Dwarf Fortress

[aka Cthulhu]

Strike the earth! Or something like that. Anyone play the greatest game ever to game? But seriously, it's not the ultimate game, but it's still pretty darn nice, and I find the entire concept rather fascinating and the fact that it's still being refined and updated is also cool. I dunno, it's just nice to watch a bunch of tiny bearded sociopaths just work until their inevitable fate of dying horribly.

[Zha Hong Lang]

I honestly wish I had the time to learn this game, it looks so cool. :(

[aka Cthulhu]

I honestly wish I had the time to learn this game, it looks so cool. :(

It is somewhat time consuming to learn the basics, but in general it's not too bad. People talk about the learning curve, but all in all it's just a matter of perspective. Watching a tutorial LP can help, and having some roguelike experience with it's many commands can help get used to DFs hotkeys as well... and furthermore, accessing the wiki while playing can certainly help as well. Like, once you figure out the basics, you'll have an easier time handling the mid to late game.

Well, okay, learning the basics can be a handful... but only 'cause the game throws you in head-first without giving you much explanation in how to handle things. I remember the first time I saw the screen after embarking on an area - looked like the computer just went and barfed out a bunch of symbols. I didn't play the game for a long while after not being able to do anything or make sense of how things work. A little while later I played the game again, with wiki help and a few LP vids watched, and things went a lot more smoothly. In general, I learned a lot from piling on failure after failure. Killed by werebison? Welp, better make a militia next time. No metal to make any weapons or armor? Better embark on an area that may have metals, or learn to trade. Wildlife in the area murdered everyone? Better be more discerning of embark locations. So on and so forth.

Okay, reading through my post I realize that it is somewhat kind of time-consuming. Still, just like any other video game putting down a bit of time will increase your skills on the game. If you got the time, I seriously recommend trying the game out. It's really fun to share stories of lunacy and dwarven sociopathy. Most recent versions even allow non-dwarven visitors to go to the fort, and possibly even join the place as citizens.

Most recent thing I figured out was setting up a militia of werebeasts. Get a dwarf infected by a werebeast, and they turn into violent killing machines every full moon. ...not as handy as you might think. They can't be controlled, and unless you quarantine them away from non-werebeasts they'll try to kill anyone nearby. Can't set up a squad of werebeasts either, as upon seeing each other transform, the first thing the militia will do is try to kill each other when they revert back to normal, because they saw each other transform.

One plus to a werebeast soldier is their healing factor. When they transform, they heal up completely. Lost limbs grow back, nerves get healed. This is particularly useful when facing off against some poisonous forgotten beasts and titans. See, some of those beasts can create poison gas, where effects range from fever, to blisters, to fever with blisters while affected body parts (all of it) start to rot and produce miasma. Normal medical treatment is... not very useful.

So affected soldiers become unable to do their duties... unless they've been werebeast infected, or get infected by a werebeast after getting poisoned (chances of such is less likely considering how fragile they become). If infected, they experience a few weeks of discomfort, but the next full moon arrives and they're back on their feet. The fact that werebeast infectees don't need food, drink, or sleep is a slightly minor bonus.

[aka Cthulhu]

That said, while trying to create a werebeast army is not quite handy due to the micromanaging the infected during full moons, a quieter alternative is to raise an undead horde. Zombies don't need to eat, drink, or sleep, and as long as the target is organic they will attack them. Undead creatures can also be caged, so it's just a matter of keeping them locked up when not in use.

'course, you really can't control them. It's a matter of rigging up cages to open up with a pull from a lever, with the cage usually located in a likely area where an enemy will go through. A means to re-cage the undead will also be required, otherwise they may just attack the population. Some architecture is required, but the undead won't be affected by poison, won't feel pain, and are generally strong. No need to worry about providing pastures to war rhinos since undead war rhinos don't need to eat.

'course number two, you also need to have a captured necromancer to raise corpses in order to have an undead army in storage.

In general, whether undead or werebeast, a well-armed and skilled militia can take on most creatures. Steel is a great metal for killing and protecting... but while a squad of 10 can generally kill an invading force of 40-50 without injury, a single creature that can emit poison or shoot webs can slaughter all 10 quite easily.

[aka Cthulhu]

One thing I'd like for DF to change is to make trade relatively harder, or balanced or something. On your first caravan or so, it becomes hard to get everything you want or need on a caravan, but that's mostly due to a lack of dwarves than anything. Once you get some basic stuff set up, you can easily get more than enough to buy out an entire caravan. Like seriously, in many cases I can get 200k worth of value from a caravan, practically giving them 2 million in value yearly, and I'm only giving them that much to reduce clutter on the fort.

A metalworking industry seems like an obvious choice for trade, but in reality it's a bit too much work. You'd need fuel to smelt ore into bars, and some more fuel to craft those bars into something with value. Furthermore, metal crafts do weigh a bit, so hauling them in trade depots can take some time. Of course, military grade metals such as iron or steel are better off being used by the fort. Even low grade military grade metal such as copper can be made into crossbow bolts, or traps. They even have more value on the fort's health if those metals are not available in the biome, and as such can only be acquired through trade.

Surprisingly, the industry that can bring the most value is either cooking or clothesmaking. Both usually can be created in the fort, so once you get the ball rolling you get production working non-stop all the time. For cooking you can either farm plants, have egg-laying animals lay eggs (seriously, a single crocodile can lay eggs in the double digits), or butcher the animals for met (a single crocodiles can lay eggs in double digits... if the stack is fertile all of them will hatch).

There's a thing called a catsplosion where cats left unchecked will breed and breed, leaving you with a ton of cats and having a FPS drop due to pathing problems... and it doesn't hold a candle to a crocsplosion, which can give you hundreds upon hundreds of baby crocodiles running around.

[aka Cthulhu]

Some tips to make fort life easier:

-Nickname your dwarf or their profession. By the first migrant wave, or the first big one on spring of the second year of the fort, a lot of dwarves will arrive. Very rarely you'll get dwarves with professions you desire at the moment. You can get waves of cheesemakers, gelders, fish cleaners... basically jobs that usually only need one dwarf, not five. No point in accommodating them according to that job they came in with, force them to follow a different path in life! Nicknaming them, and more importantly, setting their jobs to only the jobs you want them to do, will prevent a lot of confusion and you'll know exactly who's doing what.

-Check what items dwarves like. Kind of important when you get the opportunity to pick a dwarf who becomes nobility. You can't choose mayors, since they get elected, but you do get to pick a baron who will eventually become a duke. If they like a certain type of item, they'll begin mandating that item to be made, or prohibit trading them away. Failure to do the mandate results in some poor shmuck jailed, or beaten. If you're lucky you can find a dwarf who doesn't have any item that he likes, ensuring peaceful fort life.

-Also, having the program dfhack is nice. Just makes most things more simpler. For example, if you want to assign what jobs a single dwarf will do, usually you have to go in the units screen, pick the dwarf, go to the labor screen, filled with sub-sections of all the different labors, then go to each one to pick (or deactivate) what job they can do. Can get real tiresome if you're managing a lot of new dwarves. Dfhack makes it so that all you have to do is go to the units screen, do one more keypress, and you're taken to a screen listing all the dwarves, where you can assign or un-assign them their jobs. Makes life easier.

In general though, it's been debated whether you should start the game without using dfhack to get a better feel of the controls first. One can easily get used to the game without it, but the program definitely makes the game run smoother.

[aka Cthulhu]

Anyhoo, lately I can't help but care about fort design. Like generally I just go make it to be functional, which usually translates into one big open space underground where it seems that I just barfed out workshops and stockpiles everywhere. Bedrooms lack walls, because screw privacy, I want dwarves to fall in bed and sleep, and who needs weak-elf-minded concepts such as privacy and modesty?

Still, a certain sense of... aesthetics is desired. Certain workshops come in a different color depending on the material used. Why use wood and certain stones that create a drab brown color, when white from rocks like marble are a step better. Of course, white's not the only color out there. Red from realgar; red's a nice color, who cares if realgar has arsenic and is poisonous in real life? Dwarves don't care! Construct that kitchen with realgar blocks! Make realgar mugs from realgar rocks! It'll be an interesting day if DF gets an update where certain minerals do get poisonous qualities...

Another stone with a distinct color is olivine. In this case, the color is green. Not exactly a useful stone, but it's one of the few rocks that are green. Personally, I don't like it much since it reminds me of dwarves vomiting, which they totally do if they stay underground for so long and walk on up the surface, unable to handle sunlight. Many a fort's entrance (and outdoors) are stained green.

Rose gold is another nice metal. Using gold and copper bars to create it... value wise, it's not worth more than the sum of its parts, so it's just extra work where you can make something with just gold bars, but it's one of the few things that has a lovely purple color.

Anyway... what I'm saying is, designing a fort to look both pretty and functional is kinda nice.