5punk

Because all the high profile shiny ones have fuck all gameplay and get boring quickly. The old skool good games prove that even with shit graphics you can have an engrossing game: SimCity, TTD, Populous etc. Dorfs takes after all these.

After much deliberation over what to take, the Horse Lovers of Rage are ready to embark on the next great adventure: to Castle Rockanus!

friznit wrote:Because all the high profile shiny ones have fuck all gameplay and get boring quickly. The old skool good games prove that even with shit graphics you can have an engrossing game: SimCity, TTD, Populous etc. Dorfs takes after all these.

Hard.

The fortress of Bustamaze is thriving. The dwarves there have mined deep into the earth and projected their defences out of the mountainside. The entrance bristles with catapults and a ballista awaits any attacker who makes it past the flung rocks, trapped ramp, courtyard full of veteran fighters, and gateway trapped with spikey balls. None have breached, but had they done they would have found luxurious living quarters, engraved and gem encrusted, home to 81 dwarves. The well and hospital are here, with the doctors tending to the Captain of the Guards who was injured in the last goblin raid. Another old soldier is fed and given beer, but even the Chief Surgeon can't help him - a goblin spear has left him paralysed from the waist down. Still, a score of his comrades have died defending their home so he considers himself lucky to be alive. They're now entombed deep beneath the sub-stores, while the goblins' skeletons still litter the courtyard and mountainside.
Deeper still the storerooms swell with intricately crafted stoneware waiting to be traded, and the goods acquired from the last caravan. Food stores are rammed with barrels full of prepared meals of fish, meat and cheese. From below the sounds of the workshops. Rows of furnaces produce an array of materials which culminate in bars of precious steel, and an underground menagerie holds livestock and more exotic animals. Descending further, leaving the trumpeting of the captive elephant behind, past the piles of uncut gems and raw ore, are the mines. Activity is sparse down here, but a dozen levels down a couple of miners can be found chipping away at the stone in rows, searching for caverns and the mysteries that the earth still holds. The miners are hard bitten and overworked, ever since their foreman went mad and starved himself to death, naked, in the large, circular, elaborately decorated meeting hall.

But of course it's only a matter of time before someone brings it all crashing down in a tempest of blood and terror, and probably vomit.

one minute i have enough food and rooms for more than the amount of dwarfs i had populating my fortress, then suddenly i look at the fortress info and the population had doubled without me ever realising. i really need to buid more housing and maybe get a second farmer otherwise people are gonna start getting grumpy

Well my dreams were always going to come crashing down. As the dwarves of Bustamaze prepared to breach their first cavern (by putting tunnels full of cage traps ahead of it to catch the spiders), a siege horse of goblins, led by an axelord and with a menagerie of giant monsters (including a troll), arrived on my doorstep. The fortress went to battle stations, but only managed to man the ballista before the enemy had hit the courtyard. The traps felled a number of them, but they were only ever going to slow the greenskins who poured up my ramp. By the time my defences had reacted the goblins were through my gate, clashing with the first arrivals of my militia. A fast thinking siege operator managed to fire off a single ballista bolt, killing a goblin and an unlucky greenhorn militiaman, before a giant slug thing destroyed it and he fled down the stairs into the living quarters. It was enough to give my elite squad time to arrive though. As the heavily armed and armoured Singed Crypts arrived, they found the second squad (Tin Saints) being badly beaten. Crashing into the creatures they ejected them back out of the gates, pausing to hack apart a cave crocodile who was smashing down the door to my armoury, but failing to save an injured child who had been grabbed by an injured goblin. Chasing the interlopers out of the fortress, the Singed Crypts find themselves face to face with more creatures. In the courtyard the catapults were being set about by giant slugs driven by goblin whippers, and in the centre of the carnage stands a troll clothier. I can only imagine what clothes a troll creates. The militia never get the chance to find out, falling on the creature and destroying it before retreating back into the fortress.

As the militia regroup they realise just how large the invading horse is. What appeared to be maybe 18 attackers is actually more like 58. A goblin army approaches, my traps are sprung and my siege weapons destroyed. The Tin Saints, inexperienced and lightly armoured, have been badly mauled. Beneath the battle the dwarves cowering (partying) in the meeting hall cannot see how the Singed Crypts could stand against a horse outnumbering them more than 5 to 1. The challenge is too much it seems. Suddenly the elite militia Axelord, Hammerlord and Swordmaster, legendary fighters in steel armour, fall into a martial trance. Ignoring orders they charge out of the gates and into the green horde. Goblins explode as the Hammerlord hits them, and the Swordmaster hunts down the goblin commanders. Within a minute the goblins can count half their number dead, and the remainder flee. Emerging into the sunlight, the stunned dwarves set about cleaning up the massacre. A pair of unfortunate goblins are found alive in the traps, spattered with gore from their comrades. I'll decide what to do with them later, but I reckon the cougar I've had caged up for a year would love to meet them.

So, inevitably my dreams will be dashed, but not today.

Final score:

Goblins - 11
Dwarves - 59

my expedition leader was taken by a fey mood and took over a carpenters workshop, he is now screaming for wood, cut gems and body parts. ive got no fucking clue as to what he could possibly be trying to make

Best make sure he gets them, or else you'll be looking for a new one.

shot2bits wrote:my expedition leader was taken by a fey mood and took over a carpenters workshop, he is now screaming for wood, cut gems and body parts. ive got no fucking clue as to what he could possibly be trying to make

He's turned into fucking Damien Hirst.

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:
He's turned into fucking Damien Hirst.

pffft, hes now become suicidal, but hes more of an emo, he just mopes about the hallways by the bedrooms not doing much at all, theres plenty or ponds and pits he can go drown himself in, some cliffs to hurl himself off.

unmotivated prick

And so Bustamaze falls. A unkillable Hill Titan again. Four legendary warriors smashed every bone in its body, and cut off all four of its feet. They fought for so long that bodies were rotting in the corridors, some dwarves starved because they couldn't get to the food stockpile, and many went insane from thirst. All spring the battle raged, and when summer came the remaining 100 or so dwarves left the unstoppable creature to its new home.

Just tried the Rcover option when starting a new game. It doesn't (at least not in this case) let you recover one of your old fortresses, just sticks you in a random place as far as I can see. I ended up on a pancake flat desert with no vegetation and only a cart as evidence any other dwarves were ever here. Rising to the challenge, I decided that if I could survive until the traders came I could buy food, booze and wood to last me until more traders came or I struck water. So I set about my production lines. A crafter got to work right away making trade goods, and the carts were stripped to make the first charcoal for my coke production and two beds. Soon I was smelting gold and turning them into goblets. Autumn came, and not long after a message that a trader had died of thirst. I'd forgotten to build a trade depot and they were loitering in the desert, dying. Quickly I built a depot but it was too late. Thrist and hunger was driving my dwarves mad, and it wasn't long before one snapped. The miner took his pick and slaughtered every living thing in the fortress, before presumably dying of thirst deep beneath the desert, surrounded by gold. I didn't even last a year.

Castle Rockanus is coming along nicely. It was a quiet little hole in the ground, but 20 immigrants just turned up so it's gotten a bit busy these days. I'm still struggling to keep everyone occupied and without constant poking they tend to sit about aimlessly doing not much. The manager is doing a great job of handing out work orders and I'm well on the way to kitting out the First Squad with chainmail. I also trained a lizard, just because.

Have you worked out the manager then? I didn't really get chance to play with it before the Hill Titan ate Bustamaze.

Yeah it's pretty simple. I'll add it to the tips thread

Well DF has started CTD'ing me, so this game has probably run its course until a more stable version comes by.

Nice theory. Brain says no. I've spent half the day reading up about how to drop horses down holes so I can get them to explore caverns for me...

Horsploration.

Horsploitation

Horsploitation.