Bay 12 Games Forum

Hmm, I was under the impression that somehow my teacher squads do train more effectively, even in the skills that they were not initially profficient in. I figured there must be some spar -> learn a skill -> teach skill to partner -> spar loop going on.

I will do some !!science!! as soon as I can to determine the effect of initial skills (weapon, armor/shield/dodge/fighter, teacher) on final skill after one year of training; and also see whether it is useful to use experienced teachers to induct new recruits (either total rookies or the 'proficient' soldiers usually present in a migrant wave).

I also always have my seed stockpile in the middle of my farms and generally have no problems. Are the seeds brought to the pile at all? If not, it the pile set to "accept from anywhere"?

To manage the pure amount of seeds, look at DFHack 'seedwatch', which will allow seeds and plants to be cooked if the number of seeds is above a threshold.

Instead of the moebius stockpile, why not create a paradise garden for them with a drop chute or airlock for supplies as the only connection to the main world? They can chat up all they want to since they will only be friends with each other and shouldn't die anyway, and if they do, any tantrum will be contained.

Any whenever you need a volunteer to explore a cavern or mine away a wall next to the magma sea, you know where to find them!

[from the wiki page on assassins: The tales of the fida'is' training collected from anti-Ismaili historians and orientalists writers were confounded and compiled in Marco Polo's account, in which he described a "secret garden of paradise". After being drugged, the Ismaili devotees were said be taken to a paradise-like garden filled with attractive young maidens and beautiful plants in which these fida'is would awaken. Here, they were told by an "old" man that they were witnessing their place in Paradise and that should they wish to return to this garden permanently, they must serve the Nizari cause]

Inspired by threads like http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=132758.msg4734899#msg4734899 I decided to try out embarking with more military+teacher dwarves.

My thinking was: since most skills can just be learned on the job, why not focus the initial 7 more on military? What I did was:

1 teacher+hammerdwarf (I normally choose axes, but he liked hammers*)
1 teacher+shield
1 teacher+armor
1 teacher+dodger

The remaining three dwarves were a smith (weapon+armor), a doctor+broker, and a farmer. I took four picks, one silver nugget, and 10 each of coal, cassetirite, and malachite.

Spring was spent digging quarters, setting up the metal industry, and getting the basic needs of the  fortress done. From late spring, the 4 military dwarves were set to train. I split them off in two pairs (shield+armor and hammer+dodge), with the idea to cycle them around after they had taught their skill to their fellow dwarves.

At the end of the year (so after 3 seasons of training), the results were not really as expected but quite impressive nonetheless:



The top group was the hammerer+dodger combination, the bottom group the shield/armor user. Observations:

- In the beginning, there were quite a lot of demonstrations, but not always of the type expected (e.g. after a single sparring session a new recruit was confident to hold a striker demonstration). They started sparring quite quickly and interleaved sparring and demonstrations
- Hammer and figher are imo impressively high after 3 seasons of training, much higher (I think) than I normally get.  I guess teaching helps here: they learn something by sparring, and then teach it to the other? Or is 13-20 level gain 3 seasons not exceptional?
- Interestingly, sparring and fighter are highest in the shield/armor group, but that might be coincidence. The only reason could be the lower aptitude for teacher role in Kogan.
- Dodging was higher a bit quicker in the pair with a dodger+teacher, but not impressively so consideriong that the '6' started from 5, so the other gained 0->4 instead of 0->3
- Shield and armor user were learned much more quickly in that pair, ending at skills 6/7/9/12 instead of 3/3/5/5.
- Teaching and student skills go up as well, but quite slowly. Concentration and observer also increased, not sure if that is relevant. All other social skills stayed low.

Conclusions:
- Starting with multiple military+teacher dwarfs is a good way of getting military up to speed quickly.
- The important military skills to start with are shield and armor. Weapon, fighter, and even dodging are learned on the job just as quickly.
- It is probably a good idea to start with two teams on different weapons. That makes it easier to then use the teachers as squad commanders after the first large wave.

Questions:
- Assuming I take 4 military dwarves, does it make sense to break them into two pairs for training? I started out with one squad, but set to training minimum 2, but got a lot of 'waiting for demonstration' initially, but that might have a different cause..? My thinking was that demonstrations might be very effective with >1 watcher.
- I always have single weapon squads, assuming that that helped them train/spar. Is that actually the case? Is there a downside to mixing melee weapons in a squad?
- (edit) Did anyone experiment with teacher+archer or teacher+crossbowdwarf?

*) In retrospect, I might have given him fighting instead of hammer... sorry for the confusion. but it doesn't seem to matter so much?

So, I built a fortress next to a volcano, a peculiar one where the tube extended above the magma itself. I dug into the side two z levels above the magma and established a garbage dump. Seemed safe enough, until after one siege, I was left with a huge number of corpses. In the process of the dumping, it seemed like the more was dumped at once, the more it splashed, injuring several dwarves in the process. 

I'm guessing I have to dig out the next garbage dump a bit higher...

Apart from all the info on weaponizing this, the safe thing to do is make them dump through a diagonal:

.#.#.     . = hole above magma
#=#=#     = = dump zone
#   #     # = wall
 
(you can construct the walls above the magma or just find a good spot)

They can throw stuff through the diagonal, but mist, miasma etc doesn't go through

to make things easier, you can go in the 'manager' position and 'order' job. Order 40 beds built and the manager will give the order in automatic. No need to keep on piling them up in the carpenter workshop.

I became a big fan of the dfhack workflow plugin and the planning mode utility.

1) If you run dfhack with standard settings, alt+w is the workflow shortcut (look in your dfhack.init file). Do the following:

In your carpenter, (a)dd a (b)ed to bed made; set to (r)epeat. Now press alt+w, which brings up the workflow plugin in the right hand pane. Add 'A' to set a range for beds, standard is 5-10. Press esc to get out of the plugin. Now, the job will be suspended and re-activated automatically to make sure that the number of unused beds is between 5 and 10.

Repeat this process for tables, thrones, cabinets, coffers, and doors at the mason. It's probably best to have 2 carpenter and 2-4 masonry workshops.

This means that you will always have furniture waiting to be placed, and if you place them, more will be made.

2) Download and setup the building planner from http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=119575.0

Now, if you layout your bedrooms, you can activate (P)lanning mode. This means that you can order beds placed before they are made. By using various filters (e.g. material:stone) you can control what will end up there eventually. So, after your 44 new bedrooms are dug, you can instantly place beds, doors, coffers, and cabinets there. Make sure to set material filter to stone for coffers and probably for the others to prevent bags and special furniture to be placed accidentally.

The good thing is, the workflow plugin will make sure that the furniture will get build. So, planning mode + workflow is essentially a sort of manager where you order X things as well, but you can immediately place them and no longer have to think about it.

Of course, once this works well you can do the same for designing the dining hall and for ordering drinks (I set 200 drinks), food (200 roasts), socks (30 socks) and the same for other clothing.

Just to clarify: "Restricted" only increases the planning cost of moving over a tile, it does not forbid the tile. IIRC default restricted is 25 vs normal 2 per tile, so a dwarf would rather walk 12 normal tiles than 1 restricted tile. But if there is no other route, or the other route is really long then they will still take the restricted route.

From the picture it seems that the southern river is dwarf-made, with straight edges except where it crossed existing lakes. What you should have done is made sure there are no ramps whatsoever, e.g. by first draining the lakes into the lower river, removing all up-ramps, and then connecting it to the river proper.

Even better would be to dam the whole river first and give the norhtern canal the same treatment; and I would also make it 1 z-level deeper so it can't be crossed by swimmers or in winter; but that requires a bit of engineering. It's not too bad actually since if you place pumps over the river set to pump the water back (e.g. from west to east), it will drain the river enough to build a 1x4 raising bridge across (with some cancellation spam). Once the bridge is in place, raise it, and wait till all the water is gone, and shape the river/canal/moat anyway it pleases you.