Dwarf Fortress

[Safe-Keeper]

Anyone else here play Dwarf Fortress? For those who haven't hear of it, it's an incredibly deep game focusing on content and realism rather than graphics. People say the original Silent Hunter is way better than III-5, because even though it lacked good graphics, it was filled to the brim with content. Dwarf Fortress, the work of a single man who's worked on it for seven years thus far, takes this philosophy to the extreme. It uses only square BMP tiles for graphics, and the default tileset is comprised of colour-coded ASCII characters (ya rly). What it delivers, in the place of visuals, is content and, above all, depth.

The game is comprised of three parts -- a realistic world generator that handles such things as politics, erosion and road-building, a Rogue-like RPG mode where you walk around in the world, and the titular Dwarf Fortress Mode, where you pick a site in the world and travel there with a team of seven dwarves and a wagon and build a fortress. You'll mine, "terraform", trade, hunt and fish, fend off goblin sieges, and build "mega-projects" -- huge prestige projects that take skill and time to accomplish, but which look great when finished.

Examples of how deep this game is:


You need to build living quarters away from workshops, or your dwarves won't be able to sleep well, which will result in unhappiness.
You can choose freely which jobs individual dwarves can do, and if you feel like micro-managing, you can choose to give dwarves jobs by preferences -- for example, a dwarf that enjoys helping others can become a nurse, a dwarf that loves a good thrill and has a fascination for weapons can be drafted into your army.
You need to be careful digging and building, as a rudimentary cave-in and collapse system resides in the game and will gleefully punish you for the mistakes you make.
In Age of Empires II, resources are magically stored in drop-off buildings and new structures are built by hitting the foundation with a hammer for two minutes. In DF, you need to actually define stockpiles, where goods are stored, and workers will then carry goods to where they're needed to build something.
Refuse and bodies will generate miasma, which in turn will generate unhappy thoughts, if you don't designate a garbage dump outside of your fortress.
There are no hit points -- various kinds of damage is dealt to body parts, with effects based on the wound and body part.

People interested in the game should at the very least read the famous after-action report, Boatmurdered (http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/). It's of an early version, and the screenshots are of the base ASCII graphics set, but it's an hilarious read and will give you a good idea of what the game is like. As will this play-along tutorial (http://afteractionreporter.com/2009/02/09/the-complete-and-utter-newby-tutorial-for-dwarf-fortress-part-1-wtf/). If you want more... try downloading the game itself at the Bay 12 site (http://www.bay12games.com/forum/index.php#3).

[Ubergeek87]

YES! I love Dwarf Fortress. Isn't there supposed to be a rather large update coming soon?

[Rilder]

Dwarf Fortress is indeed the best game in the world. AND ITS DONATIONWARE.

I mean it when I say its the best, its better then EVERY SINGLE MAINSTREAM GAME IN THE WORLD.

Don't let its graphics fool you, its better.

Oh and not to mention, Tarn Adams, the developer has such an awesome free game that he quit his job to live off the donations.

[Ubergeek87]

Don't let its graphics fool you

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/8383/matrixfortress.jpg
http://yfrog.com/2omatrixfortressj

[kiwi_2005]

I can't find the download link on that site i see one but its 2008 is that the latest?

I see on his page the donations hes getting :o Man im in the wrong job.

February Donations: $1452.57
January Donations: $2291.50
December Donations: $4762.98
November Donations: $5122.29
October Donations: $1759.27

[Safe-Keeper]

As for the download... here (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/) you go, should have linked to the site itself right away.
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/8383/matrixfortress.jpg
Soooo true:rotfl2:!

I can't find the download link on that site i see one but its 2008 is that the latest?Yeah, he's been working on a huge rework since then, scheduled to be released Any Time Now (he's basically mopping up bug fixes and whatnot, it'll probably be out in weeks or a month or two). There's 40d16, then there's 17-19 which are basically tiny graphics fixes or something.

I see on his page the donations hes getting :o Man im in the wrong job.

February Donations: $1452.57
January Donations: $2291.50
December Donations: $4762.98
November Donations: $5122.29
October Donations: $1759.27 ya i no rite:o?

Oh and not to mention, Tarn Adams, the developer has such an awesome free game that he quit his job to live off the donations.I was wondering about that -- whether he had a day job on the side. I actually really like that he's done that, it'll make him far more likely to keep working on it.

If there's one feature I really like (other than the incredibly kind of black humour you develop from the game's brutality and the crazy things it does because of its alpha state), it's the fact that the game, and its residents, keep track of history. There's a mode called "Legends" which lists every notable event and person in the game, but more intriguing is the engraving system. You can smooth natural walls to make them more attractive and increase room value, generating happy thoughts, but you can also engrave them -- and dwarves engrave walls the same way humans did 3000 years ago: they tell stories. Sure, there's random images of mountains and mushrooms and lizards and whatnot (though even these are based on the engraver's experiences, and likes/dislikes), but predominately, engravings are used to record events before and during the fortress' existence. Click on one wall portion and it'll say something like "This is an image of a dwarf and dwarves. The image represents the dwarf [name here]'s rise to power in the civilization [name] in the year 102". Your dwarves have a big fight with goblin invaders? Expect engravings of dwarves and goblins fighting. This way, you can actually, if you want to, download another player's fortress save and get a rough sense of what it's been through by looking at its walls.

Just a pity there isn't a visualizer that actually lets you walk around in the fortress, with decent graphics. Nothing wrong with Stonesense and VisualFortress (or for that matter being able to visit your own fortress as an adventurer in the "roguelike mode"), but just hovering through the place with a magic camera isn't as immersing as actually "being there".

[Ubergeek87]

You can get the latest version HERE (http://bay12games.com/dwarves/) or HERE (http://df.magmawiki.com/)

edit:bah, too slow

[kiwi_2005]

thanks guys will try this out.

[Safe-Keeper]

Oh, and do make use of the tutorial. Although it comes packaged with an earlier version of DF with a slightly different approach to certain things (mostly UI and hot key-wise, as far as I can tell), it's an indispensable resource for newcomers as the alpha stage UI of Dwarf Fortress is about as transparent as a clear glass window (/Dwarf Fortress inside joke).

[Lionclaw]

Thanks, I didn't know of this game. Looks very interesting! :DL

I'm currently reading the Boatmurdered AAR.

[NeonSamurai]

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

Great for tutorials and info, though it does contain spoilers you could say (it does warn though in advance)

[Safe-Keeper]

I'm currently reading the Boatmurdered AAR.Just wait 'til you get to part 12 or so, when StarkRavingMad and whoever it is start writing. Laughs aplenty:D.

[Oberon]

Sankis the Beardless's descent into madness was just epic.

http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/9100/030507boatmurdered.jpg

[Lionclaw]

There were some hilarious parts in the AAR. :haha:

Update 16 by StarkRavingMad is quite funny, especially about the engravings in the new dining room.


"Engraved on the wall is a superiourly designed image of a elephant by 'Torret Doge' Regunib. The elephant is in a fetal position."


"Engraved on the wall is a finely-designed image of a dwarf by 'Torret Doge' Regunib. The dwarf is dead."

:har:

[Safe-Keeper]

Yeah, Boatmurdered, product of the Something Awful forums, is famous for its humour. I think StarkRavingMad's introduction sums it up nicely:

Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words:

What

The

****.

Another memorable paragraph from StarkRavingMad's turn:

Kind of ironic, considering my nickname and all. At least I have that craftshop back.http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Boatmurdered/Thread%201/Update%2015/ScreenHunter_37.jpg
A frogman jumped out of a well and surprised Sibruk, one of the military dwarves. He killed the froggie pretty easily, but then he somehow got stuck in the well. So now little Timmy there is dying of thirst because he can't drink from the well that his fat ass is stuck in. His friends don't seem to have any trouble drinking around him. I guess they brought straws or something.

[Rilder]

I can feel the magma flooding through the fort tonight, It burns.
And I've been waiting to pull this lever for all my life, It burns.
Can you feel the magma flooding through the fort tonight, It burns, It burns.

Well if you told me the fort was flooding, I would not save the nobles.
I've seen your ears before, you elf, but I don't know if I want your cloth
Well I was there and I saw what you demand, I saw it with my beard and axe.
So you can wipe off that vomit, I know your an elf.
It's all been a river of carp

And I can feel the magma flooding through the fort tonight, It burns.
And I've been waiting to pull this lever for all my life, It burns.
And I can feel the magma flooding through the fort tonight, It burns.
And I've been waiting to pull this lever for all my life, It burns.

Well I remember, I remember, don't worry, how could I ever forget
It's the first time, the last time you gave us a mandate,
But I know the reason why you keep your fey mood up, oh no you don't fool me
Well the Adamantine don't show, but the fort still grows
It's no Hidden-fun-stuff to you and me

I can feel the magma flooding through the fort tonight, It burns.
Well I've been waiting to pull this lever for all my life, It burns.
I can feel the magma flooding through the fort tonight, It burns.
Well I've been waiting to pull this lever for all my life, It burns.
I can feel the magma flooding through the fort tonight, It burns.
Well I've been waiting to pull this lever for all my life, It burns.
I can feel the magma flooding through the fort tonight, It burns.
Well I've been waiting to pull this lever for all my life, It burns.

I can feel the magma in the fort tonight, It burns, It burns, It burns, It burns,
And I've been waiting to pull this lever for all my life, It burns, It burns, It burns,
And I can feel the magma flooding through the fort tonight, It burns.
And I've been waiting to pull this lever for all my life, It burns, It burns


The current situation is that I expect a (buggy!) Windows release in about a week,

It comes. :arrgh!:

[Safe-Keeper]

The current situation is that I expect a (buggy!) Windows release in about a weekIt comes. :arrgh!::yeah:

Edit: I have just decided that the feature I want the most from Dwarf Fortress 2010 is burrows, the ability to designate specific areas for specific dwarves and tell them to stay there. I just came back from a Dig Deeper* fortress that I had gotten to 45 dwarves through several oversized migrant waves. I have four soldiers, who have only leather armour as I don't expect any large-scale attacks and haven't been able to get my hands on better armour anyhow. I'm new to Dig Deeper and don't expect large-scale attacks until I have 60-80 dwarves or so.

Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere come orcs. I'm relieved to find it's only a single squad, comprised of only ten of the monsters, but having heard horrific tales of orcs from other DD players, I'm still anxious. I get my four soldiers prepared for battle and draft a couple more, namely my miners (who have gained plenty strength from mining with picks) and my axe-wielding woodcutters, and order everyone but civilians inside. I mass my military just inside the front doors, so that the orcs will have to come at my combined force with a limited number of units at a time. I also order the catapult at the end of the hallway to be manned.

My makeshift army is butchered. I don't know if a single orc is slain. Ahead of them lie a three tiles wide hallway and a deadly catapult, probably more than capable of ripping them all to shreds. Occupying the hallway... is a small army of civilians and animals, milling about and refusing to stay in the safety of the depths:damn:. First the catapult can't fire because it'd hit friendlies*, then when the civilians are all dead, no one dares go near it because of fast approaching orcs. Result:http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r292/safe-keeper/Burrows.jpg
Inline note: yes, the oversized two-legged cows with the huge boobs and glowing laser eyes -- or perhaps it's red sunglasses -- are the orcs. I'm using an... otherwise more than decent custom tileset:-?.

Fortress population went first from 45 or so to 15, as the orcs cleared the entrance floor. Then about half a dozen, as I tried to arm and rally the few survivors downstairs and get a "last-ditch" catapult at the end of another "catapult hallway" manned. Then, after a very brief last battle (no one got around to man the catapult until it was too late -- a single orc came running down the hallway ahead of the others and caused the civvie manning the weapon to flee in fear:damn:), one; a bedridden hunter with a wounded leg, who lay in his chambers with a crossbow, awaiting the inevitable as a horse ran around in the hallways outside, maiming two orcs and breaking the leg of another before finally succumbing when about a dozen orcs joined the three that had gone down first.

As a side note (and speck of light in the tragedy:nope:), I love how the persistent world you generate keeps going after you're killed, so that you can do things like explore the ruins of your fortress in adventure mode or even do a "Reclaim", which to you outsiders means showing up at the gates of the fortress with an army and trying to kick the invaders out and start anew.

*For those who don't know, Dig Deeper is a kind of "GWX for DF", a mod that adds lots of stuff and even some features I didn't know were already in DF, such as enemies emptying cages and pulling levers. It also adds plenty to difficulty -- no regular enemy in DF can kill its own weight in dwarves.

**I don't know how this inconsistency came about, but catapults currently can't hurt friendlies, and as such the rock would just have stopped and been shattered when it hit the first dwarf or animal. Had it been a ballista, I think I would've fired it out of desperation. Stupid civilians were gonna die anyway.

Also of interest is the Dig Deeper mod that sometimes makes whole squads unable to arm themselves. They'll walk over to their desired weapon, try to pick it up, decide that they for some reason cannot, walk two tiles away, and repeat endlessly until the weapon is forbidden. Especially Fun when coupled with the fact that DD is chock-full of mean hostiles.

[Safe-Keeper]

...aaaaand the next version is out!

Not an Aprils fool, by the way:O:.

Playing it right now, and I must say I love the new features. So much new to get into.

[Lionclaw]

Hmm, seems more difficult to start farming underground in the new version. Muddy floor is needed. :hmmm:


I have a brook just nearby but it is 1 z-level below my planned farming area.
I guess I'll have to build some pumps to flood that area to make it muddy.

A mini-project: A short aqueduct, 2 waterwheels, 2 pumps, channels to power the waterwheels.

I have a nice little hill just on the other side of the brook that will serve as a pump station.

[NeonSamurai]

Hmm? does digging just into sand or soil not work any more? That is what I use to do early game for the first winter. I am hoping that the farm fields now need to be flooded semi regularly to keep working. The flood once and work forever principle I never much cared for.

Why don't you just make a short term farm and bucket brigade it until your main waterworks is running?

That or 2 pump, a intermediate cistern, and dwarf power (or windmills as it sounds above ground)

I just hope he did something about the 2 things that drive me the most nuts in the old version, ****ing mud, and ****ing tower caps growing under my water floodgates and blocking them off.

The game always picking the one dwarf early on for a mood where I don't have a workshop for, and then demands all kinds of stuff I do not have and can't easily get is my other major source of irritation.

I have almost gotten use to their mindless stupidity and utter inefficiency though ;)


Anyhow, I assume we need to generate new worlds for the new version right? Not going to like that one bit, took me forever to find good sites on the map I usually play with. But my sources of "fun" usually involve carefully designing and building an impregnable fortress that can survive forever while locked down, has every possible feature and comfort, and can easily deal with any invasion force.

For example my current 40d fort has a massive 3 story entryway fort (like ~30x50 tiles) that floods by back pressured pumps to drown all invaders, and if they can swim. I have 4 max quality ballistas in a offset row behind fortifications covering the 4 tile wide passage to perforate those who won't drown. Plus archers can occupy the walls in the flood area to pick off swimmers. my "secret" entrance is designed to look like a lake that drains, it is also similarly guarded.

[NeonSamurai]

Yay if you didn't notice yet, you can FINALLY edit what pauses the game via announcements.txt

No more game pausing every damn time the stupid dwarves have stupid kids or whatever :DL

[Lionclaw]

Yes it's nice it doesn't pause for every small event.

"Miners have struck microcline." Yes, thank you for letting me know we've struck useless rock. :O:

Construction material nonetheless.

- - -

I dug a too big room for farming so bucket brigading would take too much time. I have to make smaller rooms to make things easier. The farm plots were on soil.

And while I was building the aqueduct the mason said "No Job".. :-? There was plenty to do since the aqueduct was about 50% finished.

[Safe-Keeper]

Loving it so far, biggest problem for me right now is the Military interface, which is very powerful and thus highly complicated. The burrows/alert level systems will be good to have, though. I like the squad schedule thing, too. You can set squad-wide orders for every month, so that squads take it in turns to train, rest, patrol burrows, guard set points, etc. Thus, if you have three squads, you can make it so that every month one of them is practising, one is patrolling, and one is off-duty. You can also decide if they're to wear their uniforms while inactive.

Hmm? does digging just into sand or soil not work any more? That is what I use to do early game for the first winter. I am hoping that the farm fields now need to be flooded semi regularly to keep working. The flood once and work forever principle I never much cared for.No, just digging out dry soil isn't enough, you have to actually flood the area. I get an "invalid building" error when I try to designate the would-be crops as a Pond to irrigate it this way, don't know if it's a bug or not. What I ended up doing was digging into a nearby pond on the same level so that it flooded the room (and a small reservoir I built to collect the water). I then closed the gap with a floodgate, which I hooked up to a lever so that I can re-flood the room again if I need water for the crops or reservoir.

Don't know if you need to irrigate the tiles more than once. You apparently don't, though, since it's now more than a year since I irrigated my crops. Either way, I'm in a swamp area, so you'd think the soil would be wet enough from the get-go:03:.

A plus point is that water no longer ruin constructed floors:up:. I accidentally spilled water into a hallway, and the floor stayed "Rough shale block floor". No more do you have to remove and build new floors if water gets onto it and discolours it forever.

Overall, I like that farming takes more skill. It was such an overpowered way to get food in the earlier versions. Think I had something like 1500+ plants in the play-along tutorial fortress that made it to over 100 dwarves.

****ing tower caps growing under my water floodgates and blocking them off.Okay, I'm sorry, but... :rotfl2:. That is all.

The game always picking the one dwarf early on for a mood where I don't have a workshop for, and then demands all kinds of stuff I do not have and can't easily get is my other major source of irritation.
Have played for a year now, and no moods yet. It's more than possible that they've been made for more uncommon, as they apparently were in Dig Deeper/Dwarfier.

Anyhow, I assume we need to generate new worlds for the new version right? Not going to like that one bit, took me forever to find good sites on the map I usually play with. But my sources of "fun" usually involve carefully designing and building an impregnable fortress that can survive forever while locked down, has every possible feature and comfort, and can easily deal with any invasion force.You probably have to gen a new world, yes. On the plus side, you seem to be able to dig down as deep as you want to now -- no longer are you limited to 20 z-levels or so. Of course, digging deep runs the risk of running into Hidden Fun Stuff, which is apparently far more prevalent now than in the last version.

Yay if you didn't notice yet, you can FINALLY edit what pauses the game via announcements.txtIs that how you do it. Wonderful. Apparently, you can also set how many embark points you start with (in the worldgen setup).

Oh, and has anyone tried to dig a channel yet? The miner automatically leaves ramps along the side of whatever you dig out. Enlarge the pit and the downward ramps that no longer touch the sides go away. BIG thumbs-up!

[NeonSamurai]

Hmm so you don't have to do the ramps thing any more? As that was about the only safe and quick way of digging down with out the dorfs either trapping themselves. I wonder how cave-in happy they still are..

As for the old ****ing tower-caps under the floodgates problem, my solution was to stop using them and use 1 tile long raising bridges instead. It works very well and they can't grow under bridges as they are always there (plants start growing when the door/gate is "up" as the structure disappears and allows growth. It would be nice if smoothed tiles did not generate mud.

Anyhow the bad thing about 1 tile long bridges is you can't tell if they are up or down visualy, unless there is water running over them. and they are built in the down position, which means you are more likely to have an accident and flood if you are not very careful and forget to link a bridge to a lever. But this is better then having a tree grow in a critical spot and block off water flow (even though the stupid tree is blocking off a 16x16x10 cistern which has enough pressure to blast the tree to kingdom come). Good thing though about being built down is no more stupid dwarves trapping themselves and starving to death before I realize they did this yet again (and ya I know the solution, not always possible though).

If you have to irrigate for all crops now though (maybe surface crops still work without irrigation), what on earth do you do if you want a desert fort now. I have read though that it may be a bug and not intended.

As for ponds, don't forget that you need to designate the pond over a hole 1 z level above. Temp farms I make are usually 4x4 or 8x8 and have an opening at the top 1x1 or 2x2 with separate ponds designated on each pit square (this way they bucket faster, each pond can only have 1 bucket task at a time, so 4 ponds with 1 opening and 1 strip of land is best for a 2x2 pit).


Anyhow I have to say for the moment that I will be sticking to 40d, game is not very stable for me, it crashes when trying to do a search for a start point, runs very slowly, and for some reason my worlds are being generated with a ton of aquifers (my maps are coming out with about a 95% aquifer rate on any land that has soil).

[Safe-Keeper]

Hmm so you don't have to do the ramps thing any more? As that was about the only safe and quick way of digging down with out the dorfs either trapping themselves. I wonder how cave-in happy they still are..
When you channeled out a tile in the old version, it left an empty tile on the z-level below the dwarf. Now it produces a tile with an up ramp in it, so all you have to do to dig into the ground is to channel. No need for building and tearing down staircases or whatnot any more.

If you have to irrigate for all crops now though (maybe surface crops still work without irrigation), what on earth do you do if you want a desert fort now. I have read though that it may be a bug and not intended.Surface ones seem to be as they were.

Oh, and has anyone else tried out the military yet? I'm finding the new UI hard as heck to understand. Thank goodness for the DF wiki. (http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Military/Guide)

[NeonSamurai]

I thought about this more and I don't like it leaving a ramp.

The whole purpose of channeling was to make a pit (ie a channel), if i wanted to leave ramps and dig into the earth that way i would dig using ramps (if you don't know this, this is the quickest way to dig in 40d as you don't need to line out channels one at a time in an enclosed space).

Now If i can get rid of the ramps with out having to go down into the channel then it is not a big deal, otherwise it just totally kills a main defense which is pit moats.

[Safe-Keeper]

Yeah, I didn't know you could dig down by going down a z-level and designating up-ramps (haven't tried it yet, but was told on the DF forums that you could do this).

In which case, maybe channels should be as before, and a "Build downward ramps" option added.

[Safe-Keeper]

Hate to say this, but I've gone back to Dig Dwarfier. From reading the forums, there's a ton of new cool features, most of it underground:O:, but the broken combat and medical system makes it unplayable for me:-?, and I don't feel like being a beta tester for DF (already do that for FS and SH5), so I'll wait for patches.

[NeonSamurai]

Ya you can dig down using ramps. Way safer, less caveins, accidents, and other dorf stupidness, and it saves a heck of a lot of time and effort, no more designating sections one trench at a time (like when digging out a 16+z level 16x16 cistern for example). My master fort has its main entrance dug out the side of a large mountain. would have been a designating nightmare if i had tried to do it by hand.

No need for a downward ramp though really since it works fine the way it is.

I am back to the old version for a while now, just too buggy and many of my favorite tools don't work.


Btw anyone think that the creator of this game is seriously obsessive compulsive. The amount of imho stupid things the game keeps track of is beyond crazy (and is a waste of processing power). I really wish he would work more on the core game play and less on this fiddly stuff like tracking how many toes a dwarf has, and which ones are caked in blood, vomit, and mud.

[Arclight]

Aaaw, I was enjoying my crisps. They just don't taste the same when thinking about vomit covered toes. :O:

Seriously though, wish more developers had such care for detail, though there has to be a line drawn somewhere, of course. :hmmm:

[NeonSamurai]

Oh don't get me wrong, i like attention to detail, but DF takes it to an extreme.

Speaking of blood, etc, I need to invent me a dorf washer, as my waterfalls don't seem to be cleaning them. Maybe a room connected to pressurized water source, instant flood and drain thing so they don't drown. 2 z levels with a grated floor so the 2nd level which they stand on drains near instantly (also dorfs don't get sucked through floor grates, unlike wall grates).

hmmm :hmmm:

[Safe-Keeper]

I am back to the old version for a while now, just too buggy and many of my favorite tools don't work.Agree -- I miss burrows, though. They're the #1 best feature of DF 2010. I just save-scummed my way out of a failed siege because my stupid dwarves insisted on staying on the wrong side of the moat with a horde of Orcs attacking. You pretty much have to activate the entire civilian population and force-move them below-ground, and the instant you deactivate them (to man siege engines, say), they charge back out to get slaughtered. Siege preparation pre-DF 2010 is a lengthy exercise of frustration involving mass forbidding, hair-tearing, curse words and a general incredulous state of "how the **** can they be that dumb?!".

I never save-scum, by the way. Dead-is-dead, that's how the game is to be played. Only two times I've done it is this one and that time I forgot to lock the door to a corridor flooded floor to ceiling with magma, and some genius dwarf decided to open it and venture inside. Yeah:-?.

Btw anyone think that the creator of this game is seriously obsessive compulsive. The amount of imho stupid things the game keeps track of is beyond crazy (and is a waste of processing power). I really wish he would work more on the core game play and less on this fiddly stuff like tracking how many toes a dwarf has, and which ones are caked in blood, vomit, and mud.That's actually a very plausible and actually rather frightening possibility. Lots of people who have hobbies they work hard on for years without stop do not enjoy them at all.

Edit: as a side-note, I really wish there was an init option to bypass the new hospital system. Seriously, call me squeamish, but it's just too graphic for me, not to mention that I don't know how good it is for gameplay (you have to spend a lot of embark points on some dwarf's medical skills, and if he or she dies, you're without competent medical aid until you by some stroke of luck have people with medical skills stroll into your fortress). Prefer to have the current system where wounds just heal magically.

[NeonSamurai]

Burrows would be nice, but they are not necessary. Just design your forts so that the defensive systems are mainly outside. For example my fort uses an large castle structure outside as its entrance, it is backed up against a mountain hill with a high vertical slope behind it (which I cut out of the mountainside), and a 3 sided moat to the front. It uses 3 drawbridges, one for the exterior moat, and 2 for the interior (one is used to divert enemies onto a winding path. The fort has 4 towers, one on each corner with fortifications all around and a roof (so that no one can snipe from above on the hill). the wall only has fortifications on the inside to shoot at enemies on the winding path. I also made the inside of the fort floodable with pumps (and drains) to drown small armies in. I didn't bother trapping the inside of the fort though, just the outside around the first drawbridge. The ramparts can also be sealed off with a lever deep inside the fort. Oh and the moats can also only be accessed when the bridges are down (3 tile wide moat with stairs in the middle beside the bridge)

So if a siege comes i just order all the dwarves inside, and let soldiers go outside into the ramparts and towers. Even if the enemy could bypass the castle, the entrance is a long tunnel with a ramp going down towards the end, this ramp gets covered by 2 bridges on each side, and a portcullis in front of it, beyond the bridges is 4 masterwork ballistae behind heavy fortifications that overlap and cover the 4 tile wide passageway.

Nothing is getting in the front door unless I let them :) Anything else will get drowned, shot to bits by crossbows, or splattered by ballista bolts.
The secret entrance is also pretty secure though not as fancy, but the passage way in is flooded to be a small "lake" when not in use (that is what makes it secret, as the lake is drained and refilled as needed).

Beyond that I keep careful tabs on exterior jobs and tend to do them in large batches for safety. Technically though there is no reason to ever open the gate other then to trade. Water comes from an underground river (which is also fully secured), wood comes from underground tower cap farms (the only wood real dorfs use), and orders are set up to keep stupid dorf wandering into ambushes to a minimum.

But then I am very security minded.

[Safe-Keeper]

I have now commissioned the construction of a couple siege revolvers, which should even the playing field somewhat.

http://barbecueandbeer.com/images/texas-six-shooter-grill_1_.jpg

[Safe-Keeper]

I apologize for the double post, but this (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=54985.0)just had to be shared. An awesome little combat report coupled with equally awesome graphics. A must-read:yeah:.

Spread the word,
Bronzemurder is alive!