Bay 12 Games Forum

Actually, medieval (european or otherwise) crossbows were extremely inaccurate, and couldn't go very far. Their main advantage was that they hit so damn hard that it didn't matter, and you didn't need much training to use one.

They were most effective at mid to close range, where infantry with no armor could cut down scores of heavily armored opponents without breaking a sweat.

Where are you getting this information from?  Sure, crossbows in general are less accurate at longer distances than bows since you lose sight of your target when you have to point the crossbow up at an angle to get arc, but they are easier to be accurate with than bows against targets that can be aimed at clearly.  I seriously doubt that medieval crossbows were extremely inaccurate considering that most reproductions I've seen have been very accurate, and back then life or death could depend on hitting your target. 

If you think about the typical dwarven crossbow user as firing from behind fortification from above the enemy as they approach the fortress, the crossbow is pretty much the best possible weapon in that situation.

There was a post a while back about someone who was on a sandless map, had a dragon arrive, and had a sand area afterwards.  They thought it was from dragon fire, other people thought it was from trample by the dragon, nobody was able to prove whether it was a glitch or an unknown feature.  Someone suggested getting a bunch of tame dragons in an enclosed area and letting them tramp around for a long time to see if anything occurs.  So can dragons or any other megabeasts make sand on a sandless map?  (Of course, this is hard to prove to the negative if there is merely a slim chance of it happening.) 

Dwarf civilization and Elf civilization were at war, dwarves won, Elf foresthold was taken over, remaining elves are now part of the dwarf civilization.  One Elf became a liason.  Simple.

My first fortress?  I really have no idea.  Probably ended to my wanting to start a game as an adventurer and not realizing that I had to either backup my save first or abandon the fortress.  Either that or a game coming out that I just had to play.

My first fortress of the 3D era ended when I had this anti-christ bug where the game kept crashing when one kid hit majority status.  I used that as an excuse to try starting a new fort.

Chances are that you aren't actually growing multiple brewable crops, however, as I believe most brewable crops brew by default.

Since you seem to have gotten most of your information from 2D stories it is useful to know that there are some differences with farming.
1) You can plant farms on soil without irrigating them.
2) If you don't have soil and instead irrigate tiles they do not need to be irrigated again unless you destroy their status somehow.
3) There are belowground and aboveground crops.   Plump Helmets and Sweet Pods are belowground brewable crops.  The other alcohols all come from aboveground crops.  There are several different ways to grow above ground crops without exposing yourself too much, from walled in enclosures only accessible from underground to collapsed or channeled roofs that then get ceilings over them.  You can get seeds for aboveground crops by trading with humans or elves, or gather them randomly yourself from the countryside using the gather plants designation.  Generally the grasses and berries are brewable, though some are worth more than others.  (In general, grass->beer, berry->wine, sugar plant->rum, dwarven wine is an exception as it comes from mushrooms)

The same as in the 2D version, make sure that you cycle through all of the seasons on your farm plots so that you don't just plant in the spring, harvest and never plant again until next spring.  I like having 1 or 2 plots of belowground crops and 1 or 2 plots of aboveground crops, which produce different crops in different seasons for a wide variety of food and plant products.  One or two more alcohol producing plants should be enough to help the alcohol variety unhappiness, particularly if you remember to stockpile all of your brewables near the brewery.

I had something like this happen to me, the mechanic got stuck on setting up one end of the interface, and never left it to setup the other end.  It was a while ago, though, and I don't remember the exact details or if I had to do anything to handle it other than cancel and requeue the job multiple times.

I believe there is a job for helping an injured dwarf come back to the fortress, but I imagine that either a) nobody was doing it because there wasn't a bed available for him, or b) that he was so far off that when someone got that job assigned they'd break it off to get food or a drink or go to sleep before they got to him.  My best guesses anyways.

Umm, for the record, a tapestry is woven out of multicolored threads, a painting is made from paint on canvas.  So tapestry would be something that a weaver would make, or perhaps something a plant fiber crafter would make using a loom and dyed threads.  For a painter you'd probably want a canvas made out of undyed threads, and paints made out of dyes in order to make it.  (Though maybe you could first allow paint to be used to up the value of certain objects)