Don't dig my walls!

[Quasar]

First of all, well done to the dev team for getting this far, I'm very much looking forward to the completed product.

One of the issues I had in a recent game was this: Water was flooding my tunnels, only about five blocks from my home base, and the dwarfs were panicking. I hastily laid down walls to block in the water, saving the day yet again. I ended up having a fairly large stretch of nothing but wall. Quickly, the now incredibly grateful dwarfs approached my wall - perhaps to offer thanks for yet again saving their lives. But no.

They dug through the damn wall. Killing everybody.

Clearly, these dwarves are in need of help. Perhaps walls should be created undiggable, unless marked otherwise?

[Yoshiro]

Get dynamite up quickly behind those walls so your silly dwarfs on their every rampaging quest for gold do not flood your tunnels!

[Quasar]

That works, but is time consuming and expensive.

[T-Dawg]

First of all, well done to the dev team for getting this far, I'm very much looking forward to the completed product.

One of the issues I had in a recent game was this: Water was flooding my tunnels, only about five blocks from my home base, and the dwarfs were panicking. I hastily laid down walls to block in the water, saving the day yet again. I ended up having a fairly large stretch of nothing but wall. Quickly, the now incredibly grateful dwarfs approached my wall - perhaps to offer thanks for yet again saving their lives. But no.

They dug through the damn wall. Killing everybody.

Clearly, these dwarves are in need of help. Perhaps walls should be created undiggable, unless marked otherwise?

Thank you for your kind words! Regarding the dwarves, we share your concern. We have tried everything with them. They just won't learn. We even brought some of them down to GDC for some seminars in common sense, but they either drowned in toilets or hacked their way out of their airplanes. =(

On a serious note: their stupidity is by design! To make a cave "safe", you have to do as Yoshiro suggested: blowing a hole in front of the wall. If you manage to disable a cave (when it flashes white), even the diggers will actually stop walking into them and die!

[Parthon]

Yeah, I found a few solutions to this:

1) Don't break open black areas near your base until you have more money. Go for the crystals and gold first, or black areas further away.
2) ALWAYS have a 1-wide corridor at least 3 long heading towards unexplored areas. That way you only need 1 wall. Then you put down 1 dynamite in front of it and leave it. Eventually a miner will think the wall is delicious and then go blow himself up on the dynamite.

Getting cash before serious exploring helps with being able to fund that darn costly reinforced dirt.

[Jakkar]

As the makers say, this is intentional. Dwarves are an eminently suitable subject for game design, for precisely the same reason 'Lemmings' was such a success all those years ago.

Like zombies, as a game species, they can be excused any AI stupidity, and don't break the player's immersion or enjoyment by doing stupid things; Zombies are braindamaged, Dwarves are... Well, braindamaged by alcohol.

Your role in Dwarfs! is an overseer, and they mean this literally. This is a giant, ever-expanding simulated creche of mad, middle-aged, drunken babies with beards, and axes. Exciting stuff, huh? =D Your goal is to keep them under some semblance of control and stop them killing you and them. They're your responsibility, not so much your tool.

As for dealing with flooding; when the game first begins, carefully pop your nearest caves and monitor them carefully. Micromanaging your dwarves to prevent them flooding your initial tunnels may save you from early bad luck, but not always. Sometimes it's just the luck of the draw. The best games tend to mix skill and luck.

What was it that other game with dwarves in claimed... 'Losing is Fun'?

Edit: I mispelled Beards as Bears. My god, this game needs bears. Get to it, Po2!

[Aetherfang]

I don't mind this feature much, as it adds a little bit of extra tactics. However, it would be nice if you mentioned this in the tutorial, as it only mentions holes in conjunction with lava. The tutorial teaches that you can trap water simply with a wall and solidifying all other edges, so it was quite a surprise when my dwarfs propagated a watery doom the first time I played the arcade, and I was just about to post a bug report about it untill I checked the codex and noticed it mentioned it there. Very amusing game, though. I look forward to seeing any new features you implement.

[Robin]

Lots of things have improved sence the beta and we hope you all will like it we will release a demo when we are finished with the goldmaster!