Bay 12 Games Forum

So how many weapons and shields should I tell my dwarfs to equip to maximize their potential? I already maxed their armor.

I'm trying to set up a "civilian defense program" correctly. My conclusion so far is that I need to divide dwarfs into following castes:
1) Females don't get danger room training or "recover wounded" jobs. They get some armor and crossbows. I assign them bone and wooden bolts for training, not metal. During sieges they rain bolts on enemies trying to get through traps. Some ranged training on captured goblins behind fortifications is ok too.
2) Important males (legendary crafters, doctors usefull nobles, and the like) are in squads set to inactive all the time. They don't have "recover wounded", "haul wood", and whatever else might get them into trouble. They have some hauling jobs, but mostly do their main job, and train during some breaks. Same goes for important females. 
3) Males with no important skills get full DR training, and melee weapons. They are set to train untill multiple +5 legendaries and double up as haulers. They also all have jobs that don't influence quality, like furnance operator, milker, ets. My problem is, multiple +5 soldiers seem to get their civilian jobs disabled. These guys get the best equipment and are sent to combat first.
4) Maybe I should keep miners, woodcutters and hunters out of the military, to avoid "equipment mismatch" spam but I didn't have  much trouble with that.

Proportions of military to civlians should resolve themselves.

Cons:
Lots of equipment needed.
Lots of micromanagement.
Some unhappiness.

Pros:
Everyone has a chance to defend from minor threats.
Dwarfs train rather than idle.
Armor replacing cloth gives them better survivability, so random hauler won't die from DR spears when hauling away cat corpse.

I haven't used this so far, and it is some work to set up, but a 1x1 pit with a few cats surrounded by glass windows surrounded by fortifications and roofed over can't be touched by bowgoblins or trolls, and should spot them. A few towers like these close to map edges should spot anything, and reqire no maintenace (the cats will just catsplode on their own) once set up. As for FPS / pathfinding issues I don't know.

On a flat terrain wandering cats discover ambushes pretty well.

Well, I'm nowhere near player skill level to survive all these rules, and generally don't like them, and like cheese, so perhabs I shouldn't speak in this thread, but I still think I have something constructive to say.

I don't wall off, but use traps instead. Still, completly walling off would actually increase the game difficulty for me. I need wood and water (before I make invader proof water intake with fortifications and floodgates, plus a big inside tree farm, but thats beside the point). I also want migrants, and to trade with caravans.

Waterfalls would still be a challenge *IF* made with actual plumbing (recycling water or disposing of it), not mist generators powered by water reactors. Actually I wouldn't sneer at someone who managed to put a waterfall or a well in hundreds of bedrooms, if they were made with actual plumbing taking up whole Z-levels.

Oh, and one last thing about walling off. There is the "raised bridge at the edge of the map" exploit that in combination with walls makes an almoust safe path for traders. That is just to "wrong" for my tastes (and I do enjoy magma workshops, DR training, and water reactors). I even think Toady wrote sth about "removing remaining edge of map exploits". Anyway you might want to write that explicitly in OP.

Trash compression should be at least borderline. There will inevitably be some things, that you want to get rid of. I don't mean stone, but goblin trash, low quality furniture, and such. They can be traded to caravans or dissolved in magma, but DAS is a viable alternative. What you might want to disallow instead is abusing quantum stockpiles, especially putting hundreds of raw materials right next to a workhsop.
Another reasonable limit to DAS would be: It is ok to destroy trash, but not living beings, and definietly not invaders (Elves are not trash, btw).

About big dining rooms, prepared meals and good booze:
Pretty much everyone uses these, and I disagree with this constraint.  Well, maybe a dining room totally pimped out with jewel encrusted furniture worth 2k+ each is an overkill, but other than that dining rooms are pretty integral part of any fort. Plus when set as a meeting zone, it may somewhat increase potential for tantrum spirals.
Booze is simply a necessity, and brewers *will* skill up. The only reasonable constraint here would be "only use chaep stuff, like plump helmets to make alcohol", but even that is a stretch IMO.
Prepared meals, especially after cooks skill up are quite ridiculously expensive, and they spoil slower and save barrels. Maybe consider allowing 2 ingredient meals only? They are still somewhat "not hardcore", but at least less cheesy than lavish meals.

What about adding "Do not manipulate strange moods" Especially do not have everyone make one weapon and one armor item, and don't keep small steel stockpiles close to metal workshops. A mooded dwarf can make anything out of anything he likes.   

Your list also lacks "no savescumming", just keep playing.

What about "don't kill pets" "don't kill dwarfs" "don't kill nobles" "don't kill caravans (wall maybe elfs if you really want to)"?

I had one last thing to add, but I forgot.
EDIT: I remember now. Don't tinker with creature speed. Especially don't set Dwarf speed to 0 or 1 or something like that.

Oh, and change the title of the thread to sth. like "Common ground for a challenging playstyle for veterans", or people *will* complain, that you call them dishonorable.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Metal#Weapon_.26_Armor_Quality

Looking at that I'd say, that wood is not much better than leather, and bone / shell better than wood, but still worse than any metal.

You people should read more. "Holocaust industry" is a good start. WW2 was a great tragedy to a lot of people, not just jews. Even by current estimates death toll was about 35M, including 3.5M jews. Allies propaganda (mostly Soviets, but others too) started at 6M jews, and did their best to make "jewish holocaust" look like the worst thing that happened to mankind ever. This was to make themselves look glorified and Germans look like pure evil. History revisionists, called "holocaust deniers" managed to demistify some of it, and thats a good thing. Sadly they are often imprisoned. This tells a lot about how much freedom we actually have. Prisioners of Auschwitz and other camps were starved, but then feeding prisoners wile loosing war, and getting supply trains bombed by allies couldn't possibly be a high priority.

Just to put things into perspective: Every superpower at that time had work / concentration camps. Soviet ones were actually worse and took more lives. I think the British invented the concept, having so many colonies and problems with ingenious population getting in the way of their expliotation plans. Even USA had some for the Japanese, and it is estimated, that 1.5 died. China has work camps for like 3M even now. Korea is even worse. Come to think of it, jews made occupied Palestinian land into one big concentration camp.

Yes, so "nazis" were evil, but so were allies. Both sides commited war crimes during WW2. For example Britain carpet bombed Dresen, a 300k city. USA went even more overboard, nuking another citiy! The result? Germalns lost the war, so they are evil. Allies won a war, so their crimes are justified or forgotten.

OK, so I went on a rant. Now I'll propably be lynched by forum dwellers.

So has anyone made soap out of elves yet? Yeah, it requires modding them to be butcherable, but still, many of you would probably find that amusing.

Come to think of it, I'd like to be able to "this bed" -> encrust -> "this gem" rather than micromanage stockpiles, or hope I get lucky, and they don't encrust bag or mechanism or something.