Dwarf Fortress - The Gilded Axe

I learned about this game in a list of free games from PC Gamer magazine.  It's the most ambitious city builder type game I've ever seen, and the graphics are all ASCII art.  I decided that I would start blogging about my world for two reasons.

Without the blog, I tend to play for way too long in a single sitting.  Also, without the blog, you have nothing to show for you efforts.

I generated a world called The Gilded Axe, and I'm going to build my first fort at a river coming out of the mountains into a forest.  That should give me a good mixtrue of stone and wood to start with.  I selected a dwarven society called The Treaty of Obeisance as my home civilization because I liked the name.  And I gave a dwarf named Zulban some social skills so the game should make her the leader of my expidition.  

One of my goals for this game is not to build aboveground structures and keep everything below the surface.  I was going to customize my group name, but the randomly assigned one fits perfectly.  My dwarves will be know as The Banner of Depths.  Their fortress will be known as Darkbrew, the Eyes of Elders.

So I'm going to embark and see what I can get done in a single season.  The basic goals are to get a spot for the trade depot dug out, underground farming started, and a baracks built.  When I get a look at my map, I have an immediate decision to make on where to the entrance to my underground fortress.  There is a stream at the north end of the map, and a large plateau at the southern end.  I would really like to dig down into the rock plateau, but because trees and water are useful, I decite to start at the northern end of the map.

I got my spring goals accomplished, plus I got a baracks built.  I'm going to go ahead and play another season since this first one goes quickly.  I want to get my initial set of bedrooms built, and get my initial set of workshops laid out in a good pattern.  I want A Carpenter, mason, mechanic and wood burner on the industry side.   I also want to get all my storage underground.

Well, I didn't get a wood burnder built in the summer.  I should probably produce a few rock crafts as trade goods this fall.  Hopefully I get a few imigrants.  If I don't, I probably need to put a miner onto farming duty.  The bedrooms are dug out, but not fully furnished, so I want to get that done this fall.  I need to get my bookkeeper an office too.

Well, I didn't get any imigrants, so that limits my options for expanding things.  I went on into winter, where I think my goals are to burn a little wood into charcoal, harvest more trees to make up for what I've been using, and dig out my metal ores.  This game is so addicting.  I'm going to let it run while I'm not doing anything fancy and cook some dinner.