Bay 12 Games Forum

It just refers to depth required to dig to find them.

I play 31.18, so I have a lot of metals. I've found 3 Magnetite clusters and 2 Chalcopyrite clusters, as well as a lot of Tin and Galena. I've found some Bismuth as well, but I might import more.

In the newest version you can choose the mineral density when generating the world.  It ranges from "Sparse" (good luck finding ANY metal) to "Frequent" (can't launch a goblin without hitting some kind of metal/special mineral).

What probably happened is that the dwarven civ conquered an elven civ and assimilated them into their society.  Since Elves breed like flies, they eventually overtook the dwarves in the population of the dwarven civ.  Eventually, elf monarchs.  Eventually, the dwarf/elf civ conquered the goblin one, and it began to select monarchs between elf and goblin members of the civ.

You're a bit low on booze there.

There's a difference between "fake difficulty" and a "true difficulty," the former being the one responsible for every broken video game controller in my personal history. The latter, of course, being the source of some of my most favorite video game moments.

The military in this game is so glitchy and unpredictable in the "fake difficulty" area of things, that making it harder to equip them with strong gear exacerbates an irritating situation--like dying to your first wave of goblins because you have strip mined 20 z-levels and found no metal at all. Hell, I haven't had a map since .19 where I had more than lead/silver as a metal source. This is not fun or Fun. Having Fun, or fun, would be losing to a goblin siege because your bronze-clad army chose to pick a fight with them near a volcano, and half your dwarves dodged into magma. Or you had a dwarf start babbling and pull a lever that rose a bridge your military was crossing at the time.

It's honestly getting kind of annoying having to rely on traps to defend against nearly everything in the game, because I know that my under geared military will just all die and cause a tantrum spiral while the goblins break everything in the background.

I was having many of the same problems with minerals and stuff until I remembered that the site finder was updated.  So I genned a new world, set mineral abundance to the second highest, asked the site finder for flux, shallow and deep metals, and I found a perfect embark: river, trees, iron, flux, tons of other metals, and I even got magma in the third cavern layer.  So if the maps you choose are giving you trouble, don't be afraid to gen a couple more worlds and use the site finder.  Or you could even go find some good embarks that people post here on the forums or elsewhere.

As for the military, the only time I ever had trouble with it is back in the early releases when dwarves would literally not pick up their equipment no matter what you did.  The only problem I have with this version is a bug or something with marksdwarves: when I tell them to do archery training, they interpret every single bolt fired as a separate task, and take breaks, stop to spar, go get food, etc. after every shot.  If you're really having so much trouble, I don't know what to tell you other than apply traps liberally. If you think traps are too boring, invent some incredibly elaborate method.  For example, when I was training my non-hammerdwarevs (hammerdwarves get a month in the caverns fighting the nearly-immune-to-blunt blobby things that are down there), I replaced my entrance with a one-tile wide bridge covered with weapon traps with low quality spiked balls.  The goblins would dodge or be knocked down into a pit with spikes at the bottom, and upon their impalement my soldiers got some free training dummies. 

In my fortress, there is currently a plague of various cavern level 3 creatures, like cave blobs and creeping eyes.  They're not a threat in any way, but they are disrupting my attempts at making use of the magma pipe that's down there.  They are, however, an excellent way to train hammer-and-macedwarves.  One "wave" turned my Competent Hammerdwarf into an Accomplished one.  The only reason it didn't get any higher is that he is also a skilled Biter- he keeps biting off parts that bleed profusely. 

i think they hold less liquid than barrels, as in 10X less.

No, they hold the same amount.

Yeah, if they run out of bolts they immediately go into "berserk rage" mode.  You really should use fortifications is possible, and if not, a sufficient volume of traps can replace your military until you have some.

Edit: I just remembered something.  I'm pretty sure that hunters that have ammunition will fire it at any hostile target, including goblin invaders.  Since they're still civilians, though, they will run away instead of charging in when they expend their ammo.  So, if you want a marksdwarf defense force that will run away after running out of ammo, assign some hunters to a squad that remains inactive but still has armor and restrict them to a burrow so they don't go out and use their ammo.