Bay 12 Games Forum

Using the 4 GB patch will just allow you to do a larger embark without the game crashing, while the FPS crash dives, so no, it won't help.

There is a wiki page on "FPS" with some info. Apart from reducing the number of dwarves, reducing the number of livestock should help as well. Locking livestock in so they have nowhere to go should help remove their pathfinding CPU usage, although there is (was?) a bug that caused animals to still try to path through tightly locked doors.
For some reason the graphics cause a significant FPS hit when viewing the above ground situation, especially if there are significant elevation differences in the view, so if you're reasonably OK until the late stages you can get things a bit speedier by looking at things under ground.

My first caravan arrived at the trade depot. Since I haven't produced anything to sell, I've just ignored it, and eventually I got the message that it was first close to leaving, and then leaving, but it isn't. The goods are still spread about the trade depot, one trader has hauled his horse up on the roof (from where there is no other exit than down the stairs he came up), and the other trader with a horse is just standing in the same spot (on top of a cage trap I've constructed while they were there [but it was designated before they arrived], but traders don't trigger traps). I've checked the 'D' path several times, and there is a clear path all the way to the map edge. I've done some wall building while they were at the depot, but I've checked with 'D' that I don't block the path, and the traders who only have animals should definitely be able to leave, even if I somehow has managed to block wagon access.
The kill list shows a wagon as "missing", although it might be my own, which I dismantled it to get room for the trade depot.

Any idea of why they won't leave?

Apart from building destroyers, certain critters can also get through locked doors (kobolds, for instance). Drawbridges is my standard solution to any access denial needs.

I've used dropping in a hole as an alternative (adding a refuse pile at the bottom might possibly help decay the bodies). One reason to use atom smashing is to actually get rid of the bodies, in the hope that it helps to reduce FPS losses.

I've never used automatic job assignment, but use DT quite a lot for job selection. I tend to assign jobs based on which jobs I need done, aptitude, and preferences. So when a new immigration wave arrives, I use DT to look at them in the Roles and Military views, try to find any who are skilled in tasks I need, and also somewhat what they're interested in (log hauling would match up with acceptance of the outdoors, for instance).
I generally have a rather small milita force (using traps and devices mostly, and consider it a failure when the militia actually has to do anything), but assign only males and non reproductive females (i.e. asexual and homosexual) for the military on the purely practical grounds that I don't want to either lose babies nor suffer tantrum spirals, and I think fighting is impaired by carrying a baby as well [some people on the forum have very strong ideological views on this: I just adapt to what the current game rules are].

The only certain way to get military personnel to stop attacking is probably to both withdraw them completely from the military (remove them from their squads) AND activate a civilian alert burrows to get them to move back.
Bravery in the face of impossible odds is dwarven. Basic survival instincts and common sense are not.

I don't think this is a question about straying animals (which generate hauling jobs to bring them back), but rather trained animals that decide to follow their trainer without any hauling job generated. Non pet-passable doors to pastures are helpful to keep straying down, but seem to have little effect on trainer following.

Apparently both dorfs and merchants get horrified by seeing sentient corpses, so those will have to either be kept out of the way or destroyed.
I find it quite annoying that merchants just disappear without any notification (apart from an exclamation mark above the merchant, if you happened to look there at the time).
There are two ways to separate sentient corpses from other refuse:
1. Dump the corpses manually (which interferes with other usages of dumping).
2. Create a specialized refuse stockpile for sentients. This is quite tedious, however, since you have to specifically specify each sentient race in the stockpile in each of a fair number of headings complementarily for the ordinary and the sentient stockpile (i.e. exclude from ordinary, add to sentient) [but you can add creatures as you go, i.e. only add blind ogres after you've got blind ogre bodies, for instance]. Also, a "feature" causes FBs to go into any refuse stockpile unless you "forbid all", because FBs use hidden tags that are not affected by group headings. By mistake I also stumbled on a useful trick: combining a "QS" with an atom smasher by creating a sentient refuse stockpile feeding a mine cart stop that's forgotten to dump on a bridge. The corpses are then hauled to the stockpile and put into the mine cart, but not delivered on the bridge to be picked up an hauled back to sentient refuse pile in an eternal loop. Thus, the bodies accumulate in the mine cart. When you're ready for disposal, you can "repair" your track stop do dump the mine cart contents, which will promptly dump the bodies. Remove the track stop delivery again, mark all the bodies as 'f'orbidden, and acivate the atom smashing bridge to get rid of the refuse, without risking the smashing of a dwarf trying to haul the bodies back to the pile.

I have never had any problems with animal remains in a refuse stockpile, but if that is a confirmed cause, it would require a redesign to keep merchants away from any refuse.