Bay 12 Games Forum

Use the "k" command to look at the surfaces, and also at the exposed edges on hills and bodies of water.

Certainly the looting behavior of my fortresses reminds me of ants.  They keep the surrounding area clean of anything that might possibly be useful in the future, even dead vermin for which no one has any use at the moment.  Of course, that's because of my settings, but who's counting?   

A thoughtful person will fix your "mistake".  A less thoughtful one will delete the "faulty" entry.  A completely thoughtless person won't notice, or care.   

I never allow the justice system to activate.  I used to try to comply with the requirements, and then realized that everyone was happier without any of it.  Even the nobles can be made ecstastic without being allowed to relish the pain and deaths of relatively innocent subjects.

My troops of choice are marksdwarves.  Recently my method has been to capture the attackers in a courtyard, between two raised drawbridges.  The marksdwarves are then sent to their positions behind fortifications overlooking this courtyard.  Once the invaders are all dead, however long that takes, the inner drawbridge is lowered and the haulers collect the loot.  When the courtyard is cleared, the outer bridge is lowered.  Rinse and repeat.

I used to use traps, and it doesn't hurt to keep some anyway, but the version of orcs I am using don't fall into traps so traps are not so important to me now.  I keep a couple of tied war dogs further in, to detect kobolds.

The caravans come through a special tunnel, directly from the edge.  This has reduced a lot of my defense problems.  It is only the diplomats and the liaison who have to enter through the front door, as well as migrants in the early part of the fortress.

Now, what's this about Granite appearing from dug-out brooks? Default?

If you dig into an empty brook from the side, the apparently empty air beneath the brook surface will be an invisible solid.  If you dig out this invisible solid, it will become stones.  I think it is the same type of stone present where the brook enters the map.  The reason that I think that is the case is because the stone nearby the place where I tried this was not the same, and the type that resulted from digging out the brook was some distance away, at and near the place where the brook entered the map.

This happens even if the surface and bottom are left intact.

If, however, you dig in from the side to a frozen brook, the result is stones made of ice.  These melt and vanish when the brook melts.  No stones made of rock are generated.

Make sure the tree plants are not being stored in barrels.  The smelter can't find reagents in containers.

You can change their seasons of arrival by changing the seasons in their entity file even after embarking, so you can re-distribute the caravans for your own convenience and even make them come more or less often if you choose, throughout the fortress lifetime.

I have determined that one can prevent the caravans from arriving by editing the entity raws to remove the seasons.  I did it a few years after embarking, and I never saw another caravan or liaison.  Presumably doing it immediately after embarking would prevent the liaison from ever arriving.  Isn't it the case that no migrants will arrive until the liaison arrives for the first time?  If so, then that should also take care of any immigration.  I think you would want it to be normal for the world gen, though, so that the civs can spread normally.