Bay 12 Games Forum

So correct me if I'm wrong here, but when the monarch moves in, so does the outpost liason, but not any generals/lieutenants/captains, right? (I haven't actually tried to get a monarch in my fort in .40.xx yet, so it's been a while since I've had one move in) So given that pattern, I'm going to guess that it selects any positions which lack the [SITE] tag, and have either of [RESPONSIBILITY:ESTABLISH_COLONY_TRADE_AGREEMENTS] or [RULES_FROM_LOCATION], and then throws in their spouses (and children?) and a suitable squad of guards.

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of dump shafts/wells, but maybe stairs will work.  I will experiment.

You can channel out the stairs from the bottom up, but it takes a bit more micromanagement than just having a dwarf dig straight down in the pre-climbing days did.

2 and 3 both sound like you might have parts of your fort that aren't properly connected (problems with stairs or ramps, maybe?). But without seeing it, that's about the extent of the informed speculation I can provide.

[PET_EXOTIC] works as well for making them tamable, without making them more likely to be domesticated during worldgen by most races.

People have talked the graphics question to death here already, so I'll skip that part of the OP's question. Addressing other parts, choosing a starter pack can help out for a new player, since it includes some extra tools that can make things easier, though a few of the included things (like using the multilevel view with TWBT) can make things more confusing until you understand what you're looking at on the screen a bit better. When choosing a location to embark, you get to choose the size. Smaller sizes will give you better performance, larger sizes give you a larger play area (more resources, potentially more diversity of terrain/wildlife/plants/weather). A 1x1 embark translates to a 48x48 play area (with up to a couple hundred z-levels, depending on worldgen paramaters and embark site). Larger embarks (theoretically up to 16x16, but many embark sites will crash because they need more than 4GB of memory at that size) give you larger areas with dimensions in multiples of 48. As to performance from the machine you describe, my desktop has a slightly slower core i7 cpu, and with a large region, 100 year history, 4x3 embark (192x144 fortress area) , I generally maintain framerates over 50fps well into the 2nd decade of the fortress, and I find that memory bandwidth is my limiting factor rather than CPU power. Also, your GPU doesn't really matter for DF, it will perform the same on pretty much any PCIe 16x card as it will on your 970.

Bolts have worked fine in bins for me, except for when Urist McHunter runs out of ammo at the furthest corner of the map, and then starts a 'pickup equipment' job that ties up the bin and keeps everyone else from picking them up until he makes his way across the entire map. My biggest problem with bolts right now is that they eventually end up as hundreds of single bolts, instead of the nice stacks they start out in, thus requiring either bins, massive stockpiles, or quantum stockpiles if you want to manage them in any way.

If you don't want to do dating sites, you might try meetup.com or similar. With luck, you'll find at least one local group who gets together regularly and shares a common interest with you. The real key here is putting yourself in situations where you'll meet new people. If you can pick situations where the people you meet are likely to have at least a few common interests with you, so much the better.
As an example, I live in a small-ish city, and meetup.com has hundreds of groups within 25 miles of my zipcode, with a diversity of topics including (among many others) video games, tabletop and role-playing games, programming, singles groups, outdoor activities, martial arts, religious and/or spiritual beliefs, investing, wine/beer/spirits, various sciences, travel, DIY, pets... the list goes on, but you get the idea.
And that's just the clubs/groups that use meetup.com to organize events and activities. 
Dating sites can certainly work. The bar scene can work, but if it's not your scene, you might meet a lower proportion of people you consider relationship material there. Doing volunteer work at a local school or charitable organization can work. Just going and hanging out in places were people congregate (parks, malls, concerts, ect) can work. Like I said earlier, the key to meeting someone to start a relationship with is putting yourself into situations where you're exposed to new people you can meet.


TLDR; Unless you live in a very rural area, there are lots of ways to meet new local people. Meeting new people is the key to meeting someone to start a relationship with.