Dwarf Fortress' Simpler, Prettier Cousin: Let's Play Gnomoria!

It's nowhere near as detailed and complex as DF, but it is a hell of a lot more accessible. Whether that's a trade-off worth making is up to you, but it's not too expensive, it is improving all the time (both in terms of usability and features) and the developer seems to have his head screwed on and has an enviable work ethic (weekly patches, nearly all the time, often adding new content). Obviously, I recommend it!

It is indeed not too late, although you may have to wait a bit.

Unless I missed someone, the prospective new immigrant list goes:

Snark
Kaneda
Ozzo
Trudas
fadeaccompli

I'll get probably two or three this winter, so cross your fingers!

(Additional people interested in joining the waiting list may indicate their interest by liking this post!)

I'm just shocked how close it is in the basics portrayed so far. I mean it looks good, but I thought he'd mess with the core mechanics.

I don't really know what there is to change, really. Unquestionably it draws heavy inspiration from DF, but the base concepts of this sort of thing have been laid down since at least the original Settlers and Dungeon Keeper, if not much earlier. Whatever you do, its still going to look pretty similar: people chop trees for lumber, mine out rocks, farm crops and process those by means of buildings into progressively more complex items.

The tinkerers are nearly done with what I think is the final invention in the tech tree. After this I'll be able to dismantle the tinker benches, which will leave the tinker gnomes more free for other forms of labour.



Meanwhile Marcin here installs a bronze mechanical wall - the brown square thing on the floor there, with the dots in the corners. With power supplied to this it becomes a wall, which means I can have a secure door I can turn on and off. Once I connect it up to the windmills, anyway.



The corpses of Bram and Tyjenks, now stripped of all their armor, remain strewn on the battlefield. The Terrible Puke's inhabitants aren't to sentimental about corpses. You can stockpile corpses in general, but moving specific ones around is basically impossible. As such I generally leave their bodies in place, where eventually they seem to just disappear.



The linkage mechanics of the mechanical wall are in place. Left to right, that's two windmills, a lever, a horizontal axle leading to two gearboxes, which lead to a vetical axle and another gearbox on the floor below, which activates the wall:



Like so!



A gnome has to come along and actually pull the lever after you give the order. When they do:



Wall disappears into floor. I am reasonably certain that with this wall up the Terrible Puke is completely impregnable: invaders can't smash it down or anything. That's very safe, but also kind of dull; so for now, I leave it down.

With gnomes still free to roam outside, a few are dashing out to grab armor, weapons and bits of metal from the corpses of dead goblins that got killed outside the walls. This annoyingly leads to a kind of loop where those running outside to raid the corpses end up getting set upon my new enemies arriving, which triggers the Keepers to come out from behind the walls to defend them, which leads to more corpses outside the walls, and so on and so forth.



That's how this happened. A fight between the Keepers, Damages and some greenskins, well outside the walls. It's a little irritating to have all my soldiers out of position, but it shouldn't really matter so long as I'm not attacked at the same time by something else.

So, with the military pulled out of position and bogged down with some ogres, the non-military residents of the Puke are stuck on some stairs, and have to hold out against a squad of undead - three zombies and two skeletons, one in iron.

And to cap it all, due to confusion over my recent orders for everyone to don metal armor, some people have removed their leather from their arms and legs... but have yet to replace it.

Jacquelle is one of the gnomes in trouble, and she just received a leg mangling injury. Fortunately she manages to sneak down to floor -59:



She bandages the bleeding but her leg remains mangled.



Meanwhile, the distraction was provided by AaronSofaer, who DID remember his leather trousers, but forgot a weapon. And the leather isn't doing much good either.



All the proper military - everyone with "Defend gnomes" orders - have gone out to fight the ogres, because they were the threat that was spotted first. I can't do anything to turn them around. I just have to hope they finish the battle quickly enough to run back and save everyone.



AaronSofaer's now unprotected leg is causing problems. But then he too manages to sneak away to bandages:



How come? Well, here comes Schadenfreude, and he brought a friend:



Yes, Schadenfreude has somehow grabbed Mirriam 's legendary hammer, The Crucifier of the Glutton. I'm honestly not sure how or why that happened, other than that my uniform orders must be to blame, again. I'm kind of glad, though:



Jacquelle takes advantage of the change in battle momentum to blind a zombie with her foot.



That's Schadenfreude next to the skeleton. He found an iron helm somewhere, too.



Hurry up, you guys! In an attempt to try and salvage the situation I let some groups (The Bolted Dancers of Brunch, the original emergency militia, and The Stretching Candies of Bunch, composed of miners with some limited battle skill) off their "avoid enemies" orders, in the hope they'd act to to try and save Jacquelle and AaronSofaer on the stairs. With the exception of Schadenfreude, though, they decided to instead help out with the ogres, which is why Leriel is here.

Not for the first time, I curse my inability to order the gnomes around directly.

You sure your armor orders were for "Any" armor? If you set head to "helmet" then they would never pick up a leather helmet, etc etc

Schadenfreude, Jacquelle and AaronSofaer remain embattled on the stairs. With the addition of the legendary hammer wielded somewhat inexpertly by Schadenfreude, the battle is pretty even; but with the weak or missing armor on them, they're only one half-decent blow from death.



The proper military finally dispense with the last ogre. Now get down the stairs, pronto!



AaronSofaer doesn't even have a helmet on: he's prone and injured...



Move faster, you bastards!



Schadenfreude makes a breakthrough....



...and then another....



..and then a blow that would have killed anything that wasn't already dead.

The cavalry have finally arrived to bail AaronSofaer out.



And then appropriately enough, Schadenfreude gets to finish it:



Whew. Crisis just averted. Jacquelle and AaronSofaer get themselves bandaged up and/or report to hospital.

I'm still very concerned about all the uniform confusion, though. I decide to try and do something about it.

And thus begins the largest cock-up in Terrible Puke history.

ANATOMY OF A COCK-UP - PART 1: INCOMPETENT ANTICS



A little note first: I've constructed a side door using a similar layout to the one on the main gate. I order the lever pulled so as to leave the wall closed, though. This is a decision I later have cause to regret.

So: the cock-up.

I've been frustrated that, despite the availability of bronze armour helmets and breastplates at least, my changes to the uniforms used by the mass of the general population haven't had the expected result. I'd wanted people to wear bronze or copper if it is available, and leather otherwise: what actally ahappened was a lot of milling around in confusion, and many gnomes dumping their armor altogether.

In an effort to get everyone uniform compliant, I order all the non military gnomes to report for guard duty on some guard areas I slapped down. I hope that being "on duty" will trigger the gnomes to decide to get dressed.



It doesn't quite work as I hoped.

While I wrestle with the Uniform UI to try and work out what combination of options will actyually get everyone dressed the way I want, an unintended consequence begins to play out.



Several gnomes have taken it upon themselves to head outside the walls via the main entrane (the only one open at the moment). I assume they're aiming for uniform compliance by retrieving some weapon or bit of armor from the corpses of those ogres and goblins that were killed the other night.



Schadenfreude and xanomon are only just out of the main gate, rounding the hill...



...while Dan Lawrence is far ahead by the lake.



These are the corpses I think they're heading to raid. The problem?



At least fourteen mants have just shown up on that side of the map, and are heading on a direct collision course for Dan Lawrence, xanomon and Schadenfreude.

And the worst part? Due to something I did with the uniform UI, all three aren't wearing anything on their arms and legs. Not even a thin layer of yak leather.

Anticipating disaster, I try a range of things. I attempt to change the uniform instuctions in the hope they'll stop running to the corpses for whatever it is they're after and instead rush back home. No dice. It seems they don't react to uniform changes quickly enough. All I succeed in doing is getting them to drop any weapons they were already carrying. Dan Lawrence does eventually turn around, as does xanomon, but Schadenfreude keeps coming - and it may well be too late anyway, as the mants are racing around the other way.



Next I order the side gate opened, in the hope they can dash back inside the walls quicker that way... but of course that means someone has to come pull the lever, which will take too long to affect anything much.

My final, desperation move is to order the troops out, in the hope they will get there a little faster and come in to save these errant gnomes before they get too mutilated.



It's all too little, too late. Dan Lawrence has turned around and is retreating rapidly; xanomon has rabbited, but here come the mants:



...and Schadenfreude is heading right for them.

ANATOMY OF A COCK UP - PART 2: MONTY PYTHON REFERENCE



The troops are marching out... but because the side gate isn't open yet, they still have to go the long way around.



Schadenfreude finally realise the uniform order have changed and turns around... but the mants catch him. Catch him with nothing on his arms and legs, and not even a weapon in hand. He quickly gets wounded, twice:



Okay, well, could be worse... and the soldiers have just made it! He can get away! There's still hope!



...there's still hop...



The troops are here - but they're battling only a few mants to the left of Schadenfreude, who is the bronze gnome on the right hand side of the image, with the red splodge where his leg should be. He's having to fight a stack of ten mants by himself, with empty hands and no limb armour.

It happens with devastating quickness.



...



...

He's still alive!?

It's just a flesh wound.

It sure is hilarious that without arms and legs he's just this hopping torso of bronze armor.

Oh my god, that's sort of disturbing. Ahahaha.

Is Mirriam in a dedicated military squad with no other tasks, or is she in a squad with a formation that has the Militia perk enabled? If it's the latter, maybe she dropped the hammer to grab a pickaxe or felling axe? My gnomes in my militia squads continually cycle weapons around because they drop them and switch to tools when they're off-duty; only my full-time professional soldiers hold on to their own weapons at all times.

Either way, nice swipe by Schadenfreude. Don't anybody else get any ideas, though - nobody touches Sasha The Dressed Fatality or we're gonna have words.

ANATOMY OF A COCK UP - PART 3: MISSING ARMS



Incredibly, the Schadentorso is still alive.



He's flopped in a pile of his own blood and legs, but he is alive.



Never has a gnome been more appropriately named.

Still, theoretically he could crawl home using his teeth, get bandaged up to avert bleed out, and then carry on living the rest of his days getting meals fed to him by caretaker gnomes. It could happen!



Well... I guess there wasn't much else left to target.



Perhaps this is the merciful thing. Godspeed, Schadenfreude. You came, Edelweiss named you, you did a lot of mining and stone-shaping, you lasted nearly two years, you had a heroic moment on some stairs with a purloined legendary hammer and some undead, and then you were marched out to your limb-loss doom due to incompetence.



The military are here in force now, to sought out these no-good mants quick sharp!



...wait.... Where's the Dressed Fatality? Why is almost no-one carrying weapons.

Ohshit.



Yes, almost everyone in the military, with the merciful exception of Thasero above, has show up to battle... with no weaponry. My uniform UI juggling is again to blame. Some have at least remembered their shields, and they are at least wearing their armor. But this is going to be a long, grim slog of a battle.



There's going to be a lot of that.

Everyone flails with whatever they do have to hand at one another, largely ineffectually. The usual gang-up tactics are rather stymied by the fact that we're actually outnumbered. At least shields apparently count as blunt weapons, to which mant carapaces are vulnerable.

And then, out of nowhere, a lucky strike!



...for the enemy.

The future of the Gnomeland depends on me and my whimsically-named hand axe! No pressure!

Wait a second. Schadenfreude was infected with the zombie virus and just died.

Uh-oh?

ANATOMY OF A COCK-UP - PART 4: WHATEVER WORKS

Sheepherder 's death was sudden and abrupt. That's gnomish warfare for you; while battles can wend on for hours with no-one getting a clear blow, and often enemies have their armour smashed to pieces and their limbs steadily removed before finally succumbing to blood loss or suffocation, sometimes someone just gets a clean hit and someone else dies, armour be damned.

Sheepherder was a strong soldier, a good soldier. He didn't deserve to be sent out to die on a battlefield like this, without his hammer. One of the original Starry Keepers, he died with 22 lifetime kills and a hammer skill of 67. He will be missed.

Now, fourteen mants face off against the remaining nine members of my military, half with their weapons missing. How will that go?



Minardii wields... a fragment of breastplate? And beats a mant to death with it.



Nerys does well, accounting for two with a shield/hunk of bronze combo:



Flixilber gets one while dual weilding his shield with... a helmet:


Thasero, being apparently the only soldier here so far with an actual weapon, accounts for three:


Towards the end, Gryff shows up, with a weapon, and accounts for one of the last ones:



That's eight. So who got the other six?

ANATOMY OF A COCK-UP - PART 5: THE MAN FROM SHIELD

SuperJay.

SuperJay got them all.

With his shield.



...SuperJay, I dub thee Captain Terrible Puke.



That's the last one, and wonderfully appropriately:



Hells yes.



Bad. Ass.



SuperJay: He's deadly with a shield, he's clad fully in iron...

Now he just needs to work out what happened to his hammer, and he'll be all the Avengers at once.

ANATOMY OF A COCK-UP - FINALE: UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Alert members of the audience will have realised that the full consequences of this battle haven't played out just yet.

And that evening, when the sun goes down, so it proves:



HE'S BACK! AND HE'S....



...upset?



Oh, yeah. I guess the zombie virus doesn't grow those back.

This... this is the saddest zombie.

I send the troops over to deal with... him? This is the entire combat log:



Rest well, Schadenfreude. You had literally every body part destroyed.... except your heart.

----------------------

The excitement over with, I try to sort out the whole uniform situation.



I locate Mirriam's hammer in Minardii's hands.

Good, so long as it's somewhere. I create a new kind of uniform that only permits you to wield legendary hammers, and assign SuperJay and Mirriam to it.



It still doesn't work, though. BOth gnomes wander around a bit, as if searching fruitlessly, and then fetch up idle in the Great Hall:



I scan around myself and eventually locate the hammers, discarded on the floor:



This comes as a relief - for a few minutes I believed the hammers had ceased to be legendary. Instead, it merely appears that the gnomes have stopped recognising them as such.

I have one more thing to try.

AWW HELL YEAH.

I mean, poor Schadenfreude.

Pogo looks at the wide open mechanical gates that protect the kingdom from attack. He then looks at a military in disarray shuffling around taking off and putting on disparate pieces of armor in a frenzy before the next attack comes.

Pogo looks again at the wide open gate.

THE WIDE OPEN GATE

It's not like gates ever actually stopped any of the enemies before, though, is it?

Come to think of it, not sure the gates actually slowed anyone down.

Was referring to the mechanical gates.

Haha, fantastic. Killing mants with bars, taking hammers (Then aparrently discarding them..).

Also the saddest zombie. Perfect end to that.

Oh, right. Seems like just yesterday when everyone was walking over the gates and then using them to bludgeon each other. Good times. Good times.

Marcin finally completes his work on the very apex of gnomish science: the steam engine. It's a power source like the windmills I'm using on the mechanical doors, but unlike the windmills it'll work anywhere, not just on the surface - so long as you feed it coal.

I've finally sorted out the whole uniform situation! I eventually end up setting a stockpile for just bronze hammers, which gathers up both legendary weapons into a crate. Then I keep twiddling the settings on the uniform Mirriam and SuperJay are using until they grab the hammers. Incredibly, they end up grabbing the right ones.

The rest of the population is finally forced back into leathers on their arms and legs; I won;t toggle them to upgrade to metal until I know I have it in stock and in safety.

In an effort to get more of that bronze armour made, I crank up the priority of the metal bar stockpile. Everyone rushes back and forth between various scattered battle sites outside the walls; hopefully I can get it all hauled in before another group of enemies jump on...



..yeah this was inevitable.

A two-headed ogre?



Well, crap.



I guess around 95k total worth is probably the threshold for these guys to start showing up? I immediately order the attack:



...but the gnomes out there have got to either scram or hold out.



Looks like the ogre has help, too.

I forget who the sword-wielder is, but whoever they are, they get away. Hammer wielder, on the other hand, is Amaranthine , and he can't quite move quick enough.



There's an additional situation too:



A second ironclad goblin has interdicted kerzain just by the side door, which I opened up for this little metal collection exercise.

Sill his armour ought to be enough to hold out for a little while, the troops aren't far.



Wait, he falls?



Oh crap.

A moment of silence for our fallen comrades who I was totally not reenacting Monty Python & the Black Knight with and -- *loots the armor*

Ah well, Schnad had a good run... for a gnome.

kerzain has been knocked into the lake. Gnomes, seemingly, don't swim, but they can and will walk along the bottom of the lake. Quite by accident, when I built the solid wall around the edge of the lake, I created a small slope leading out of the lake - it's on the top right of the image above. The question is whether kerzain can make it there before he drowns.



Amaranthine, meanwhile, has to stay alive versus a two headed ogre and a goblin in full iron plate. It isn't going great.



Still, he's not bleeding, and the proper soldiers should be here to bail him out any second...



kerzain is suffocating under all that water, but the slope is just... tiles... away...



He makes it! And now he's on the opposite side of the lake, within the safe zone. The side gate is closed now, so he's safely out of the combat. I guess he took... an early bath.

YEAAAAAAAAAH

The military finally show up... and run straight into the goblin that pushed kerzain into the lake.



What I love about this combat log is how SuperJay blocks the enemy blow with his hammer, and then hits him with the shield. The boy really ain't right.



The problem now, of course, is that the military (at the far left) are being held up from rescuing Amaranthine (on the far right, with the two headed ogre) by having to deal with this guy. Then again, if I hadn't had the gate closed, the goblin might well have snuck inside the walls and run amok after bathing kerzain.



Mirriam is just behind the rest of the Keepers, and quickly crunches the breastplate and takes out a lung. Looks like we'll be fast enough after all!

Blackadar dispatches the goblin, and hastened by my frantic atatck orders, the Keepers rush from the lakeside to Amaranthine's aid.



Amaranthine has taken some licks:



Incredibly, though, his armour is almost entirely intact and he isn't bleeding anywhere.



Only lost a leather greave! He's going to be fine.



Oh crap.



That's Amaranthine's breastplate gone. His torso is exposed...



...but the Keepers are riding in!



They're nearly there! They..



...they just made it...



...

All of the sudden your gnomes are dying left, right and centre :(

Amaranthine! Nooooooooooooooo!

*observes a moment of silence*

...hey, does that mean now the colony can get new immigrants?

"Oh Gnommish, please don't station me at The Puke, please don't station me at The Puke."

"...fuck."

So we survive the zombie apocalypse, only to meet our ends at the hands of ogres and strangely cute ant creatures.

It probably does, yes. Do you want to be on the new migrant list, fadeaccompli ?

I do indeed! I look forward to being a wide-eyed, hopeful immigrant, stepping foot into this madhouse of mants, zombies, and two-headed ogres for the first time. Maybe I can wrangle llamas or something.

Finally caught up! Holy emus this has been an epic adventure thus far, and I will definitely be picking this game up when it hits Steam.

What Alligator said! It also got me to get Gnomoria as well, though, now I'm terribly frightened to leave Peaceful.

Yeah, I have to get caught up. Meserach, I don't know how you or anyone else has time to do such awesome LPs, but I appreciate it. THANKS!