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[Yovatsap]

Something seems odd about the labor-to-population ratio in your fort. What is your current population, and what is your maximum population set to?

In my small forts (20-30 dwarfs) I assign 2 military dwarfs in the first year plus 1 per year thereafter. I do not find this significantly impacts my labor ability to feed and clothe my dwarfs.

Maybe you are building up your industries too quickly? For a small fort, try keeping things simple. Not only will this decrease your labor requirements, but it will reduce the size/frequency of ambushes and sieges, so your military needs will be less. Serrated disks are one of the most valuable items in the game, so if you are building a lot of weapon traps with 10 serrated disks and a high-quality mechanism, you will drive your fortress wealth skyward and bring more invaders! Better to have a fort that is "poor" (low fortress wealth) but has a pair of legendary sworddwarfs training at the entrance.

In my opinion.

My fort currently has 12 adult dwarves and a child dwarf from the second migration wave. I have my pop_cap set to 10 so got 2 dwarves per wave (plus that kid). So I don't think I can spare any for my military (for now at least) until I get at least 20 adults. And I currently have 20 cage traps set up in a 1x30 entrance hall to my fort and I'm going to fill the other ten with the 10 serrated disc/ultra-mechanism traps. I have fire-safe (but not magma-safe) bridge set up just at the end of the entrance hall. So if anything goes wrong, I can just lock my dwarves inside and hope that the trapavoid gets killed by the 30 über serrated discs which will attack it each time it moves. Either that or I'll have a grand master dodger trapavoid creature waiting outside. Both seems !FUN! to me.

P.S. I even have a subterranean emergency refuse stockpile set which is miasma-proof.

[Mushroo]

Something seems odd about the labor-to-population ratio in your fort. What is your current population, and what is your maximum population set to?

In my small forts (20-30 dwarfs) I assign 2 military dwarfs in the first year plus 1 per year thereafter. I do not find this significantly impacts my labor ability to feed and clothe my dwarfs.

Maybe you are building up your industries too quickly? For a small fort, try keeping things simple. Not only will this decrease your labor requirements, but it will reduce the size/frequency of ambushes and sieges, so your military needs will be less. Serrated disks are one of the most valuable items in the game, so if you are building a lot of weapon traps with 10 serrated disks and a high-quality mechanism, you will drive your fortress wealth skyward and bring more invaders! Better to have a fort that is "poor" (low fortress wealth) but has a pair of legendary sworddwarfs training at the entrance.

In my opinion.

My fort currently has 12 adult dwarves and a child dwarf from the second migration wave. I have my pop_cap set to 10 so got 2 dwarves per wave (plus that kid). So I don't think I can spare any for my military (for now at least) until I get at least 20 adults. And I currently have 20 cage traps set up in a 1x30 entrance hall to my fort and I'm going to fill the other ten with the 10 serrated disc/ultra-mechanism traps. I have fire-safe (but not magma-safe) bridge set up just at the end of the entrance hall. So if anything goes wrong, I can just lock my dwarves inside and hope that the trapavoid gets killed by the 30 über serrated discs which will attack it each time it moves. Either that or I'll have a grand master dodger trapavoid creature waiting outside. Both seems !FUN! to me.

P.S. I even have a subterranean emergency refuse stockpile set which is miasma-proof.

What are your 12 dwarfs doing that's so important you can't spare a couple for fortress defense?

Personally with 12 I would have:

1. soldier
2. soldier
3. grower
4. cook/brewer
5-12. whatever you like

No reason that 2 soldiers and 2 farmers can't easily take care of a fortress of 20...

[Yovatsap]

(Didn't quote because it was too long and didn't want to crop it.)

Well I just realised that I don't need a 5x10 farming plot for a fort of 13... I'll move some dwarves around, see what I can do. Thanks for the suggestion though, it's exam week in my school and I guess I'm kinda distracted.

Another question: Do you think I should spam the outside of my fort with cage traps so I have more trap coverage and maybe I can catch some butcherable animals?

Edit: And also, none of my dwarves have any combat skills whatsoever. And since I will have a very small squad, I want to keep it professional. I want to make sure they get the job done. What would you suggest? Axedwarf? Speardwarf? Marksdwarf? Or just a luchador or something?

[Mushroo]

(Didn't quote because it was too long and didn't want to crop it.)

Well I just realised that I don't need a 5x10 farming plot for a fort of 13... I'll move some dwarves around, see what I can do. Thanks for the suggestion though, it's exam week in my school and I guess I'm kinda distracted.

Another question: Do you think I should spam the outside of my fort with cage traps so I have more trap coverage and maybe I can catch some butcherable animals?

Edit: And also, none of my dwarves have any combat skills whatsoever. And since I will have a very small squad, I want to keep it professional. I want to make sure they get the job done. What would you suggest? Axedwarf? Speardwarf? Marksdwarf? Or just a luchador or something?

I, personally, do not use cage traps...I find that they are more trouble than they're worth sometimes (dwarf runs into battle to swap a fresh cage, gets killed!) plus I consider it kind of an export. I am surprised you are having trouble getting enough food with such a small population to feed. What crops are you growing, and what animals did you embark with?

No combat skills?? You didn't embark with a military dwarf? You are in for a frustrating year or two of trying to train complete novices up to reasonable skill without a teacher. There are about 1,000,000 threads on how to effectively train military, unfortunately you are at a huge disadvantage without at least 1 competent or better to act as trainer. What I would do in that situation is designate one (or more) dwarf as a Hunter. This should train him/her to competent marksdwarf in about a year (and also solve your problem of not enough meat).

[Yovatsap]

(Didn't quote because it was too long and didn't want to crop it.)

Well I just realised that I don't need a 5x10 farming plot for a fort of 13... I'll move some dwarves around, see what I can do. Thanks for the suggestion though, it's exam week in my school and I guess I'm kinda distracted.

Another question: Do you think I should spam the outside of my fort with cage traps so I have more trap coverage and maybe I can catch some butcherable animals?

Edit: And also, none of my dwarves have any combat skills whatsoever. And since I will have a very small squad, I want to keep it professional. I want to make sure they get the job done. What would you suggest? Axedwarf? Speardwarf? Marksdwarf? Or just a luchador or something?

I, personally, do not use cage traps...I find that they are more trouble than they're worth sometimes (dwarf runs into battle to swap a fresh cage, gets killed!) plus I consider it kind of an export. I am surprised you are having trouble getting enough food with such a small population to feed. What crops are you growing, and what animals did you embark with?

No combat skills?? You didn't embark with a military dwarf? You are in for a frustrating year or two of trying to train complete novices up to reasonable skill without a teacher. There are about 1,000,000 threads on how to effectively train military, unfortunately you are at a huge disadvantage without at least 1 competent or better to act as trainer. What I would do in that situation is designate one (or more) dwarf as a Hunter. This should train him/her to competent marksdwarf in about a year (and also solve your problem of not enough meat).

I thought about the hunting thing but that would put me in a hard situation when summer comes and elephants pass through my embark site... I'll just make a practice range and make sure the bolts will not break when fired. It'll take a while, but it's a start.

Edit: I had a statue I wanted to get rid of and sold it to some elves in exchange for a bow. Is there any difference between a bow and crossbow other than the obvious usage of different ammunition?

[greycat]

So if anything goes wrong, I can just lock my dwarves inside and hope that the trapavoid gets killed by the 30 über serrated discs which will attack it each time it moves.

Weapon traps will not trigger for trap-avoid monsters (like kobolds).  They'll walk right past all your cage traps and weapon traps.  And they won't dodge off the elevated 1xN dodge-'em trap path, since there'll be no weapon trap weapons for it to dodge.

What they can't avoid are upright spear/spike traps that are being actively triggered, and angry military dwarves (once they've been spotted by something).

[Yovatsap]

So if anything goes wrong, I can just lock my dwarves inside and hope that the trapavoid gets killed by the 30 über serrated discs which will attack it each time it moves.

Weapon traps will not trigger for trap-avoid monsters (like kobolds).  They'll walk right past all your cage traps and weapon traps.  And they won't dodge off the elevated 1xN dodge-'em trap path, since there'll be no weapon trap weapons for it to dodge.

What they can't avoid are upright spear/spike traps that are being actively triggered, and angry military dwarves (once they've been spotted by something).

That settles it I'm constructing the entrance hall from scratch. Thanks for the info.

[knutor]

Edit: I had a statue I wanted to get rid of and sold it to some elves in exchange for a bow. Is there any difference between a bow and crossbow other than the obvious usage of different ammunition?

Dwarfs cannot make arrows.  Too many beards get caught in the fletching.  Although, many folks claim whips are overpowered, if a bow does whip-like damage in melee, instead of hammer-like damage found in xbows in melee action, it might be beneficial to buy them.  The melee damage-type(hammer or whip) I do not know, but would surely like to know, aswell.  Knutor

[Garath]

sword damage for bows in melee I think it was. At least it uses the sword skill but does blunt damage. The contact area of a bow however is 10.000, for a whip it is 1, so not whip-like but pretty useless

[Tierre]

You can make minecart killing long hall:) Especially with minecarts moded with blades:)