Bay 12 Games Forum

the dwarven economy is getting really dangerous at later stages of the game. most of my dwarves simply don't have any money, so they cann't afford a room. not having a bedroom is no problem for dwarves as long as they dine in legendary dining rooms and get alcohol and well prepared meals. but at some point their cloths start to rot away, and this fact makes them really angry. i have plenty of clothes, i have clothing shops (but even the dwarves with money rarely go shopping), but they are unable to get new clothes. the result is that dwarves are throwing tantrums, and i have no idea to avoid this. anybody an idea what to do?

i managed to capture a few elephants - some of them are tamed. but i don't know what to do with them. trading is no option, as i have so many stone crafts i want to get rid of. i could throw them into my pit and let my marksdwarves shoot at them, i read that's a good way of getting experience.

however, i'd like to free the tamed elephants and wait for them to produce little elephant foals - and start butchering, when i have plenty of them. but i have never seen an elephant foal, and the hippo foals i was able to tame don't grow up. any ideas - is it possible to set up a hippo and elephant ranch?

i tried to build an obsidian room. i do have obsidian on my map, but it's quite an advantage to have a permanent obsidian source (and it is fun to design it)

i've dig out a 5x5 room, made channels to the river and to the magma vent, built lever connected floodgates (steel of course) and then wanted to start the action. i will tell what happened: i connected a channel to the magma vent and tried to close the floodgate to control the stream. however the magma stream took the floodgate away and the magma went uncontrollably into the designated room. then i opened the water floodgates  - but i connected the water channel directly to the magma room, so the water met the magma turned into obsidian, blocking the water supply.

i propably have a solution to the second problem. next time i will build a 5x5  room, directly above my magma room, completely channeled, with floor grates, and a connection to the river. this way i should be able to turn all the magma into obsidian.

but i really have no idea how to handle the magma floodgate problem. i will build several floodgates, but losing one floodgate every time i open the magma channel is definitely not satisfying.

if you have any experiences or suggestion concerning magma/obsidian room please post them.

my countess just went insane in her fancy bedroom. i have no idea, how this happened - i was able to meet all her requests, there is plenty of beer and my dwarves mood generally ranges between happy and ecstatic. she doesn't attack anyone, just stands in her room, doing nothing. (maybe it has to do with her baby). should i send my military to kill her, or is there any chance she recovers?

i'm sorry i have to pose another question, this time about the military. having soldiers train with their steel weapons seems to be very dangerous, especially when trained soldiers fight with untrained (i lost two low-profile recruits that way). so i should let them wrestle to increase their armor skills, and then let them train with wooden weapons.  
Well, the part with wrestling is no problem (although you can wound or kill even that way soldiers, i found out). the part with the wooden weapons is more difficult - first the elves don't really like me, they don't offer me any trade contracts, so i can't order wooden weapons. my question is: what's the second best choice to these weapons - to forge copper weapons or use an other ore? and what can i do to make the dwarfs take the copper and not the steel weapons (do i have to forbid all other weapons?)
my second question is about armor, i have plenty of armor in my stocks, but the dwarfs don't take the armor, although i ordered them to do so. is there no way to give them direct orders to get and equip a certain item?

currently i'm building a long and wide channel around my fortress and plan to flood it with water. however, i'd like to have the option to drain the water out of the channel. i'm afraid pumping will not work as these channels will carry lots of water. the alternative of course is flooding my fortress - i could either flood the lower levels without living quarters and workshops only - or flood the whole fortress. (i'm not sure wether there is enough space on the lower levels to absorb all the water).
so my question is: will my dwarves drown when i flood the fortress or will the water distribute itself equally in my fort, preventing deaths this way.
and are there any water related damages in the storage rooms, when flooded - it would be perfectly reasonable that cloths get spoiled and arms and armor start to rust. in fact when fires get extinguished, the damages caused by water are usually higher than those caused by the fire itself.

i don't know if this has been suggested before. many people have extremely well protected fortesses, and armies that can wipe out the goblins on the open field without problems (for example i only have 25 soldiers, but most of them are champions, and all of them are equipped with steel armor and weapons of highest quality - when the goblins besiege me i am able to destroy their army without losses).
when the siege mode works, it will only get easier to get rid of the goblins. my idea is to have some kind of catastrophe mode. an option to trigger an attack of an extremely powerful force (you could choose the size of the enemy army) - maybe 200 goblins with trolls and some supermonsters on their side. such an attack would be a challenge even for the most advanced fortress.