Bay 12 Games Forum

I'm not a completely new player, but something happened and I have flooded my fortress with lava.  I'm hoping to get a more experienced player will point out my error.

I had a lava moat around my fortress on the top z-level.  I got a message that "Something on the Surface Collapsed" and suddenly there is a hole at the bottom of my moat draining into the level below and flooding my fortress.

Nothing was happening on the surface, and this seemed to coincide with trying to disappear a tree in the caverns about 50 z-levels down so I could pump out and create a stairwell.  Can cutting down a tree 50 levels down cause a collapse on the surface?

Thanks.

I apologize if this has been brought up already.  I did a search but couldn't find anything like this.

During the embark preparations, when choosing a site, we're restricted to only seeing the fact that metal ores / flux stone / soil / clay exist in the area.  Which seems rather odd to me if we're talking about being close to settlements, especially ones that mine and produce metal-works. 

What would people say to these tweaks?

1) Anywhere within a short distance around a settlement that would realistically mine (excludes elves and maybe small agrarian towns) you can directly see what ores / gems / stone layers / clay and sand deposits have been found there.  My thought is that if they can mine they would probably send out expeditions to search for metals and gems and would know what's in the area.  A bigger settlement will have done this for a larger area and delved more deeply.  Restrict knowledge down to only a certain number of levels that would correspond to how deeply they've dug.  I guess you could argue that they might be greedy and want to keep this info to themselves, but you would definitely be able to see what types of metal-works and gems they produce and I doubt that they would find information about certain things like what types of soil / stone there are in the area valuable enough to try to hide.

2) Have the area further out than above display what the game does now, with the proviso that the exact soil type(s), stone layer(s), gem type(s), etc that compose the surface layer(s) be known, as someone scouting the area (Lewis & Clark style) would be able to see and record this information. 

3) Islands or land that has no civilizations would display nothing, as if they have not been scouted at all.  We have the general lay of the land say from ships that have made maps, but nothing more.