New Version!

I’m very, very excited about this new version. I’m aware I border on the obsessive in my love of this game – although not quite as much as this guy (whose babies I now desire (and as I’m male this would presumably be through a civil partnership or kidnap)) – but I’ve been looking forward to this update impatiently for what seems like years. And what an update!

First impression is that World Gen takes slightly longer, but as it effectively plotted out mountain formation,  the paths of rivers coursing to the sea, many civilisations and their alliances and wars and downfalls, and fully 127323 individuals, all with families and hopes and fears and aspirations, complaining about a 4 minute wait seems a tad churlish!

There will be stories to follow, I am sure.

Dwarven Dad

Mosus Cattenunib was a craftsdwarf, plying his trade from fortress to fortress as a migrant. Upon arriving at my fort he attended a party, fell madly in love with one of my Marksdwarfs, and married her. How the fortress rejoiced! Scarecly had the confetti fallen when a baby was born, followed by another the next spring, and then yet another. Soon the family of 5 was living in their own quarters- a specially dug out bedroom with a few beds for the kids, and chests and cabinets for all their belongings. Truly heartwarming!

…until the goblins invaded. Mrs Cattenunib was guarding the entrance way with the other squads, waiting for the scum to burst through the front door. I was slightly worried because she had her baby with her, but I guessed that she could take care of herself.

She could.

Unfotunatly Mosus wasn’t so lucky. Unbenownst to me, his bedroom had a few extra value-added features. It had skylights.

See, when I’d been constructing the fortress defences I’d wanted to remove a large overhang sticking out untidily over the entrance to my fortress. Being the lazy type, I evacuated the area beneath and set a miner to channel along the connecting edge, bringing the whole lot crashing to the ground. And, it turns out, crashing straight through the ground, into the family accommodation below.

I only figured this out as goblin bolts pored into the still-twitching corpse of Mosus.

Mrs Cattenunib got pissed off at this point. The goblins beat a hasty retreat as she poured bolt after bolt into the main invasion force, only to be caught in the “corridor of traps”- a trade tunnel under the mountain that I’d rigged with closing bridges at either end- they were trapped. She got her revenge to the tune of 5 dead Goblins. The carnage cheered her up so much she isn’t even sad about her spouse’s death.

Their children were worst hit. The younger daughter took it in her stride, but the eldest Son is pretty depressed. The baby is too young for complex thoughts and feelings, and just has the status- Mistem has been unhappy lately- she lost a father to tragedy.

Hammertime

Whats a fair response for a dwarf not following a noble’s construction order? A few days in prison? A couple of lashes?

Bear in mind please that the noble was asking for clear glass crafts. I don’t have any sand on the map. No sand= no glass. It’s an impossible order. You’d think that the sherrif would take that into account, right?

My hammerer decided a fair price would be to track down the only dwarf (an immigrant) with glass making skill, and mangle both of his legs. Not just break- mangle. As in, he’ll never walk again. Or wank- both of his wrists were also broken.

My hammerer now has the thoughts: He lives to enforce dwarfven justice. He has been estatic recently. He has beaten someone with a hammer recently.

Edit: “Punchbag” the hammered was lying on the floor of the jail, unconcious. Until of course another dwarf came in (after tantruming due to the death of his freind and punching a marksdwarf in his squad). This dwarf then had a tantrum about being confined, and started beating Punchbag in the face, while he was still out cold. So the guards came and beat both of them for fighting.

Mayor

I appointed my fortress leader pretty much because he was the top of the roster list- the social skills he gained when having meetings with diploments made him able to be elected when the fort became big enough for democracy.

Maybe I should have taken more care in selecting him. His  profile now says “He is socially crippled by thoughts that everyone is watching and judging him”. I think he’s going to crack under the pressure- if he wasn’t a legendary miner/bookeeper I’d murder him. I’ll put some nice engravings and windows in his suite of rooms and hope he cheers up.

3D-ness

The new versions are in 3-D, which takes some gettting used to. It’s still a 2D display, but you can move up or down a z-axis to get huge 3D caverns. This leads to some unusual (but ace) problems.

For instance, in the old version, you dug a channel, no problems. In this one though, it digs a tunnel in the z-axis below for the water to flow in, and only the surface is on the top. Play it, I know that doesn’t make sense. But anyway- I was being invaded by goblins, and a Bronze (megahard) colossus. After an almighty battle where my marksdwarfs fired every arrow in the fortress at the colossus (blinding him in both eyes, but doing little else) one of my wardogs knocked him backwards into my moat. Hurrah! I thought, and went off to slaughter the goblins.

A little while later the 2 goblin prisoners were in the execution room, and my head noble had just pulled the death lever. Which opens the floodgate, connected to the water channel, connected to the moat, which is connected to the river. Noble pulls lever. I notice a flashing C on the other side of the floodgate- “oh,” thinks I, “it must be the corpse of that OMG IT’S NOT DEAD QUICK PULL THE LEVER AGAIN ARGH!”. It had lay in wait on the otehr side of the (thankfully indestructable) floodgate. When that was lowered, it destroyed the doors to the jail, starting a creeping flood spreading through the fort. The last few dwarfs of the fortress died knee deep in swirling, bloody water, fighting with an angry metal god-machine. As the filthy waters seeped down the garbage pits into the chasm far below, the Bronze Colossus sought out all of the cats in the fort, and ripped their legs off.

War.

My fortress was 200 strong, and very healthy. I had an army of about 20 marksdwarfs, most of them elite, with a big fortress guard of swordsdwarfs. Massive amounts of industry could be performed in very short times- my dwarfs were all pretty ace.

Then, as the title may suggest, a time of War decended.

The first action was of my own making. I’d spent some time building up a network of passages, drawbridges, and fortified shooting rooms next to the lava flow, ready for when I disturbed the demons in the pits beyond it (about 10 or so superhardbastards, ussually). When my marksdwarfs were in place, I evacuated the civilians to beyond the chasm and lifted the drawbridges, sealing off the area. Then a solitary (suicidal) miner was sent to dig for the pits. In the ensuing battle I lost the miner, 3 marksdwarfs who were hit with flying fireballs, one swordsdwarf who decided to stand on the bridge over the magma, and was thus pushed aside to his death. Not a bad loss rate for such a hard enemy.

About 5 minutes later- with the section reopened and dwarfs scattering to clear up the blood and limbs- a bronze colossus arrived outside. I sent a squad out to intercept it, not knowing what to expect- I’ve never fought one before. When the limbs and heads of half that squad were scatted liberally about, the remaining, deeply crippled dwarf made a run for home. Followed by a bronze giant of death. Some quick thinking had the rest of my army outside the gates, and the civvies cleared from the area. Final score- Dwarfs 1 (after about 5 minutes, he really was tough) Bronze Colossus 12. I had 6 marksdwarfs left, three of which are now crippled to shit. The other 3 are elite, and severly battle hardened. In one of their profiles- “He is starting to get used to tragedy”, after 3 of his mates in his squad had died, which is probably the saddest thing in the word ever. I drafted about a dozen farmers and peasants into new recuits and set them to training, ready for the long climb back into being a proper military power again.

Two minutes later- the dead hadn’t even been cleared yet- a goblin invasion force arrived. Three warbands of goblins, and three lots of troll. There was no choice- I retreated to within the mountain. Catapults fired on the advancing enemy- all the hours spent training a legendary siege operator paid off, as the near machine-gun like fire of rocks took out one of the the bands of goblins. But it was inevitable- the enemy breached my gate. The large array of traps took out a lot of them- 10 were trapped in cages, while most were cut to shreds by the weapon traps. The few that got through to the inner moat were (eventually) cut down by the vast numbers of really quite shit recruit marksdwarfs in the entrance barracks. The rest, anout 20 or so, ran- I opened my gates and let the Guard and their dogs chase them down. Most by this point enetered martial trances, and the slaughter was complete. My losses were 2 of the injured soldiers that could not run in time, 2 fishers, 2 woodcutters a few minor Nobles and a hunter caught outside, and a couple of guards in the chase. They also wiped out an elven trade delegation, which might come back to haunt me later.

The Great Clean-Up has begun. All hands are involving in sorting the piles of corpses into coffins and refuse piles. The masons are working overtime making enough caskets for the dead. The famers are desperatly trying to get enough food from their neglected fields to get us through the winter. The Guard are running around like madmen, dealing with the tantruming dwarfs, some of whom have lost their entire families and friends. Any engraving or craftwork that is done (now this is cool) shows scenes of death- of goblins killing dwarfs, of dwarfs killing dwarfs, of trolls making rude gestures at injured and weeping dwarfs. I checked the status of my oldest, toughest elite marksdwarf (“Colosso”, after the monster he slew) and it simply states- “He doesn’t care about anything anymore”. Will this fortress recover? Maybe it has seen too much disaster. Only time will tell.

Recent Stories

I’ve started playing again. Dwarfs of note:

“Hero”, who got his title in the last goblin invasion- only a small one thank god, all my dwarfs were outside collecting wood, they only just ran inside in time. Hero was trapped outside by a cruel twist of fate- he ran out just as the drawbridge was swinging up, knocking him unconscious. He lay in the entrance halls while the multilayered traps and wardogs took care of the advance party of trolls, and then he woke up just as the main host of enemies arrived at the gate. Grabbing up his crossbow he fired wildly into the scrum- with his first shot piercing the heart of the goblin leader. As the rest of the ungodly fiends ran for their lives, he chased after firing with every step, slaying a dozen goblins before the river. He returned home to a heroes welcome, and a title to match.

“The Butcher”, which is a lesson in what results if you let an initial population of 4 randy horses breed unchecked for a few years. The resulting 100-odd horses were starting to block up the corridors- at least 30 had adopted a lowly peasant and followed him everywhere. His description, however, said he didn’t like horses. So I made him into a butcher. Two seasons later and pretty much my entire fortress is flooded with blood, and I have three tanners working overtime to keep up with this one pissed off, horse hating slaughter machine. I have a couple of years worth of meat and leather armour for all my marksdwarfs though, so it’s well worth it. I also have about 40 cats… yummy.

The final dwarf in our story is “The Recruit”, previously a lone fisherman wandering the banks of the underground river fishing for cave lobster. His journeys had taken him further afield than usual, down an old abandoned (though stupidly unlocked) exploratory passage which led to a small far away beach. Where he was ambushed by lizardmen. I switched to the military screen and recruited him- as he was in my initial batch of dwarfs I’d made sure he’d got some small amount of military training, and an axe to carry. He smote the first lizardman with such a hefty blow that his corpse splattered blood over the wall on the far side of the river. He took down another, and another. The ground was littered with limbs and chucks, both from the invaders and the one lone soldier. Finally he fled in terror- down the long passage towards the squads of marksdwarfs I’d sent running as soon as the alarm was sounded. He made noble progress, but with only one leg left working it was futile. The last invading lizardman caught up and tore his throat out, a heartbeat before being slaughtered by the squads. The Recruit lay there for a while, no doubt in terrible agony, with every part of his body damaged, before bleeding to death, just as the soldiers reached him.

“Fox-Face McBrainDamage”

A dwarf went out one day to chop some wood, but he was interupted by a fox. He thinks to himself “It’s my chance to shine!” and leaps onto the fox, battle axe swinging.

He seems to have attacked the fox face first. Not only is he half blind now, the fox also bit off his nose (his nose! ow!) and gave him pretty severe brain damage. So now the poor fool falls unconcious every 5 seconds or so. It was amusing at first, but now the job cancelled messages are bugging me. Plus a load of immigrants just arrived and bedrooms are at a premium.

Fox-face McBrainDamage, I’d like to introduce you to the crushing drawbridge of death. *squish*…

Edit: in the end I decided to put him on the bridge over the chasm, which was under repeated attacks from batmen, in the hope that he could die a hero’s death. He did manage to take down a batman fairly easily, but it took out his other eye and broke his right arm, left leg, and mangled his spleen in the process. It also must have nudged him in the head a bit more, because now he falls unconcious every few seconds- meaning he cant eat, drink or sleep. He’s currently dieing a slow, agonising death in the middle of the food stockpile, reaching out to a barrel of beer every few seconds before slumping down unconcious again.

Ezum the Terrible

A kobloid thief was spotted by Ezum, whle she was out chopping wood. I expected her to run away, leaving the thieving scum to get caught in my cage traps. But no! Without skipping a beat, Ezum beheads the kobloid, and sends his head flying off about 10 spaces. Then she picks up the body and takes it to the refuse heap, before calmly going inside and eating her dinner.

Cave-in Claims 2 Dwarfs

I just lost two dwarf in a cave-in. It was my fault, I miscounted when assigning the area to be mined. I lost a mason (which pissed me off, I’ve only got four) and a metalsmith. The groovy bit is, they got two different messages- one was crushed under the collapsing ceiling, the other killed by falling rocks. Sure enough, there was only one corpse (the mason) in the room when the dust cleared- the other had presumably been caught under one of the now collapsed sections.

Nicely detailed, you say. But wait! A while later chokeing clouds of purple miasma began to fill the room, pissing off the dwarfs hanging out in the newly dedicated statue garden. As they all seemed to be eminating from one of the collapsed piles of rock, I got a miner to dig it up- revealing the now fairly rotten corpse of the metalsmith. The dwarfs carted him away to his coffin, and I placed a statue there in his memory; the poor, rotten bastard.