So, I've just recently started playing and I do know they are some players around here (Jorbles? sudgy?) so I though, why not start a thread.
For those that do not know, DF is kind of a very complex civ building game which is bound to cause a huge amount of
frustration FUN!So, I've had few fortresses so far. First three (not counting test ones) weren't that impressive - there were dozen bedrooms and me trying out to set up some semblance of industry. First one died out cause I was trying out stuff and I flooded half the fortress, and people mysteriously started dying later. In second one everybody refused the work and started hunting vermin cause they had no food (a big wave of migrants came), and I couldn't come back from it. In third I got a necromancer invasion in like first year, which completely destroyed me. I got hang of the ropes, though.
So, than came my first somewhat successful fortress. on ground floor I had a moat with a drawbridge and 2 tile wide fortified wall all-around, I even had some sembalance of army (only one squad of ill-equipped archers which I seriously couldn't get to train EVER even though I've put them on train shechule and I've build archery practice range, they just refused to train (still not sure how to do it) ) that I could at least order to patrol and/or kill on order. I had huge bedrooms with engraved rocks all around, huge waterfall going through the fortress (artificial, but pump-less), farming was set up and I was also making quite a lot of quality crafts for trade. I have some very poor metal industry and was dabbling in other industries, but things were working well.
And than shit hit the fan. I had no idea that their clothes can rot until they started throwing tantrums about having to go around naked. I also had no cloths of any sort to start making shirts and trousers, so I had to trade for it. I was so focused on trying to get clothes industry going that I didn't notice that my corpse stockpile was full and a dead yak was laying in the dining room until it started rotting. Now, miasma clouds + lack of cloths + a guy committing cause he wasn't able to complete his artifact made quite a few dwarves unhappy. Even though they were all in cloths, they continued to throw tantrums without a break. Tantrums led to violence, violence led to deaths, deaths led to more unhappy dwarfs (I also had no jail at first so I had to release the first murderer, which made for even more unhappy dwarves) I fell into a trap called "tantrum spiral".
So, I decided to raise the drawbridge and not let the new migrant dwarves (~20 of them) in until all the unhappy dwarves killed themselves first, and than try to clean the things up with a new batch of fresh, happy dvarves. I also closed the waterfall and made a back entry somewhere through the waterfall.
So, everybody in died, but it took a while and upstair dwaves got fed up with waiting a bit. I let them in and start cleaning up - I though that I had a chance to coming back. Unfortunately, I forgot to re-seal the back entry and when I turned the waterfall back on, it started flooding the farms, people fell down the waterfall shaft, other dwarves that tried to rescue them got drowned to, I had to seal the whole section off and.. well, I was back where I started, tantrum spiral #2.
Now, my few fortress is built with more care (old one was fun but disorganized). I finally got completely hang of Therapist, and quickfort, so things are going more smoothly. I quite like where I am right now, I got a few food industries going, other stuff is getting set up but the dwarves are quite happy and working and I hope they'll stay that way. The main problem is that currently my defenses are low and I have problems with thives, but I'll fix that up soon.
