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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 28, 2016 11:11:01 GMT -5
So far in the fort, two years since embark;
Rocks and metals: None from the latter so far, but I haven't done some exploratory mining yet. Rocks available in the first stone layer is a mix of dolomite (flux stone, color white), and gabbro (normal stone, dark gray/black). The two stones are more or less equal in amount, so both get used for constructions.
Aside from that two rocks, there's sand available so glassmaking is possible. Making it even more possible is the sheer abundance of trees; had two wood cutters to cut every tree in the area, and it took more than a year and the fort has a total of 4k+ logs. Oh, and there's some mid-value gems available.
Caravans: both human and dwarf caravans has platinum as the highest value metal, though in a stroke of bad luck, both caravans don't have any iron available. What's odd is that the dwarven caravan has steel available. Like the past two forts, most metal sources will be from melting down what metal that can be traded for in the caravans. Making lots of steel can be tricky, since the caravans lack iron. Pig iron can't be made and in turn steel bars can't be made aside from melting down steel trade goods. Another odd thing, the dwarf caravan has pig iron bars available as well, despite iron not being available. Can't make any sort of anything made of iron, and can't make steel via basic smelting due to it. Amassing steel via melting will take a long time.
Unicorns: The freaking bastards won't go away. Remember that group of uniforms that I mentioned? They refused to leave. They tended to just loiter just a little bit close to the fort entrance, running away if a dwarf gets too close. Due to that, managed to catch all of them after setting up a few more cage traps.
Like any animal, I tried letting one go, but the damn unicorn returned to his loitering area and got caught again. A few months later some more unicorns came, and they acted the same way.
So, to prevent area extinction I have no choice but to do a more long-term strategy: breeding.
Basically, it goes like this: unicorns can't be tamed, and you can't let wild ones roam free since getting them ready for butchering will take a lot of effort to herd them back into cages. So what I did is this. All unicorns get stuffed in one cage linked to a lever, and that cage is in a sealed room. Outside is a big hall of cage traps. I seal the room, then I pull the lever to get the unicorns to roam a bit. After a while I open the doors and the unicorns escape... only to run back in the cage traps.
After a while, some of the unicorns give birth to foals. Takes a year for them to reach adulthood. Once I reckon that all the births possible have happened, I release them in the sealed room once more to repeat the process.
So far, I got 18 caught in the wild, and six children - also wild. When the time comes, more children will be born, and the adults will be herded away to the kill chamber: a small tunnel with spiked ball traps to kill them and leave a relatively intact corpse. Normal butchering can't be done since they can't be tamed, so the only methods available is killing them via military or the trap corridor.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 28, 2016 13:19:15 GMT -5
Just started to figure out how to use workflow and I'm enjoying the hell out of it.
Basically, it helps with repeat tasks. Like, for instance, say I have three smelters focused on the task of melting items. Due to stockpile shenanigans, despite having several items designated to be melted, the melters can't find the item due to some other dwarf using the bin which contains the items to melt or some other thing. This causes job cancellations, which is annoying to reorder the job - which will work fine at first then get a job cancellation again on the next instance.
One of the things workflow does is make it so that when stuff like that happens, the job will merely be suspended, and when the item is available the job is automatically unsuspended. No need to manually order the workshop again, just sit back and let progress move forward.
Furthermore, one can also use workflow to set the limit of other jobs set on repeat. Say that you need thread to make into cloth. Like the meltable items, threshers end up canceling their task due to shenanigans of the stockpile. Like the auto melt function, workflow can do the same level of automation, though you have to set a limit of the item to be made.
For example, you set the min-max of the workshop to 1000-1050. If there's more than that number of threads, work will be suspended, but if the number drops - and of course you have the item needed to create thread, then the job will be unsuspended automatically.
No hassle at all. It can even tell the difference of different jobs. Like, for example, I got three farmer's work shops. Two are for threshers processing plants into thread, and the other is for making cheese. The thread makers are following the workflow settings of their job, while the cheesemaker is currently following a different one: basically make cheese until there's no more milk, and when there's milk available continue doing the job once more.
This works far better than the current manager job. If I were to give an order to the manager to make 1000 units of thread, it'll divide those jobs between all three workshops, with the cheesemaker unable to do it because threshing isn't his assigned labor.
That said, the manager still has its use, namely assigning workshops to a dwarf or dwarves.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 29, 2016 1:26:48 GMT -5
Man, I am being cruel to unicorns. More or less the cleanest method to harvest unicorn meat. Sending a squad to kill the unicorn can risk severing the limbs of the unicorn since some of the militia members wield axes. Using traps like that only has some risk of mangling the bones, but even then the bones themselves can still be used. I suppose dropping them from a decent height could possibly be more easier, but there's a risk that they might survive the fall if the drop is too low, and if the drop is too high the unicorn will explode into severed parts, which again will just give the butcher more work butchering individual parts. Plus, the death hall is only a short distance from the butcher's workshop, while making a pit will take some time to go to the drop zone and collect the body. Then there's the matter of breeding them. A 2x9 sealed room, with the unicorns released from a cage via a lever. A 2x9 room for about 20 unicorns caught in the wild. They get a month or two of freedom in that area, and after that it's back to the cages. Up to 18 fort-born unicorns so far, untameable like their parents, so their life so far revolves around being stuffed in a cage. When there are about 20 fort-born who reach adulthood, the parents caught in the wild will... retire, with their offspring taking their place in the breeding room. Cruelty! Alas, can't be helped, as the unicorns who enter the map refuse to leave and inevitably wander into a cage trap. Eventually, no more unicorns from the wild will enter the fort's area due to their species going extinct in the area, so I have to rely on this grim breeding program to ensure that my fort will regularly be supplied with unicorn products.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 29, 2016 5:08:21 GMT -5
Amazing. Some unicorns that came into the map actually managed to exit the area, and the ones who left didn't even step into a cage trap. This'll ensure that unicorns from the wild will continue to enter the area, but at the same time this doesn't mean that I'm stopping the breeding program. That herd who managed to exit had some of them caught, and they are immediately put to work on increasing the unicorn meat and bone supply of the fort. And soap. The moment I saw unicorns I held back on making soap. No cow or yak tallow for my dorfs - it's pure unicorn soap all the way.
In other news, I didn't bother since I started playing, but I reckoned it's time to do a half-hearted effort to dig deep and search for cavern layers.
Dug down 100 levels, and somehow that one-tile path didn't hit cavern layer. Oh well, with a bit of work and a little more digging I turned that path downwards into an execution pit. Nearly a 100 level drop, into a floor made with platinum bars for maximum smashing.
Also, 18 floors below the fort the miner discovered tetrahedrite. Copper with a small chance for silver. Not exactly what I'm looking for. Still no iron ore, so the only source of steel available is from dwarven caravan trade goods, which is not a lot. Still, arming the militia with masterwork quality steel armor is underway. More or less trained my armorsmith by making copper and bronze bucklers. Furthermore, this gives my melters something to work with, as the bucklers are melted down.
As for the copper, I might mine something out. Billion can be made by smelting a copper bearing ore with a silver bearing ore. Tetrahedrite has both, but billion can only be crafted via tetrahedritextetrahedrite if there's no other silver bearing ore available, which is the case. Billion isn't a weapons/armor quality material, so it's only use is for value.
Billion is worth more than copper but less than silver. On the other hand, the chance to get silver ore from tetrahedrite is pretty low, and smelting two tetrahedrite ore creates 8 billion bars. Checking it on the wiki, smelting tetrahedrite normally gives four bars of copper, and 0-4 bars of silver with a 20% chance for each silver bar.
Hard to tell which would be more value. Either way, it doesn't really matter since in terms of trade goods I got more than enough items to trade away.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 29, 2016 6:00:32 GMT -5
Alas, the execution method isn't as certain as I had hoped. That unicorn stayed unconscious for a while, but the next step set off the other trap and finished him off. Maybe I should have went with silver to make sure the pulping of bodies would be more effective. In any case, phasing out the unicorns caught in the wild. By winter, their offspring will be doing the breeding. After that, about 20 will be set as breeders. 10 males, 10 females. That leaves 30 butcherable unicorns. When the unicorn population is close to 50, the butchering will begin. The second gens will continue to breed until they're about 9 years old, since a unicorn's lifespan is 10-20 years.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 29, 2016 6:25:57 GMT -5
Right, did some excavating to search for some cavern layers. Every five floors, dig a small tunnel in hopes of finding a cavern. 30 floors down, I find one. Just finished setting up a basic cage trap system in the entrance (and one unicorn sentry chained to lure in attackers.) ...and later on I realized I got a male and female cave crocodile, baybeh!
Bigger than alligators, a female can lay from 10-60 eggs. They take three years to mature, but with those stats they make an ideal feature in the meat and eggs industry. And of course, they're big lizards that'll attack things.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 29, 2016 9:02:12 GMT -5
Also, one other thing about cave crocs. They have a value multiplier of four - the same amount as animals like elephants and unicorns. Their meat isn't as numerous as elephants, but they're still fairly large. On the other hand, their eggs carry the value modifiers, so big stacks of croc eggs can be an ingredient for big and expensive meals.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 29, 2016 9:25:56 GMT -5
Some other things of note:
A small stroke of luck with regards to nobility. Despite the fact that one of my dorfs inherited a barony, plus another baron appointed by the mountainhomes, both dorfs have no real items they desire. No mandates since they became nobles, and both are already dukes. On the other hand, mayor likes high boots and battle axes. No biggie, as the both items made for mandates are melted down.
Screw keas. Once a flock of kea men attacked. Now normal keas are wreaking havoc on the populace. Somehow they're more aggressive than giant kea. Some of them are bold enough to attack dwarves, and while they get killed easily, sometimes giving minor wounds to dorfs. The worst part is that keas interfering with work can stress out a lot of dwarves.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 29, 2016 10:50:36 GMT -5
With regards to the keas. Caught some. Low egg yield, and since they're normal keas butchering them... well, you'd be lucky to get one piece of meat from the bird.
So screw them thieving annoying bastards. I sent them to the sacred death corridor usually meant for the unicorns. Fly away from that, ya bastards.
Spoiler: the keas are small birds. The death corridor regularly mangles unicorns. The keas basically exploded into separate parts much like some creatures who get dropped off 100 levels down.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 29, 2016 12:47:50 GMT -5
Had to reset two stockpiles. Both are refuse stockpiles; one holds bones, and the other holds all the other refuse like animal corpses (except unicorns).
Basically, much like civilian dwarves, merchants are real easily scared, but dwarf civilians don't end up destroying their wagons in a panic. A season ago, one such dwarven merchant destroyed his wagon. I didn't realize this, up until the point that the entire trade depot (located next to the dining room and bedrooms began to spread miasma like there was no tomorrow. The merchant's caravan held a lot of food items, and there was a ton of miasma.
Cause of destruction? Dead unicorn waiting for butchering.
Gonna have to avoid butchering them when the merchants are around. Just in case, I moved the bones stockpile a level down, and on the surface I moved the other refuse stockpile on the side of the mountain, far from prying eyes just in case, because some of the corpses are the ones killed by my crossbow squad. Civilian dwarves going up the surface sometimes get horrified, but no point in risking the merchants going on a panic.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 30, 2016 7:42:56 GMT -5
Found the second cavern layer by accident.
The first layer is where I caught the cave crocs. It's a colorful place with lots of underground trees (technically giant mushrooms). My woodcutter was cutting one of them when the floor underneath the mushroom turned into a hole, which usually happens when there's open space underneath the tree.
So the second layer was revealed, a drab muddy place. No way to go down there until I mine out a path, so I'll leave it alone for now until my woodcutter finishes cutting down the first layer.
Also found some cobaltite. Just a stone, but the only stone that has a dark blue color, which looks nice.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 30, 2016 9:12:25 GMT -5
More or less, always remember to request for bituminous coal and lignite from caravan reps. You'll get 4 of each at most each time, but they're a great source of fuel. Smelting each requires one unit of fuel, but you get 8 units in return for coal and 5 units for lignite. It all adds up; 32+20 units, minus the cost it takes to smelt them is 44 units of fuel, which is 44 tasks that can be done on workshops that require fuel. In a fort that requires a lot of them, and with skilled workers who do fast quality work, it's not much but it can keep the industries constantly moving for a while longer when native sources of fuel like wood for charcoal start to run low and with the trees not growing fast enough.
Also, having far more luck releasing unicorns out into the fort's area. Real important as it keeps a constant supply of more unicorns to show up in the future. The meat I harvested from unicorns caught in the wild is far more than the one in my breeding program, since I gotta wait for the unicorn foals to mature and get themselves pregnant and all that.
Aside from that, already got 70 tame cave crocs. Got a few giant chinchillas who bred and got tame offspring now, and a couple of giant coyotes I'm waiting for them to give birth. Considering that I'll soon have a big supply of croc meat, I might assign another dwarf to do cooking duty so the ingredients stockpile won't overflow.
In general, I'm trying to release one herd animal back into the wild. Not just unicorns. The giant coyotes, the chinchillas, etc. Not the keas, because screw them. I'm even releasing animal people. They can't be butchered, but they can be used as combat training for crossbow users. Firing on stone targets doesn't give a lot of experience, but live targets does.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 30, 2016 11:33:57 GMT -5
With regards to cheesemaking;
Cheese is a relatively high value food item. On the other hand, as far as I can tell, cheese has a maximum stack amount of 5, severely limiting the price you can get when combined with cooking. Still, it's still pretty decent, and helps add variety to the dwarven diet to prevent the citizens from getting frustrated from eating the same thing all the time.
You need milk to make cheese, obviously. On the other hand, you need animals that produce milk, and one problem is that many animals that provide milk need pastures to graze in. If you want a lot of milk, you'll need a lot of farm animals and a ton of grazing area. One solution is to get milk from sows only. Pigs don't graze, but you can get milk off them. If you can get a lot of sows; your milker can keep getting milk all year round. Like say forty sows. By the time the milker has finished the 40th sow, the 1st sow will have replenished her milk reserves to be milked again.
On the other hand, each milk using that method only produces one cheese, not a stack of five, so it's not a lot.
The better method, I feel, is to request all the milk available on caravans. They then bring a lot of milk in barrels, which can be produced into multiple 5 stack cheeses, and it comes in different varieties, not just pig.
Of course, you can cut out all that work and just request cheese directly, but why have dwarves with nothing to do?
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 30, 2016 13:23:53 GMT -5
Oh, snap! One of my dwarves snapped!
Basically, one of my dukes got real stressed out. Both of my dukes have no item preferences, so that means no mandates and less work for me. On the other hand, I did not take into account the material preferences with regards to the possibility of demands.
Mandates come in two flavors. One is them wanting a particular item to be made. It all depends on the dorf's item preferences. So if a dorf likes shields, when he or she makes a mandate to create them, you get some time to create them or else the mandate is unfulfilled. The other type of mandate is export ban. Almost the same deal with item preference. Dwarf mandates no shields belonging to the fort be traded away, simple as that... though sometimes the mandate happens just as you traded away a shield and the caravan is already out of the depot and moving out the area.
Failure of a mandate will bring forth punishment upon an unlucky dwarf, usually one with skills related to the creation of the mandated item. Like if it's shields, then it's the armorsmith. Punishment is either jail time, or if there's a lack of jails, a beating.
Demands, on the other hand, usually involve a random item and a material preference. In this case, noble wanted a raven bone throne. You can't make furniture out of bones, so you can see the issue right there.
Failing demands won't involve punishment, but it does stress out the poor, poor, poor (sarcasm) noble.
In this case, that noble was stressed enough to reach a fell mood.
At first, I thought it was a fey mood. Both are strange moods that involve the creation of artifacts. The fell mood, on the other hand, has the dwarf with it go into a butcher's shop, then kill the nearest dwarf and turn him into an artifact.
In this case, the nearest dwarf was a child. Turned into a bone ring.
Whoops.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jun 30, 2016 20:35:09 GMT -5
Well, justice has been served, I suppose. I decided to go all out when it comes to dwarven justice, for better or for worse. Set up jail cells, assigned the vice-captain of the crossbow squad as the captain of the guard, and the captain of same squad as the hammerer.
The hammerer is the go-to dwarf when the most heinous of crimes is committed. It's exactly what it says on the job title; the criminal is sentenced to a hammering. Whether he or she survives or not is no concern to the hammerer. I chose the crossbow squad for this, because when they run out of ammo in battle, they use the crossbow as a blunt weapon, which trains the hammerdwarf skill. I also got some masterwork steel and silver war hammers in storage. Do the math.
Still, no job for the hammerer yet. With regards to the noble and his crime, he was sentenced to jail for 194 days. I was the one who selected him as the criminal. There were no witnesses to his deed but me, so maybe that's one reason why he got off with only jail time. Also, interestingly, apparently dwarves who hold grudges with other dwarves can make false witness accounts.
Aside from that, fort life has been relatively peaceful. No sieges... but there was two titan attacks, two forgotten beast attacks (like titans, only underground), and multiple werebeast attacks. One particularly memorable one was a titan made of flame. Their defense is low as hell, since they're made of fire and no organic material, so one hit will easily tear off beings made of such things. The militia commander was just a solo squad then, with nothing but cheap armor from trade caravans. Still, he dodged and killed it in three blows, with the finishing blow causing a big explosion of smoke that spread across the forest. The commander then proceeded to walk away like a boss.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 1, 2016 9:54:18 GMT -5
Using a stockpile that only takes a particular kind of meat, and giving it orders to only give to one kitchen, I created it.
Five killed forgotten beasts. Only needed four, and the fifth one was made of green glass anyway so it couldn't be butchered. Can't remember the first one, but the last two beasts was a giant moth that spewed poisonous gas, a dinosaur that breathes fire, and a feathered scorpion with a poisonous sting.
Total stacked meal count of the dish is 626, for a total worth of 100k. The price is actually pretty low - forgotten beasts and titans have no value multiplier, which is kinda sad. In comparison, a stack of 91 meal made up of flour and eggs is worth 47k. Still, it's a nice image to have a meal of horrifying beasts from underneath the earth.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 2, 2016 12:41:32 GMT -5
Forgotten Beast attacks are on the rise. At a certain point they started showing up yearly, but the most recent set of attack had three forgotten beast attacks in the span of one year. Still, the squad is more than enough to handle it.
They don't get close to the fort either. While the militia is centered at the entrance to the fort, the first cavern layer is about 30 floors down. Since the beast has to navigate towards the stairway up, the militia has then more than enough time to go down and intercept. With all of them armed with masterwork quality steel, they can easily hack away at the beasts. Furthermore, they're all legendary in combat skills. Didn't even have to utilize a danger room to train them, though constant use of live targets (animal people) helped.
Unicorns aren't breeding though. Odd, the second gen hasn't produced a single foal, so I slaughtered them all. Not that it's a problem. Any herd of unicorns in the wild have one survivor released back into the wild via rigged cages in areas far from cage traps, so the population in the wild is kept existing.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 2, 2016 13:25:31 GMT -5
Also, latest forgotten beast was made of grime, which is surprisingly hard as steel weapons only chipped it's body, though in that fight two spearmasters were the only ones present because the rest of the squad was asleep.
Economy-wise, the fort is still going strong. Main source of trade goods is food, of course, but clothesmaking, both cloth and leather, make up a significant portion of sales as well. Glassmaker is making clear glass trap components for a fair price as well, while with all the animals butchered my bone carver also gets constant work.
As for the metal industry, I'm more or less at the point of not needing to melt down trade goods anymore. The militia and future members of it have steel weapons and armor ready, and with several other industries ensuring that trade caravans go home happy, there's no need for the weaponsmiths to do much work. On the other hand, making a lot of steel spikes for a future plan. So a supply of steel outside is still needed, so some melting down of inferior weapons from caravans happen. Not as much work, as there's not a lot of trees anymore and it'll take years before the trees grow bigm but in general I think I have enough fuel to have some work with regards to melting and forging steel goods.
With two cavern layers discovered, I reckon that it's time to find the third and final layer, and maybe find the legendary candy to give my fort a big value boost.
Melting down steel and other metals so far has worked out for me, but I wonder if that will be the case in the latest version. Apparently armor degrades after too much use, so there'll be a matter of making more to replace the ones that have degraded to uselessness. Ensuring that every armor and weapon wielded by the militia to be masterwork class will be tough work, at least.
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pegasuswarrior
El Dandy
Three Time FAN Idol Champion
@PulpPictionary
Posts: 8,748
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Post by pegasuswarrior on Jul 2, 2016 16:53:31 GMT -5
This. Is. Awe. Some. *clap clap, clap-clap-clap*
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 3, 2016 0:33:37 GMT -5
Oh snap!
So, I had given orders to the miners to find the third/magma layer. Make an up-down stairs all the way down, but every five floors dig out a small tunnel in hopes of hitting a wall that leads out to the cavern. First and second layer were found this way at around floors 30-35.
At floor sixty, a miner digs through a wall, and reveals the third cavern layer. Strangely, not the magma one, so I'm assuming that there will be a fourth layer to find. More importantly, upon opening the wall that discovered layer three, the miner came face to face with a tower of freaking CANDY! The most valuable anything in the game, and so high up as well.
Guess I'll carefully dig it out, or maybe I should scout the environment first and find the magma layer, to give me an idea of how deep this candy vein is, and when to be real careful in case I end up inviting the circus by accident.
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