jnmwhg here. Apologies for the delay. Starting from sketch-bag’s most recent save now.
Yeah, the goblins really don’t give a fuck. I’ve got the military stationed right in the entryway in as defensable a position as possible, and had walled off the rest of the fort, but they’re still just standing on the other side of the map. I guess I’ll take down the wall, but keep the military posted there just in case.
Apart from that, I’ve done some more mundane housekeeping issues. I appointed a manager (some useless chump with no valuable skills) so that in the future we can get building orders and whatnot done a lot faster. I also started assigning bedrooms, as the dorfs are happier when they actually own the room they sleep in, but we don’t have enough beds at the moment, so still roughly a third of the fort is homeless. I also started my search for magma. I’ve only got a single tile staircase going down now until I find what I’m looking for, but it should be done pretty quickly.
Also, we have a legendary gem setter! Fuck yeah! While apparently our broker has no appraise skill, so I can’t see the value of anything, this guy should easily make trading a breeze. Just a couple of gem-encrusted gold crafts should be enough to get damn near everything we need from a caravan.
Wait… that’s not a drawbridge, is it? I can’t find a lever or anything. Well, fuck it. rhbscipio said the defenses should work well enough, so let’s see how that works. I’ll mobilize the military and maybe just wall off the main body of the fort for safety’s sake.
Sketch-Bag’s turn: First Impressions (Warning: TL;DR)
The fuck is this? The fuck is that? Now, that being said, once I took a minute to actually look around, it all made sense, it’s just that the fort’s been built in a completely different manner than I’m used to.
Everything seems to be under control, with a few key exceptions here:
1. We’re currently under siege
2. We don’t seem to have any metal that can be used for weapons or armour (or at least we haven’t found any yet)
3. We haven’t found magma yet, and are still relying on fuel to smith everything
Now, I’ve got a few ideas as to solving these issues, but they’re only first impression sorts of things.
1. We can’t expect to beat the siege in an open fight. We lack both the equipment and enough hapless meatsacks valiant warriors to just waltz out there and kill them all. I’m noticing that there’s a large amount of traps in the main entrance, but I don’t think it’d be enough to get the entire siege force. An ambush would certainly be thwarted by them, but if the siege force just up and rushes us, there’d be more than enough survivors to give us a lot of trouble. There’s 16 goblins out there, all set on cracking this fortress open and killing everyone inside, and I’m thinking the direct approach might not be the greatest.
What I’m thinking of doing is just raising the drawbridge and waiting for them to leave, as that’d be the safest. From experience though, this can lead to even worse situations though. If we get a migrant wave while the goblins are still there, they’ll be massacred almost instantly. While the siege holds, we can’t retrieve the bodies, and so the restless spirits of these unfortunate migrants will start haunting our dwarves until something can be done, and more importantly, kobolds will have access to easy looting. If they keep stealing stuff off the dead migrants on the surface, eventually they’ll start sending their own raiding parties as well, which can actually be very serious problem.
So, while hiding isn’t without potential drawbacks, it does seem to be our best bet at the moment. I may try to open the drawbridge and then close it after only a few goblins are through, just to whittle away their numbers, but I’ll wait and see first. Hopefully I’ll have some way of dealing with them figured out soon enough.
2. While the lack of iron is a pain in the ass, it might be out there somewhere in the map. However, I can also see a much more simple solution for the time being (or at least, after the siege). The goblins are all equipped with iron gear, and looting their dead bodies could give us a reasonable supply. While a good deal of it is useless to us, and almost all of it is terrible quality, we can still melt it down and forge our own weapons out of it. This is only a short-term solution, it could mostly keep us equipped until we find iron somewhere in there.
3. This is the problem I’m most likely going to be able to solve the fastest. Reaching magma should be no real issue, and once that’s done, we’ll be able to work with metal without relying on a fuel source.
So, tl;dr version? I should probably be alright here, I’m not too concerned. The siege is the biggest issue though, but I’m pretty sure nothing too nasty will come of it.
Sorry for writing so much, I’ll try to keep my next post more simple!
Slight change of plans
thenorwegianwhaler isn’t really into it, so he has given the go-ahead to continue on without him. By my records, the next person in the rotation is sketch-bag, who has until a week from now (January 4th at 11:59 PM) to pick up the game from rhbscipio’s final post. Otherwise, it will continue back to me, jnmwhg.
Strike the earth!
The Reign of the Whaler
INITIAL REACTION:
My initial reaction to seeing our current situation is approximately the following, “I wish I knew more about this game.” I can see my n00b-ness and Dwarf Fortress’s notorious learning curve are coming to get me. Nonetheless, I will do what I can so as not to lose for us.
What I do know is that we need supplies. Since I have little experience with martial things and trappidy do-hickies, I will focus on keeping our population alive and finding the iron we need, as well as producing enough drink for our alcohol-dependent dwarves.
PLANS:
-Find Iron
-Brew
-Not Lose Have Fun*
-Get Better at Game
*FTFY
FIRST AND VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:
We are under siege. Suggestions for dealing with this:
- DO NOT send the military out to fight. They will be slaughtered.
- The dwarves are all currently ordered to stay inside. This can be changed under the military menu, alerts, set civilian alert level to anything but “siege”. Do not change this until the siege is over.
- The front gate defenses should be ample for dealing with this siege. Do not even raise the drawbridge. Just let them come.
- On that note, the goblins are in no hurry to path to the front gate. Maybe just give it some time
Back to the regularly scheduled report. Not all that many noteworthy things occurred during my reign. I mined around and determined we have no other layers within the fortress bounds, limiting us to the metals we have found and the possibility of copper somewhere. I assigned an archer squad that has been slowly training for a couple months. Some of them are novice skill now. I also spruced up the defenses overall, building more walls around and sealing an entrance on the river level, at least for the siege. We were attacked by a goblin ambush that thankfully was repelled by the merchant guards. Only one of our dwarves was injured, and none died. An interesting note is that our negotiator will not use his appraisal skill for us when trading, resulting in no prices displayed despite his competent skill. This is likely a bug caused by his being elected mayor at the same time. Overall the fort is flourishing, with just more metals and weapons and armor needed.
Please be careful in dealing with the siege; again, the gate defenses should easily be enough. Good luck and have *Fun.
I have decided to take up the fortress now, as I have a bit of time between studying. First impressions are that there is a ridiculously unnatural amount of gold in this fort. By contrast, there seems to be a lack of metal that can actually be used for anything useful like weapons or armor. Also kinda wondering why we have warehouses full of stone when a single tile zoned as a garbage dump can hold all of it in a central location. Overall looks really good except for the undefended trading post. If we get too many merchants killed by invaders it can be grounds for war. STRIKE EARTH!
Initial Plans:
- Make the outside area defensible from archers above
- Find some fucking actually useful metal
- Make sure the military is properly outfitted
- Clean up the ugly rock-filled caverns
