Bay 12 Games Forum

One advantage of bronze in Fortress Mode is that it is cheaper than dirt when embarking.
Cassiterite + Native copper or Malachite = 8 Bronze bars, for only 12 embark points. That's 1.5 points per bronze. Which is cheaper than clay (3 points) . Hence cheaper than dirt (okay total cost is slightly higher due to coke/charcoal but 8 bars per charcoal sure ain't bad).

Iron costs 6 pts each. Steel costs a good deal more due to flux and charcoal, but is still a bargain to embark with.

You would need to use drainage from below and it is fairly simple, that is, go under the aquifer using twinslit or whatever, then build a drainage shaft to the map edge (carved fortification), build an off valve (floodgate or hatch) and link it to a lever, and then punch an up/down stairwell into the bottom of tank. You will probably need a larger than 1x1 shaft, probably a 3x3 shaft at minimum - but it only needs to be that wide for 3 z-levels below the aquifer, just enough height to give dwarves access from below.
The tank will continually drain down the shaft allowing you to do some work. Then when work is done, shut of the valve so the tank refills.

Unfortunately, you will not be able to (easily) seal off the shaft at any point above the valve. You might succeed in building a retracting bridge across the shaft (or might not, falling water is tricky), but the moment it is completed it will be thoroughly flooded and you won't be able to link it to a lever or deconstruct it, so if you succeed, you won't have the ability to drain the tank anymore. So this might result in your tank having a deep shaft at the bottom. Might be a problem or might not be.

There is another way, and that is to dig a full size up from the drain (i.e. at least 3-z level below the aquifer, at that point it can narrow down to a 1 tile wide drainage shaft) say you want a 10x10 tank. Dig a 12x12 shaft of up/down stairs from 3z below the aquifer, through the aquifer, to the surface. Then wall off the aquifer on the top 2 z-levels (do this from the top down, to the bottommost level of the aquifer). Once the aquifer has been completely walled off you can floor/bridge off the appropriate level for the desired depth of your tank.
This method works great and I've used it to punch large sealed shafts through aquifers (i.e. for sunlit under aquifer gardens and stuff) and it'll work for a tank in the aquifer too.

0pt embark is viable, even without exploiting training axe, so yeah, a all hunter embark is viable. Dwarf fortress is quite an easy game once you get over the learning cliff. Especially since invasions and stuff are keyed to fortress wealth, so if all you have is a bunch of hoopleheads in bone and leather nothing really comes along to threaten their safety, until the fortress has traded it's way to megawealth.

It should be noted that the cave-in technique for punching out the floor of a lake is only needed if you are opening a hole in lakes which are 2 or more z-levels deep. As for a single z-level lake it is very safe to just dig the staircase, the reason it is safe is that the moment you open the downstairs in the lake floor, the water starts draining, this means there is less than 7/7 water and the dwarf can breathe and won't drown. The water will drain quickly enough that the water will become low enough that he can dig out the rest of the downstairs in the floor of the lake. Once the digging is done he can either escape from below (any z-level but the lowermost) or you can build a staircase from above down to the lake floor.

For lakes which are more than 1 z-level deep the water flow can be so extreme that it becomes marginally less safe. This is especially true if it's near to the map edge (and if the map edge is 2-z deep) as the water will replenish so quickly that the miner may have great difficulty battling against the water flow to finish digging.

However if your goal is to put a staircase through the lake bed (something I'm oddly obsessed with, as I like perfectly vertical staircases and things like lakes are just engineering challenges to overcome) then draining the lake is not a sensible approach. The sensible thing to do is to drop a plug of rock into the lake then dig the staircase through the rock plug. Exactly like the cave in technique for piercing aquifers, except easier.

It tends to be extremely safe to drain things from below using up/down stairs. Once you've got a drain set up below, just order a down stairs into the bottom of the lake and the dwarf will dig it from below. The dwarf can then escape from the staircase via some level which is not the lowermost level. Obviously, the lowermost level will be extremely flooded.

AFAIK dwarves don't give a toss if you take away their attached weapon, unless it has changed very recently. I have never seen a dwarf get unhappy due to their weapon being replaced and certainly never seen an unhappy thought related to it. As far as I can tell dwarves don't even notice their attached weapon is gone, as if it hasn't been coded in. Another way of looking at it is is that it is a mild form of attachment, lets call it preference. A dwarf prefers to use their trusty no quality copper battle axe, but if they must use a shiny new masterwork steel battle axe, well, so be it. It's not like you've killed their beloved pet bunny or something. (I haven't tried destroying attached weapons, but I doubt they care even if you do that).

If you want a dwarf to stop using an attached weapon, the easiest way is to set 'specific weapon' in their uniform. You can also set the uniform to have a weapon of specific material (i.e. 'steel battle axe') and 'exact match'. It comes back to the 'preference' thing, a dwarf will prefer to use the attached weapon, but only within the wiggle-room provided by their uniform.

I've always thought that elves grow their weapons something like this.

And magical wood should be able to do cut steel.