I’ve had trouble thinking outside of the box with Stonehearth for a while. I usually play the same scenarios out over and over. I decided recently to start playing at the corner of the map rather than in the center of it - specifically to reduce the vectors of attack from enemies on the Hard difficulty, but also to explore building an underground dwarf kingdom (since the corner of the map makes it easier to see excavated spaces from two sides).
I have been choosing map placement based on corners where there’s a confluence of earth protected by mountains on one side and only one path towards the rest of the map (which provides farming and mining opportunities in close proximity).
What I’ve found is that this is a very defensible position. Has anyone else tried this? Any strategies?
The other aspect is that I usually build up, so I decided I need to start building down. The primary difficulty to building an underground dwarf-inspired kingdom is the time it takes for workers to excavate underground spaces. By the time you have a large area dug out, you would have benefited from building above ground buildings. You need 4 voxels above any building underground if you want to put a roof on it since the Hearthlings can’t build a roof from underneath. This is unfortunate since I’d preferably create a roof that touched the ceiling of the cavern I’ve dug out.
Does anyone else have any thoughts on this concept? Am I not thinking of interesting new strategies? Thanks.
Can you share some screenshots? Not sure I understand where you’re choosing to be? Also would love to see your underground city too :D. ALSO I was looking into mote use for this same reason. Have you considered that? The engineer needs to make retractable drawbridges and stuff lol.
OH have you used The x-ray button? It helps you see everything. I prefer it set to flat lol.
Here are some screenshots. I used the corrupt biome mod for this, among some other mods. The dwarf buildings underground aren’t very imaginative in design. This was my first attempt at the concept so I didn’t want to spend hours coming up with cool designs that might not work. I was going to use this pinterest page for inspiration when I started doing more interesting building designs: 535 Best Dwarven Cities and Architecture images in 2018 | Dwarf, Landscape, Drawings.
The time to excavate was really a barrier. My next thought was to use the instant mine cheat to get the space I wanted at the start of the game, but I also want the resources that come from the mining as well and I didn’t want to have to cheat to get them. It would be awesome if the mod community could resolve these kinds of issues. You can increase the body stat for workers to 1000 and they’ll zip around the screen and mine quickly, but again, I’d prefer not to have to cheat to achieve the desired effect.
In my very first series on StoneHearth I actually did something like that. I went to the edge of the map, and placed my banner between a mountain and a lake, giving me one defensive position they can attack me from. I then build a wall there with a single entrance. Worked really well.
Then in later series, I decided to start on a small island, to there build a bridge out to the main land I could protect.
Generally, going to sit somewhere and making a single point of entry to your city, be that a giant wall surrounding your city or natural defences (like water or mountains), really helps to make defending a lot easier
You guys should try mountains, they need ladders to get to you and you can find nice outcroppings, tunnel through them to other sides. Makes for interesting builds.
I’ve done mountains before, but getting some earth to build farms on can be a problem. Some of the mod biomes like Anorien and Pillars will give you mesas next to earth on a peninsula that is easy to secure.
I’ve always wished we could relocate dirt to grow farms wherever we want, similar to replacing the dirt mound left by the first sheep-loving goblin chieftan. I’d love to have underground or mountaintop farms.
I wonder if someone could create a mod that allows farming on stone.
Here’s the update on my latest attempt. The Geomancer and the Miner jobs really help in building an underground dwarf town. Unfortunately, it still takes a while to excavate, even with the miner.
I dug under a corner part of a river and that feeds the fountain in the middle of the town. It takes a lot of toying with wet and dry stones to get the balance right so the fountain isn’t flooding the underground and the river above isn’t draining.
I finally put some effort into a distinctly Dwarven architectural style and I’m pretty pleased with how the style is working out so far. Unfortunately, I had to instant build to get them to be finished because I didn’t dig deep enough for the height of my buildings.
With the Geomancer’s abilities, I’m wondering if maybe you can just build an artificial cavern over a plot of land so you don’t even have to excavate. I might have to try that next. The discussion in my Bunny Fountain thread hints at the possibility of generating landmarks underground that might work for creating ready-made caverns.
