Bay 12 Games Forum

So my dwarf just made a legendary statue that has an image of his friend making an image of himself engraving a masterwork  image.

Either he really likes his friend or he is saying his friend is full of himself in a very passive aggressive manner.

I am however very pleased with this artifact: I was literally building my first ever statue garden when he created this piece- a statue of the founding of my fortress. This makes a very nice center-piece.

Just curious: How many dwarves do you have and how much food/drink do you tend to stockpile? I myself am running around 220 dwarves and I try to maintain at least 5000 of each (though I have like 10,000 food for no good reason).

Hello, I have just a few questions for my fort if someone doesn't mind answering. I would appreciate any direction or hints in general as well.

Description of my status so far: my fort is 6 years old, has 220 dwarves, 98 of whom are babies/children (due to the dwarfsplosion bug of last version). I have three main industries: Clothmaking, brewing, and cooking, and currently have enough stock between them to buy every item from every caravan for the next 3 years if not more. In terms of military I have three squads of axedwarves wearing full iron armor and steel axes, and 1 squad of marksmen. I am currently (slowly) making more weapons and armor to equip 2 more melee squads once my children grow up. I would like to have a squad of silver hammerer's but I don't have enough silver yet to do this.

First up: I have way to many bins. I keep buying cloth/leather from merchants and selling them finished goods but this increases my bin count every time. I seriously don't know what to do with them all, I already have 4 large stockpiles dedicated to nothing but bins and I am almost running out of space on the 4th. What should I do? I tried selling them once but it was a pain in the ass finding the bins among all the other junk and seems like a huge waste of time.

Second: So far goblin sieges have been cake. They usually bring some 50 goblins and 6 trolls or so twice a year, and two squads of moderately trained axemen in full iron took them out without a single injury (except an unarmed baby one dwarf decided to bring into the fight for some reason). Now my original squads are much stronger and better equipped and I have additional squads in training. Do sieges get stronger or better equipped with time or did I face the worst of them? Do I need to plan for them or am I pretty much set?

Food: I have a shit ton of it, partly because I always buy out every single bit available to fuel my food making industry. How long does it take for food to rot? If I convert most of my food to prepared meals, does this make it last longer? I want to make a huge stockpile in case I ever need to close my fort from the outside world (for whatever reason) but I don't want to invest the effort if all food rots after a year or two. Same question with booze.

Plans: My current plan is to open up and start exploring the caverns in 8 years. This is because most my children should grow up then and I will be able to replace my military in case it all dies to whatever terrors lurk below. Am I right to play it safe (I rather like my fort and would prefer not to start over if reasonably possible), or is the topmost layer reasonably safe for my fort?

Future fortresses: As I lacked proper planning on my main fort for thinks like a mist generator and better room layouts, I was considering building a new fort once I do hit the first cavern layer for better design and just for amusement. Make routs for my industry more optimal, and more aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps build it into the side of the cavern with 'glass walls' for windows or something silly like this. My two concerns are that it will take too long for my dwarves to carry goods to the trading post, or that It would take too long for my military to move between the caverns and the surface to fight whatever threats are out there. For those that did try it: are my concerns valid or is the time traveling up/down negligible? Are there other issues I am not year aware of that I should plan for?

I appreciate any and all tips you can offer.

Hello,

I am trying to build a massive pumpstack to pump lava from the bottom to a nice little pool at the top of my fortress right under a few lava using workshops. I know the standard way is to use watermills, but I don't need the lava constantly flowing, just once now and perhaps again when it runs out 80 years down the line. . . so I was wondering... what happens when you put a single dwarf to operate a pumpstack? Would he just fail to turn it, will it work as if he has infinite power or will it just go by slowly.

Perhaps he might output a certain amount of power and I could use a dwarf to supplement my watermills if they are not enough?


Also, on a slightly different note: What will happen if I hook up my pumpstack to my watermills but they don't have enough power for them all?

Thank you all very much!