Thanks for the post! Just started a new fort today as part of a civilization of 1 and that person is the king. The Civ also has no sites. Really excited to see if it’s possible to build from the ground up like that. Or if I’m doomed to 8 dwarves until children are born/travelers become citizens.

Oh shit I forgot, lmao

Yeah I don't think Moonworm turned up (which is fine). The schedule is running on the assumption that people just want to keep playing forever, which isn't necessarily true. This week it would be @Doubledee@hexbear.net's turn.

Last week when I played I got the feeling that this fort was really running out of steam (might just be I wasn't in the right mood though). Things have gotten quite disorganized and keeping things running is very micro-managey, which makes starting long-term projects difficult (let alone the one year turn limit). I kinda lean towards retiring it and applying what we've learned to a new fort after a bit of a break, but I don't want to pull the plug unilaterally if anybody sees potential in pressing onward.

I was thinking of making a post like this myself! I don't have an active fort atm, I was thinking of starting a new one today. My last fort I encountered a strange issue. Sometime after attracting the queen and her husband to my fort, I was looking at my noble menu and suddenly realized I was once again being led by a duchess. I checked out the royal quarters and noticed that the queen's tomb was unassigned, though the king-consort's tomb was still assigned... to a regular weaver. I checked him out, and his wife had the title of "farmer" and was not present on the map. On the world menu, my civilization had a king I'd never heard of, with my duchess as the second name on the list. My fort was still labeled as a capital and I wasn't receiving any dwarven caravans or migrants.

Did my royal family get deposed? And where did the queen go? Anyone encountered anything like this before?

This is Pageclefts, the Library of Learning and its environs in the year 12

One of the first settlements branching out of the mountainhomes of The Wire of Lashes, this fort was built with the goal of being the ancestral repository of learning for our civilization. The founders were all custom created with writing and technical skills like astronomy, chemistry, geology, critical thinking etc. It was founded in the year 5 and so far...

The Archive List

I mean it's not the most impressive list, but it's a start! We have a lot of scholars milling around as well, and will likely open the tavern to visitors soon so we can start trying to recruit poets and musicians to hopefully catalog the cultural heritage of our world. We have a long list of legendary artifacts produced by our local dwarfs as well, but few that would impress. Most recently our weaponsmith decided to make a lead spear...

Library forts are fun because they require a lot of focus on a kind of complicated industry in order to keep themselves stocked, but they produce a neat little trade good that can be exported and copied to fill your world with evidence of your dwarfs and their accomplishments! Would highly recommend as a little side challenge to anyone who is getting bored with the main loop of the typical fort, or as an easy main goal for newer players.

The Architecture of Pageclefts

The main entrance, visitors come down from the right, that chamber beyond the steel drawbridge can be flooded directly with water from the local stream, and then drained into the cavern layer by raising the bronze drawbridge inside the drowning chamber. To the left is the unused and undecorated space which is planned to be the designated visitor tavern. The levers for opening and closing the gate and drains is located above the empty tavern, beverage storage is below, and the descending ramp outside the tavern heads down to the main fort complex.

The main fort occupies several levels of the highest cavern layer (inspired by Beardrenched!) with homes carved into the main bodies of rock that are connected by the exterior wall. In the open areas below we have built the farms and a lot of the food processing, with industry and storage descending into the levels below the main courtyard. On the right you can see The Rough Palace, our library and to the left of that hallway are some offices, the main dormitory and the stoneworkers' guildhall.

Here's the beating heart of the fort, the large tavern and dining room occupying a central space and frequently humming with activity, I've imported a large number of instruments which are regularly used for communal dances (a lot of the ones we know here involve getting in a big circle). South of the tavern is the hospital, which I have divided into a bunch of individual operating rooms with their own beds and tables and traction benches, which can be locked from above in case there were to be a dwarf in treatment showing symptoms of lycanthropy. Further south is the shared temple complex, smaller shrines to the main gods are sprinkled around the fort but the main one helps let off a little steam. West of there is the Mayor and Duke's residence, although I will need to build a new royal apartment soon as I cannot seem to get the duke's residence up to standard no matter how many jewels I cram into it on display pedestals.

Here you can see the treatment rooms, as well as the main industry workshops, accessible from above with hatches as well (in case a worker goes insane for any reason, they can be restrained to keep them from hurting anyone). Below this level is another storage level, mostly for coke, metal and finished metal goods, which leads down into the magma workshops...

We were fortunate enough to strike magma far far below the main fort and, with a bit of finagling, to pump it into minecarts and haul those by hand up here to reduce our need for fuel. Infinite fuel has made it very easy to train legendary smiths, who are in the process of making masterwork equipment for our militia. By exporting clothes, bone byproducts of our turkey and pig pens, glass trinkets and masterwork metal objects produced in training the smiths, we are able to import ores, metal bars, wood, and metal objects that we can melt into usable ingots for our own production.

When I'm feeling like I want to chill I really enjoy generating young worlds. Early on you have far less of the !FUN! things that fill the world over time. You're less likely to get vampires or necromancers, werecreatures are less common because fewer cursed lineages have been established, and you get more creatures like minotaurs and cyclopes attacking since they haven't mostly been killed yet. It's also nice because so many more good embark locations are available and if you're trying to learn you can more easily settle away from hostile civilizations, giving you breathing room to tackle invasions and war at your own pace.