Appraisal is a complete waste. It will level up instantly the first time the broker goes in to trade. The other noble skills (bookkeeping, organizer, any social skills) are also a waste of points as they will immediately gain the required skills on the job. This is another longstanding piece of useless advice that people mindlessly perpetuate, it might have made sense in 34 (was before my time) but it hasn't since.
Remembering why I hate bins and love QSP...anywho...some thoughts on the stockpiles:
Intermediate goods should be kept near next workshop, and usually don't need large stocks (I'm looking at YOU ash bars pile) would set bins to 0 for sure, since 20 is plenty. Actually I would just put the ashery inside the pile.
Actually a lot of the piles I would recommend not using bins for and/or consolidate more possibly, crutches/splints for example; 5 each in the hospital, sure keeping a few extra around might not hurt, but certainly not 20 bins full of them (and I'm not positive they go in bins, like I said bins are foreign to me). Wooden shields and crossbows are another thing I'd keep the 5x4 pile binless (but then I tend to make most of these out of steel anyway, which with them wearing out in battle being a new thing is probably best). Not really sure why I'd want 2 piles of wooden pump parts either, but then maybe it's cause I tend to use glass for that (magma safe). You neglect to mention meat & fish for the kitchen piles, which considering came along with embark in all likelihood, needs to go there. Fat/tallow too (because otherwise you'll forget).
The fields (and not trying to change your mind anymore at this point, but a bit of info for what you can expect and how to deal with it) are definitly future-proofed. The 4 large fields unfertilized with adequate skilled farmers should supply even a max pop fort. Fertilized no probs, but will take 24 potash per season! Now the more I think about the extra PT, the more I like it, since you can make paper out of it as well (something I had been buying previously), so I definitly think I will work a 4th field into my own design. I don't think you are going to get good results with less than 4 farmers.
My current (other than your guide) fort has around 128 dorfs IIRC, I have 3 fields, 1x7 fertilized (6 potash per season total), a legendary and a high master grower, and I let everyone harvest. I'm overflowing in food (between geese and cavern monster meat + farming) and booze. Clothing industry making all varieties of everything, although I do trade for a bit of cloth & dye typically (especially since I've no silk left to harvest). Fort is about 4 or 5 years old. Ale does tend to be my lowest stock though. I would probably add another rotation of dye or two with the extra PT. 1:1 for PT (that is going to thread):DC is fine, but it doesn't account for dying your wool & silk. By the way, DC/PT/PT/DC is a good field combo. Skilled farmer migrants also seem to be quite rare for me, always (and the few I ever get seem to be skilled soldiers with good stats as well so it's always a hard choice).
Back to my playthrough:
So trading with the 1st caravan. We've got rock crafts (bleh) and wooden spiked balls (yay!) plus some poor quality crap I want to weed out early. Got 8 migrants...3 of them are fishers/fishcleaners/disectors <grumble>, 1 lvl 5 mechanic...and not a useful skill otherwise, other than the fact that most of them are (very) lowskill marksdwarves...<more grumbling>. I'll have to speedtest your layout with my usual embark profile. It's a bit slower initial going generally, but I'm at least guaranteed lvl 5 in major skills if the migrants RNG is unkind to me. Granted regular quality is just that, regular, there are no poor quality levels in DF, so it isn't the end of the world. Regular steel armor and weapons still do a bang up job.
Uncle Krougal's tradetips for noobs (AKA shit I wish someone told me when I was a noob)- Trading in other games (like RL) is usually about making a profit, for DF forget what you know about commerce, in DF trading is about 2 things.
1. Getting rid of shit you don't need.
2. Getting shit you need/want (after 2nd year mostly want)
You want them to leave ecstatic, so give them a stupid profit margin. Why? The more profit they make, the more crap they will bring next year. That means the more of your unwanted crap you can get some return on. Also the more migrants you will get. For the first caravan that can be tough, since you likely don't have a lot to get rid of (although if you start making trap components when they arrive on the map, you can still pretty well clean them out). By the 3rd year if you don't have more garbage to throw at them than they have stuff you want to buy you're doing it wrong anyway.
First caravan priorities are leather (quivers and backpacks for your military, your livestock industry is going to take a few years to get good returns), possibly metals/wood/sand if your map is lacking, maybe some more seeds if you didn't bring a lot, and likely some more brewables. Also good to mark these up with the diplomat as well, so that next year they will bring more. With the advent of libraries, I'd also recommend keeping an eye out for written books/scrolls, many dwarves like to read in their spare time (whoda thunk it?). Speaking of livestock you can request those (from diplomat, pets category), and with the appropriate dfhack tweak (I think Peridis enables it in LNP by default) you can request each gender seperately. Great for if that lone cat dies or you find you forgot the sheep (like me!) or someone brought pets of 1 gender, and you might as well make the best of it. Also even if the caravan shows up and you haven't crafted any goods (just so long as you built that depot) don't panic; you can start crafting spiked balls or whatever now, and continue up until you get the message they are preparing to leave. Just keep an eye on completions and keep them moving up to the depot ASAP.
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Topic: Dogfooding my own strategy guide (Read 12061 times)