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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 18, 2016 11:15:21 GMT -5
Good news, the area of the fort is actually a shallow metals area. The bad news is that the other metal ore is garnierite. It's an ore of nickel. It's not a military quality metal, and the value of nickel is equal to that of copper, so it's not exactly useful. If I have zinc, I can mix it with copper to make nickel silver, but all in all if I want value I'm better off forging billon from two tetrahedrite ores.
Elf caravan surprisingly brought one male giant cougar and two females in one go. Unfortunately, it's one of the few cat species that can't be trained for war. Still, in terms of food, breeding some giant cougars could be nice.
Still not enough steel. Training my armorsmith by having him forge copper bucklers, while my weaponsmith makes copper bolts
Kobold thieves and goblin snatchers show up once in a while, but since the militia is stationed at the entrance they don't get to do anything, and when they're detected the militia is usually able to give chase and kill them.
Library is set up, and a papermaking industry is underway.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 19, 2016 1:50:39 GMT -5
Garnierite does have one use. The stone itself is colored light green, the only thing in the game to have such a color. I suppose it could be nice to have constructions like paved roads to be that color, though for the current fort I prefer the dark red realgar has.
The human bard who was a resident of the fort has applied for citizenship. Residents who get citizenship can't do jobs in taverns/libraries/temples, but they can do workshop related jobs.
Also hired one dingo woman poet as a resident. In two years time she'll be a citizen and I'll put her in the military.
Still, as far as animal people go dingo people aren't that impressive. For one thing, they're smaller than dwarves, so I'll have to get my armorer to fit her with some smaller armor if she'll be in the militia by then.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 20, 2016 11:30:42 GMT -5
Stuff be happening. Been a couple of years in the current fort, and things are moving on rather well.
Accidentally let a group take residence in the fort. In the petitions screen there was a title instead of a name, with no word on why they wanted to take up residence. So, out of curiosity, I accepted the petition, and I was "blessed" with a group of 10 entertainers. Killed them off via retracting bridges, though I kept an elf and a goblin alive. Elves who belong in their civilization are tree-hugging butts, but any elf who joins a dwarf fort where there's tree chopping is all right, I suppose. Plus they don't age, so in the fullness of time they can do permanent work in the fort.
7 melee militia peoples and 4 crossbow users, all of them armed with steel. One dingo woman and several humans; the latter need larger armor and the former requires smaller armor. While you can make armor to fit various sizes, it's a shame that dwarves can't make exotic human weapons such as pikes and great axes. They're only available in human caravans, so the best quality you can get for them is iron (or silver for mauls). The only way to get them in better quality is random chance when a dwarf gets a strange mood to make an artifact weapon.
Main trade source, as usual, is clothing and food. Nothing new I'm doing on that front, though I do have some dwarves making paper for scholars to write on.
Don't have anyone with medical skill, so when some real nasty injuries happen I have doubts on what may happen.
Few goblin invasions here and there, and some kobolds would try to steal from the fort. Nothing to trouble my fort's safety, though I haven't attempted to breach cavern layer yet.
In terms of animals and food, the creatures so far aren't that super awesome. From elf caravans secured breeding pairs of giant cougars, jaguars, and waiting for them to bring in a male tiger for my two female tigers. Giant sparrows were also acquired, but giant sparrows are present in the biome as well. Giant spider monkeys were caught, and just breeding them just because. Might as well diversify the diet of my fort. Giant thrips and giant snails are present, and neither are really good for breeding due to their lifespan.
Also caught a werebeast, after a bit of senseless sacrifice and a bit of dumb luck. I reckon that I can make a means to catch a werebeast much easily next fort, though I'll have to test to see if it works by then. Also, werebeast is a weretortoise... will wait until someone is badly crippled before resorting to curing them via werebeast infection.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 21, 2016 8:44:47 GMT -5
Heh. Heh. Heh. Blood for the blood god, as they say.
So, there seemed to be a problem with the fort visitors. Visitor cap has been reached, but it's been a while and the current visitors ain't leaving. I suppose it's natural considering how rich my fort is. But due to the cap, no new visitors can arrive, and I'm stuck with a bunch of bards, dancers, poets, and one dwarf king from another civilization.
I tried closing the tavern. Nope, they just loitered around. So... I did the only possible thing to do.
I set up a door to the entrance of the tavern, after reopening it so the loiterers gathered there. I stationed my squad in the tavern, then I locked the door, and... well, I suppose it's obvious what I'm gonna make my squad do.
All the visitors were slaughtered. Very easily, considering that they're non-military peeps and all that. They wouldn't fight back, so that left them running around while the militia cut them apart. It took a real short while to finish, and the end result was 60-70 corpses of visitors who outstayed their welcome.
Sure enough, just a short while after new visitors began to show up.
I've set up some coffins for the dead. Some of them are being buried, but if there's no need then I'll be disposing of the dead via falling bridge.
Shame about the tavern. All that blood... and the fort peeps are cleaning them up.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 21, 2016 11:46:46 GMT -5
Such a shame. Caught some wild tiger men in the cage traps. Wild animal people can't join forts, and it would have been cool if I could get a tiger person to be part of the military. They're bigger than dwarves, and just about the same size as humans after looking at their armor size in the forge.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 21, 2016 20:11:59 GMT -5
So far, here's the animals that have entered the fort's vicinity so far.
Ravens: Meh. Small bird, not worth butchering, or can't be butchered. They lay an okay amount of eggs, but considering their lack of butchering returns, it's not really worth it to keep them. Once I had a crossbow using squad, it's shoot to kill.
Buzzard: Like the raven, but comes in smaller flocks. Meh again.
In general, most flying creatures I try my best to send them to area extinction. They often take a long time to leave the fort area, depriving the fort from other animals entering.
Giant sparrow: Seemingly common within savage biomes, as I run into these birds on nearly every fort I set up. One giant sparrow has decent butchering returns, and a female can lay a decent amount of eggs, so no matter how common they are these birds often provide a decent backbone to the fort's diet. Still, it's shoot to kill with regards to wild ones, since I got tame ones now.
Great horned owl: Not great at all. Easier to wipe off the map since unlike the other two birds these owls only come in one at a time. They don't lay a lot of eggs, and they don't provide a lot of meat. No point in breeding them. Another common animal encountered often. Surprisingly aggressive, as they often cause interruption on dwarves working on the surface.
Giant thrips: Flying insect. Comes in a pack, like the ravens and the sparrows. Flying creatures can take a long time to kill since they can often go up high in the sky. Like most insects, they live only around a year or two, so even with decent butchering returns, there's no point in trying to breed them.
Mantis/hornbill people: Animal people that fly. Can't be butchered, and like most flying creatures, an annoyance. Kill on sight. If caught in a cage trap, chain up, then kill.
Giant snail: Comes in one at a time. Decent butchering returns. Butchering them provides shell, which is rather hard to find. It's not an expensive material, but it's possible that a dwarf in a strange mood may want shells, so having some in stock can be useful. No genders on snails. They only breed during worldgen, so eventually they'll head into area extinction from constantly butchering and killing them.
Giant spider monkey: Decent amount of meat on them. So far all the packs of these monkeys easily walk into cage trap areas, so I'm currently breeding some of them. It's a bit of an investment since they take 3 years to mature. Sadly, can't be trained for war or wield weapons.
Giant gray langur: Another monkey. Somewhat more aggressive, in that they'll try to steal stuff... meaning that they'd try to force their way into the entrance and end up getting slaughtered by the militia guarding the entrance. So far, haven't caught any of them due to that.
Giant pangolin: Mammal that only comes one at a time. Fairly common critter as well, as they seem to show up on savage tropical biomes often. While they only come in one at a time, setting up a breeding program is easy enough, but for this fort I'm not using them for breeding. Wipe em off the area's population.
Jaguar: Can be trained for war or hunting. Shame that I haven't encountered giant ones on this fort. Still, breeding them for their war training capability. Still, all the big cats take three years to mature, so it's another long term investment to get a big population going. Big cats are often solitary, too, and unlike giant pangolins they can be fairly rare, so setting up breeding programs can be tricky. Still, tree huggers have provided one of the opposite sex to breed with the one I caught, so any new jaguars caught are butchered.
In general, trying to prevent area extinction for creatures that only appear one at a time is kinda futile. Take giant sparrows for example, if the area population for them is one, and you let that one go, the next time a giant sparrow enters the fort it'll be more than one. Release a solitary creature, and while the area population will slowly increase, they'll still come only one at a time. Too much work.
Giant leopard: Can be trained for war, and unlike the jaguar I have it's giant sized. Unfortunately, only one has appeared so far, so I'll have to wait.
Giant cougar: Like the other cats, solitary creatures. Luckily I didn't even need to catch one to secure a breeding program, as the elven caravan brought a breeding pair in one go. Unfortunately, unlike the other big cats, they can't be trained for war.
Tiger/giant desert tortoise man: Animal peoples. Shame that wild ones can't join the fort. Ah well, they at least make decent training dummies for my militia.
So far, it's been a year or so since I haven't seen most of the flying creatures, not counting the animal people. Hopefully, they're extinct, and a new animal group becomes more likely to show up in the fort. Working hard to kill off the giant pangolins and snails, though they still seem to be abundant despite my best efforts.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 21, 2016 23:21:59 GMT -5
Dwarven teenagers are getting murderized out there. So basically, when dwarf children become adults, I assign them the task of building roads on the surface while I figure out what to do with them. It's been roughly three years, and about four dwarves who had just reached adulthood keep getting mauled by various creatures. There's also the fact that the original architect who was doing the road building got killed by a weresloth after he foolishly tried to join the fight.
Basically weresloth appeared on the worst time when somehow most of my melee squad was under the fort asleep, the entire crossbow squad at a far edge of the map hunting giant snails, leaving the gate guarded by the commander of the militia. He was a mace dwarf at the time, and maces aren't exactly the best weapon against werebeasts. In the latest version apparently blunt weapons are far more effective due to joint damage, but at the version I'm using it can take a long while for a mace to destroy creatures that don't feel pain - such as werebeasts.
Still, the commander was already very skilled at that point, and he was slowly crushing the weresloth while dodging and blocking attacks, and generally being protected by armor. Then the architect who was nearby had to join in. Weresloth then bit him and refused to let go. The commander kept trying to bash the werebeast into pulp, but the werebeast just kept shaking the architect like a rag doll. By the time the weresloth was killed, the architect was a mangled mass of a corpse.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 22, 2016 13:42:41 GMT -5
Aw, yus. Got some giant jaguars caught. Wondering now if I should halt breeding of jaguars in favor of breeding the giant ones instead. I could butcher the normal ones, or train the normal sized jaguar population for war.
Anyways, here's how animal populations in area work. For each animal species, they have a population number for the area of the fort. Certain animals have high numbers, certain ones have low. Animal people are also counted as animals, but they have a separate population. Anyways, when the animal enters the fort area, the population number of that animal is reduced with the total number of them entering the map. So say dingos have a population of 50, and 10 enter the fort area, so the population number is now forty. The population number is increased by the total number of that species who manage to exit the fort. So catching or killing them lowers the number.
So, if I kill every dingo that enters the map, eventually the population number becomes zero and they no longer show up in the area. Area extinction, more or less. Now once in a while the population number will increase on it's own, but only as long as there's a population to begin with. Making sure that every dingo is killed and putting them into extinction will prevent that population from increasing ever again on that fort. This can be handy if you don't like a particular species, as they no longer show up and possibly making room for a different kind of animal to show up in the fort area.
Also, you can preserve the population by making sure that one leaves the fort. Doesn't matter if there's only one male left that gets released. Next time they show up they'll come in a pack (unless it's the kind of animal that only enters the area one at a time) and possibly over time the population number will be big again, though in general just making sure one leaves the map is more than enough. Sometimes I'll release one animal and the next animal group that enters is the same type of animal, in bigger numbers.
That said, right now releasing them has been tricky. Most of them I don't particularly want to keep populated, but do so only to have something to hunt and thus feed my fort. Giant spider monkeys and giant dingos. Animal people I release as well because they make excellent live training dummies. Most of them are seemingly particularly inclined to not try to leave, and some of them are aggressive. They either step on to another cage trap, or manage to injure or kill my citizens. There's at least two dwarves walking around with the aid of a crutch, and at least two new dead from dingo attacks.
Giant dingos have appeared, and I try to keep them populated in the wild. Smaller dingos its kill on sight.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 22, 2016 13:49:26 GMT -5
Also, the tricky thing about aggressive creatures like the giant dingo and many animal people so far is that visiting mercenaries will attack them if they see them. So if I'm not careful, the last animal of a certain species I release might get attacked, sending their species to area extinction. That said, it's also likely that they get killed by the animal as well.
Also also, animal people in this area have been surprisingly aggressive. Usually I'd get cute critters like wombat people or chinchilla people. This fort, nope. Tigers, jaguars, dingos... even the non-aggressive desert tortoise men have a certain exotic-ness about them.
P.S. Also also also, chaining up a wild animal doesn't count them as captured, so having one chained will prevent the next animal group to enter the map. That can be used as a breather if you got a lot of animals to release or process.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 22, 2016 14:03:41 GMT -5
So, some of the generally useless only used as a trade good craft items can now be worn, such as rings. So dwarves will nab a few crafts here and there to make themselves happy. Don't mind it, since I got a lot to trade anyway. Apparently large gems can be kept as well. Also one can forge metal into large gems, which I assume turning the metal into the shape of large gems.
Apparently, my trainer managed to fend off and kill a dingo man attacking him by bashing the thing on the head with a couple of large silver gems.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 22, 2016 23:33:34 GMT -5
Gonna retire the fort soon. I reckon I should start looking for areas that have a tower nearby, to actually have undead invasions.
One thing I realized, though. Kind of dumb of me to not know it sooner, but instead of hoping that the first caravan has weapons and armor to set up the first military, I could just purchase the goods myself during the embark. In general, weapons and armor take up a lot of embark points, and even copper can be pretty pricey, but metal bars are cheaper. Raw ore even more so. One stone of hematite is equal four bars of iron. Three bars for mail shirts and breastplates, two for greaves, and one each for every other armor and weapon. Not a lot of hematite would be needed to equip one dwarf, and all I'll need is some fuel for the forge and the anvil required to build the forge itself.
In terms of jobs, I have a better idea on having a dwarf have more than one job. Take soap, for example. Soap requires lye. Before I'd have one dwarf making lye and another one making soap. In general, lye doesn't have a lot of purpose outside of soap making, and soap is only needed when dwarves get injured. So now one dwarf will make a decent supply of lye then convert it to soap, and when there's enough soap, I let the dwarf do other jobs.
Of course, certain jobs require a dwarf to focus on that job alone, or several dwarves doing that one job such as farming. Farmers plant the plants, then they harvest it. With so many farm plots there might not be some time in between, so their other job is to haul things when they got nothing else to do.
In terms of construction, I've made some alterations in bedroom design. Before it was a 3x3 room for every dwarf, and all the rooms are basically next to each other, resulting in a 30x30 room that can hog a lot of space. Instead, I make 9x9 rooms. 8 rooms, middle 3x3 is a stairs leading to a floor up and down which has another 9x9 setup. On the old setup, the dwarves in the farthest room take more time to get to their room, but in the new setup travel time is much less than before. Three 9x9 grids is 24 rooms available, and takes up less space. Same goes for nobles; old set up was four 5x5 rooms next to each other, so it's basically a 5x20 space. Making the noble housing multi-floor saves up space in the residential area, which helps a lot since the residential area is also a big workplace with several workshops and stockpiles in the area.
So, off to a new world! More savagery, and more civilizations and slightly longer history, since that makes civilizations bigger, which could mean bigger goblin armies.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 23, 2016 2:09:35 GMT -5
New world, new fort! Embark area savage tropical forest and grassland. Area has all four civilizations, with the goblins at war (unless you mod it, goblins will always be at war). Aside from that four, the area has a nearby necromancer tower, so I may encounter the dead at some point, so I'll have to be careful with regards to corpse and body part disposal.
No shallow metal, no aquifer, sand - black sand at that. The color of sand has no consequence, but I prefer the darker color compared to the bright yellow of normal sand. Deep metals, and flux stone. Iron ore is more or less a shallow metal, so I don't expect finding any iron at all.
Anyway, things are moving. Flux stone is chalk, and there seems to be a ton of it so all fort constructions will be made of chalk. There are cotton plants in the area so I can get a clothmaking industry going as soon as I get the dwarfpower for it. Cotton can't be brewed into beer, unlike rope reed, the usual aboveground cloth crop that humans bring, but they can be used to make oil which can be used to make soap. Not as dwarfy as making soap from forgotten beast or elephant tallow, but having some uniformity is nice. Dwarf civilization has no access to iron ore (but once again still has steel) so I settled with getting a few tetrahedrites to armor up my soon-to-be commander.
So far, the only animal seen so far is the infamous giant sponge. They don't move, but there's a chance if a dwarf goes too near it goes berserk and charges. Due to their size they will crush a dwarf into a red smear on the ground, and on previous versions they are invulnerable to damage. Now they can be pulped with blunt force, but they can still crush a dwarf. Trying to devise a plan to capture one of them, then set them up as a very ornery defense feature to crush my enemies to death.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 24, 2016 11:42:25 GMT -5
So, basically, I embarked near a necromancer's tower. What I didn't really know is that embarking quite close to a tower will increase the chance of an early attack. Early as in the very start of the first summer, not even three months since embark.
It's a small group, about five zombies and one necro. Still, I had a small squad. One dwarf who I chose at embark to be militia due to good stats. I made it better using embark points to give make him a skilled armor user and dodger - each dwarve can have 10 levels of whatever skill increased, with each skill capping off at five levels during embark. Legendary skill is about level 15, more or less.
Anyway, since I knew it was a tower, I made some preparations. Nothing fancy, just copper armor. Was planning on a steel pick as well, but I forgot that, so all he had was a copper pick. Still, the pick is a great weapon early on. Mining skill equals skill at using a pick in combat, so having him start off as a miner will quickly raise his skills.
It's a five on one fight, but the necromancer has slipped away after leading his group into the area of the fort. Somehow, despite being outnumbered, my miner-turned-commander managed to behead undead left and right, and won the fight in the end. The only injury he got was losing some teeth, to somehow a bite attack. How one loses teeth from a bite without having the mouth getting injured is a mystery for the ages.
It doesn't end there. Later I'll post what happened a year after.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 25, 2016 4:55:23 GMT -5
I'll tell the story of the second year of the current fort later, but one of the juicier bits involves the capture of a necromancer. Some necromancers carry their books of necromancers, which if read in fort mode by dwarves turns them into necromancer. Don't know if they can revive corpses, but undead becomes non-hostile to them (I think) and they won't age.
Alas, this necromancer doesn't have one. On the other hand, if he spots an enemy of his (in this case, fort residents) then he will try to revive nearby non-mangled corpses. Undead have a strength boost, though in case of fort revivals they won't wear any armor, since all clothes are dropped upon death (the undead soldiers that necromancers bring into the map come armored, though). So humanoid corpses probably won't be resilient, but since my fort is in a savage biome I can get plenty of giant creatures to turn undead.
Why do I want to create undead abominations that are hostile to my fort, you ask? Well, they're hostile to anything living. Furthermore, unlike werebeasts and forgotten beasts they are NOT immune to traps, so containing a massive horde can be done in a controlled manner.
So I'll get a horde of undead, to fend off nasty forgotten beasts with webs and toxins. When the battle is over, I could always just lure them into the way of cage traps and set them aside for the next attack - perhaps with more new additions to the force. Unlike werebeast squads this could be less maintenance in a sense as I don't have to command infected militia to seal themselves in a room every month.
And... why stop with forgotten beasts? Let's collect all big animals, and any foolish invader who tries to attack, and with it... the fort shall conquer the HFS!!!
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 25, 2016 13:47:19 GMT -5
So, more or less during the second year of the fort, exactly a year since the first necromancer showed up, another one appeared. This time the group wasn't small at all... instead of five zombies it was a little over 30. I did not prepare at all. No fort defense (though I didn't realize at the time that the undead can be caged), and I still only had one soldier. The legendary skill miner, which I decided a couple months back should wield a sword. Granted, the sword that he's using came from the dwarven caravan and was made of steel, much better quality than a copper pick.
I was more or less believing that the fort won't get out of that mess, so I sent my sole commander to meet the horde and die a glorious death. When he reached the foot of the hill where the horde was stationed, he detected an ambush of one necromancer. No undead horde around him, and he was the first to fall, cut down by my commander.
Then he (actually she, I keep forgetting to check the genders of my dwarves) encountered the horde. Against all odds, she won. Like seriously. About half of the undead were bowmen, and the arrows were flying everywhere... except where my commander was, who dodged and blocked attacks like he was Super Cena mounting a comeback. Heads were cut, limbs were sliced open... and none of that happened to my commander. Maybe it was the light copper armor giving him extra mobility, or the steel sword easily cutting through flesh - as the undead only had iron or copper mail shirts and breastplates, with head and limb protection being nothing but cloth. Perhaps it's due to the fact that the commander I chose had excellent physical qualities during embark (all physical stats are more or less randomized during embark).
In the end, it may have been just RNG feeling generous. If one good blow hit, my commander would have been overwhelmed without a doubt. She was stunned a few times during the fight, and she was collapsing from exhaustion on the last few zombies - the remaining were thankfully bowmen still trying to fire and missing. She didn't come out unscated; one broken toe and another few teeth lost. Still, considering the circumstances, those injuries are barely anything.
She's now a master swordsdwarf, leading a squad of 9 human mercenaries. If another necromancer comes, she and her squad will hopefully provide the same excellence the commander had during a fight when all hope was seemingly lost.
As for the necromancer that led that attack force, he got caught in a cage trap. Now he's caged most of the time; naked because I looked through his items searching for a book that can grant necromancy to the fort (he didn't have any). The only time he's uncaged is when I make him revive corpses that'll serve as an emergency line of defense. How I do that is for another time, another post.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 26, 2016 13:53:13 GMT -5
So, I noticed from the animals my dwarves killed, and then got revived by the necromancer I caught, more or less retained the old wounds they had in battle. That simply won't do, so I figured, for most part, it would be ideal if the sacrifices to the necromancer would be in a woundless state. What's the best way for that, you say? Why, drowning them, of course!
Animals that don't swim and are basically not immune to drowning are easy enough to drown. So, there was a tunnel with floodgates I set up, to divert the path of a river, basically going down a path to a well I set up underground to provide a water supply for medical needs. The tunnels were sealed up, since due to water pressure if I didn't the floor would be a watery grave by now. Anyway, it's a fairly long tunnel, so it was easy enough to modify to create a rather crude drowning chamber.
It no longer leads to the well area of the fort (but with a flick of a switch it can do so if the well goes dry). There's two hatch covers, and two bridges that can be raised. The drowning chamber is basically a two-level room with no floor in between. The upper floor has the tunnel leading to the tunnel where the river will go in, and the lower floor leads to a much bigger but empty room. Both have drawbridges that can be raised, turning the bridge into a watertight hole.
Basically, a switch is pulled to open the floodgates. Water is filled into the two-floor drowning chamber, but the bridge that leads to the big empty room is raised. I wait until the water is filled up, and I flip the switch to the bridge on the upper floor, basically sealing everything except on point.
There's a hole in the ceiling with a hatch cover set to forbid. Dwarves can't get down there (if they do, they drop down two levels and probably break a bone if there's no water, or drown if there is water). Still, it's a hole and can be designated as a pit to throw creatures down. With the water filled up, I drop creatures down, and they won't be able to get out. They can't destroy the bridges, and they can't destroy the hatch cover on the level below the cover is set.
I wait until they're dead, and flip the switch to the empty big room. The water is quickly drained, allowing my dwarves to quickly collect the corpse and more or less force the necromancer to revive it.
Now I got a giantess zombie and three undead jaguar men. Just like when they were alive, they can trigger cage traps. Now if a forgotten beast that emits poison arrives, I can always send them out in a contained area where I can lure the forgotten beast, and more or less have them fight. As long as the forgotten beast is an organic creature (not made of stone, snow, or fire) the undead will be hostile to it.
Plus I reckon I can have an easy time creating an army of the dead. Caught some giant monitor lizards. One can lay up to 20 eggs or more each time. It takes about a year for them to mature, and a full-sized one is bigger than a bear. They're really only aggressive sometimes when they're attacked or when people get too near, but for most part they're usually benign. On the other hand, being undead removes the peacefulness.
So long as I have a containment method, I can have a massive army of undead to take on most foes. Truly expendable resources of war.
And why stop at defense? Why not send a horde deep down into the earth and conquer what lurks deep within?
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 27, 2016 12:46:27 GMT -5
Compared to the first two years of necromancer attacks, the following years were... uneventful. For most part, the necromancers attacked once per year, usually at the start of a season. For three years, three attacks were ambushes. In an ambush, the necromancers will try to stay hidden while they try to revive corpses on the map.
Try is the keyword here. Try to raise corpses, but because I'm very careful about being attacked, even back then before I realized that the tower has to be near the embark point to have necromancer attacks, I basically make sure that corpses (and any spare part that can be revive) is promptly destroyed.
They also try to stay hidden... and only get detected because they get caught in cage traps.
Also, in general, necromancers aren't strong at all. Aside from the corpses they revive or bring, the have no weapons. They're only as strong as the species they are. They're good at running, at least, since they don't have armor and are fleeing in terror against an angry militia.
So, I catch some necromancers, but usually release them. Don't want to send the necromancer population to extinction, since where's the fun in that.
Three years of necro ambushes, and on the year after the last ambush, a siege arrives. 13 undead soldiers, and three necromancers. Compared to the second siege of the fort, these numbers are pathetically low. It's no longer one soldier with a bit of luck and hastily set up gear: it's a full squad armed with steel. The battle didn't take long at all, as a militia composed of 6 sword users, 2 axe users, and 2 spear users quickly routed the enemy before it could get near the fort.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 28, 2016 3:15:35 GMT -5
A rhinoceros woman poet visited the fort. Sadly, she did not petition to join the fort as a resident. Would not mind waiting two years for he to petition for citizenship, not to mention the time it'll take to train her. 'cause, come on, it's a rhinoceros woman. The size alone will make her a beast in melee.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 28, 2016 9:44:49 GMT -5
Decided that it's finally time to search for caverns. Dug straight down starting from the main set of staircases in my fort.
20 levels below the surface, I found one of the deep metals of the biome. Everyone's favorite metal: tetrahedrite!
Still, no point in underestimating that ore, as it has its uses. In general, any weapons-grade metal are serviceable for ammunition, and since steel is better off for weapons and armor, copper is a fine choice for crossbow bolts due to its abundance.
That said, I got more than enough copper from melting caravan products. Since tetrahedrite holds both copper and silver, two stones can be used to forge billon, if there's no other silver ore available. It's a decent metal ore to boost up fort value, at the very least.
37 floors below surface, and one cavern has been found.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Jul 29, 2016 9:47:18 GMT -5
Oh snap! Encountered and caught giant rhinos, and they aren't kidding about the giant part. Like butcherable forgotten beasts have usually 400-500 units of meat, not counting other edible parts in big numbers. One giant rhinoceros has 900 units of meat, and also not counting other edible parts. In other words, they're massive.
No point in breeding them. Being grazers, ordinary rhinos already need a massive pasture space to survive, so keeping a giant rhino alive and in herds may be impossible. So, in other words, if I want a constant rhino supply, I gotta make sure that I release at least one per herd back into the wild.
Doesn't mean I can't use them in combat. After all, I got a captured necromancer in this fort, so I can drown giant rhinos and have a hostile corpse to throw at big challenges. Have to be real careful about containing them, as I don't want my dwarves to get gored by massive undead rhinos.
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