Dwarf Fortress Roundtable - Ep. 123: It’s all about the Siege Update

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

We talk all about Toady One's description of the upcoming siege update: https://bay12games.com/dwarves/#2025-09-17

Welcome to Dwarf Fortress Roundtable, the podcast for all things Dwarfee. I'm Jonathan. I'm Roland. I'm Tony. And about a week or two ago, does it, um, Totey 1 dropped the latest, um, what do you even call those? The latest update on Bay12games.com slash dwarves. Toadie's pearls of wisdom

Yeah Tody drops some knowledge on us That's what he did Bam His prophecies The prophecies of Toadie That's what I'm going to call it And it sounds very very interesting

Like there could be some serious changes Coming up to the game That in my opinion might Might make it Better If you haven't read it already Just don't freak out about all the NFT stuff Yes

Just don't worry about it It's fine microtransactions and in-game purchases, it's fine. It's only going to cost you three cents to get a steel pick now. That's fine. That's a small price to pay for your... But it's your pick. You can own it.

Sorry. God. Unless you decide you want to sell that pick. Look, bad. It wasn't funny that it's not funny now. I'm going to stop. Okay. Anyway, moving on.

So anyway, we thought we'd kind of go over that this episode. If you haven't read it yet, you don't have to. because we're going to read it to you. Oh, yeah, we are. But we will link it in the show notes. Okay, so it looks like he's working on sieges, which I think that we agree that they have gotten a little easier than they used to be. Do we agree there?

Yeah. Doors. Especially if you do the hermit method and you just vault yourself in and you don't deal with it at all, then, yeah, I mean, you don't have to deal with sieges. They put up a door, which is the strongest substance known to the world. A wooden door, no problem. Although, you know, before Steam, people would go through the door.

Trolls would break them. It would be broken down. And I still have that in my blood, so I don't really, I don't trust doors, is what I'm trying to say. Well, it sounds like that may be well-founded. Yeah, I use drawbridges, yeah. But it sounds like drawbridges are getting jacked, too. Yeah, yeah. Well, and you don't even have to, at this point, you don't have to do the hermit method.

You can actually train up 10 dwarves for, like, heavy combat and send them out there. And 10 dwarves can, you know, defeat a siege of 70 goblins. They may get a few bumps and bruises and a couple cuts here and there, but there's a good chance that they're going to win. So, yeah. The only problem that you will ever face is that you have too many enemies, which doesn't, like, amount to your dwarves will just take so much damage. at some point that they, you know, keel over.

It's just that your dwarfs will start to get exhausted, fall over, and then they get stabbed to death while they're on the ground. So you can technically make, do some math and find out how many individual fights one good legendary fighting dwarf can take before he like falls over and gets to exhausted and stuff, right? which is why you should never underestimate elven ambushes because they bring a lot of animals and it doesn't matter if it's a small jaguar puppy okay it exhausts the dwarf and that kills it so i haven't run into a whole lot of animals but i have yet to have a squad of 10 legendary dwarves with steel armor lose to anything like i said a couple of them have been injured but not

you know, fatally, so. But in any case, we're going to go ahead and kick this off. And we're going to go through this paragraph by paragraph and kind of talk about it. In the, just imagine TOTI-1 saying this. I'm not going to use his voice. Do the accent. No. Look on sieges has been going well.

The sieges now dig, deconstruct, and build. No, I'm going to have to cut that. It's bonus material. That's right. work on sieges has been going well the siegers now dig deconstruct and build these activities can all be turned off individually in the difficulty settings and their speeds and tendencies can also be adjusted there actually i'm using the accent just a little bit the phraseology it's all right accident but anyway it's it's what i'm doing right now that we talked about this in the pre-show i'm in a play and i can't get out of that mode so anyway the only thing that i have the only problem i have with that is that you're able to turn it off. The play or the accent. Because you will turn it off or?

The activities, the things that, these things that we're about to talk about that, oh, yes, that it is enableable, like kind of like Rimworld, the way they did it there. Like, you can make your difficulty bonkers or you can just be like, okay, don't hurt me, please. As he says that these activities can be turned off individually and not turned on individually, it appears that they will be the default on. So you can opt out. you don't have to opt in, which is good.

That way, vanilla will still be the more challenging of the sort. I'll be honest, the biggest difficulty spike I've had since Steam is that damn portable game thing in finding out where my shit's saved. That is, that's, that

defeated me a few times, I'll be honest. Huh. Hmm. Yeah. So were you like trying to port the game between different computers or? Yeah, I like to play sometimes on a Windows machine and sometimes on a back. And so I just kind of schlep my save games around with me on a thumb drive or a network

drive or something. And it's when it puts it in hidden directories and windows under your app data roaming and all that thing, I just, whoever designed that, I know it's not TOTI. It's somebody at Microsoft and they're terrible people. Whoever made that. Anyway, that's my. Can you turn that off? Yeah, you can. And then it doesn't quite work the way I expected it to. And, I could be an idiot, but I don't know, man. Now it seems to be working, and I just don't want to do anything. Gotcha. Just, like, hold my breath.

Anyway, be careful. If you can't find your save games, check your Door Fortress settings. Yeah. But this is very edge, I'm sure, not very many things. When it comes to the new activities, let's call on like that. I mean, deconstructing is one thing, right? They just come to your door and deconstruct it. They go up to your wall and just deconstruct it.

There's now a hole. Okay, I get that. The digging part is going to be interesting. Because if we, for example, look at Rimworld, where invaders can, in fact, dig into your mountain base, they always try to go the shortest route. They always try to dig the least amount of wall, obviously. But that means you could channel them into a specific kill zone where you just, you know, wait for them because you know. that this is the place they're going to dig into. What I'm trying to get at is what happens if they dig into your like water trap and accidentally flood your entire fortress?

Well, you're, you need to design your water trap better. Yeah. Yeah. Apparently, that is going to be a little bit of a problem. Also, I wonder, A, how fast they can dig. be whether or not they can dig everything or if there's

like they can only dig dirt or certain stones that are soft I don't know or if they're undead does that mean those guys are like legendary and everything does that mean they'll just start they'll just be like tunneling machines that's that is

a possibility that is a possibility well what concerns me the most in a good way is the word build that they will be able to build so perhaps they can build staircases to get over your walls

yes I like that idea that is true that is also what frightens me the most because if they can build for example just a floor just some flooring they could potentially build over a moat

yes and like you cannot dig through a moat have fun there's water or lava in there you cannot deconstruct my moat. That's not going to work either, but you can build over it. And that could be fatal to everyone that is currently building moats and stuff. Because if they can just, you know, build their own little bridge over it and then deconstruct the wall behind it, yeah, that's kind of scary stuff. I don't know how that's going to work because how would you,

ah, that's when you'd give your archers like really heavy crossbows to throw, like make them all lot of lead, so they hurt. I don't know. What's your soul? I mean, yeah, you could, you could really go down the route of having more archers that just stand on top of the wall and then shoot at the enemies that are incoming. You mean like archers are supposed to do? Exactly. Yeah, might all pick up arrows and shoot now. It's kind of neat to watch it. They'll go in practice, which is fun. So you've played with some archers? True. Yeah, and they, they shoot. I mean, they haven't shot when I wanted them to do it, but they'll

practice. I'm still not I'm still not quite have the knack, I guess. I wonder about, does this mean mind cards might be a good defensive mechanism because you can't build over mind card tracks? I mean, I think mine cards will always remain like the S double

plus super best defensive method if you do it right. Imagine a mine card track that just goes, does like a circle around your fortress outer wall or you have like an outer wall mine card track that has being driven on inner wall and nobody goes in there.

Okay. And if they deconstruct a wall and there's just 400 mine cards going at like Mach 8, like, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-choo, right? They step in there, they get shredded. There's, yeah, okay, what are you going to do? Deconstruct something? They have fun. You don't have the time.

Yeah. You got to do like the walls of Constantinople, you know, like the land wall. So you've basically, you're going to be deploying now to any sort of geography that looks like Constantinople. And then you just have one giant wall to build because they can't swim across a big body of water. So you find your Bosphorus, you know, and I think you got it, right? You build your outer wall and your inner wall and your moats. I think that really depends because armies can bring like mounts. they can ride on animals

and they can ride on amphibians I think that got tweaked for a while because they're not showing up with any amphibians because amphibians had the problem that the amphibian would go into the water and the goblin would not get off the frog when it dives and therefore drown which was kind of annoying

that's funny but if that ever returns and the amphibians no longer try to drown their riders, then potentially you're not even safe if you're on an island because they could now just swim over. Swim? Wow. Let's see.

The amphibian swims and the rider just sits on top of the amphibian. And then maybe they can even shoot both while they do that. There's so many possibilities. I remember trying to test the smooth wall theory because I had a, I had, I think I was inspired by something that you had where I dug a big pit and I would throw things into it just, you know, because I was like, you know, out of sight out of mine. And they'd fall 40 floors to the cavern or down. But cats would climb back out of it because they can climb up anything. But then if you smooth the walls, I think it's supposed to make it harder to climb.

Like, what do you think? Are we going to have to have like two levels of wall and smoothing and. Don't know. Well, this will find out. Ah, this is the thing, right? This is our speculation. All right. Moving on to paragraph two.

Siegers require picks to dig, do it slowly, and try other means first. Trolls and blind cave ogres have been given a, have been given new great pick items to improve their digging. They still dig much slower than dwarves. Much, much slower than dwarves. So, uh... Dad answers some questions, yeah. this is however interesting first a new item a great pick a great pick that has implications because i'm firstly thinking about the gladiator tournament okay if the great pig actually turns out

to be just a oversized pig it might become one of the best mealy weapons because a pig already is insanely good at times because it has just so good of a puncture rating. But if you have an even bigger pick and if your dwarfs can wield it, oh,

ooi, ooi, y, y, y, y, y, y, and now in the hands of a blind cave ogre? The cave ogre is not going to know where to smash. I'm going to compare this again to Rimworld, because in Rimworld

you can actively tell your pawns what to shoot at. You don't really get that in Dwarf fortress Because even if you try to click on one person They just kind of fire and everyone they want Because otherwise you could just click on everyone that has a pick To then disable the invaders' ability to actually dig through your walls Yes, Dwarf fortress, not a real-time strategy game

Yeah Yeah, I think Rimworld might be a good way to practice some of the defensive tricks and strategies. I started playing that game more. Firstly, you should, but the downside is that the shooting mechanic just works very different in Rimworld because in Rimworld, if you don't install mods, that is,

you have unlimited ammo. So your dudes can just go like ha-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-da-dha- forever, while your dwarf very much need. a certain amount of ammo. Yeah. Yeah, and I think in real world they're carrying like weapon, like machine guns as opposed

to, yeah, I mean slightly, and you can throw, there's incendiary stuff and all of that, so. I'm wondering when that will come into Dwar Fortress, you know, like flame arrows. Aren't we stuck in the, yeah, I suppose the Romans had those, so the dwarfs should.

Because what's our technology cut off? I think, I think 400. I think it was before the fall of Constantinople, right? Because that was the first, not to keep going back to it, but I think that was the first time gunpowder was used effectively to conquer defenses

that always were effective throughout antiquity. I mean, I think that's our cap, right? Because we don't have gunpowder in North Fortress. We don't have gunpowder, but on the other hand, we will get a magic system at some point. Right. And I always question,

if you have a magic, system, you know, and like, that dude over there is flinging fireballs. Why would I need a musket? Yep. Yep. If you have magic, that's a good, it's a good workaround. Well, because, because a musket would be a scan weapon and fireball would you be able to dodge. You know, it's like doom. Yeah, it's going to really change things. It's going to be Dorf Fortress FPS. Yeah. I still would like to see a mod where you can walk through your You know, they had that with the 47 and before. They had a mod where you could walk through a 3D render of it,

kind of like in Minecraft. I never could get it running on my computer, though. Was it Stone Sense? Yeah. I think Stone Sense was the photograph one. Now, this was... Could you wander it? I remember seeing the one that you could wander through.

Yeah, I think that was Stone Sense. I did it a few times. It made you like a 3D render and then tried to place the object. as like sprites into that. Yeah, it wasn't Stone Sense, though. It was, um, crud. Um, yeah, Stone Sense is the one where you can take a snapshot and you can get the awesome pictures of your, of your fortress. Um, it was, it's a 3D isometric one.

What I'm talking about is the first person one? And it had the word stone in. What was that, what was that called? Shucks, I can't remember. 3D. Some of those mods haven't necessarily. necessarily come back. The one that I miss is Legends viewer. That one was pretty cool.

There is a version of it. I don't know. Is it still being worked on Roland? Do you know? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. There's somebody, some delightful human took all the code and kind of fitted it up. Armach Vision. Thank you. Yes, Armach Vision.

I think there also used to be like an add-on for Dwar Fortress that would take your world and make it into Minecraft world. I actually wanted to try that out, but I never got around to do that. I saw that somewhere. Just remembered

that, because you said Minecraft. Twisted Logic has a video on Armach Vision that is on the Dwarfurtress team, so it may actually work. We may have to check that out. It's weird. Yeah, yeah.

It's cost anything to check out. Nope. That was two years ago, so that was well into the steam era. So, yeah, gosh, can you believe that? Yeah. Here we are. This segment has been brought to you by Deckham Broadbrews Bottomless Brewery. From sunrise to cave in, Deckham's got a barrel with your name on it.

Strong enough to fuel a mining crew, smooth enough to make you forget about the mining accident. Deckham Broadbrew, drink deep. All right, moving on. Trolls and larger siege engineers can build floors and stairs with blocks. This allows them to move through open air slowly and vulnerably. Vulnerably. Damn it, I can't say that word. Slowly and vulnerable.

Roland say that for me. Me. I hit one. No, you curse the. I can. Vulnerably. Vulnerably. Anyway, they've been given the ability to build floors under the airspace occupied by raised bridge buildings to overcome that gap.

So much like you were talking about, they can build floors over open air so that they can, that's going to have to change my way of building a forge. So one of the things that I do, I like building structures above ground. so I will put a stockpile of blocks above ground and have it be fed from other stockpiles underground so that it's always full so that I can build my above ground stuff. I would hate to have a siege come in and just be provided with the tools they need to defeat me. True. I think there is a possibility

that they maybe bring their own blocks because you can't really depend that the player has to blocks above brown which then would slow down the builders again because now they're like holding stuff that is very heavy which is good so you have more time to actually shoot at them however i'm deeply scared of the second sentence the third sentence here they've been given the ability to build floors under the airspace occupied by raised bridges buildings to overcome that gap oh we can't even do that, can we? No.

Because that means, imagine a corridor, okay? It's an underground passage, and there's like a Prince of Persia just gap in the middle, okay? It goes to nowhere. You're not old enough to know about that game.

I am. And on the other side is a raised bridge, which technically would mean that you can, do you anything. You can't jump over the abyss. You can't get to the bridge. You can't, you know, climb on the side because then the bridge is still working as a door. This is now being changed fundamentally because the invaders will be able to bridge that gap, get to the bridge,

deconstructed, and just move on. That feels pretty OP. That is dangerous. Because Because in my head, I'm starting to consider what kind of defenses would be necessary to, like, repel invaders that are already inside my fortress in, like, my above ground portion of the fortress. So either I have to go with mine cards that just go spinny, spinny, or, you know, liquid stone. As in magma? Yeah. I feel like you're, again, like, looking in history, you're getting to a point when your traditional defenses that have always worked for you just aren't going to work anymore. So, like, does this end city walls? You know what I mean?

Like, are we done with that? That's what I'm wondering. I mean, they still get you some benefits. For example, a raised position for your altruist is good because they can shoot. better at the goblins on the ground and they don't really get shot back that much. And it might slow the siegers down. Yeah, is it just a way to slow things down? Yeah.

But it's no longer the, like, completely impenetrable obstacle that it used to be. I think we need stuff like Greek fire. That would be pretty cool. I'm telling you, flaming, flaming arrows, Greek fire, pitch, all that jazz. military boats before we can have Greek fire. Oh, that's true. Boats in general would also be cool. I think you could launch

Greek fire from your city walls or from your fortifications. Like there were things where they used sort of the equivalent of a pump and somebody would operate the pump and somebody would spray the nozzle. Yeah. That must have been terrible to be on the receiving end of just kind of thinking about it.

You know, there were probably cases where it was awful to be on the delivering end of that too. You know, I bet it was pretty unpleasant. Yeah. I bet there were some accidents. I mean, just thinking about it, like, it really must have sucked to live back in those days, but you know, I guess you didn't know any better.

In World War II, you did not want to see your papers come up in basic training, saying you're going to be a flamethrower operator. Yeah. You did not want that job. On the other hand, now you have TikTok, so I don't know. Also, you know, the second paragraph

mentioned, they try other means, first. And I'm starting to actually now just realize the gravity of that sentence. Yeah. Other means. Depending on how the pathfinding works, they don't want to dig into my fortress. So if they want to channel in, they want to dig in, where does the path finding go? Where does it stop? How far does it go? Will they prefer to, like, jump into my mode, swim across, dive, and get out of my well before they start to channel? Doesn't necessarily say they'll try all other means first. True, true.

I'm just, you know. I figure it's probably like, if there's an open door, they'll use that. Can we just think about how many dwarves TOTE is about to kill with this release? That's all I'm asking us to think about. Think about the death that's about to happen. It's great. It's great. I hope he doesn't find it overpowered and go, oh, well, we need to back that off. Again, I really liked the massive cave dwellers invasions.

That one fortress that I had where that was defeated by them, but man, it was fun. It was a great challenge. I loved it. But anyway. That's true. I also liked it. I was mostly upset about two things, and that is the clutter. and secondly, the fact that the cave dwellers

were able to use steel weapons and armor. I really didn't like that part. Those could have been tweaks. I don't think that they necessarily had to shut it all down for that. Yep. But in any case, we're rehashing an episode from last spring. You should check that out. Yeah, if you haven't already, my goodness.

My goodness. Episode where we talk about Catechism Dark Dazer. Here's another question. Larger siege engineers. What exactly is the siege engineer? Is it just the captain that's in charge of the siege? Are they going to actually have siegers who have character classes? Yeah, I think it comes probably down to that

because there is already the job of siege engineer in the game. You mostly see it rarely because that would mean you're building a lot of siege engines, but your dwarfs can, like, earn the job title of siege engineer. And I assume that that is what he is talking about. Some of these enemies that will come to your fortress will just be having the job title of seed engineer

and have some skills and mechanics or, you know, siege engineering. Those apparently are the ones that can build. It's not like every single goblin has knowledge, and ability to put down some stairs or blocks. Which, yeah, okay, that's nice. I don't think I've ever built a siege workshop. You haven't built catapults or anything? They don't do anything, catapults.

So I think that's part of it, is like the catapult may be useful now. Hopefully. The ballista is pretty fun. Yeah, ballista is neat. If you build it right and you have like a nice setup and somebody that has a high, siege engineer skill I think it is they shoot straight

they shoot completely straight and the ballista bolt just keeps flying for like so many blocks and even if there's like it does matter if there's goblins in your hallway or the hallway is empty

that ballista bolt just flies for it's indiscriminate death yeah it's really gruesome I love it and don't have any dwarves behind the bad guys because they'll get taken out too, right? Yes, absolutely. Okay.

This episode of Dwarfurtress Roundtable is made possible in part by Sarnanagan's pranks and practical jokes. Need a goblin whoopee cushion? A bucket of magma balanced on a door or just the old switch the lever labels classic. Sarnanagan's guarantees laughs, screams, or both. Sernanigans, because every fortress needs a little chaos. Most monstrous siegers can break down raised bridges, vertical bars, and other blocking buildings.

They can also break through constructed walls and fortifications over time. These actions don't require picks, so creatures like war cave dragons can join in the fun. Yeah, it's getting tougher. War cave dragons, you say. I don't even know what that is. Oh, okay. It is essentially a dragon. It works like a dragon.

It doesn't spew fire, I think. Pretty sure. I'm also pretty sure it cannot fly, but it's essentially a very large lizard that really, really hurts when it's, you know, attacking you. So is it like a cave dweller? Yeah. And the adjective war at the beginning of that means that they can be trained, I guess.

Yes, they can be trained. I believe they can also be hunting trained, which I believe is very funny. There's so much about this game that I still haven't dug into. I have not really found any cave dragons myself. I think I've found, like, in my entire lifespan, like two, okay, and I did not get to actually train them. So, I feel you. Monstrous siegers is however the key word Because if goblins

Now bring more monsters and creatures and critters To my doorstep I am very excited about that Very very excited What is a monster in Door Fortress In Dungeons and Dragons A monster is anything that is not a player character Or perhaps in PC as well

But so what is a monster fair i think for me the definition of monster is pretty much everything that isn't real but is in the game so like a troll would be a monster for me the blind cave ogre would be a monster for me flying guts

cave dragons dragons minators those are all like in the monster monster category from me. Okay, this next paragraph is what scares me the most, I think. Seizures will still run into traps,

but can now adjust their path over time if an area gets too hot for any reason. So they'll bail. I thought they could bail before, because I feel like I've had traps and they're just like, okay, run away, run away! Bailing and deciding to

choose another route or different things, though. Yeah. Because they retreat, they don't just look around for something different. Yeah. And they don't fully retreat if you do it right. So I, for example, remember a different fortress fairly small. And picture this, okay, a square, just a complete square out of blocks. That is my entrance.

And then around that square, there is a one tile wide hallway completely one time around it. And that hallway is full with traps. And that is my trap hallway. I would seal the normal entrance and then open the trap hallway entrance when I get sieged. And these idiots, they would, you know, go into the trapway. People would get trapped or hurt or fall down and die. And then the dudes next to him, he would go, oh, damn, Steve's down. Holy balls.

Oh, no. then he would also go in and trigger the next trap and that would just continue sometimes they would like freak out and go like oh my god I'm not going in like five minutes later he's going in seriously come on man well they fed him some whiskey that's right some plump helmet wine yeah I think that is what you can do this you can handle it no problem man show us how it's done yeah exactly like come on you know hyping him up um So I think that's what is meant here with an area gets too hot for any reason. If you have like a really long trap hallway and like 30 goblins just got smashed to bits by hidden traps, they're not going to say, okay, well, that worked badly, but I swear the next time it's going to work good. So are trap hallways dead? Yeah, well, what I wonder is one of the shenanigans I've done before. is have my trap hallway, but have a drawbridge at the end. So I get a few in, and then I put the drawbridge up, and then they can't leave.

Yeah. I make it an involuntary stay. Yeah. I can enslave them. Yeah. Now enslaving them would be cool, but I don't think we can do that yet. Do you think that's going to come? Inslaving them?

I don't know. is there's like because that's a for anyone listening if you haven't tried rimworld that's something that you can do in that is like you can basically capture people and then enslave them and you have to keep being horrible to them otherwise they'll rebel and leave so I don't know I think the labor systems sort of work a little bit differently but yeah it could do I certainly adds a new level of cruelty to true true i will also fully admit that i would love that addition uh in the game but that is to nobody

surprise yeah no i i i hear you i think it would be a fun thing to do like if you can't build an organ harvesting farm i don't know but i guess they don't have the same level of medical technology so no not hardly who who knows what comes with the magic update that's true you're right there's that that that that that that that that that that that leaves a lot of uh new tropes to explore siegeing armies can now bring skilled units and units with improved equipment and the commander is also highlighted in the pop-up message so that is there so the commander's highlighted in the pop-up message is that like you'll get to see that that you'll be able to click on him kind of like you do in a in legends mode and see that this person has been part of so-and-so many kills and so many

so many sieges. I wonder. Yeah, I would imagine, because it works similar to the way that you are sieging goblins, right? And then it's like, oh, yeah, Ubuque, hoisted fortress, met the goblin, blah, blah, blah in the open field and match his skill or something. I think that the actual goblin leader that often blends in with the rest is now being highlighted so you can click on him so you know who is the leader and possibly he also has really good equipment so he might be harder to kill because of the equipment he might have more skills than the rest of his army which would make him more dangerous um so now you have like elites and i i I'm curious, I'm curious, you know, because you're bringing cave dragons, you're bringing trolls,

you're bringing digging blind cave ogres to my doorstep, and now you're telling me you make elites and, and like the commander who now has a like a really, like an actual presence on the battlefield, okay, okay, whew, damn, is it hot in here? Can we, but consequently, if you kill them, does it affect the morale like could you say target them and then you know they go oh gosh the commander's gone we better retreat that would be very interesting to find out you know that would be a fun way to change the nature of who you targeted it's like you just go crazy and try to kill the commander yeah they go uh you know they they get a hit on the morale check on the same hand you don't

want them to escape because I'm not sure if we're going to get it in this update, but traps, right? So the goblin sees a trap. He sees that there is a trap and then he can leave your map and he can go back to a civilization. So at some point we will probably have this thing where this goblin now knows and he will tell us friends that there are traps. So Maybe they are less likely to then use your, like, trap corridor because everyone is like, no, that's a trap corridor. It's, come on, man. We told you about this. Was it in the briefing?

Was it the briefing? Check your notes. Come on. But, yeah, commandos. Commanders. I wonder what is meant by improved equipment, by the way. Is it just the normal equipment, but with better quality? Maybe it's...

Are they going to bring Adamantium? Masterwork? Or a masterwork? That would be mean if they'd just bring Edmontine stuff. Yeah. That would be pretty harsh. That's where I think then you'd really need your siege weapons. Because if it says that they can build stuff,

so maybe they set up a little camp or something. I don't know. I could see lots of ways this could be relatively interesting. Makes me want to go build some catapults, though, and see how they work, because I don't think. I've really ever used those. They are not that great, to be honest.

No. Yeah, I think I was like, well, how on earth is this going to work? And you get to choose what you put in them, too, don't you? Like, you could put children in them or whatever. So you put earth in them? I don't think you can put children in them. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough, maybe not.

But I'm pretty sure you can choose the type of stone, which probably has, like, mechanical reasons. and, like, oh, no, jet is, like, denser than microline and whatever. Yeah, get Eurist away from the catapult. It keeps putting platinum nuggets in it. Stop. You know, I'm very happy because the way that sieges have been working for a while got, I'm looking forward, let's use sluggish.

Okay, I was just going to say easy. Yeah, pretty easy. Yeah. I've got, like, serious military power. I have good equipment, okay? I don't even have, like, the best equipment. I don't use any candy so far. It is just steel and some bronze.

That's what I use. And it is still so good. My dwarfs will remove everyone from the map that I tell them to. There is no stopping them. And shifting the power, so to say, having like a new way siege's work, that might actually mean that I will sit in the, like, this comes out, okay, now we're in the future. This just came out. Roland is now in front of his PC and he gets the first tweaked new siege. I'm going to shiver, okay?

Shiver my timbers. I'm going to be afraid. Yeah. I love it. Today's show is sponsored by Brundar 313's beard oil and battle bomb. Tames the wildest beards, shines the glossiest moustaches, and doubles as goblin repellent. Brundar 313, because every dwarf deserves a glorious chin fortress. Siege work continues through this moment.

month and onward. So, we're on version, what, 52 now? Yeah, major version 52. Let's say this becomes major version 53. So I wonder how long it's going to be. February? February seems like a reasonable, you know, day. I feel like February.

That feels, you know, if we make it to February, I bet we see something. I could see that I hear that the winters in the UK are kind of dank, so yeah Oh, is that where he is now? I think so.

Ah, nice. I think UK, I'm not positive about that. Delightful. Well, they speak English there, so that's fun. Yeah, I mean, winter where I live is over then, but yeah, it's, you know, that's why I was thinking February is like after winter. yeah

February is typically our worst month here in the in the Midwest that's when our spring starts I know having having come from the Midwest like February is something that's like in my psyche

like it's the bad time but you know if you're on the West Coast it's nice yeah how are Berlin February's you know I like the

the cold and dark season a lot of people seem to have some problems with it it's like no so dark I really enjoy it if I go out of the house in the morning to go to work and it's just dark I like it

What time locally does the sunset at the earliest where you're at? Now you're asking me specifics I mean like 4 p.m. 3 p.m. I mean here it's typically

5-ish is as early as it will get dark because we're at a little bit more southern latitude than you are. I've got it. I just looked it up. 4.03 p.m.

Yeah, okay. So you get a couple hours more Oh, hang on a sec. Wait, no, no, no, no. I'm wrong about that. So here we are. Summer solstice? Yeah, that's 3503, 352 p.m. Summer solstice?

How about the winter? Winter. Okay. It's winter solstice at 812. No, 815, 816, 815, 815 to 3 to 350. That's a pretty short day. Yeah, my wife just spent some time in Alaska, and it was the sun was setting at like 10.30 p.m. Yeah, yeah.

It is now, just we're talking right now, and it is getting dusky. We'll have to get up and, like, put on my lights because the light is just fading. So, yeah. And here it's approaching noon. Nice. All right. So I think we're going to wrap it up after that go over of the latest report from Todi 1. Looking forward to that being released.

It would be very much so looking forward to that being released. I really do want to get my archers and figure out how they work because I've heard. heard rumor that they work now. They do. They do. So, yeah. And Archers, I always thought were a fun part. They were a pain in the butt to get working.

But once they got working, I really enjoyed them. It's like making soap in the game. When you've got that down, you feel like you've won. I don't know. That's just me. I'm a simpleton. I always have trouble with lie in that, I think it's a lie that I have trouble with. Even though I have it on hand, I, sometimes they just won't use it.

it's like it'll be like look dudes I've got a huge stockpile full of lie here and you won't go use that lie. Why not? Don't lie to me. Sorry. I've had the problems with tallow where they'll cook the tallow

before I can make it into soap. So yeah, I've heard this. When I start butchering, I have to go in and ban the tallow from cooking as fast as I can otherwise they'll just ruin it. Well, I make a stockpile with with tallow and have it only feed the the soap place that's did just anyone listening that's the correct way to do it there's a dumb way and there's a correct way i'll start with with lie as well i've

try to put like stockpiles around my my soap making place in fact yeah overall i have i have started doing that more and more with with every specialized uh every specialized ingredient to a to a task i will try to make it yeah and i I don't remember whether it was you or one of our guests who suggested that, that I, basically, if I want furniture to be decorated, that I just put furniture in a stockpile and feed that, feed that stockpile to a jeweler's workshop. That was you. Yeah, that's that, I mean, it's just bliss, man. It's great. Yeah, I love it.

I know, right? It's so good. And I started splitting up my stockpiles. So now I have like stockpile here, stockpile there. It's all small stockpiles, but that enables me to, like, a min-max, to an insane degree. Only encrussed this stockpile, only encrussed this stockpile. Now I have a stockpile just for statues, so I can just like smash everything that I have onto these statues. It's delicious.

Oh, so you guys are using the stockpiles that way. Yeah. Okay. The link system definitely is the way to get, like, the last few percentages out of the game, I feel. Without having to micromanage too much. Yeah. I think that is the definition of micromanaging. No, micromanaging is trying to get them to use one particular piece.

Yeah, I'm doing it. I'm doing it the daft micromanagey way and what you guys are describing is, like, smarter. so I'm actually thinking there's something here there's something to this I need to I need to go figure that out at some point you can figure out mass production

of the same goods so for example imagine you want your goblins your goblins your goblets in your tavern to only be of sterling silver and only be encrusted with bands of copper

and only have iron pictures of something that happened in your fortress. You can make sterling silver and dwarf fortress? Yeah. Yeah, how do you do that? Is it, well, I guess you're knowing how to make sterling silver. I am pulling this out of somewhere. I think it's silver and copper, and you mix it together into an alloy, and then you have sterling silver. I love that idea.

And, you know, a lot of this game, it's not the actual utility of the things. It's the aesthetics. So, yeah. Correct. I love the idea of having, you know, sterling silver stuff in a tavern. Yes. Yep. Because in my mind now, it's like all their plates are pewter, you know.

Well, not pewter because I don't make pewter. But, you know, it's like stone this, stone that stone goblets. It's just kind of dull looking. I love the idea of sterling silver. Ooh, sterling silver chairs. I like that. Oh, yeah. Yep.

I want a lot of sterling silver. Where do you guys fall on the lead goblet thing? Do you let him eat and drink out of lead? Because, you know, like we know, but they don't. I prefer to make my metal coffins out of lead because that gives me like the imagery of this absolutely massive coffin where somebody just gets put in and then you close it and it is never being opened again. He's like radioactive or something. It will also protect your dead whenever the nuclear weapon mod comes out.

Which I think you just make with rotten cheese. All right, guys. Got anything else we want to cover today? No. I think we got it. I think we've got lots to look forward to with the old video game. Well, everybody, send us an email. join the Discord server.

Join the conversation. Yeah, people are posting some cool stuff in the Discord server. I have to say, I really enjoy passively consuming the content there. It's awesome. Thanks, everybody who's there. All right, well, until next time, everybody. Yep, see ya. Have fun.

All right. Adios. And that wraps up this episode of Dwarfortress Roundtable. Brought to you by. Deckham Broadbrews' endless supply of ale, Sir Nanagan's guaranteed mischief, and Brugdard 313's beard oil strong enough to repel goblins.

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