How Do You Stay Invested in Your Worlds?

[wsanford403]

I'm happy DF has become more accessible to so many people. I've been waiting a long time for this version to come out. I enjoy watching playthroughs of DF.

But for the life of me, I cannot stick with any one world/fortress for more than a day! It's not the game's fault, I assure you! I start it up, make a world, and get overwhelmed just with where to set up a fort. I've combed the wiki, looked up all kinds of themes and advice for starting. I've even actually gotten to the embark screen and started a few maps. As soon as I save a game and quit for the day and try to come back, I lose all interest in what I had planned and want to start over again >_<

How do you stick to a fort after it's started? What are some ways you keep yourself devoted to running a fort for more than a few days? I'm dying to create my own stories, but I get so bogged down in managing everything that it kills my interest. I'm even playing with some mods that pretty much trivialize resource management and I still cannot stick to any one fort.

[Morkonan]

Starting over again is a good sign - It means you enjoy all those early bits of drama and watching your own creative processes unfold.

There is a point where "management" becomes a chore in DF and that's the fault of the game and it's UI, not the intended design itself. There isn't anything difficult to manage in DF, the game just makes good management features inaccessible. I feel your pain. :) (And, no, I don't want the game to do it for me, I want access to useful tools that help me manage it, myself.)

That dreaded middle-of-the-game is an issue in many games. You're at the point where you can do a lot of things, but may not have a good direction to go in or may not know which one to take.

Try to achieve some personal goals. Are you using Lava Smelters? Why not? Do it. :) Did you build a Waterfall? Any mechanisms and power generation? Why not? Do it. Did you start destroying your enemies on the map? Why not? Do it...

Make very good use of the Work Order manager tab. Use it to set up all of your standard inventory levels and production needs. ONLY give separate Orders to specific Workshops for very specific reasons. Assign Dorfs to workshops in professions you need a Legendary Crafter. Start building up, push the population limit and try to become the capitol of your civilization. etc..

(Look up Dwarf Megaprojects. You may want to engage with those creative bits of gameplay/building.)

There are plenty of good games that have enthusiastic players that really just love the gameplay up to the middle of the game, where things might get a bit more complicated. That's fine and if you like starting new fortresses, that's even better. :)

[76561188078797539]

Originally posted by wsanford403:

How do you stick to a fort after it's started? What are some ways you keep yourself devoted to running a fort for more than a few days?

It's not a proper Mountainhome without a running indoor waterfall, magma-powered forges, and at least 3 z-level deep moat surrounding most of the embark, even if half of it is z+57 mountain.

It takes me several in-game years to get to the point where I consider my fortress at bare necessary comfort level, and that's even before I start getting creative on automated ways of greeting unwanted visitors, much less go into first cavern level and below.

Probably doesn't help that I tend to restart multiple times early on, when I realize some of my intended layouts are sub-optimal...

Then comes the glorious task of building up obsidian spire above the ground level - either to keep pesky fliers away, or (more likely) to pump-stack magma and water above for the inevitable "you and what obsidian garden" response to larger hostile attempts.

Then again, I end up waking up in the morning still thinking about designs or some new ideas for work order implementation, so can't say I am experiencing this kind of inability of the game to keep my attention.

Incidentally, if you don't like the exploding population, you can adjust popcap according to your fortress' needs along the way - migrant waves will stop when you hit your selected cap number until you raise it again.

This spreads out the need for constant micromanagement while you do more dorfy things like building that magma shower over your entrance, or setting up magma-filled carts to empty in face of anyone daring to charge your entrance, or build retractable bridges to drop such invaders into a magma moat.

Ultimately, it's all about magma.

[Dagmar]

Don't be afraid to get picky about worlds. Generate one, set your embark filters, and if you can't find a spot that ticks all the boxes you want, just generate another one.

I will usually generate 15-20 worlds before I find one with a river, a temperate forest, humans, elves, *and* goblins as neighbors, iron and flux stone, but after that I'm not letting anyone take it away. Large trees and lots of vegetation means you have to work hard to run out of food and booze, and a ready water supply of any kind (especially if it's temperate and can freeze) means waterworks and a state-of-the-fort hospital are just around the corner, along with temples, a taven, a library, and "fun" around every corner.

...and I'm kinda flexible on flux stone as long as there's sand or clay to work with because eventually the goblinite ore starts churning out the steel for you and glass sawblades don't ding it up that much.

[Deadweight]

are you embarking with a goal in mind? either a project or something relating to the world. doesn't have to be at embark, can decide on projects on the fly

world i'm in now is a pocket-sized one ravaged by necromancers so my fort's goal is to endure, repel, and eradicate the undead hordes and reclaim the world from them. having that noble goal in mind helps me deal with the management and years-long onslaught of angry giant birds and such

[The Trashman]

When you stop playing a fort, do you create a whole new world?

If so, I'd suggest retiring the fort and starting a new one in the same world. That way you can keep advancing the timeline of one world. You can always check legends mode between forts to see how your old ones are doing or even resume an older fort from the embark screen.

Originally posted by evildagmar:

...and I'm kinda flexible on flux stone as long as there's sand or clay to work with because eventually the goblinite ore starts churning out the steel for you and glass sawblades don't ding it up that much.

You need flux stones to turn goblinite into steel, though

[DoubleG]

I try to start my fortresses with a goal. Like when i set up in an evil biome so i could grow sliverbard and have all my dwarfs wear fancy black threads. Or the time I wanted to cast an entire fortress out of obsidian. It's nice to have goals.

[Rainbow Jeremy]

I don't. I generate worlds and struggle for hours against the tide of slightly obnoxiously named brooks and streams ruining my picturesque themed names for my fort/group/symbol/area, often find myself on an unsightly surface after preparing carefully, then I eventually find a good embark only to accidentally delete my saves there juggling new embarks and get mad about all of the forts I lost. I don't recommend my methods.

[Elur]

Lower the population cap. Smaller world, shorter history (I like running 50 years). Choose or let a fort theme emerge (my latest is focused on gathering and taming as many weird/non-native to my civ beasts and making a zoo; the previous one was centered around a grand library; etc.). At the end of the day - change forts and create new ones, who cares, as long as you're having fun :)

[czpetr]

My current goal is to make an army of war hydras. Already embarked on one, waiting for more.

As others have said, find some goal. Make your fortress out of gold. Cast a giant Armok statue out of obsidian. Enslave all elves and make them fight in you arena. Possibilities are limitless.

[Taura]

For my part I started using descriptions of artifacts and forgotten beasts as prompts for Midjourney.

Now it's like a drug, I can't wait to get new artifacts or beasts, resulting in a collection representing the highlights of the fort's history. It gives me a lot of fun.

[Rainbow Jeremy]

Yeah AI art generation and DF are really made for one another.

[Sinclair]

Originally posted by wsanford403:

But for the life of me, I cannot stick with any one world/fortress for more than a day! It's not the game's fault, I assure you! I start it up, make a world, and get overwhelmed just with where to set up a fort. I've combed the wiki, looked up all kinds of themes and advice for starting. I've even actually gotten to the embark screen and started a few maps. As soon as I save a game and quit for the day and try to come back, I lose all interest in what I had planned and want to start over again >_<

I usually start the game with a sort of a generic idea in mind. I also use the site finder a lot. For example, one of my playthroughs had the idea of starting in year 5 and making multiple forts for the same civ, watching as it develops alongside the stuff I'm doing. Basically a recreation of a Civilization style of play almost. There have also been forts built in specific biomes, like the deep north. j
If I have no concrete idea, I basically just use the site finder + my standard embark template, tweaked for material availability, and go in blind.

Originally posted by wsanford403:

How do you stick to a fort after it's started? What are some ways you keep yourself devoted to running a fort for more than a few days? I'm dying to create my own stories, but I get so bogged down in managing everything that it kills my interest. I'm even playing with some mods that pretty much trivialize resource management and I still cannot stick to any one fort.

For me, the game has this 'one more turn' syndrome. There is always something new to do, something to set up. Something to prepare for. The stories come organically while I'm during that. I'm not looking to entice them in any way.
I'm also not a fast player. I usually have just the bare minimum at the end of the first year: a farm, couple workshops and about a dozen bedrooms.

FYI, resource management conundrums are a huge part of why I'm playing this game, so for me the problem you described is actually a draw.

[Stealthkibbler]

So I'm on my twelfth fort in a world that I've been playing for about 57 years now starting from 100, this is a world I generated using the detailed world generation, I set it to the preset medium region then lowered the length dimensions by one so the world was very wide but short. This leads to a lot of habitable area in the world as it squishes arctic to be up against the border, If the world generates massive inland sea i reroll until i get a nice landmass with some ocean on the top and bottom, some good biomes, evil biomes and a healthy amount of mountains, the world I settled on has a mountain range that peaks in the centre of the world and snakes its way to the leftmost side.

Staying in a world can be difficult at first because you wont have yet discovered what makes that particular world interesting or unique, The first thing I do is decide which dwarven civilization im going to stick with because there are various things that carry over between forts such as migrants and animal training levels. Then i play a few forts in my parent civs mountain region, In this world my parent civs home mountain region is basically devoid of cavern life as they've driven most the regional population to extinction, so it lead to some very chill early forts. If I settle anywhere else though the rest of the worlds cavern regions are so untouched that they are teeming with huge packs of cave critters and I've had to abandon 5 or so forts to the relentless savagery of these regions.

[Runaway_char]

I think a big problem in all colony or civ/4x games like stellaris is the impulse to start over if things don't go perfectly, be it your fort layout, rng, or lack or certain resources/bad start.
My advice is to stick to a fort, avoid staying paused for too long, and fight the instinct to rollback or restart. If you run into a problem, see it through. Your early mistakes and poor planning will eventually become the foundation for all the fun challenges in the future - embrace rebuilding, walling off mined areas, widening corridors as needed and tearing up bedroom layouts. Make mistakes on purpose and shake yourself out of the urge to get it perfect the first time. You'll have more fun that way.

[FireStorm(StarlinVF)]

I've been lucky. So far, all of my forts end in some kind of disaster within 5 in-game years. Just in the last 2 weeks. Weremoose pandemic, Aquifer pit killing FPS (and losing 6 dwarfs trying to fix it), Expedition team killed by a Named Giant Sparrow in the first 6 months,