Bay 12 Games Forum

"Whats that?"
"You understand that?"
"What do those letters mean?"
and so on. I get the same reaction for roguelikes too, since I tend to play them in ASCII if possible (just a preference I've developed over the years)

For farming, I usually embark with 5 seeds of each type except dimple cups (you can buy seeds for those later if you want dye) and disable cooking plump helmets, you should not run out of food doign this. If you are running out of seeds, check to see how many are planted - it could be just that your dwarves have planted all of them, which isn't a bad thing, as you'll get more  once they are harvested and brewed/eaten. Human-style above ground farms can be started with no investment if your on a map with local plantlife, simply by using herblism ( [d] -> [p] ) to gather plants, eat or brew those and you can plant the seeds

For a military, I usually start it with one or two Dwarves from the first migrant wave, and add to it each subsequent wave until it's big enough for me to feel secure against whatever nasty things may pop-up. I usually keep them in groups of 5, with each group using a different weapon type (so for example, one group of speardwarves, one of crossbows, one of hammers, one of axes, one of wrestlers). If you are embarking somewhere dangerous, take a military dwarf or two with you on embark, usually if I take fighters on embark I bring one with a slashing/hacking weapon (axe, sword) if I expect mostly living threats, or one with a blunt weapon (Hammer, Mace) if I expect undead or think a necromancer may be nearby (since reanimated limbs severed with an axe can be an issue).

As general advise goes, experience Fun, especially in your early forts. Try things out, have them fail in hilarious ways. Flood a fort with magma because you forgot to turn off a pump, have a naked berserked wrestler strangle your king, turn your entire population into vampires. Build a giant upside-down pyramid that drops into the bottom cave layer with the pull of a lever. It will usually end poorly, but wheres the fun without a bit of failure!?

I generally like to have a populaton of 150 to 250. My FPS tends to hit single digits around 120 or so, but I like having extras so I can keep a fully stocked standing military and fortress guard, so the labourers never have to fight, and it makes sure that if one dwarf is sleeping there are 6 or 7 others who can do his job, so work never comes to a complete halt, even with parties, drinking, eating, sleeping, and the occasional disaster.

Inadvertently struck into hell on level 48, anyone else ever found it that high before?

Yep, I've found it as high as 33, it's pretty random how deep you have to dig to break open your box of !!FUN!!, makes mining spoilerite a gamble every time, I've had it so that I mine ot 2-4 strands worth and I'm already opening up box

I manually assign my noble's beds, and make a special room for each legendary dwarf, and each champion, which are assigned manually. For the rest of the population I let them work it out for themselves.

Took a short break from DF, just started a new fortress and I have surface magnetite, and hematite, and galena.. and the site finder mentioned flux, So I'm pretty happy with this site. it's 3x4 and I decided to make a shallow fort, basically the entire thing is going to be inside the mountain, so that the lowest main floor of the fortress will be on the lowest above-ground point on the map...

I'm not going to use any magma stuff as a result (no volcano, and I don't like fussing with pump stacks), but there is an abundance of trees so that won't be a problem. 

Well rapidwhip fell, finally, took the goblins long enough, they decided to attack with 6 pages of attackers, over half of them lashers, and all but the trolls were mounted on cave crocodiles, lol my military brought them down to 2 pages of invaders, but they finally killed the last defenders. Was fun while it lasted.

The traders seem happy, after I traded them a bunch of worthless goblin clothes for basically all they had, I offered over 1mil in crafts, weapons, leather armour, and clothing (basically, I filled their weight limit with offerings xD) I really needed to free up some space, and this should attract some more !!FUN!! and migrants.