On Hauling Buckets and Aquifers

One of my fondest, most embarrassing memories of Dwarf Fortress is just getting started with one of my first fortresses a scary number of years ago in a savanna environment and, not knowing any better, deciding to make a water reservoir for the summers by having my dwarves haul buckets of water from ponds before they evaporated. I glanced from time to time to the fastidious process while I struggled to keep the poor little guys alive, growing a little happier with each blue-coloured tile and, in my blissful ignorance, feeling victorious when the reservoir was finally covered in blue "1"s.

That's how it feels making a new territory for Anamnesis.

I recently decided to try adding a new territory to the game, having been years since the last one. I was aware that it was going to be much more laborious than it used to because many of the new features over the years have been based on territories, but I still might have slightly underestimated how much work it really takes. In part because it requires adding a lot of new content, but perhaps in greater part because this content is all over the place, forcing you to change your mind-set every few steps.

One day, you pour in a bucket containing a new aristocrat's events, the next your bucket is a new affliction or a new lover and so on until you start pouring bucketfuls of territory events a few at a time, always carefully checking to make sure it all fits together.

I'll eventually look with satisfaction at the finished territory when it is full of blue "1"s, but I won't be able to shake off the feeling that things could have been made a lot easier if I had just built over an aquifer instead.