New release of Dwarf Fortress!

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Just dl'd it now, this is a pretty huge release that makes the game 100x better.
Please tell me I'm not the only one excited about this, looks like my Saturday night won't be sucking after all!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RLPG88u3lM[/youtube]

Downloading it right now. Thanks.

Were-beasts everywhere in adventure mode..

I found some tombs too and got killed by a mummy

You are not the only one excited by this.

Having survived an early tantrum spiral (it was horrific, about a hundred dead, and the fortress was totally smashed up by the survivors - including one unfortunate incident when a rampaging dwarf smashed up a (Moria-style entrance) bridge in a fit of pique, sending themself and two others plummeting down into the depths of a spiked pit) and a full-on invasion of goblins and trolls (it was... not so horrific) the population of the fortress Crowncoal has ballooned to 218, including a worrying 75 children. I usually change the init to something more manageable. The most notable feature of this fort (set in a thoroughly un-scenic sandy wasteland with no trees or vegetation of any kind) is the total absence of any metal (despite being promised "shallow metal" and "deep metal" by the Finder) meaning a desperately under-equipped military. Still, I've managed to get a few of my favourite traps up - there's something very satisfying about watching a goblin casually stroll into ten whirring serrated glass disks...

I was delighted to find Giant Leeches (Spatterjay!) so I'm keeping a pit full of them.

After the untimely abandonment of Crowncoal and a brief-lived fortress on top of a volcano - yes, someone fell in a magma pipe - the weary dwarves of the Mortal Diamonds founded their newest fortress, Shortbush, on a lonely and savage jungle island, safely away from goblins and kobolds. For a while the news was good, but the presence of an aquifer meant there were limited options for progress. Then a terrifying dwarf-were-rhinoceros ^^ turned up, and the two squads of unarmed, unarmoured militia braced themselves to suffer horrific casualties... they rushed out to battle and the rhino bit off a hapless dwarf's foot before conveniently reverting back to its own humanoid form and being driven off.
Okay, okay. I'm a big fan of werewolf films. I'm a huge fan of werewolf films, in fact. I've got dozens of them. So I should have guessed what would happen next, really, but sometimes I'm just dim.
...yeah, that's right, a little time passed, and that poor bitten dwarf was hobbling around on a new crutch, when suddenly she turned into a new were-rhino, right in the middle of the fortress, and this time the casualties really were horrific... by the time she was eventually caught and put down, she'd killed over twenty unfortunate citizens (and infected another, who fortunately was locked in the hospital until they met their end under a drawbridge.)
Oh well, life goes on. Got an aquifer to drain...

Once Mayday update his titles, I'm going right back in to DF and maybe even try Adventure Mode for the first time since with this new release, AM became a lot more of a wilderness survival game since I believe you have to watch your hunger and thirst now (?)

May day is updated i'm playing the updated version with his tile set.

Dwarfhack still needs to be updated if you use Stonesense for the isometric view though

I am now making a concerted effort to learn this game but I don't seem to be getting too far at the moment need to watch more tutorial videoes and read more.

Do you use Dwarf Therapist?

Yes, I also recently downloaded the updated lazy newbie pack as well to make use of all the funky apps that come with it

I can't go into details at the moment as i don't have enough time but basically i am past the initial stages of getting setup and its more getting towards the intermediate skills of the game

I.e. building wells, craft work to sell to traders who visit the fortress, securing the fort against theifs and future invaders, actually organising a militia and more specialised skills and buildings and the functions that they do.

Basically a where do you go from here once you have the basics established of a fort.

Okay, cool. The military stuff confused me when it was changed a while back, and I never really got to grips with it (plus it was buggy) but I've got the basics down now, so here goes:

The basics:

First you need to appoint a militia commander. Appoint a dwarf to this post from the (n)obles screen.

Now you need to make a squad. From the main screen go to the (m)ilitary screen, highlight the new commander and press (c) to create the squad. You can now add dwarfs to the new squad by selecting their names. Pick a bunch of soap-makers and fish dissectors for your new legions. (To begin with, your squad are unarmed and unarmoured. This is good for the moment - they can train up their unarmed combat skills before they get real kit.)

Squads need to be set to active/training before they'll train, so from the main screen go to (s)quads, choose your squad and press (t) to change them to active.

Now you need to create a barracks. I suggest you create one next to your Trade Depot, or in the entrance of the fortress, or at some other point where bad guys are likely to appear. Place a Weapons Rack or Armor Stand down and create a (r)oom from it. You'll see the name of your squad in the room menu. Underneath are some indicators - sleeping, training, and storing equipment. All you need for the moment is (t)raining. Once this is set, the squad will go to the room and train there. Because they're unarmed they'll practice stuff like dodging and fighting, but they won't learn anything about armour use, shield use or weapons for the moment. Dodging is an important skill to have. If any bad guys appear, they'll break off training and attack them.

You can now create additional squads using the same process - as well as the militia commander you can appoint additional captains, add dorfs to their squad and set them a place to train.


Intermediate:

Once you've got a couple of squads up and training their martial arts for a while, you can give them real weapons.

Each squad can have a uniform set for it. Each dwarf in the squad will try to wear this uniform if possible, so if the uniform says "steel short sword" the dwarfs in the squad will try to find and carry steel short swords. It can be customised so that each person in the squad wears different things if you want, but it's easiest to just set a uniform for them all.
Go to the (m)ilitary screen. Press (e)quipment and then (U)niforms. The default ones are Metal Armor, Leather Armor and Archer which are self-explanatory. Select one of these and press Shift-Enter and the whole squad will try to wear that uniform. Once dwarfs are carrying weapons and shields and wearing armour, they'll start to train in those skills. Leave them at it long enough and they will become Swordsdwarfs, Speardwarfs or whatever; leave them at it for a really long time and they'll become Swordmasters, Spearmasters and so on. Once they get to that point they stand a reasonable chance against Titans in one-on-one combat if they're wearing decent kit, so a squad of ten Axe Lords in steel armour can be counted on to shred pretty much anything, although you've always got to keep an eye out for archers.

To customise a new uniform, from the main screen go to (m)ilitary then u(n)iforms and choose (c) to add a new uniform. Give it a snappy name with (N). You can now add individual pieces to the uniform by choosing them, so for instance choose (W)eapon and pick a weapon from the list, for example short swords. All dwarves who are assigned this uniform will try to carry that weapon. By pressing (M)aterial you can specify what the weapon should be made of, for instance iron short swords. The same goes for (C)olour of things which can be dyed, so you can tell your dwarves to wear midnight blue Giant Toad Leather cloaks if you want.

To control your military, from the main screen press (s)quads and you'll see a list of your squads. You can choose them from the list by pressing (a), (b), (c) and so on. You can now give them orders like (m)ove - choose a spot and the squad will go there, then stay there and fight anything that comes along - and (k)ill - choose an enemy and the squad will go to them and attempt to kill them. When you are finished with the order press (o) to cancel it and the squad will go back to their normal training in their barracks. Soldiers will start to get annoyed if they have to stay on station too long, so don't leave them standing in a field forever or they'll start to flip. They'll also break off for home to get food and drink every now and then, though I think they default to carrying some rations and booze if you have backpacks and flasks available for them to carry.

Soldiers in a squad will tend to become friends with each other, so they can get very upset if one of them dies, leading to tantrum spiral and Fun. Dwarfs become desensitised to death once they've seen enough of it. If a squad takes a casualty every now and then, they'll get used to it; if an untested squad takes several casualties after they've spent their whole lives in an incestuous barracks love-in, expect them to go crazy.

It's a very good idea to set up a hospital. Designate a zone using the (i) menu, make sure it covers some beds and a chest or two, and set it as a (h)ospital. Also appoint a Chief Medical Dwarf from the (n)obles screen and check their Healthcare labours are all turned on. Wounded dwarfs will (theoretically) be carried to the hospital, and this sturdy soul will come along, diagnose them, and treat them for their injuries. Modern dwarf medicine is greatly improved over what it used to be, and far fewer dwarfs are left crippled for life if you've got a supply of crutches, splints, thread, cloth, plaster and soap.
Of course, if you should run into one of the nastier Forgotten Beasts you might find your hospital full of were-rhinoceroses, or that your Chief Medical Dwarf's face has rotted away from contact with a horrible infection, which just happened to mine. And his cat. And all his other patients. It wasn't pretty.

There's also an alert level for all your civilian dwarfs. You need to use this in conjunction with burrows, which I'll not go into for the present. Basically it replaces the old "stay below ground" state. It's useful to save casualties among your civilians, but not essential.


In practice:

My fort of 100 dwarves has four squads. They're assigned a uniform of steel armour and their individual choice of weapon. One squad trains in the entrance to the caves, one squad trains at the fortress entrance, and two train at other spots inside the fortress. If anything tries to sneak in, it runs into those squads and gets mullered. If anything big turns up, I set all four squads to (k)ill it and watch it die quickly. There's no goblins or kobolds at this site (it's an island) but last fortress I had at this stage had six squads for 250 dwarfs and was able to repel full goblin sieges without much bother. The only really dangerous ones are the ones with bows. As a top tip, you can train up a bunch of War Dogs (or War Grizzly Bears ) and assign them to each militia captain, that way they'll follow them into battle and hopefully the goblins will shoot at them instead of the dwarves.


I'll do a "where to go from here" when I catch my breath.

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=101941.0

Behold! The tale of Vanod Openedfires!

Thanks for that post Ambivalence I appreciate it.

It's taking me awhile to learn this game but I'm getting there. You think you have the jist of it and then you learn something new that makes you realise there is absolutely tons more to learn.

I've been watching some of captain ducks new videos. The 2 n half hour one he made for the previous version of DF was very good. One thing I notice with all these play through and tutorials is that each person has their own style and technique of going through the game.

What kind of entrance do you have for your fortresses?

At the moment I've two different games going. On fort I have the entrance as a two square wide mined out tunnel with doors. The other game I've dug downward with a ramp so that wagons can access the trade depot i've put at the entrance to the fort.

Do you guys build fortifications and walls on the surface? Or do you build defences further into the fort underground?

I'm still trying to create "that perfect fortress entrance" - there must be something that allows traders in but automatically eliminates all intruders with no need for maintenance whatsoever, then sorts through their belongings, moves the useful stuff directly to stockpiles and destroys the rest...

Generally I just use a five tile wide (wagon access plus a bit of redundancy, see later), quite long (better reaction time, more space), twisting (so enemies can't see or shoot straight down it) corridor, with a mixture of retracting bridges (over short drops that just lead back outside), traps (as a last resort - either I'll fight enemies with the military or just open the bridges and wait the siege out) and tethered animals (which die if anything nasty comes along, but are invaluable for spotting kobolds and snatchers and that sort of thing.) I use lots of single-tile-width bridges rather than one big bridge - that way, when a dwarf destroys the bridge in a tantrum, there's always still access and usually still wagon access...

Come to think of it, I could use a three-tile wide corridor that expands in a couple of places to have a set of six or seven (for neatness' sake) broad bridges, that'd be a bit more dwarf proof, would always allow wagon access even if a bridge was destroyed, and yet would have narrow corridors for easier trapping. *heads back to the drawing board*

@Laz - here's how not to do it! Link to the map at the DFMA.

The fortress is reasonably well defended, using several tricks which are worth taking note of, but just read the Points of Interest in order and you'll get the idea.