Dwarf Fortress you sick temptress, you!

Swat wrote:

Thanks for the tip on the mining. I finally did something! But now I can't chop down trees! I have:

1 Miner
1 Carpenter
1 Mason
2 Trappers
1 Fisherman
1 Farmer
2 Attack Dogs
2 Cats

How do I tell those guys to chop the trees down, and how do I build stuff? It says a snow storm has hit and they have no where to go except the 6x6 cave I just made!

You have to mark each tree that you want cut, you have to have a wood stockpile set up, you have to have a dorf with wood gathering turned on, and to build items, you have to have the appropriate workshop built.

You will need a stone stockpile, a food stockpile, ore, wood, etc...

Keep your miners mining constantly, and I havent seen an effect due to snow or any weather for that matter.

If you've selected some trees for cutting, then eventually a dwarf with woodcutting enabled will start to chopping. To check hit V, arrow over to whichever dwarf you want to check, then hit P and then L and woodcutting will be one of the first few skills on the list. Usually the carpenter starts with woodcutting on, I believe, but if not you can + down to that kill and hit Enter to turn it on. This can be done to any dwarf for any skill, and their proficiency with that skill will determine how well they handle the task.

An alternative way to select a dwarf is to hit U to get a list of all your units, pick one and hit C.

You don't need to mark every tree. If you designate a large box covering many trees, they will all get marked.

Slackeyed wrote:

You have to mark each tree that you want cut, you have to have a wood stockpile set up, you have to have a dorf with wood gathering turned on, and to build items, you have to have the appropriate workshop built.

You will need a stone stockpile, a food stockpile, ore, wood, etc...

Keep your miners mining constantly, and I havent seen an effect due to snow or any weather for that matter.

The appropriate workshop here would be the carpenter's. If you look at the thoughts of dwarf (V-P-Z-Enter) you can sometimes see they stress out over benig caught in a storm. So it's not a great idea to leave them outside, but probably not the end of the world.

It worked! I caught one of the 3 elephants in a bronze cage trap. Now to see if I can tame it.....

Let me know how that works out, I've got Batman in a cage but I don't know how to tame things.

BadMojo wrote:

You don't need to mark every tree. If you designate a large box covering many trees, they will all get marked.

Ah thanks for that.

Deleted the game again. I started dreaming in ASCII, and that was all she wrote. No more, Dwarf Fortress. You shall have hold over me no longer.

I started a new fort with a more challenging environment. Heavy woods and 'Terrifying' There are skeletal creatures out there on the periphery... and Elephants. Yikes. I imagine they'll take out a few migrants, but maybe that will help keep things a little more managable. I intend to have a squad of spear dwarves and hope I can make some sweet spears too, to attract a spearmaster.

My work install of the game has a roaming herd of unicorns outside. Works great for population control and now my dwarves are stealing the dead would-be immigrants' shoes.

If you have food and a kennel, you can assign an animal trainer to tame a caged animal. Once you do that, you can set it available for pet adoption or butcher the sonuvaFemale Doggo! Which is what I did. 16 pieces of elephant meat. And I've still got 2 more pachyderms locked in that barracks.

Can you do anything else with it once you tame it? Parts of the wiki talk about using chains to tether a war dog as a guard to a specific area. Maybe this would work with the elephant. That would be one badass guard.

My new fortress was wiped out by rampaging skeletal elephants. Spears were a poor choice for an area likely to have skeletons. My newest idea will inset the front door of the fort back 5 or 6 squares from where it starts. Ill build fortifications on either side to let marksdwarves butcher anything trying to get in. Ill probably work on bringing my outdoor piles and such inside, but thats so much wasted space it'll hurt.

I noticed there are some starting locations that have NO trees. I wonder how that's even possible. You have to survive for 3 years to benefit from growing tower caps, and your yield is going to be terribly poor. You can demolish your wagons for some wood, and come with plenty of barrels, but your bed shortage would be horrible. Maybe those are for when they enable lumber in caravans.

Duffman wrote:

I started dreaming in ASCII, and that was all she wrote.

Oh good. I'm glad I'm not the only one.

polypusher wrote:

Can you do anything else with it once you tame it? Parts of the wiki talk about using chains to tether a war dog as a guard to a specific area. Maybe this would work with the elephant. That would be one badass guard.

I don't know, I butchered the one I tamed because I needed food.

Im trying to figure out if I am attributing more brilliance to the game than it has, specifically in wildlife AI.

In the past I've been devestated by elephant rampages. Usually they'll chase one guy who got out too far. They'll run his stumpy legs all the way to the fortress where they'll slaughter anyone they find in a thunderous storm of hooves and tusks.

My new fortress takes it to the elephants. I respected their power up to a point. I'd bring everyone inside if they'd get too near my few outdoor projects, like the road and bridge, and logging. All the while my squad, The Fearless Mountains, was training. 2 axemen and 2 marksmen. I set cage traps hoping to capture a few if they tried to storm my fort, like Quentin did.

After several seasons I found an elephant on its own so I sent my intrepid 4 dwarf force out. We pinned it down with crossbow fire and it sustained an injury that made it too afraid to charge us. It tried to limp away and took enough arrows to keel over. Feeling bold I engaged another pair. The battle was tougher and my axeman sustained a career ending injury but 2 more elephants fell. They made fine meals.

Now when a herd of elephants is sitting on the road and a caravan arrives, the elephants run. When they wander close to my loggers, they edge away. A pack of 6 massive elephants runs from my loggers! I think I've trained the wildlife at my site to fear the dwarves. The elephants have scored a few kills, mostly when my idiot dwarves go to collect dead caravan guards' shoes, but for the most part they leave me alone now. How cool.

Wow, nice going. I can't imagine the elephants being afraid of anything. In an experiment, I decided to see how my dwarves would fare against the elephants locked in my barracks. They got stomped and only gave it some minor wounds. Reloaded and just caged them instead. I keep them caged in case I need a quick supply of food. Though with all the damn horses I have running around, I doubt I'll need to slaughter the elephants.

To trap the elephant did you build an animal cage or a standard cage trap? I havent been able to lure any enemies to my trap-infested 5 square inset entrance yet.

WOW! That sounds pretty unbelievable, but as Bill Harris is fond of saying, this guy is in just playing in a different league. The AI in DF is a huge leap forward. I can't think of another strategy/sim game that has such logical and complex AI.

Also, I don't know if that would apply to other wildlife. Elephants are, of course, known for their memory.

I have to say, I had an initial run at this game. Took some time away. Let it just gel. Seemed like there was too much to learn just to play.

Then I just went back at it and played without really having any idea what I was doing. I built everything I could find, I poked around. You know what? It was more fun than reading up on everything. The game, while inscrutable at first, really does tell you everything you need to know, and pretty much everything is completely logical. Yes, I'm being very slow and innefficient, but I'm also enjoying figuring out how all the stuff works. Things like "leave burial on, and make a graveyard, or you're going ot have a lot of pukey dwarves when the snakemen come"

polypusher wrote:

To trap the elephant did you build an animal cage or a standard cage trap? I havent been able to lure any enemies to my trap-infested 5 square inset entrance yet.

A cage trap, and then a cage (mine was bronze) for someone to put in it.

I thought some of you might appreciate this.

polypusher wrote:

Elephant story

I got really scared of the elephants, from what everyone was saying. On my second time around I had a whole herd that just stuck at the edge of the map where the caravans come on. But they didn't do anything but sit there. At some point, 1 lone immigrant hunter when out by himself, killed two of them with a crossbow while the rest ran away, and then got too tired bringing the body back to butcher it in time (I mean, it was just sitting in my cavern entrance, but noone would butcher it! C'mon!).

I'm not so scared of the elephants anymore. Only fight I've had in two builds was with four frogmen. Course, I haven't tried any haunted or sinister maps yet...

IMAGE(http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/4064/lavaflow1nv3.th.jpg)

It took thousands of dwarfhours, but my masterpiece is complete. Eat it, Gorillas! The lava killed some animals, a fisherdwarf, and a portion of my food supply that the dwarves had over a year to move into the fortress but didn't. If the elves bring cloth again this year then it shall be declared ride the fire-eagle danger day.

I wasn't thinking ahead enough and failed to fully realize what the completion of this project would mean for my dwarves. The magma tunnel was like my Military-Industrial complex since the very first season. Every action of every dwarf was in some way related to the creation of this WMD. At least one third of my economy was fundamentally tied to the creating the tunnel or supporting those that did the creating.

Now that the lever has been pulled my fortress has hit a kind of depression. More of a recession really. Dwarves are wandering the halls without anything to do, not earning a salary. Next season I should be able to get a slew of asheries going to process the fallout from the magma into fertilizer. Maybe that will bring things back into line. They just need to hold out until I can prop the economy up somehow, keep the rent paid.

Shortly after laying waste to the outside world a fire imp popped out of the magma river and burned my Bookkeeper's right leg off. He's still alive so far, but needless to say I've built him a tomb. Anybody know what happens to the bookkeeper's abilities if he dies? What the hell will that do to my already borked economy?

The dwarven civilization could very well be relying on the Bookkeeper's unsteady pulse, and I can't make myself look at the thoughts of those unemployed who are outside sifting about the sea of ashes. What if they're thinking, "This isn't a mountain I want to live in."

Let it be known that I am admitting now that I have not read this entire thread, but..

I would like to say that yesterday morning this game finally "clicked" with me. Suddenly I didn't see ASCII characters on my screen and everything that I was supposed to do made sense.

Want to know how much sleep I got last night after getting my work done, and being out late with my girl? None.

I was building a dwarven culture.

And it was delicious.

I hate you people for having such damn good taste in entertainment.

I showed my wife this game last night. She immediately said "lemme guess - blonde, brunette, readhead" - which is the only real metaphor for this game.

I'm really thinking of starting over. I'm kind of just all over the place - no plan at all. I've kind of built one of every shop just for the hell of it. At least farming is working for me. But I'm running out of trees fast.

Danjo, you're officially a very sick individual. Seriously - building that fortress is evidence of some sort of deep-seated mental illness. (Props on the anti-gorilla (guerilla?) warfare techniques, though. :))

Chumpy_McChump wrote:

Danjo, you're officially a very sick individual. Seriously - building that fortress is evidence of some sort of deep-seated mental illness. (Props on the anti-gorilla (guerilla?) warfare techniques, though. :))

It was the only way to be sure.

rabbit wrote:

I'm really thinking of starting over. I'm kind of just all over the place - no plan at all. I've kind of built one of every shop just for the hell of it. At least farming is working for me. But I'm running out of trees fast.

No shame in starting over. I did quite a bit before really digging in and sticking with it. It helps to have enough experience that a guide isn't necessary in the starting process.

Does magma flow nicely through channels? If I build a room to receive the lava that's half-filled with channels, think I'll be able to place magma forges on it or will I pretty much lose my fortress?

I've got my industry set up very nicely and I had the thought that bringing the magma to it, rather than picking up and moving across the entire map, might be a lot more efficient

Oh and Jolly Bill: If you set your dwarves to gather refuse from outside (in the 'o'rders menu), they'll go and drag the elephant corpse the rest of the way to the refuse pile, where it will be recognized by the butcher's shop. Alternatively you can place a tile of refuse stockpile right under the corpse and it should also recognize it.

I found that elephants are quite sadistic too. They crippled the dumbass hunter that I forgot to turn into a farmer, and left him there while they all guarded the body. One by one as my dwarves went to fetch him and bring him back, they trampled the 'rescuers' then finished off the dumb hunter. boy oh boy.

How long does it take to generate a world? My Athlon 1800XP+ has been terraforming for about 10 hours now.

Are you getting a ton of rejections? My poor laptop managed to get a world created in about 15 minutes or so.