brody
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,463
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Post by brody on Jun 20, 2016 3:01:06 GMT -5
I was really hoping for something much much different from the thread title.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 21, 2016 9:10:20 GMT -5
Oh, hubris. So, next challenger against the 8 dingos was one of my militia dwarves. Not the commander, but a highly skilled dorf with masterwork armor. Poor bugger didn't stand a chance. Much like the ettin, combat against the dingos proved fatal for my dwarf due to the numbers game and small space. With no place to run, the dingos ripped the axe out of the dorf's hands before he could even try to swing it.
Alas, due to me overestimating things, I had no other choice but to bring my militia to slay the pack. 4 against 8 made all the difference as the fight club arena was soon littered with dingo bits.
Aside from that, the fort is booming when it comes to animal breeding. Lots of cats. Lots of big cats. Lots of really big, giant cats.
First things first, the giant lion. Started off as a trio the fort caught, one male and two females, and now it has bloomed to a total of 29 giant lions. Takes three years for a cub to mature, so training giant lions takes a bit of time to get the ball rolling - generally speaking all the big cats take about three years to reach adulthood.
Giant cheetahs I also have. 15 of them, caught only two at the start. Took slightly longer to get cubs popping out, since the first two sets of cubs were all male, and both cases were single births - pregnant/non-egg layers only give birth to 1-3 cubs per time.
Giant leopards I just got a female for breeding just a few in-game months ago. The male was getting old so I was getting worried if I should have just butchered in.
Got one male giant tiger as well. Need a female for him.
Aside from that, giant dingos are breeding a lot. Almost at 50. Thanks to the tree huggers, got a breeding pair of giant coyotes, and a herd of giant hyenas got caught and trained and set to breed.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 21, 2016 11:42:34 GMT -5
Seriously, my animals screen is stacked. 250 animals, and only 25 of those are alligators. Giant aardvarks, giant pangolins, giant otters... basically if you're a giant animal, you're gonna be part of the meat industry. Bone industry, too. During the time the fort was getting on it's feet, all its crossbow ammunition was made of bone for the marksdwarves to use for practice. Now that I got skilled marksdwarves, I got them stationed and armed with iron bolts.
As for the metal thing, I'm finding that melting weapons acquired from caravans is rather efficient now. No need to lug around heavy ore, just carry some weapons and soon you got metal bars. Already had enough steel bars to spam craft steel armor making until I made twenty sets of masterwork armor.
It took a bit of micromanagement, melting down non-masterwork armor and weapons to keep supply up, but it all worked out in the end.
With this, as long as the fort embark has at least trees, and decent neighboring civilizations that trade metal goods I reckon I can survive mid-game without requiring an embark point that has metal ores.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 21, 2016 13:20:09 GMT -5
Lucked out and got a second artifact weapon made. In strange moods, dwarves will request item types and use them for their creation. Depending on the item used, the created artifact will increase in value. Not a super important thing, but it's nice to make a cool looking piece of furniture for dwarves to admire. There's a number of extra other things it does, like in the case of weapons make it more effective.
One can manipulate the items that they use by forbidding all the other items of one item category save for just one. 'course, by forbidding certain items, this can end up with a lot of jobs being canceled because the item has been forbidden and thus unavailable, which is kinda a headache to do.
So, what I did is simple. All I want is artifact weapons, so I set aside a stockpile next to both forges I have which only has steel bars. They're forbidden for use until the time comes when any dwarf in a strange mood mans a forge. Don't really care about the other item requests, so long as the metal is steel.
It won't guarantee weapons, since the strange mood in a forge could be a piece of armor, furniture, or the most useless of them all, crafts, but on the off chance that it does, the artifact weapon will be made of steel instead of being copper or tin.
For this fort, the first time a dwarf strange mooded into a fort resulted in a weapon, a steel crossbow. Not too interesting, but hey, still an artifact. A year later it was disappointingly crafts (a crown). A few years and several other strange moods with equally useless items later, the forge was manned (dwarfed?) again, and this time it's a sword. A surprisingly plain one, too. No other items except one steel bar was requested.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 22, 2016 9:10:39 GMT -5
Giant dingos have reached the species cap, hooray. Giant lions are close to 50 as well, though I may have to butcher one or two due to old age. Giant hyenas are at third, while giant cheetahs are moving slowly due to most of the ones being born are male. Giant leopard has a few cubs, but need those cubs to grow up before breeding can get rolling.
A couple attacks from werebeasties, and some giant hyena packs. Somehow I'm managing to make sure certain species don't reach area extinction. Doing it is pretty simple, actually. Set a cage near the edge of the map, link it to a lever, then place the wild animal there and pull the lever. Usually they'll wander off the map, but if they blunder into another cage trap I repeat the process.
Due to this, giraffes still appear in the area. On the other hand, it's harder to do the same thing for animals that are usually alone, like giant ticks. It's either free the animal you caught or butcher it. Unlike species like giraffes and giant dingos which show up in packs, where you can butcher all but one and release one back into the wild.
Also, tried again and failed. Breeding giant insects is a real bugger. They have a lot of meat in them, but breeding them is a risk due to their one-year lifespan.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 22, 2016 11:40:53 GMT -5
Ya know, I really like the ASCII-like graphics of the game. On many roguelikes if the game has a tileset version I'd go with the tileset, but with this game I prefer the default graphics the game comes with. All the various colors and symbols mix well together creating a sort of living map to watch things unfold. One reason why I like the current fort with the mostly limestone terrain, helping me create a uniform looking fort, and now currently smelting rose gold since it has a lovely purple color to furnish my fort.
Also, two other things. During one of the animal fights, a hyena got disemboweled. He took a few steps away from the carnage, trailing blood and turning the while limestone floor red, when I noticed it: a couple of ~ symbols next to the hyena. In other words, the guts of the hyena was out in the open and the hyena was dragging it along for a bit before passing away.
Just around the same time, a werelizard showed up. Werebeasts who enter the map are hidden until someone spots them - and in this case it's the commander of the militia. It was a one hit battle, and I paused at the right time. Going up one level, I saw the icon of the werebeast's head in the air due to the commander doing a one-hit decapitation with his artifact sword.
Also, animal population is at 300+. Again, held off on hatching 300+ alligator eggs, since adding that to the animal population will be an absolute nightmare in terms of managing things.
Then again, I could set up multiple cages to stuff the gators in. That way, multiple dorfs can haul the hatchlings into all the different cages instead of trying to do so one gator at a time.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 22, 2016 12:15:05 GMT -5
More animal fight club fun:
Current match is between four wild giant dingos and 6 hyenas. The hyena pack is the current champion and all six have been named for their kills. Six hyenas versus six alligators, then a war gorilla and two war giraffes, and two giant anacondas. This time was a far harder fight for them.
First thing I saw on the map was a bunch of 2s scattering into the arena floor; the 2s representing teeth - in other words one of the animals got their teeth knocked out. It was a hyena, and their team seemed to be on the losing end.
Keyword is seemed. Despite the fight difference, the hyenas are putting up a fight. In general, dingos and hyenas, both regular and giant versions are real agressive, and when you put the two together it becomes a blender of blood and violence. The hyena pack were certainly game, more quick than their giant opponents and continuously scratched the heads of their giant opponents. The dingos were slower, but due to their size it was harder to take them down with scratches. Can't break through the skull and tear the brain, that sort of thing.
It was basically a war of attrition. In the end, two hyenas and one giant dingo was left, both unconscious due to exhaustion. One of the hyenas came to first, and finished off the dingo to bring the win for his reduced team.
Cause of death for most of the participants was blood loss.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 23, 2016 2:43:10 GMT -5
Another werebeast attack, this time a wereskink. A few notable things happened:
It was in stealth mode when it entered the map before the militia first spotted in. Before being detected, reading the battle report, it tore apart a wild giant anaconda. Bit it in the head and shook it around like a rag doll. In return, the squad curb stomped it. It's 8 versus 1, after all. Much like the dingo pack vs. ettin fight, only in this case the dingos were armed to the teeth. The first one that engaged the wereskink was the sixth militia dorf. At first he tried to bash the werebeast with his weapon, and it did have an effect, but the dorf soon changed his mind and decided that he'll just bite the werebeast. It's surprisingly effective, in a way; it tore off muscles and tendons and did nerve damage - though for werebeasts that's only half-effective since they feel no pain. After that, the rest of the squad caught up and ganged up on the wereskink. Everyone was cutting him up (or in the case of one dorf, trying to bite pieces of the werebeast off) and soon the battle was over. Two severed body parts from the werebeast; an arm and a leg. Another nice touch of battle; the arm flew and landed about 9-10 tiles in the NW direction, and it fountained blood on the floor below as it flew past. A nice little decor on the white limestone road.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 23, 2016 3:43:36 GMT -5
Hmm, I'd give this fort three or more years before retiring it (if I'm gonna use the current world and embark elsewhere) or abandon it (if I'll go with a new world). More or less just monitoring the amount of bins I need and how big I should make stockpiles so I can make a cozier fort next time.
Still, animal fight club continues. Battle royale of different species this time. On the wild side, and not exactly sided with each other, a giant tiger, a giant tick, and a giant cheetah. On the tamed on the fort side, a giant lion and a giant hyena.
Complete and utter chaos as almost everyone tried to kill each other. Giant lion died first from the giant tiger, then everyone just tried killing each other. Giant hyena killed giant cheetah, but the giant tiger, now given the name Smohalat, killed the tick, hyena, and lion without getting a scratch.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 23, 2016 12:16:44 GMT -5
I tried retiring the fort to see what would happen. Since I unretired it immediately, nothing much happened... except for the fact that all the animals were out of the cage. I was like "nope" and retired it again.
So yeah, gonna be a new world. Don't really like the surroundings of that world. I wanna embark in an area with a mixed biome; no metals needed, but preferably with sand for glassmaking, enough trees, and no aquifer.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 23, 2016 12:57:08 GMT -5
Cooking is just ridiculously broken in terms of value. Alone, the base ingredients don't cost much, but when you put them all together in the hands of a skilled cook, all ingredients get a value multiplier. The lavish meal order at a kitchen uses up several ingredients, and each one of those ingredients can be exceptional or masterwork quality if the cook is skilled enough - and getting a dwarf to that level of skill is easily done by the first or second year.
To top it all off, the amount of prepared meal made is the combined amount of each of the ingredients used. So, for example, a single rhinoceros when butchered can produce a stack of 100 meat. Four rhinos will be 400 meat in four stacks. A cook can easily make a masterwork meal using the four meat stacks as ingredients, creating a 400 stack monstrosity that's easily worth more than steel weapons.
Pretty much one reason why I end up trading away a million or two worth in value for items worth 100k.
It'd be nice if this was somewhat fixed in later versions so trading won't be so broken, but I'll keep going with it since repeated cooking can keep my dwarves busy.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 23, 2016 13:02:51 GMT -5
Also, I wanna make a base where the architecture is almost all clear glass. I like the color of it, but damn is it hard to piece the materials together.
First is sand. For constant sand, embark in a place that has them. Then you need bags to store sand. Then you need fuel or a magma furnace to at least make green glass. For clear glass you need pearlash, and to make pearlash you need potash, and for potash you can make it from lye which you create with ash by burning wood, or you can make the potash directly from the ash.
In the end unless you have the magma forge you'll need wood to turn into fuel. So for clear glass you're basically spending two units of fuel for a piece of clear glass, not to mention the multiple steps required for it. But man I like the somewhat dark blue color of clear glass.
Green glass not so much, since it reminds me of the green tiles that happen when the dwarf pukes on the floor.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 24, 2016 13:04:20 GMT -5
Same world, new embark!
Firstly, biome is mountain and temperate marsh. Don't really like temperate, since I prefer tropical since the animal life there is often more interesting. Ah well, though on the bright side both biomes are savage, so animal people and giant animals could still show up.
Deep metal, no shallow metal, and flux stone. I think I can handle a lack of metals after testing it on the previous fort. Has sand, no clay, but thankfully no aquifer. I'd rather have a lack of metal than aquifers. So far, rocks that have been mined out are granite, which is seemingly the most abundant and comes in a rather drab dark grey color, but should at least provide some uniformity in fort design for floors. Not as common is silt stone, boring brown color, meh. Also not as common is jet, lighter shade than granite and apparently lighter in weight as well.
Least common is rutile, dark purple stone. All rutile will only be used for block making, and those blocks will be for building construction. Might use them for statues and suchlike if the supply increases.
Started at the end of autumn, so the very first migrants would not appear until summer. For most part, spent most of the time setting the fort up. Food and drink supply is decent and will last for a year, probably, so I took my time to get the space mined out first before moving on to pumping some effort into industries.
Time passes. Summer time, first migrant arrival. Much to my surprise, though I know this stuff happens, several migrants are the dorfs from my previous fort, retaining their legendary skills. One of them was even a member of the militia in the old fort - though sadly while he carried his skills he didn't carry his old equipment. Still, he's the master of the axe, the pick, and the whip, so he'll be a great asset to the new fort.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 25, 2016 0:14:10 GMT -5
Waiting for autumn, wondering if more migrants that were former members of my old fort will show up. Looking at the civ screen, the dwarven civilization is the same as the old fort. Anyways, on one hand, migrants from my old fort arriving is good since it provides skilled workers. On the other hand, I'm somewhat saddened since who knows what'll happen to my old fort without them around - though what happens there isn't really the concern of my current fort.
A teeny bit of exploratory mining reveals no metal so far. Still mostly granite going down. In terms of gems, found kunzites (okay value) and emeralds (belongs to the group of gem with the second highest value). Both are in very small clusters, but still pretty nice.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 26, 2016 3:10:51 GMT -5
Animal breeding/collecting program for this fort,
Animal people: so far, raven, wombat, and sparrow animal people have been caught. Not really interesting, as they're small animal people who'll barely try to fight back. For now, keeping them in cages.
Yaks: Some of them wander in the map from time to time. Harmless. Since they're a domesticated animal, training the wild adults once will immediately tame them. Not breeding any since they're grazers. That said I let one wild one go every time so that the population won't suffer from area extinction.
Giant dingos: They seem to be always around savage biomes. Oh well. Caught some and pups should populate the fort soon enough.
Giant white storks: Instead of giant sparrows I got these guys. Lays the same amount of eggs each time. Meat supply is low so I expect that breeding them should pad up the numbers a bit.
Ospreys, great horned owl, ravens, geese, ducks: Eh. Small birds. While meat is low I'm not low on food supply, so not really worth setting up breeding programs for these ones.
Giant kea: Screw these guys. Mean bastards who love interrupting dwarves above ground, and will kill them if they got the chance. Kleptomaniacs, too, so having the militia guard the entrance is a must. Did catch two, but only females, so I'll have to wait for a male one if I wanna breed them.
With all these birds flying about, it can take a while before new animals show up. Basically, unless the current animal group who show up on the map are captured/killed/exit the map, no new groups of animals will show up.
The problem with flyers is that sometimes they go buggy and refuse to leave, and killing them via crossbow isn't exactly viable as they're so high up and away from attack range.
To combat this, after two months or three of them refusing to leave I use dfhack to kill them. I delete the corpses as well, since I killed them via dfhack and it doesn't feel right to get their meat.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 26, 2016 23:17:18 GMT -5
So, a few attacks here and there, but deaths were in the most unexpected of places.
First was the glacier titan. A giant, scaly, flying moth. Special attribute is a poison bite, which is generally considered one of the weakest abilities for titans/forgotten beasts since bites can be dodged. And so it did. Despite the flying attribute is has it immediately flew towards my militia who was heading toward the titan. Bites were dodged, and the lashers managed to ground it with a few strikes before one of the dorfs punched it in the head, killing it. The beast was butchered for its meat.
Then came a number of werebeast attacks. In general, the werebeast often got detected at the fort entrance, and since I always have the militia training in front of it, killing the werebeasts was easy. Still no deaths.
Then the yetis came. They're classified as an animal, but can't be tamed. They're known to attack, but for most part they just try to charge at the numerous war dogs I got stationed all over the surface. Of course, there's a circle of cage traps surrounding the dog, and since yetis only come one at a time, it was easy catching them.
They can't be tamed, but their corpses can be butchered for meat, and their butchering returns has a value modifier to it. Due to a decent amount of meat they have, butchering them is tempting. On the other hand, this is a species heading towards area extinction, since their main instinct is to try to attack nearby structures or dwarves, so letting them go will just lead them back into a cage trap - or the friendly arms of the militia.
I may just keep some of them for display, or try to get the yetis to breed so I can have yeti meat on the fort all the time. Highly unlikely as apparently yetis take ten years to mature. In any case, the yetis should make a decent display for a zoo, considering that they can live up to 1000 years.
As for the deaths, they came from... dingos. Not giant ones, even. Two wood burners, and two haulers. Pack of them killed four dwarves. There have been giant dingo sightings, and the attacks that came from them were against the militia. The civilian dwarves stood no chance against the smaller ones.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 27, 2016 1:14:26 GMT -5
Yaks. Yaks are everywhere. Since they provide a decent amount of meat, every time the yaks that wander in the area gets caught, I release one. Doing so prevents the extinction of animal species in that area, and that's happened for other species. Dingos and giant dingos in particular; got the latter breeding tame pups for the fort, while the former I just killed on sight after they caused the death of four dwarves.
That said, releasing a yak is easy, but recently after the one yak escapes another herd of yak show up. Tempted to kill drive them to extinction at this point, if only to see what kind of new animal group will appear in the biome. That said, meat supply is lower compared to the previous fort, though not low enough to cause job cancellations in the kitchen. As long as that's the case, there's no danger of the fort being starved.
As for the yetis, I caged some of them up in fancy cages in meeting areas for the dwarves to ogle at, while the rest I placed in the corridor of death.
One narrow corridor, where in the end a cage rigged to a lever is regularly set up. A yeti gets stuffed into the cage, then the lever is pulled to release them. They take a step forward... into a 9-tile hall in which each tile is a weapon trap with 10 bronze spiked balls. A single yeti has yet to go more than one step.
It doesn't end there, as next to the butcher's workshop is a stockpile that'll only take yeti corpses. There's one wheelbarrow there, and they'll wheel off the heavy yeti body to said stockpile, leaving the butcher with enough time to butcher the carcass. Tame animals are butchered instantly, while corpses takes a lot longer to process so having the corpses close so that the butcher won't waste time hauling a heavy body into the workshop is essential to prevent it from rotting.
Spiked balls are ideal for the murder corridor. Serrated discs can slice the body up to multiple pieces, which will take more dorfs to haul and more butchering jobs since the butcher will then process the corpse one part at a time. With the spiked ball, cutting away body parts is less likely, though one or two unfortunate yetis end up surviving the first few blows of the trap, and by the time that single trap is complete, the yeti becomes an intact body with crushed bones. Basically, when butchered, the bones are called mangled bones, which can't be used for bone crafting, which is a shame since sometimes bones are requested during strange moods.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 27, 2016 8:54:47 GMT -5
Just because, new embark. Still the same world, but chose a different dwarven civilization this time. Don't think the citizens from the previous fort will migrate to this one, but I guess I'll find out when autumn comes. More importantly, this civilization is apparently at war with the tree huggers, so that should be interesting.
Can't remember if the biome is a temperate marsh or shrubland or savana. The other biome is another mountain. Deep metals, no aquifer. One of those two is joyous wilds, basically savage good area. Possibility of unicorns.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 27, 2016 10:59:08 GMT -5
Luck is on my side. As it turns out, there are unicorns in the area, and I caught one of them. Very lucky since I placed that cage trap just at the edge of the map just in case some creature blunders into it, and whaddya know just before autumn a herd of eight unicorns wandered into the map.
No chance of catching them all, but since letting animals go prevent site extinction, I don't mind. More unicorns to butcher tomorrow.
Unicorns show up in good biomes, and unlike many animals can't be tamed. They can be butchered, though, and they carry a 4x value modifier for their parts - which is the fourth highest... basically 5x value animals are elephants and rhinos, while 10x has the hydra only while the highest at 15x are dragons and rocs.
Considering that unicorns aren't that rare, and with some effort herds of unicorns will continue to thrive in the area so long as I let one survivor leave the map, the fort will get a lot out of their meat and other parts.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 27, 2016 11:52:45 GMT -5
Werepangolin attack! Sure, not the most threatening animal type to be a werebeast of, but dangerous considering that it's the first year and I've only just barely armed the militia. Basically barely armed with a pick and nothing else.
However, a little bit of foresight proved essential. These days, instead of just going embark now I select the items that can be brought on embark. Aside from getting a few extra items at the start in exchange for choosing not to take certain items, one can also spend embark points on selecting skill levels for the starting 7 dwarves.
Among them, I gave one dwarf with ideal physical attributes to get skill levels at fighting and dodging. I debated whether to give her mining instead of fighting, but since prowess with the pick in combat is easily attained by striking the earth, I went with fighting skills instead. Then, the latter was chosen because dodging can take a while to train for a single dwarf doing solo training.
So with that in mind, and thanks to the autumn caravan, I got some armor pieces made of copper and bronze to equip the militia commander. I had selected the gear a few days before the werepangolin attack, but I forgot the essential command in the equip screen for the dwarf to actually equip the damn armor instead of staying in civilian clothing.
She was still armed with a pick, though, and the werebeast charged towards her and thanks to the dodging skills she managed to evade the attack while lopping off parts. Somehow, and amazingly two of the migrants who arrived just a couple of days before the werepangolin did helped out as well.
With regards to the migrants... while it's the same world, I chose a different dwarf civ, so no migrants from the previous two forts I did will show up. On the other hand, the second migrant arrival which happened in autumn brought some rare choices; rangers, basically dwarves skilled in animal-related labors, and luckily some of them even start off with good crossbow skills. The one who helped did, and had some dodging as well since he somehow decided it was a good idea to join in on the fight without being armed at all.
And when the werebeast fell, I checked the reports to see if there were bite wounds. None whatsoever from the commander and the ranger. Lucky.
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