How to Stage a World War in Dwarf Fortress

Dwarf Fortress is mostly seen as a game where you stick it out with one fort as you build it up and up, conquering challenges and becoming the greatest Mountainhome or library or tavern. With so much to do in your fortress alone, it is easy to neglect the power you hold over the wider world. Here is how to start a world war in Dwarf Fortress.

How to start a world war in Dwarf Fortress

It would be recommended to generate a new world for this. Tailor the generation to the prefered setting to host a grand war. For best effect, make sure there are plenty of civilizations and leave it running for at least 500 years.

Igniting hostilities

When you embark, you are part of one of the available dwarven civilizations. You can change this through clicking the ‘change origin civilization’ button and then choosing which civilizations you want to throw into war.

It is up to you whether you want a free-for-all or a select number of sides with mutual enemies. You don’t have to drag every civilization into war. It would be recommended to leave at least one dwarven civilization neutral in the conflicts.

Select the first civilization and embark right next to the target civilization. Don’t worry about setting up, just appoint a Militia commander, and create a few squads. Depending how many sides you want in the conflict, you may need quite a few.

Go into the world map. Your targets, or at least one of them, will be in close proximity. Send a raiding party to that location. Wait for your dwarves to return. You will notice that, upon going into the world map again, that all of that civilization’s sites have a red border. That is because there is now war.

Abandon the fortress.

You must now do this until every civilization is at war with each other, or every side is at war with everyone else. It may be a little time consuming but soon you’ll have all-out war.

Related: What to Do if Your Dwarf has a Fell Mood in Dwarf Fortress

Choose your side

Now with war plaguing the continent, you can either play in adventure mode and navigate the war-torn land, or pick a side and join in the warfare. You could also choose a neutral civilization and watch the horrors unfold.

Either way, you can always retire your fortress to look through the legends of the world to keep up-to-date with the war effort on each side. Then you can simply unretire the fortress and nothing would have changed.

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