Bay 12 Games Forum

It only takes a few good dwarves to take down most FBs. Dogs are kind of useless.

I didn't notice a big hit to framerate on my PC with a large reactor running to power a magma pump-stack, but I agree with melphel that it's not really worth the time and effort when you can just order dwarves to pump manually when you need magma brought up.
 
This idea on the wiki looks pretty interesting: http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/DF2010:Magma_piston.

I used to scorn training, but now what I do is send one squad to a danger room and then afterwards use them as squad leaders. Training goes MUCH faster if it is lead by high-skilled dwarves. It can be almost as fast as a danger room at its best.

Use a pump stack with a system of floodgates, and put a roof over the reservoir so it can't overflow.

I've been playing with ultra-low mineral scarcity lately, usually have extreme wealth and massive exports within the first few years, yet sieges are typically the same or even smaller than they were when I played fortresses that were barely scraping by. I have seen no correlation between wealth and siege strength.
 
I'm creating more, exporting more, trading more both buying and selling, than I ever have before, and as far as I can tell it has zero effect on either the strength of goblin sieges OR the frequency of titan attacks.
 
Titan wealth requirements are pretty low by default, and I see no "multiplying factor." As for goblins, the wealth component seems to be entirely anecdotal/superstition. The only thing I have noticed that MAY be true is that trading with more civs will increase the frequency of goblin raids, as they seem to follow caravans sometimes.

Even if you are able to convert the region to the default tileset, you'll be forcing your fellow participants to convert it back, and/or wrecking the save.
 
If you're going to participate, you should just accept using the tileset that was agreed on.

That's true as far as it goes, except that such things as miners and growers level up very quickly. Mine out a 15x15 room in stone or metal ore and your miners are already better than dabbling, and probably better than you'd have embark points to squander on, in about ten minutes. I can guarantee my workforce of part-time miners or growers gets the job done far faster with more or less the same level of skill.
 
There's no way that anyone keeping dwarves as specialists will match my productivity in years 1-5. After that I too have specialist dwarves in most professions, but never such things as mining or woodcutting or growing -- by then most of my population is skilled at those things.
 
I would say the first professions that get specialists in my fortress, in the first few years, are crafting trades after someone has a strange mood and becomes legendary. 

Ploder: not everyone does this, but what I do is turn every new migrant into a "jack'o'trades" who has ALL labors active. I don't start to restrict labors to specialist dwarves until I have a few with high skill at a given profession. I reject entirely the notion of having 2 medium-skilled dwarves plod away at some major masonry task. for example,  when sending the entire population out there will get it done in minutes. Similarily with mining, woodcutting, plant gathering, etc. I can be ready with 1000s to trade the first caravan and fully stocked with food and booze by deploying those 7 dwarves efficiently -- restricting them to a single task each is not efficient.

Similarily ALL dwarves are in inactive squads that periodically train, until I start seeing several dozen idlers at all times at which time the guard, a melle squad, and a ranged squad become full-time.

I also don't waste embark points on skills, as they are rapidly acquired through practice. Instead I make sure there's an axe or a pick for every starting dwarf and I take enough vital supplies with me in case a map lacks certain stuff.