Bay 12 Games Forum

Still... I wasn't expecting to lose five dwarves just by trying to build a bridge.

I had a similar thing happen. The entrance to my fort was over a bridge I'd built spanning a chasm.
I'd only just started the fort, and there were lots of batmen in the chasm, so I was building a wall & roof for the bridge to stop my dwarves from getting harassed.
Foolishly I'd set all the walls to be built at once and had enabled all my dwarves with the carpentry skill to speed up building constructions.

To cut a long story short, one of the dwarves decided to build the wall in the middle of the bridge first, which immediately collapsed knocking the entire population into oblivion.

Although this is more a case of me being surprised that I'd forget my dwarves are so stupid. 

I can't say I've ever noticed this but then I don't really watch my grower in action and I have to cycle legendary growers with unskilled ones to avoid being inundated with food.

Makre sure there's multiple "Plant Seeds" jobs in the job manager. I'm not sure how it works but it's probably to do with plot size.
How big are your farm plots?

Most jobs pick dwarves which is why when the dwarf finishes he has "no job" for a bit before the next job picks him.
If it doesn't, either there's no job to pick him, he's busy doing something else, or the job is slow at picking him.
No idea why that would be the case. Possibly if there's a crapload of dump item/haul item jobs.

Turn off literally everything (all hauling types) except planting for the planter and monitor the dwarf. Check the job list to see if "plant seeds" is there.

Don't use inexperienced growers as it'll just reduce the food you get from the seeds that you do plant.

It drove me insane on my earlier forts when there were small lines of rocks inside my fortress that they wouldn't dump.
I didn't realise it was because I'd dug out channels and the tiles were considered outside.

To Hellcar:
#1) What size are your farm plots to begin with and do your fertilize them?
#5) It is actually stone hauling that kills me most of the time.
#6) I don't want to stop breeding, I want to just prevent ownership so I can butcher them later once they have matured into full grown cats.  I love the feeling of raising an animal for the sole purpose of slaughtering it and devouring it. 

I make all my rooms 11x11, which I can then later split into 4 5x5 rooms with either statues or walls. It's not as visually pleasing as other designs but I find it solves the problem of changing the use of rooms and temporary rooms at the start.
I start off with a single 10x10 farm plot which is probably overkill (I don't bring 100 seeds however) but it does gaurantee that I never run out of food. I stick 25 beds (or more) into a single 11x11 bedroom and my dwarves never seem to mind (as long as there's other things keeping them happy).
The rest of the space in the room is a food stockpile with only seeds enabled (make sure to disable prepared food also) For my other plots I make 4 5x5 ones.

I just thought of something else. I have all dwarves harvest food enabled, and if all your dwarves are hauling stone, then food will start to rot, which can cause a problem with food at the start if your planter is busy doing other things or your food stockpile isn't near the farms.

#6 Work with dogs then. They have more uses as well. Cats just give me headaches.

So to elaborate on my hauling problem... the main case this comes in is for stockpiles.  I dig out a nice big room for stockpiles and then assign them to a certain resource.  But my dwarfs are not hauling stuff to my stockpile.  Why?  Because my stockpiles are full of stone.  So I have to haul the stone out to haul other goodies in... which takes forever.

I never embark with any dwarves with any points in the mining skill. I bring 5 picks and 5 of my dwarves help dig out my initial base so as not to leave much stone. The other two have points in axe user just incase which are the cook and the wood cutter. If any dwarf has a problem with the cooked food they shut their mouth

As for your stockpile problem. In the start of the game you can always put your stockpiles outside, depending on the layout of your base. If you're adamant about everything being inside, and there's no soil layer, and you dug out the base with only 10 point miners leaving stone everywhere, then you'll have to either dump or use up the stone.

As people have said, put craftdwarf workshops in the rooms and don't dig out more than one level at a time, else the dwarf will go down below to pickup stone instead of the stone on the same level. When he's used up all the nearby stone, deconstruct the workshop and move it to where the rest of the stone is. Just make sure to keep up on the bin demand. Obviously you can do the same with masonry but I tend to change my problem into a "door problem" or "statue problem". Embarking with a skilled stonecrafter means you should always have enough trade goods to trade for anthing you need, and all the food the caravans can bring.

Alternatively, if you want to "creatively" use game mechanics, you can mark a tile as a garbage dump zone and mass designate all the stone in the room for dumping. Dwarves can store more than one item per tile in a garbage dump and with not that far to move it shouldn't take long for even a few dwarves to remove stone from a single room.

Check the FPS setting in the init.txt in the data folder.

#1 - Food
I've only ever had problems with food once, and it was because my farm was a ridiculous distance away from my food stockpiles. Set a single planter to just plant from the start of the fort.
Disable everything else and you'll never have food problems again (unless he gets injured etc) I always have too much food. (400+ tiles of barrels full of food) I'm talking thousands and thousands of prepared meals.
I just grow plump helmets because I can't be bothered with anything else, and trade and request all other types of food to keep dwarves happy.

#2 - Nobles
Nobles aren't that big a deal until you get to the late game with the hammerer.
The assigned nobles are useful, but you don't need to worry about them so much except for the broker which you should assign someone with the appraisal skill.

#3 - Bedrooms
Dwarves will get an unhappy thought from noise. Personally I think people make too big a deal of most unhappy thoughts. In my current fort only the nobles have assigned bedrooms, but everyone is estatic from eating well prepared meals and looking at crap in the hallways that they don't care.

#4 - Military
Honestly you can just forgoe having a military and line your corridoors with cage traps if you don't want to worry about enemies and focus on other things such as building or learning the game. For this you need mechanisms, cages (metal or wood).

#5 - Hauling
Most likely all your dwarves are busy doing jobs which is why you think hauling is such a big deal. I always set aside a percentage of the population to just haul (and detail stone, train pump operating, etc) so I never get behind on hauling. Use dwarf manager (or therapist) to easily mass manage enables labors.
The only time I find hauling to be a problem is when you have legendary dwarves churning out items when you don't have any bins.
Make sure to keep up on the bin and barrel supply or you'll be sorry.

#6 - Chains
You can use rope, which you make at a clothier's shop to restrain creatures instead of chains. But as Quietust said you need to put them into cages to stop them breeding.

#7 - Dependencies
Not really sure how to help here. The only advice I can think of is to use the job manager.
If you want to do a certain job, check the wiki and see if it references any other jobs.

Draft him and station him at the workshop to make sure it's pathable. If that fails check that the butcher's workshop isn't forbidden, that there's a butcher job active in it and the skill requirements for the workshop are OK.