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The marble walls of Tongsblunted: a novice's first true fort

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Simon_science:
While I know dwarf fortress is supposed to contain a lot of !!FUN!!, as a new player (okay, I started playing awhile ago but never really got into it) I wanted to get an easy starting position to truly setup a fort, and not find myself as incapable as a two year old within the first year of gameplay. I allways chose starting positions with two billion layers of aquifer or No weapon grade metals (only COBALTITE GOD DAMIT! AND NOW THERE IS A TROLL AND MY DWARVES HAVE BEEN WRESTLING IT FOR MONTHS.). Needless to say, I probably picked bad starting locations for a novice, though they were a lot of FUN. I mostly picked those locations because of some obsession with having an island fort, but finally I decided to let go of that. Now that I have less starting hurdles, I find myself doing very good progress, and i've decided to post here to get advice for the fort and for showing off/storytelling. Because i'm very familiar with some aspects of the game (construction, obtaining food, designations, the basics youknow) but completely unfamiliar with others (currently considers nobles useless vermin, what the heck are import agreements, dont talk to me about livestock and animal training ffs why do I allways get trapper migrants...) I feel like this could be pretty interesting.

Before I start getting into the meat of this though:

SPOILER WARNING

I spoiled myself HFS on the wiki worth it for knowing about archcrystal that run is amazing. Curiosity killed the expirience, but I feel it wouldent be in the spirit of the game to just exploit what I learned from the wiki without consequence. Therefore, I will not be using any adamantium, at all, untill I breach into HFS. That dosent mean I wont go in prepared though...

The world settings were not customized, but the embark was a tad more fine tuned to trade off dwarf skills for more containers and whatnot.
The settings for world creation changed from default are: Very large size, very many civilisations, very short history, many sites.

the main landmass on which the fort is located:


The progenitor civilisation of the fort is the artificial seal, a group of forts on a mountainside overlooking... Elven towns.


Currently, Our civilisation is at war with the elves of the southeast. the war has lasted for a few years now,  and though our civilisation has the population advantage by far, I cant figure out if any of the two sides are winning. Either way, our outpost is pretty far away from that conflict.

The outpost of Tongsblunted is decently far from the Mountainhomes. About eight days of travel to the north. We are positioned in a valley surrounded by mountains. A good defensive position for a civilisation in my opinion, but I dont know if my position will influence future settelments. In the meantime though, we are ALONE alone Al- (cue squidward alone clip). The closest "neighbors" we have are the elves downstream and the only human civilisation on the continent.



The year is 7, meaning it has been two years since "embark!". Here is the main surface Z Level:


I picked the site specifically to build a river moat. Only the southern arm of the river is artificial. The moat has caused a few dwarven casualties, mostly due to a floor overhang that needed to be channeled out and dwarves not understanding that standing where someone else is digging on a thin dirt ledge is a bad idea.

one group of people really dont like the moat though. Merchants:

even though i've built a perfectly functional bridge they still decide to swim. I just... *sigh*. Well I kindof find trading to be a hassle anyways. Wait holy thats a lot of blood

Oh right, the humans! For some reason I have a constant influx of humans armed to the teeth that just want to kill cave monsters all the time, and that's fine by me! I really dont understand why. Maybe the human military in those coastal towns are getting bored and travel here for some FUN. and man, do they get FUN.


As you can see in the main surface z-level image, i've started the construction of a wall. I'm planning the construction of a huge marble castle. My military do their training on the outside. the west flank will be the main building, while the east is planned to be food production in an enclosed wilderness. Most of our food is gathered by herbalists, but we also do have fisherdwarves and a fishing industry, because I decided to figure it out when I got frustrated that migrants allways seem to be fisherdwarves.

The first layer of the underground: Storage, Food processing, carpentry

Also contains the grand dining hall. Yeah, i'm starting to get annoyed that its all white aswell. I'm going to get my mason to make some stuff out of colorfull rocks eventually.

Second layer: Sleeping, masonry, hospital and graveyard

Smoothed bedrooms with space for a peice of furniture, looks cozy! (or claustrophobic). For those with a keen eye for detail, you might have noticed the bedroom with a "king sized" bed. For a bit of background, I wanted my for to have a dwarven couple so I could have dwarven generations. I dont think I will turn away migrants when I get a second generation, but having it would be nice. So I resolved to leave my population cap at default untill I got an immigrant couple. Any Urist Mcmarriedcouple would do. Welp.

Urist Mcmarriedcouple is what I got! the fort now sits at population cap of 50. I'm currently asking myself if I need to increase it to get dwarven children, but I dont want to get immigrants either. help on that would be nice.

Next floor is the metal industry workshops and the mechanic's workshop, which are pretty boring. Instead i'll go over the exploitation of the undergroud so far.
The first event of significance was the striking of Galena a few z levels down. It kickstarted the fort's metalsmithing industry and military, leading to the creation of the first squad, the Grooved Boats, equiped with "the meta": SILVER MACES SENPAI, and wooden sheilds because, whynot. Lead has remained unused for now, but I plan on using it for military applications later. The second ore hit was, uh... let me check... Ah right. Sphalerite. Followed immidiatley by
SENPAI
TETRAHEDRITE

Copper FTWWWWW. This let me create my second squad, the Inky Conjunctions, only equipped with copper crossbows and bolts, and start making copper armor for the Grooved Boats, starting with breastplates.

Otherwise, all three caverns were breached. PRAISE THE MINERS, RAW ADAMANTINE-PRAISE THE MINERS, RAW ADAMA- of for f- shut up! -which i'm not going to use for a *long* while. My main staircase has hit semi-molten rock, though I cant seem to see any magma yet. The only other mineral of note I can think of is Pitchblende, which i'm planning to quarry and link to a minecart system to use as effective catapult ammunition.

Finally, we get to the history room:

Yup. I got tired of not having any artwork to look at description wise and just did that. I'll go over some of the better enravings but first- I got some artifacts. Best of wich is Lor Paintedpasses, a hazel wood grate

I'm just suprised he fitted that onto a grate! like, arent those things supposed to have holes?

a few of the engravings are masterpeices, and as you can see i'm expanding it.

Anyways, I guess thats it for now. I'll try to share the save eventually if people are interested. I'm hoping the fort gets attacked by... something (seige-forgotten beast whatnot) eventually so my dwarves can get in on the FUN.

Those humans, stealing all the FUN for themselves.

Fleeting Frames:
Adamantine has long felt cheaty to me. Though I've never managed that enthauism for tetrahedrite; though they are warmer now my initial feelings were along the lines of "...lets keep digging."

I'd be worried about being too isolated; part of me is still in the mindset of "all civs in range", despite the raids mechanic.


I like the aesthetics of what you're doing with the river.

And agreed on adding some colours other than white. Your memory room could use it as well.


For offspring, you have two population caps in /init/d_init.txt: regular and strict. having strict above regular means the difference is just for birth. However, if your couple doesn't get to spend bit of time doing nothing next to each other, no babies. This can take years, if you don't force it, as they don't seek out their spouse on their own.

...Hm, it wouldn't be too hard to set up an autmatic system to make the bedroom entrance not an exit every 3 seasons.

And welcome to the community games and stories!

Simon_science:
Thank you!
I've failed to bring up the main hurdle i've been dealing with right now in the main post, which is quite the ironic situation.
See we are really well stocked on food:

But our alcohol...

We simply dont have enough barrells! I guess this is one of those "good problems". Maybe I'll make my metalsmits construct some zinc barells. Just... try to ignore that taste of rust in your ale, eh?

Fleeting Frames:
Personally, I never store non-liquid foods in a barrel (and if they're in, I may take them out with dump command); I instead use a minecart (holds five times as much, but dwarves can't drink, only cook, booze inside) or minecart qsp.

Though either way, food needs a larger input pile than just a few tiles due how it can come in bursts (depot, slaughtering a pack of wildlife, herbalism returning from trip).

Simon_science:
Part 2: Death and Birth
The first thing of note that happened after we left last time was the death of a blacksmith. He drowned somewhere, which is somewhat unsuprising given the moat.

However, much more exiting is the sucsess of our dwarven couple! I decided to disable all of their labors so they could focus on, well... Dwarven Good Times

In a sense, their Labor is Labor!

Soon after, allthough I think the pregnancy was allready under way, our first birth happened in the fort!


In the middle of the dining room ofcourse. Lets take a look at the newborn!


-has mustache
Welp. Thats dwarven biology for ya.

Shortly after that, I started having a lot of !!FUN!! trying to stop all of my dwarves getting caught in a cycle of combat and refuse hauling creeping eye corpses. to summarise:
Dwarf goes to haul creeping eye corpse
Dwarf gets interrupted by creeping eye
Dwarf beats the shit out of creeping eye, creeping eye dies
Dwarf seeks medical attention
Other dwarf goes to haul creeping eye corpse
Dwarf gets interrupted by creeping oh for fffffff

I feel bad for our medical dwarf. He was a diagnoser and I decided he would be our Doctor, having *ALL* of the healthcare things enabled. and, well...

One guy treating a dosen other people in a rough, damp hole as your "hospital".

So after a lot of !!FUN!! blocking out the doors to the caves, disabling my refuse stockpile, re enabling the doors to the caves because I need the Nether-Cap-Wood for a thing. Reactivating your refuse stockpile in panic as your mineshaft floods with miasma. And finally all of those creeping eyes died.

So I found myself asking what I should work twoards. I knew I wanted to build a Marble castle but I needed another Primary material other then Marble that was abundant enough and that I would personally be satisfied with. Well, the solution is somewhat obvious: Obsidian. Infinite, valuable and an awsome idea IMO.
Only problem though: I dont have any magma-safe metal. How in the  world am I going to do this withough moving magma?

Well, luckly a magma-safe pump can be constructed from nether-cap-wood, but building a magma safe pump stack to move the magma closer to the surface seems somewhat harder then having the obsidian generator deep underground but building a transport system for the mined obsidian.
Here is a blueprint of the plan:

+a fine drawing of dwarves in mspaint. The dwarves are working. The image relates to the beginning of the construction of the great convoluted obsidian generator in the early autumn of year 7+

I gave some designations to start construction of the Obsidian generator, and also to continiue building the marble wall around the most elevated portion of the river.

Oh, some merchants! Time to watch them drown... wait... could it be? Is this really happening?

YES! I didint care much but at least now my drawbridge is getting used for someth- wait
Why did they turn ba- DID THEY JUST GET ON THE ISLAND TO TAUNT ME WHAT THE F

GET BACK HERE YOU SONOFAGOBLIN.

In retrospect I was mad enough I would have probably atomsmashed them with the drawbridge if I thought of it but I dont think that would be good for dat dwarven Diplomacy. Which is why I'm going to do exactly that if this happens again Armokdamit.

Otherwise, the construction of the outer marble wall has progressed well:


And Excavation is being done for the obsidian generator (I hit the magma sea by the way):


The long hallway in a U shape on the top layer is to transport the water- as per the previous diagram i'm channeling a vertical tube up to a underground infinite water source. On the bottom level it is acces for the eventual magma pump.

While thats being built, i've been thinking about overhauling my food and alcohol production around Foxtail Millet & Maybe potatoes/grapes. The biggest hassle is that local plant life gets in the way of farm plot construction, so the best idea may be to build a road or something on top to override the natural plants, and then remove it. I guess i'll have to see.

One of my crazier ideas was building a giant artificial building and have the farm sit on top of it with irrigation, but honestly thats just complicating my life for not much reason lol.

I still hope i'll get attacked soon. Other then the occasional cave horror its been quiet... too quiet...
*looks at accidental dead merchant bodies*

Too quiet indeed...

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