to the east and a steep drop the valley to the west. If you notice the river you will note that it falls into the valley going down 6 z-levels.

Since we are near enemy territory defense will be our first priority. So we have designed a a ramp going underground.

There is then a long hallway with space for a our trade depot at the end. This will force anyone entering or exiting the fort. There are two pits that will have fire proof draw bridges over them this way we can divide and conquer the enemy. on the floor above we will have arrow slits so our marksdwarves can rain down bolts on the enemy. The pits will eventually be filled with magma.

Behind that our first will be built. Here is where our central staircase will be.

4 z levels below this point we have our first temporary workshop area.

Above and below we have 2 stockpiles accepting everything but our corpses and refuse. We can now disassemble the wagon.

Up above, right underneath the first layer we have our starting farms, kitchen and coffee grindary (stills)

And finally, the beginning of our bedrooms and living quarters.

I will add updates once the fortress is more complete.

[asad3ainjalout]

On the 19th of slate, year 255 we received a worrying announcement.

Fearing the worst imediatly ordered all of our dwarves back into the fortress until the situation was assessed, sadly, two dwarves did not make it.

And it was not just our Stukos Ilrallar who died. One of our woodcrafters Rigath Degdatan was chased down after having his leg cut bit off, was strangled to death.

The were coyote also killed a pet cat

One of our boars

And finally one of our geese.

The attack has sadly required us to build our burial hall.

We where able to grab their severed body parts and place them in the coffin as well btw.

Their deaths have lead to new policy changes. At the time of the attack we had no military. We have now created our first squad and they are in the processof training.

Our barracks and training arena area are topside to allow for faster deployment of the military. However, they are close enough to the main ramp to retreat if the outside threat is too large.

We have also began to craft rudemntary armor and will be tunneling deeper to get to the magma so we can start our forges.

Anyways here is the fortress as it stands right now. If anyone wants me to explain what something is, just ask. You have to click on the image, discourse cuts off the lower quarter of it.

[roketfiq]

lol reading the combat text is nuts. I cant understand how they make it so elaborate. They just program possibilities and it makes it all up as it goes? And does it use the different colors in order to make it easier to read? Seems to be more red than anything else but still.

[asad3ainjalout]

i cut out bits of the log to just the main parts ill post the full fight underneath. No they don’t make it up as they go. They are actually fighting. This becomes more apparent when you play adventure mode (that whole world you generated and you build fortresses in? you can also play an rpg mode in them called adventure mode. when you build fortresses they will be a part of the history, if you play adventure mode and become a legendary hero you will be part of the history, in fact you can visit your old forts in the history and see if they are still bustling metropolises or have fallen to ruin.). Anyways in adventure mode when you fight a creature or another person the game goes in a specific order. you type out the order for the attack, the game calculates how you and the other creature are standing relative to each other. Facing each other, away etc. etc. It calculates whether your sitting, standing laying down etc. it calculates height and width etc. So for example, as a dwarf, it will be near impossible to hit a standing giant in the head with an axe but if it’s laying down, and you are standing near it’s head, you can. After it calculates the position of everything you can choose to a generic attack, where it picks the best one based on your skills, what you can reach, how likely you are to hit and what kind of blow, straight on glancing etc. Or you can do a precise strike and choose for yourself. In dwarf fortress mode your dwarves pick for themselves…

Based on how your standing and types of weapons etc. it will calculate the possibility of hitting a certain part of the body ranging from likely to impossible and what type of blow from glancing to straight on. After the character chooses to attack it swings and all that fun is calculated. This is when the defending creatures defence, dodge, and shield skills come into play. assuming you hit, it then calculates damage. All the above works for grabbing etc. Now you do get some weird things, like apparently you can grab someones back teeth with your mouth, but the trade off is that you can also rip someones limb off and beat them with it.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Combat this wiki actually explains it a bit better lol, and i just learned that in the new version of the game I am playing, he added the fact that damage to one body part can affect another. For example if a werecoyote is shaking you around from the head it can cause damage to your spine.

anyways heres the full log of what happened to one of my dwarves.

Btw, damage to the skin, and fat can heal usually ok, with a chance of infection. Damage to the muscle MIGHT heal ok or you might have some trouble grabbing or doing things, you will also get a scar, and there is a higher chance of infection. Damage to the tendon will mean that you will always have trouble doing things with that limb or body part. Damage to the nerve means its paralyzed. There is also damage to the bone that can happen.

[Wulf]

1. So that gif shows the multiple Z levels right?
2. What does that worrying announcement mean?
3. Also, what happened to those crossbow places? Were those planned or did you not get to defend properly?

[asad3ainjalout]

1. Yes starting from top to bottom. It is hard to visualize the fortress if you do not see it in order.
2. Well the announcement said that my woodcutter cancelled a job (returning the kill from one of the hunters to the fort) the reason being she was interrupted by combat. If a dwarf who is not in the military is interrupted by combat, 9/10 its bad cause they do not have good fighting skills.
   3)If you watch the gif of the fortress again, the level above the main hallway has not been designed yet, so no crossbow places. Also, it would not have mattered in this case anyways since the werecoyote never attempted to assault the fortress. (the ai can tell if it does not have a chance) and instead harassed anything outside.

[asad3ainjalout]

What is a closer look?
Since most of my posts tend to have a very general zoomed out overview of what is happening, I thought it would be cool to just zoom in and look at some of the inner workings of the fortress in detail. I decided to start with the mayor this time. And next time to focus on bedroom setup. etc.

A Closer Look: The Mayor
The mayor is a noble whose job it is to speak with unhappy citizens, and (until a baron is appointed) entertain foreign diplomats. He or she is automatically elected from the most social dwarf, most likely the expedition leader, once the population reaches 50. A new mayor may be elected from time to time as your dwarves’ social skills change.

So who is our mayor?

One small problem i noticed, hes in my one and only military squad. I think I will keep him there for now as he is one of a handful of dwarves who has any military experience, but let’s get to know him a little better.

TLDR: He is overall pretty happy. He is married and apprenticed to someone. Onalkeng is the dwarven name for Mountainsteam, our fort. He has a long bear and shaves his head and has a bit of a narrow face. Now his likes are only really important once you are done with the basics and want to min max the happiness of the dwarves. This helps when something really bad happens to keep them from going insane, but earlier on in a fortresses life there are more important things to take care of. We should take not that he detests purring maggots. so we make sure that no one has pet maggots. The rest will is dwarf fortresses way of telling you his stats without turning it into flat numbers, story and the world is very important in dwarf fortress. but once again, once we get our fort running really well we can focus on making all of our dwarves super happy and efficient starting from the key dwarves such as important nobles and key legendary crafters.

Part of being a mayor comes with some quirks. Here are the perks he gets.

You will note that I have given him everything but the decent quality quarters so far. I plan to add a few more engravings to increase his bedroom to a decent level, but let’s go look at what he has on the map.

Symbol Key:
	Door
	Smoothed Floor
	Table
	Chair
	Statue
	Bed
	Cabinet
	Armor Stand
	Weapon Stand
	Chest
	Smooth Wall
	Engraved Wall

So we have given him his decent dining room and office, his 2 chests, weapon rack, armor stand and cabinent. I used engravings to help spiffy up and raise the value of the rooms. I will probably add a a couple more in his bedroom. Here are some of the more interesting engravings. I let the artist choose the engravings btw.

Nice only fitting that there would be an engraving of the founding of our mighty fortress.

Nice a small token to our original expedition leader. She is btw still in the fort, but lacked the social skills to become mayor. Here she is one of our better masons.

Nice he engraved one of the artefacts we made. Here is a description of it btw.

and some random shapes and gems here.

Huh, he went out of his way to mention this dwarf, I wonder what is special about him? Not sure why, he seems to just be a regular herbalist. It is possible he engraved this image, I didnt really keep track, I aint that good to micro manage that well yet. lol I am just happy my fortress constantly has 0 idlers.

This engraving is pretty cool. If your recall the history that i posted, there was a battle in the year 54. This depicts some of the fighting and now we know the name of the battle.

I also had no input on what the statues look like. so lets take a quick look.

This is the first one. I should probably pay attention to what is happening around the fortress, i did not even see that happen lol. I guess cause none of my dwarves where involved. oh well.

A nice little tribute to our crafts dwarves.

Anyways thats enough of his quarters lets take a look at his relationships.

Nothing to interesting, well, we found out he wont have any heirs anyways Other than that he seems to be pretty friendly with everyone. I wonder if his master is in our fortress.

No he is not so i guess he is a long distance apprentice. He did make one mandate since he took office.

Reasonable so far

Anyways this has been a closer look of the mayor.

P.S. I want to customize the last two engravings i put in his room, any suggestions? Most things are possible so tell me what you think should be there and I will do my best to put it up.

[asad3ainjalout]

Quick Update

I took a short break to build some stuff for the next project i was going to document when an undead siege occurred.

Here is the announcement.

So one of the problems with undead is that you need good hammer dwarfs to kill them since the only way to destroy them is to bash their skull in. I dont even have hammers much less trained hammer dwarves, I was training them as Axe dwarfs. The reason you need trained hammer dwarfs is because untrained hammer dwarfs wont aim for the head, and will eventually tire themselves out from smashing zombies chests and arms but never actually kill it. They also are led by a elf axeman for some reason.

See you can never trust those filthy tree huggers. what makes matters worse is after quickly looking over the undead. the necromancer is nowhere to be seen, however.

Here are the undead on the map. The necromancer must have the sneak skill, so that means i cant see him on the map unless hes in my dwarves line of sight.

Good news, I got everyone inside with no casualties and even got my military inside, was able to rig the lever up to the bridge and raise it. Bad news, enemies can path diagonally… so i need to fix this.

This is going to be the lever room btw

More bad news, the undead have full bronze armor on, but undead have no skills, so my dwarves being competent should be enough to take them on, despite us being outnumbered 3 to 1, but, my dwarves do not have any armor on and only wooden training weapons. We need to really step up the steel production and make some weapons and armor. Steel is better than bronze so we should be good there.

I also need to split my squad up into teams of 2 based on their weapon skills so they can spar more instead of holding demonstrations. Apparently demonstrations are good for being introduced to a skill, but not so much for practising and raising that skill.Thirdly, I noticed one of my fighters is carrying a baby with her… so she is going to have to leave the squad.

Last thing, we have no source of water… so after i get the military and the bridge sorted out, I have to get water into the fort somehow.

EDIT
The lack of water proved to be lethal for some of our dwarves and I had to take drastic action.

and at least 3 more died i believe that have not been found yet (they are marked as missing)

They are all incredibly thirsty. so i put my military between my fort and the slow moving undead and let my dwarves run to the lake to drink.

You can see them crowded around the water source. this means we need to make building a safe water internal water source a priority.

[Wulf]

Kick the mayor. He failed to give safe drinking water to the people. Joking

Btw what is the advantage of attacking the enemies who killed our queen? Does it affect our relation with the rest of the clan? What kind of riches would we get?

[asad3ainjalout]

so we cant actually attack yet, that is coming in future patches. The rest of the clan will like us the more powerful our fortress is and provided we do not kill their caravans. riches? well we would have someone to trade with so there is that.

[asad3ainjalout]

Quick Update

So while I was making steel to armor up my fighting dwarves to finally clear out the undead, a forgotten beast has come up from the depths. Luckily I had walled that area off so he cant get to my fort, but hes effectively locked me out of the caverns , my only source of under ground wood… grrr.

Looks like he is one of the weaker forgotten beasts so I have decided to send my dwarven military down to kill him and hopefully net some exp

I moved my military into the caverns.

The capital B to the left is the forgotten beast. I will let him come to me so my numbers will have the advantage.

And he’s dead lol. As soon as they hit him, he disintegrated lol. Alhamdullillah he was one of the weaker forgotten beasts.

This is the one blow that killed him

[Wulf]

The beast wasn’t weak. ( or else it would be been a lower case b )

He just messed with the wrong dwarf, that’s all. Forgotten Beast needs to lift more imo.

#axedwarf ftw

[asad3ainjalout]

While I was slowly making steel bars and equipping my troops with steelt to take on the undead onslaught. A Giant Toad made it’s way into our Statue garden and started knocking everything over.a

So i sent one of my squads to fight it, only one dudette , my militia commander showed up with only a steel shield and the clothes on her back and proceeds to knock the ever living life out of this toad by herself.

Just punches the toads mouth off…

Toad is still not dead yet but yah these are it’s injuries so far.

Here is proof my dwarf does not have any weapons, just a steel shield.

I think as soon as i get them some armor on, they can fight the undead, finally lifting the siege.

Not much later a bunch of birds ran into my hospital and began biting the patients… luckly my military dwarves got there in time.

MEANWHILE

I am still working on the Clean Indoor water initiative, which suffered a minor cave in during construction.

Alhamdullilah, both dwarves survive with minor bruising.

I also noticed that I had accidentally walled off the guy installing the floodgate in the drain. thankfully, we where able to open the area up again before he died

oh yes, and one of our dwarves is a ghost now. and I cannot find his body anywhere to bury it so he goes away.

Hes the white N shaped thing

[asad3ainjalout]

Anyways, I shall end the let’s play now. I don’t really have time to play/update it and I do not think many people where following it anyways Salaams, I am probably going to disappear till finals are done.

[roketfiq]

I hope you werent relying on just me to follow @asad3ainjalout -___-…

[asad3ainjalout]

lol no, but i thought at least some people may be a bit more interactive. Ill try later when the community is bigger.