Bay 12 Games Forum

My favorite dwarven foodstuff is the "cookie factory" where the only food (and the only export good) is biscuits consisting of exactly 1 rock nut oil and 1 rock nut press cake. To prevent the fortress from drowning in quarry bush leaves, I prefer to trade for the rock nuts as opposed to growing them on-site.

HARVESTING plants has NO effect on stack size, yet still gives a little EXP.  At first you disable "all harvest" to concentrate EXP on your farmers to pump stack size.  Later, you allow "all harvest" to give kids something to do.  Also... you do know that large stack sizes can't be brewed into barrels, right? I forget the cutoff, but I think its 6.  You won't be seeing "Dwarven Wine [45]" at all.

D'oh, I did not know about that glitch/limitation! So much wasted effort! What about large pots?

Alcohol industry aside, I do like the enormous quarry bush and syrup roasts that are possible with potash and legendary growers. It's kind of a mini-game for me to make the most valuable prepared meals for trade; one stack of them can buy the entire caravan! I also like the idea of being able to make 18 socks from one pig tail seed, so "dwarfy".

dabbling medics + soap > legendary medics + no soap

source: casual anecdotal observation

Quote from: Mushroo on May 28, 2015, 08:11:21 am

By the way, I usually do (o)rders, only farmers (h)arvest, to work around the "all children are legendary planters" issue.

Who says it's a bad thing?  Trains stats, (agility, endurance, strength, and kinesthetic sense - all useful for soldiers or nearly any craft,) and it's not a moodable skill.

I may have mis spoken by calling it an "issue" (people sure are touchy!). That is a good point you bring up about stat training.

I like to use a small number of dedicated, legendary planters/harvesters in my forts ("only farmers harvest") because stack size is an important fortress goal for me. I prefer to have my stockpiles full of "dwarven wine [25]" as opposed to "dwarven wine [5]" barrels. Harvesting large plant stacks just has such a nice ripple effect of efficiency through various industries: food, drink, clothing, barrel/pot making, hauling... Basically I derive great pleasure from making compact, efficient forts with smaller farm plots and stockpiles.

For similar reasons, I am probably one of the few players who actually uses and recommends potash.

A minor secondary reason why I choose "only farmers harvest" is because it is easier for me to spot all the teenagers at a glance on the "u" screen if they show up at the bottom of the list as Peasants, not mixed in with the Farmers. (I don't typically use Dwarf Therapist.)

Lotsa different ways to play the game.

My current fort, "Tinthroats," is an example of the "small population, get to know the dwarves" approach. I started with an original 20 dwarves, and now 20 years later,  the population is up to 71 through internal births. There have been 0 dwarf fatalities! I know each of the Original 20 pretty well, and they all have separate living areas so children can grow up in their own bedrooms next to their brothers and sisters.

But... this kind of fort can be boring for me to play. After the first 10 or 20 years, the survival of the dwarves is all but guaranteed (barring stupidity on my part) and it basically becomes an exercise in keeping down frame rate by atom-smashing refuse and trading worn out socks to the merchants. From a storytelling point of view it is basically, "Oh look at this special snowflake dwarf I put all this attention to detail into, now he is crawling around the legendary dining room on his hands and knees cleaning vomit!'

My mostest favoritest way to play the game is high-population with a hive mentality. In this type of fort, I treat all the dwarves (including the starting 7, who are simply the "play now" pre-gens) as nameless and replaceable. I enjoy the challenge of building a fort that can survive the loss of any individual. In this type of challenge fort, I don't even set labors on my dwarves (with the sole exception of a strange mood dwarf who becomes legendary in a random craft skill) so if no migrant weaponsmiths arrive, no weapons get made!

What's most fun for me is, each time I start a new fort, deciding what are going to be the constraints, what is going to be my philosophy as an overlord this time?

What's the best approach to getting the everyday things (cooking, farming, basic crafting and the like) mostly automated?

Easy! Don't do this:

Each starter dwarf has 2-3 skills I've found useful, plus maybe an extra point in mining or the like. I usually assign very strict labor orders (the mastered skills + hauling + the default healing/other categories). Shifting them around with migrants and urgent jobs I get lost pretty fast, half the dwarves dick around the meeting hall while the workshops are empty.

If you choose "Play Now" and then just start playing, then you will get a fisherdwarf, brewer, etc. and all your basic fortress survival needs will be met until the first caravan.

ps Having lots of idlers getting drunk in your meeting hall isn't "losing" in my opinion, it is "winning."

Food production is so incredibly easy in current versions of DF, if you don't have huge overproduction, you're doing something wrong.