Caltrops - Dwarf Fortress - Re: I played some more

Forum Overview :: Dwarf Fortress

by Bananadine 01/28/2011, 12:02pm PST

Bananadine wrote:

Upstairs, things got worse and worse, because of the goblins. They kept coming and coming, and my population kept dropping. Untended horses and cows wandered through my legendary dining room; the clothing of fallen dwarves littered the floor. Eight dwarves, seven, six... and my new pump system was spreading water a little too far, so I had to cripple it. I ended this play session in a state of terrible disaster, as always.

So far, all the goblins I had met were just temporary visitors. They'd come and wreck some stuff, and I'd try to shut some doors and save some lives; and after a while they'd leave. These latest waves of goblins turned out to be the same, though they managed to nearly empty my prosperous fortress of dwarves, and so my dwarven society was able to limp along for a little longer, until a new set of migrants arrived and everything was basically back to normal. I think I put some traps in the entrance hall after that. Of course I knew I could organize a security force and maybe fight off the next bunch of raiders, but traps seemed like a lot less trouble. I built stone-fall traps and weapon traps, all of which I understood to be automatically refilling (for as long as any mechanic dwarves were around to refill them, anyway). I built rows and rows of them.

After I'd fixed my pump system, my next big effort was to pump out the basement even harder. I had reason to believe that there were multiple aquifer tiles exposed to the rooms I wanted to empty, and I couldn't see exactly where these were--but I knew, at least, that they were probably not close to the main stairway into the basement, around which I'd managed to smooth almost all the floors and walls before the flooding occurred. So I figured that if I were to dig a wide tunnel on the next level up and place several pumps in a row at its mouth, the resulting hole in the water would grow quickly enough to fill the main room (with emptiness) before the further-off leaks could close it again. It'd be a big task: I'd have to curve the tunnel around into the rock beneath the river, and make an equally large series of pumps on the next level up to elevate it another level, and then another set on the next level, before the water could finally spill out of my fortress and fall down again into the river. But I saw no reason why I couldn't do it. So I set to work.

The pumps on the higher levels could be placed close enough to the river that a water wheel could drive them. But the deepest set of pumps, next to the basement stairway, had to be driven by wind. Accordingly, I built three windmills on the mountainside, seven stories above the pumps, and made a very tall axle to carry their power down to the basement. The axle was supposed to go through an open shaft that was already part of my main stairway, and so I only had to dig out the topmost end of it, since the stairway didn't reach all the way to the surface. Unfortunately, the miner who took the order to open the top of the stairwell did not fully understand my plan, and so he made the mistake of standing on the last bit of ground as he dug it out. Thereafter he fell six floors and landed in a water-filled room without any exit. But I still had plenty of dwarves.

Around this time, the outpost liaison came around again. And this time, I happened to notice when he visited my dwarves' dormitory. An opportunity! I immediately paused the game and gave orders to wall off the dormitory. The orders were carried out briskly, and the liaison was trapped! I counted this as a great victory, even though five of my own dwarves were also in the dormitory, including the mayor. All began to starve and thirst. But I would not relent until that liaison was gone. I didn't know whether he was capable of starving--at worst, I would leave him shut up in there permanently, with five corpses to keep him company. I could easily build a new dormitory. So I watched and waited. He gave his little farewell speech, as usual. And a few moments later, he disappeared, leaving me sadder but wiser. It would not be so easy, it turned out, to convince this recalcitrant game to let me make an interesting impact on its world! With my prisoner apparently teleported home, I broke down the dormitory's new wall and let my poor dwarves rush to the well.

The underground canal was still in progress, and wood was very short, due to all the axles and pump components I'd been building. Trees grow automatically on the surface and can be chopped down without consequence as soon as they're old enough, but their slow, steady rate of replenishment is inadequate for a medium-sized fortress full of mechanics, and I'd become impatient with them. I couldn't make them grow any faster, though, so I settled for reducing the amount of attention they required: I would shave off several of the topmost levels of my mountain, solely for the purpose of allowing me to designate the entire mountaintop's worth of trees for cutting in a single operation. (Though the Dwarf Fortress world is 3D, its main display is severely and annoyingly 2D, and it only lets you look at one floor at a time.) This was the easiest of all my large projects, and it also taught me about cave-ins: Every once in a while, the dwarves would dig too hastily, and a section of the mountain would be left with nothing underneath it. I guess a huge structure can be supported by the tiniest pillar--but the simulation is robust enough, anyway, to notice when a section of ground has NO support. Several of my dwarves were crushed, and a few failed to survive. I was okay with that.

But then a new wave of goblins came. Whatever traps I'd built weren't enough, and many dwarves were killed. In fact all but one of my dwarves were killed, and the one survivor got himself trapped in an aqueduct somehow. That was a setback! But trees only grow so fast, and so I could afford to be without workers for however long it took for these goblins to leave, and for new migrants to arrive. Once I had more workers, I'd catch up with the trees quickly enough.

My last remaining dwarf appeared to have elected himself mayor, and though he could not move (water was holding him down? I couldn't really tell), he remained active in politics, imposing bans on "certain exports" and so forth until hunger or thirst took him.

An elven caravan arrived, but nobody was around to pull the lever.

A ghostly dwarven baby arose, and began haunting my empty fortress.

Then, suddenly, the game told me that my settlement had crumbled, and sent me back to the title screen! Evidently you can't go on forever without dwarves! There is a goal! Sort of! Or at least, there's a way to lose. The game just doesn't care to tell you about it, until after it's already happened. :(