Bay 12 Games Forum

A few things I've done, though I'm new to the economy myself:

- Get as many legendary dwarves as possible, since you can assign them rooms for free (hollowing out huge areas in dirt can get you 6 or 7 legendary miners - I call it my "New Deal").
- Make cheap rooms.  I can get down to about 100 monies rent if I build it in crap stone as a 3x3 cross.  The room is literally one door, one coffer, one cabinet, one bed, and one empty space in the center.
- Make beds, coffers, cabinets and doors with a peasant to ensure theyr'e crap quality.
- Obviously, don't smooth/engrave your slums
- Legendary dwarves, with no rent, don't need a salary.  Unless you really need their products, set them to haul while a lower level craftsdwarf does the work.  High level dwarves haul faster, too, since they usually have strength upgrades.
- Military dwarves sparring get really happy (and, er, pregnant).  It's a good temporary solutino for unhappy folks, so long as you take them out before they hit the elite/champion point of no return.
- statue guardians and zoos make for happy dwarves, and if you leave them with no work, they'll start parties here (I suspect its triggered by a low happines level)
- I don't know for sure if this helps, but I have some damn nice barracks (engraved obsidian with statues/etc), so at least sleeping there isn't a chore.

Now that's interesting, dwarves treating a shot as practice if they're skilled; I hadn't thought of that.  So training marksdwarfship first could actually be a problem, as their increased strength means they hurt other dwarves while they're noobs.  My next fortress, I'll try training wrestling before archery, and see how that turns out.

Of course, this means that training successive skills (i.e. wrestling then hammering then swords etc.) would be almost impossible, as a dabbling dwarf who is already legendary in another skill or two would tear apart anyone who got in the ring...

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Originally posted by BurnedToast:
<STRONG>get armor, plate armor stops the vast majority of wrestling injuries. There is no real point in making troops without armor anyway, so I just wait till I have enough armor before I draft anyone.

silver weapons are pretty safe, and copper are not too bad. I'd not give them steel (or obsidian swords) till they have legendary shield use though.</STRONG>

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Well, that's the bad part: they're all in iron plate with iron shields.  They have been since before they even started sparring; I made sure of it.  They can't even get to legendary shield/armor use before they're crippled from wrestling.

Wait, nutrients?  The last time I asked this same question in here, I was told the red crops were ones that wouldn't have time to grow before the season was over, and that fields had no fertility levels outside of a binary fertilized/not fertilized for the season that made it produce more crops.

Are chains any better in the current versions that past ones?  Before, they would snap their chain any time they saw their trainer, resulting in a constant, fortress-crippling stream of chain animal tasks.

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Originally posted by Furious Fish:
<STRONG>He'll still be able to fight in actual combat if it comes to it, though.</STRONG>

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Aye, welcome him to the "very special" forces.

Totems are only really useful to train up bone carvers, in my experience.  Gem setters have an annoying tendency, though, to select them for improvement, which can be a problem.  But then, better a particularly nice, if useless, totem than a diamond-studded narrow carp leather loincloth.  *sigh*

I like kids because they immediately do jobs that require dwarves to have no tasks active, like harvesting plants, while requiring very little resources (they live with their parents) and wielding an inordinate amount of cash, driving the economy.  And because they start with absolutely zero skills, every skill bonus increases their stats (as opposed to ready-made skilled migrant dwarves, who start with a certain level of skill but no strength, agility, or toughness).