Bay 12 Games Forum

In my early years of a fort I like to request all of the food/booze items. That way I don't have to deal with the hassles of farming different stuff and my dwarves get some variety, which leads to happier dwarves.

Also, if you have seasonal autosaves turned on, know that you should never actually try to load them, as doing so will result in it creating further autosaves based on that name, netting you stuff like "region1-spr-205-sum-205".

Unless you rename the one you use. It would kind of defeat the purpose of seasonal autosaves if you never used them.

I think the lag issue is counting the stones, so it shouldn't matter where they are on the map.

I'm in the process of dumping out a dwarf-made lake/moat filled with the stones from sheering the cliff face entry of my fort. I considered flooding it with magma, but all the pumping would probably be just as much work as dumping. And with the magma pipe near and below the lake, it makes a nice trashcan (functions exactly like a bottomless pit for dumping).

I've read that another option is editing the raws to make the rocks boil away, but you wouldn't get to choose which stones if you wanted to keep some for crafts/masonry. And it could be tricky if you don't know what you're doing.

Building the actual waterfall is pretty intuitive. Just dig a cliff face and channel the water to it.

The nuances can be as complicated (dwarfy) as you want. I like to build multiple shut-offs with bridge floodgates. Instead of having a central control room, I put color coordinated control levers near where they function to help me remember what they do. My current fort has a large waterfall flowing into the kings throne room, which also has an open view of the great hall. It falls through floor grates and into a hidden channel (plumbing). Water has a tendency to splash and can flood an area unless you use plenty of grates. I have this configuration:
ccccccc
gwwwwwg
ggggggg
c=cliff face/wall
w=grates where the water directly falls
g=extra grates for splash

The water 10 squares before the waterfall powers waterwheels, which are routed with gears to power a pump tower. I could pump it back to the waterfall (making a perpetual motion machine), but instead I'm putting it back into the underground river. This is all after it runs throughout my fortress to power the magmafalls, fill the moat, and fill the well. It's hard to put into words accurately. The wiki has instructions on pumps, but I didn't really get it either until I played around with them. No guides that I know of really do the job well for pumps.

How long have you been there? I've gone years between ambushes or sieges.

Do caravans come? You could always piss off the humans and elves and they'll attack you.

Remember that you can melt down the goblinite you find from your kills and turn it into armor/weapons. Stop wasting it all on ammo; that should come from bones if you don't have many veins.

I've noticed a bug where if you build up-stairs (the construction, not mined), and then deconstruct them, the floor takes on that layer's dominate stone type. It becomes engravable and everything. I know no way to do this with walls however.

Personally, I like the variety of different stone types. I compulsively make my forts symmetrical, but the different colors and types of stone add a nice contrast to the ordered structure.

The only thing that pains me is when I find a cluster of gems or metal ore in a wall, and I want to mine it out to use, but I have to refill the space with block walls that cannot be engraved.