Blockaderhyming - 201 Early Spring by Phlamethrower

Map Description:

Here's a snapshot right after embarkation. As you can tell I've chosen this region specifically for the ocean, which runs to 11 layers deep - perfect for an underwater city. The basic plan is to create an artifical obsidian land mass in the ocean, hollow it out leaving an 'O' shape dam, build a fort inside, then trigger a cave-in beneath the dam to remove it and allow water to submerge the fort. This way I'll be able to install lots of glass windows to allow the dwarves to see out into the ocean.

There are about 20 stages to building the fort. Hopefully I'll remember to upload snapshots of each one, to provide a handy how-to guide for anyone else insane enough to try this.

Point of Interest: Starting caravan

Here be dwarves... - Phlamethrower

There are 29 comments for this map series, last post 2008-11-16

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Comments

Submitted by: Caranha - 2008-10-08 to 201 Early Spring

Wow! Good luck!

How do you plan to cave in the dam? Don't you need to cave in all its 11 levels at once? (or dig in the wet side to cave it in?

Submitted by: Phlamethrower - 2008-10-08 to 201 Early Spring

The plan to get rid of the dam is to dig a pit underneath the dam that's as deep as the dam is tall. Then from inside the dam channel out the bottom layer of the dam. The water that leaks through from the outside will go into the pit rather than drown the dwarves that are channelling, so as long as I can finish channelling before the pit fills everything should be OK.

Of course once the channelling is finished and the dam falls into the pit any remaining dwarves will drown - but it's a small price to pay to be able to properly submerge the city.

Submitted by: Caranha - 2008-10-09 to 203 Early Spring

Hmmm. Shouldn't you make a magma resevoir one level above the start of the magmaduct to make things flow faster?

Submitted by: Phlamethrower - 2008-10-09 to 203 Early Spring

I'm not sure putting a reservoir at the start would help much - there would still be a long way for the magma to flow and thin out before it reaches the pouring points.

Since I can't build a reservoir at the end of the magmaduct yet I've gone for a compromise and built one halfway along. This should hopefully be all that's needed.

Submitted by: THLawrence - 2008-10-09 to 203 Early Spring

You can use wooden corkscrews to pump magma. Even with temperature on. They don't ignite. It is a known bug but then you don't need iron.

If you don't believe me ask in the forums or try it out yourself on a smaller scale.

Submitted by: Phlamethrower - 2008-10-09 to 203 Early Spring

Interesting - didn't know about that.

Unfortunately I'm almost as low on wood as I am on iron, since it's all getting used for beds, bins and barrels. Plus it's kind of irrelevant now since I managed to melt enough goblin items to get the iron I needed.

Submitted by: sneakeypete - 2008-10-10 to 205 Early Spring

Thanks for uploading all this. going by your attempts, i've gained a lot of useful information for when i attempt something like this :)

Submitted by: Caranha - 2008-10-10 to 205 Early Spring

I'm surprised that the obsidian didn't sink at once - so you have to collapse every layer in order to make columns?

Submitted by: Phlamethrower - 2008-10-10 to 205 Early Spring

Yeah, because the magma is coming from just one source it creates a single tile column directly under the source and then a disc on the water surface.

With regards to sinking the obsidian for the city, I'm currently building a water tower to allow me to create blocks of obsidian which are multiple layers thick. This should help reduce the time/effort needed (assuming the magma reservoir fills properly)

Also before realising the correct way of doing things, I managed to drown my mayor while trying to test an obviously flawed way of sinking the obsidian :(

Submitted by: w4ldf33 - 2008-10-10 to 205 Early Spring

Sweet :). I tryed this once (and failed :) ) But maybe i can help you a little. For instance: you dont really need a magma reservoir on the surface if you put a pump directly over the 1st layer layer of the volcano (there is a spot, that i will poi) then pump it all the way up you will be able to drain the entire volcano in about 2-3 minutes if you want.
And i discovered the it is better to turn off caveins in the init when pouring magma directly into the ocean to avoid the single columns dropping down.
Btw Copper will do just fine for the pumps, wood sounds a litte like exploit :)
I just found an old map of my attempt so i've uploaded it. This documents not my last attemps (of which i have no pics) but but should give you a clue of what i meant with the fast magma pumping.
http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-3689-irontusks
I hope you come up with a working approach :)

[Message edited on 2008/10/10 at 05:41 by w4ldf33]

Submitted by: Caranha - 2008-10-13 to 209 Early Spring

Happy to see that work is progressing :-)

Submitted by: Doppel - 2008-10-18 to 211 Early Spring

That crack seems to be a bitch, is it located in the exact middle of the map? (or where regionmaptiles touch?)
I have had similar (i think) problems like this. Namely when i was trying to create a block of ice. (don't remember how i fixed it)

Submitted by: Phlamethrower - 2008-10-19 to 211 Early Spring

Nope - the crack is only about 25 tiles away from the edge of the map. If it was there because it was the boundary of a region map tile then there should be at least one crack running horizontally through the foundations.

Submitted by: Caranha - 2008-10-20 to 213 Early Spring

Hmmm. Won't it take forever for the caravans to reach your new trade depot?

Otherwise, I liked the window-filled central shaft :-)

Submitted by: Phlamethrower - 2008-10-21 to 213 Early Spring

Well, there's no point having a fancy underwater city if you can't show it off to the visitors :)

I've got some bad news about the crack of despair - it looks like I have reached the limit of how far I can fill it with obsidian. I waited for the surface water to evapourate and then channelled down through to the ocean. But as soon as the first drop of magma hit the water the water level jumped up a whole floor, flooding the level above and stopping the magma from reaching the level I was trying to fill.

I suppose there are other ways around this problem (Use floor hatches/caveins to drop a whole load of magma in one go? Use pumps and raw power to drain the crack?) but I don't think I have the patience anymore to try using any of them. It won't result in the layout I wanted for the city, but the righthand block of obsidian is large enough to be used for housing, and the way it cuts into the sloping ocean floor means that it can be connected up to the rest of the city without resorting to digging 'underground'.

Submitted by: Caranha - 2008-10-22 to 213 Early Spring

Think of it this way: instead of one, now you have TWO underwater obsidian fortresses!

Is it possible to install some windows to the outside? or into the crack of despair?

Submitted by: Caranha - 2008-10-25 to 214 Early Spring

What will you do with your old fortress once the new one is inhabitable? Flood it with magma?

Submitted by: Phlamethrower - 2008-10-26 to 214 Early Spring

I'm not really sure what to do with the old fort. I could flood it, but it could be a lot of hassle to do it without also flooding all the mines.

I think it could be more fun to trigger a cave-in and leave a giant crater in its place.

Submitted by: sneakeypete - 2008-10-30 to 216 Early Spring

The words "epic" only begin to describe what your doing here.
You should try replace all your sand walls with green glass or obsidian (blocks if your crazy about it) if you can though, IMO. since, you know, you'll never be able to change them once its flooded.

[Message edited on 2008/10/31 at 04:47 by sneakeypete]

Submitted by: Drone - 2008-11-04 to 217 Early Spring

So how do dwarves get from the housing area? I can't see any pathway or corridor that links the two blocks together.

Submitted by: Phlamethrower - 2008-11-04 to 217 Early Spring

At the moment they can't get to it, because I made a mistake when digging out what was meant to be the connecting passage :(

However once the dam collapses it should rest in the right place for me to connect the two sides again (although not in the way I initially planned)

Submitted by: Drone - 2008-11-08 to 218 Mid Summer

D: Oh noes!

Although, at least the fortress isn't ruined and you could still save it o/

Submitted by: Caranha - 2008-11-08 to 218 Mid Summer

Awww... shucks!

At least your fortress is already underwater... kinda - I noticed that the water inside the dam is 1 level lower than the ocean water?

Submitted by: Phlamethrower - 2008-11-08 to 218 Mid Summer

Yeah, the inside of the dam is still filling up.

When the magma mould fell, the sea level actually dropped by 1 floor across the entire map, due to all the underground tunnels that are now flooded (and the inside of the dam).

I'm thinking that for my next attempt, I'll try picking a map with a chasm/bottomless pit and see if I can drain enough of the ocean into it to reveal the sea bed.

Submitted by: Dakira - 2008-11-10 to 219 Early Spring

wow, How high up was the stone before it punched through several floors and killed two?

Submitted by: Phlamethrower - 2008-11-15 to 219 Early Spring

Only a couple of floors above ground level. The height doesn't affect how big a cave-in will be. Collapsing ground simply travels down until it reaches a wall (natural or man-made).

Submitted by: Drone - 2008-11-15 to 220 Early Spring

I'm pretty sure that as soon as any salt water touches any freshwater it is all turned to salt water D:

Submitted by: Dakira - 2008-11-15 to 220 Early Spring

I noticed a lot of traffic on the bridges, has anyone fallen off yet?

Submitted by: Phlamethrower - 2008-11-16 to 220 Early Spring

> I'm pretty sure that as soon as any salt water touches any freshwater it is all turned to salt water D:
Well if I try placing an activity zone over it it no longer shows as a water source - but at the same time, the well is shown as being active. Guess I'll just wait and see!

> I noticed a lot of traffic on the bridges, has anyone fallen off yet?
Not yet, no. I'm just waiting for the day when I can lead a goblin seige across the bridges and then chuck them all into the water...

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