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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 21, 2015 8:16:44 GMT -5
First female cave dragon has been born. Really seems like they can't be fully tame, but I'm going ahead with mass breeding of them anyway. Trainer usually gives them a high training level anyway, so not a lot of maintenance is required.
I might look into breeding them for size. Only the male dragon has a favorable size (one female is gigantic but skinny, and the other is average). I'm not exactly sure how breeding works in that way, but I'll pick the largest offspring to base my breeding program when the time comes.
Other than that, breeding of other creatures is going well. Giant wren is mainly for meat and eggs. Jabberers even if they can't be trained for war has a size advantage so they could possibly be a defense feature, but main purpose is for meat. Rutherer breeding program is just one male and two females, but they get bizzay and often give me triplets per year - but they're a long investment as they grow to adult size in ten years. Voracious cave crawlers are the same as rutherers for their busy-ness, and while they are born as adults reaching full size takes longer and in the end their meat returns isn't that big. Still, they're giant worms with a head full of teeth, and I'll keep breeding them for variety.
For more mundane creatures, I let the eggs of crundles and giant tortoises still hatch once in a while for meat. Once the original trainer is getting up there in age, I might assign a second and more younger trainer who'll be in charge of the mundanes to build up training skill.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 21, 2015 9:57:28 GMT -5
Gah. My "stock" of untameable/unbutcherable animals is getting absurd. I mean, it's nice to have a zoo, but I probably don't need so much of them. Like I'm pretty sure I don't need 10 flesh balls, or 12 trolls. The only one that can be tamed and butchered is the cave blob, which produces no meat and just raw hide which can be made into leather. Flesh balls and reachers could be killed and butchered, and the rest are useless for anything else but weapon practice and zoo denizens.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 21, 2015 11:08:07 GMT -5
Secured four females for the cave dragon breeding program. After that... I reckon 10-20 other dragons will be trained for war. The rest will be kept caged as butchery and trade products. Like I might consider selling them off to the dwarven civilization, but not the humans. Currently I'm provoking the humans by killing caravan guards as the merchants begin to leave the map. No elves around, so I'm settling to increase tension with the humans.
In general, I wish there was a way to properly measure or check the age of cave dragons. Butchering newborns, even though they're considered adults, will give me low meat returns, so I want to let the dragons marinate a little and age for growth.
For the zoo, I've decided on keeping only two of each kind. That's a permanent spot for the immortal ones, at the very least. The others will be military practice for new-ish recruits.
Main trade product is clothing. Now that my dyer is experienced enough, dyed cloth turned into clothing should add a lot more value.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 21, 2015 13:42:50 GMT -5
The slaughter is over. I kept two of every zoo creature in their gold cages, while the rest are crammed up in one wooden cage in a room that can be sealed. Cagespace is a wondrous thing. Anyway, once that's done I link the cage to a mechanism, then I station my new-ish squad there. Two dwarf squad, one armed with a hammer, the other a mace, both silver and masterpiece.
Armor for all my squads is masterpiece as well... took years to do that as after a while the iron ore I got from mining ran out and I resorted to trading low quality steel armor and weapons from dwarven caravan and melted it down. Any weapon or armor I made that was not masterpiece quality was melted down as well. Same with silver for the maces and warhammers.
Anyway, the squad is stationed in the room, door is locked, and I send someone to pull the lever and all hell broke lose. Including the trolls.
Both dwarves won without injury. They weren't inexperienced as they got drafted to the military the moment they became migrants when I noticed that they had some combat skills. Not legendary skills but enough for them to probably handle themselves in battle. No prior kills before becoming military though, but I certainly fixed that.
End result. Mace dwarf now has 56 kills, and hammerdwarf has 45. The hammerdwarf had less combat levels, but somehow he went crazy against the trolls. 5 in a row got brain smashing hits via hammer blow, pretty much insta-killing them as pretty much any brain damage is fatal.
In general, thinking of increasing my population cap. Whatever dwarf migrates to the fort, they'll become farmers. Want more farm plots, and in general a much larger clothing industry as the source for plant thread is renewable. Maybe add another dyer to further increase profit.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 21, 2015 17:22:54 GMT -5
Whew. Once again dfhack is a savior from slight inconveniences.
Like, stray animals won't be named unless a dwarf adopts it as a pet, or if it manages to make notable kills. So, animals in breeding programs can't be normally named, and if you have, say, 30 giant tortoises it can be a bit hard to tell which ones are to be butchered.
So I find out that there's a command in dfhack that can name a unit, even strays. This makes my cave dragon breeding program a whole lot simpler. I'll nickname them the dates when they were born, mostly for the ones reserved for the butcher, and designate the other dragons if they're for breeding or war.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 21, 2015 19:43:35 GMT -5
Now this is interesting. There's a program called Dwarf Therapist that helps manage the selected labors for each dwarf. Because dfhack adds in an interface in-game that does that, though with slightly less detail, I don't bother using Dwarf Therapist. On the other hand, I just found out that it can also show the details I want for my animals, namely their age and their size. Like I now know that my rutherers, which still need 8 years to become adults, is already half the size of an average adult one - so now I can consider them for butchering as the meat returns for them will be pretty decent.
So, with combining the rename command in dfhack and the info provided by the dwarf therapist, I can keep track of all the dragons present and decide what to do with them.
Furthermore, dwarf therapist also gives details on the physical attributes of each tame/trained animals, so if I were to be interested with it, I could arrange it so that the biggest and strongest dragons are the ones that breed to produce strong offspring for war.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 22, 2015 6:07:45 GMT -5
Comparing sizes between the adult cave dragons I caught in the wild with the newborn ones. Seems like that for the fort born ones to reach elephant size requires at least 200 years. Unlike the rutherers, and especially the jabberers, the cave dragon grows quite slowly.
On the other hand, they probably will reach a decent size at maybe around 5 years or so, as that would probably have them as the same size as the big cats like lions.
Unlike a lot of animals, the cave dragons are born with skills in biting, striking, fighting and dodging, so I might feed them enemies for them to practice on.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 22, 2015 10:43:43 GMT -5
I caved in and used dwarf therapist's feature where pet attributes can be monitored. As it turns out, while pets can't increase their skills, their attributes will.
So now I'm experimenting with a three-month old cave dragon, chosen due to some decent attributes - the only exception being disease resistance which for that dragon is super low (disease resistance and healing rate can't be improved no matter what).
Anyway, I pasture him in a small locked room and send in a few weak creatures. Blood men, cave blobs, etc. Can't send trolls from the get go - as the dragon is barely a year old and is half the size of a goat. And indeed, checking dwarf therapist from time to time I'm seeing small increases in stats.
I'll continue to feed this one kills, so it'll grow stronger and stronger.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 22, 2015 11:42:20 GMT -5
Also, some current random junk, mostly on breeding:
-Started with 3 cave dragons caught in the wild. Caught two more much later. Number of fort born cave dragons are 20 at the moment. Pretty decent numbers, but it's really a long term investment due to how slow they grow. The caught ones are all around 200 years old; older than civilization and they're big. The one year olds are around the size of a goat.
-Jabberers are the number one meat stock. A female only lays 1-3 eggs at most, but they're the fastest growing ones that are big. A full size jabberer is almost as big as an elephant, and they reach adulthood at 1 year and full size at 2. Since the creature has an infant form, they can be permanently tamed. They can't be war trained but their size and beaks can be considerable. Certainly dangerous against unarmed haulers.
-Rutherer's are not egg laying and each birth can bring up to three children at least. They're the same size as rhinos, and reach adulthood at the same time as rhinos, though it seems they grow pretty quickly. At three years they're almost halfway to full size, so a meat industry based on infant ones can be viable. Rhino leather has slightly more value, and rutherers can't be trained for war, but still overall better as rutherers don't need to be pastured to survive.
-Caught a giant ocelot. Can be trained for war. Still, it's just one. Problem with most of the cat predators is that they only show up once in a while and often one at a time. I'll have to hope for one of the opposite gender for any kind of breeding program with them.
-At the very bottom are crundles and giant tortoises. I mostly just harvest their eggs now, as a birth explosion of around 20 of each is not fun.
2 year old cave dragons are bigger than a dog but smaller than a cheetah. I'm generally just comparing sizes with the present pets in the fort.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 22, 2015 23:01:50 GMT -5
Training my soldiers in swimming. Generally in case if a soldier falls into a pool of water or a river. As long as they're novice level, it should cover drowning prevention for most part, but might as well train them up as it can also increase physical attributes.
The main way to do this is to keep them in a room and flood the area with water. As dwarves won't generally take a dip in a deep enough body of water. So on the surface I dug out a pit, removed most ramps except for one, then put a floor over the pit to make a roof. The ramp has a floor hatch, and there's a screw pump connected to the river and an un-roofed area of the pit to send water into the dwarves. I make the water 6/7 deep, and just keep the hatch locked until the dwarves get tired.
Now that my dyer is legendary skilled, the value increase of dyed cloth is quite large. Sometimes double the value of undyed cloth.
Got four millers constantly milling flour using a millstone. The farm still outproduces them, but flour and dye is constantly used up so they can keep on working. I got a potential recruit working with a quern for strength training. Got three threshers processing plant fiber to thread, and one weaver making cloth. One clothier is enough to supply the fort with clothing and get enough excess for trade.
Instead of selling second-hand goods, the clothing is simply destroyed. There's a dfhack command that designates all worn down clothing to a garbade dump, and in that garbage dump I also designated a refuse stockpile that only takes clothing. Refuse stockpiles will quickly decay items, so clothing is dumped and in a short while is gone in my fort.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 23, 2015 9:36:18 GMT -5
I think I may have wiped out the jabberer, rutherer, and crundle population in the region, as they're no longer showing up. First two got in the face of aggressive amounts of cage traps, while the crundles were exterminated during the cage hauling times. On the other hand, caught three more cave dragons. Almost double-digits in caught cave dragons, so that's nice.
Breached a different cavern layer. 90 floors deep, completely different from the cage-filled one starting at 105 floors deep. Different species, it seems. It has cave crocodiles. Tempted to cage them - because crocodiles. Can't be trained for war, but crocodiles. Tameable, and apparently a very explosive egg-layer producing up to 40 eggs per laying.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 23, 2015 11:14:30 GMT -5
Somewhat unsure on what to do with the cave dragons I'm producing. Like yeah, war dragons and everything, but there's still a lot to do.
Right now I'm chaining pairs together in different areas. Two pairs; two old and two young. Both pairs have the best size, both gigantic and muscular. Want to see if they will produce similar children. I want to breed them based on physical attributes like strength, toughness, and agility, but the thing is that all the dragons have stats all over the place so I couldn't really choose so I went with the best size instead.
Also, by accident I seized all the cargo of the human caravan. I mean, yeah, I'm trying to provoke them into war by attacking the caravan guards, but I'd rather not seize items, since that just gives me a ton more items to deal with. Lots of useless junk like clay, large human clothing that's too big for dwarves to wear, and low-quality weapons and armor. Just to be fair, I dumped all the seized cargo, as well as the items I was gonna trade them for, into a dump site that's located under a raised bridge and smashed them into nothing.
Oh, and as I am trying to provoke the humans, I killed all the guards, caravan animals, and nearly all the merchants. Left two alive so they can go tell their civilization what I did.
Also, funnily enough and by complete coincidence, the two dwarven children that became adults... One was the soldier I mentioned a while ago, and the other was originally a farmer but as she's young I decided that she'll be the second animal trainer. I was checking on them after and I realized that their parents had the same job. The mother was the lead marksdwarf, and the father was the animal trainer. By that point the soldier kid already reached legendary skill like her mother and the trainer child was already a skilled trainer.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 23, 2015 13:05:07 GMT -5
Some fun with stockpiles. You can designate a stockpile to give/take from a workshop, or another stockpile. For giving to workshops, the primary use of this is to speed up item gathering for workshops. Like, say you have a Mason's workshop. Dwarves can be notoriously dumb with gathering items; instead of taking one from a nearby stockpile, sometimes dwarves will venture all the way down to a cavern to get a different rock. If you link a stockpile to the mason, then they'll only take stones from the stockpile.
Of course, if there are no stones currently in the stockpile, the dwarves won't work even if there's a rock next to the workshop on a non-stockpile area.
Stockpile linking can be done to make sure decorating items get the best results. Like say you want to encrust high value gems on statues. Have a gem stockpile, and make a stockpile that only takes statues of high quality, then link those two to a jewelers workshop to make fancy statues. Since the statue stockpile only takes statues, this makes sure that a low-quality furniture item like a wooden bin doesn't get decorated by accident.
Now, on to fun. I make a stockpile that only takes meat from a certain animals, in this case the elephant-sized jabberers, and in particular only the big stacks of meat via a little bit of forbidding items. So I got four big stacks of jabberer meat in one stockpile, and I link that stockpile to the kitchen and order the cook to make a lavish meal which requires four different stacks of items.
As luck would have had it, the meal is masterpiece quality. A stack of 726 jabberer meat, and while an individual piece is far smaller in value, the total sum of the entire stack is around 280k. I've had artifacts made from aluminum and diamond before that's worth almost the same.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 23, 2015 14:40:59 GMT -5
A bit cheaty, but I checked the sexual orientation of my breeders using dfhack. Well, so far all my breeders are attracted to the opposite gender, so breeding will happen. The first male cave dragon was luckily bi. If he wasn't and only liked males, my cave dragon breeding never would have gotten off the ground.
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pegasuswarrior
El Dandy
Three Time FAN Idol Champion
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Post by pegasuswarrior on Oct 23, 2015 20:52:10 GMT -5
This thread still rules. Thanks, Cthlulhu
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 24, 2015 0:28:27 GMT -5
It's pretty fun to post whatever silly thing I find on playing. Fighting is fun, but I'm more drawn in to making a big industry. I'm also eagerly waiting for the next release, with stuff like libraries and music playing, among other things.
dfhack has another somewhat cheaty command. A command which makes the game tell whether an egg is fertilized or not. Dud eggs can happen often, especially in the case of female cave dragons. As they're born adults, newborn females can and will rush in to the nearest nestbox, such as the one their mother uses, to lay eggs that have been unhatched. I often forget to take note when the eggs are laid... and in general I can't stare at the hatching area all day to see when the eggs are laid to have an estimate their hatching time, so knowing if the eggs are fertilized or not is very handy.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 24, 2015 6:56:44 GMT -5
Hrmm, starting to consider if I should keep the two cave blobs I keep in the zoo. Unlike the other zoo denizens, the cave blob is tameable. Problem is that they're kept in a cage, and trainers won't do follow up training on caged animals to prevent them from going wild. When they go wild, the game pauses, and since I'm often doing something else while the game does its thing, this can waste time for the fort to progress.
So yeah, I'll probably butcher them for leather.
Flesh balls are another problem. They often spawn in moderately large numbers, cluttering up the cage traps. If there's too many wild creatures on the map, no new wild animals will spawn until they're taken care of. So, in order for another cave dragon to arrive on the map, or any creature where I can make use of, I got ten flesh balls in cages underground which can take a long time to haul, and an even longer time to reload the traps.
On the bright side I divided my squad of 10 to two squads of five dwarves each. The underground squad is a hammer and mace dwarf squad. When they attack enemies there's less chance of body parts being sent flying, so less hauling arms and legs to a refuse pile.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 24, 2015 9:36:03 GMT -5
Meat. Lots and lots of meat.
Cave dragon meat farms isn't as big. I mean, yeah, I can butcher the newborns, but I'll get as much meat from a small animal, such as cats. I'm not considering using the cavern-caught ones to be used, as while they're huge, they're also huge in the sense that I can parade around with large cave dragons trained for war. As they can only be trained, there's not much difference in training a cavern-caught and a fort-born one.
Rutherers are slightly better than rhinos as their young, even though they reach adulthood as the same time as a rhinoceros calf, they grow in size at a much faster rate, so I can immediately butcher them when I want to. Right now I've hit a pet cap for rutherers. There's around 70% more rutherer children than adults, so no newborns will show up until they grow to adulthood. I also may have wiped the cavern rutherer population in my area, as none are showing up anymore.
On the other hand, herds of rhinoceros still show up once or twice a year. Tons of meat. I already have a tame rhino breeding program, so those caught in the wild are sent to the butcher the moment they get any training. The recent caught ones seem to be half size... new adults, perhaps.
Now, Jabberers are the most abundant of them all. I've wiped out the cavern population from aggressive use of military squads for hunting. Doesn't matter as I already secured a tame generation for breeding. They grow into adults in one year and full size, around the size of a rhino or elephant, in two years.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 24, 2015 12:34:21 GMT -5
Hmm, yarn cloth is the cheapest value cloth, in comparison to plant and silk cloth. Base value of a masterwork alpaca cloth is 94. Adding red dye to it, which is an above ground crop, can increase value from 94 to 194 if the dye job is also masterwork, which is a good increase. On the other hand, the blue dye from an underground crop can increase the value from 94 to 334 - a little over 3 times the original price - not to mention the further increases it can make once the cloth is made into clothing.
For maximum profit, I should stop growing the red dye crop and go with blue dye all the way. I'll keep using it for variety though. Increasing profit is a bit moot, as I only trade a small amount in the caravans, giving the merchants almost three times the cost of their entire stock.
On the other hand, I'll forbid the masterwork cloth that has masterwork dye, and only used for artifact creation.
Makes me wonder though. There's two other above ground crops that provide different colored dye, and I wanna know how much they add to cloth. Can't really get them, as both requires different biomes to grow.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Oct 25, 2015 5:51:31 GMT -5
Number of cave dragons are now 28. 9 are cavern-caught. There's a cap per number of one species on the fort, which seems to be around 50. There's a dfhack command that removes that cap, but I think I shall keep it. 50 is a good number.
Also, breeding specific pairs together does seem to work. Mother is gigantic and hatched two gigantic and muscular twins. Maybe when I reach the pet cap for cave dragons I'll butcher the skinny/weak ones so the population of pet dragons will have the best size. Wondering if I should keep fat ones since I assume that means more fat/tallow.
On the other hand, lion breeding program doesn't seem to be working. Been two years since I caught two lions, and no cubs have been born since.
Thinking of investing in pigs as well. They're the only animal that can be milked and at the same time does not need a pasture area to graze in. The rest, from cows to llamas, require grazing area so if I were to mass produce milk to be turned to cheese, then pigs would be the way to go.
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