Hm, I'd say that at least I never *felt* slowed down by the hauling tasks -- then again I was generally just hauling in a random fashion whenever I felt there were too many barrels piling up in my stills.
Overall despite the loss via # of barrels, I see from the screenshots drink stocks I may have had the *fullest* drink barrels haha. xD
And I had a bunch of fun, definitely pleased with my first attempt at a community game. *thumbsup*
That said, there are definitely things I could've done to produce more/faster.
Firstly, while I did manage to get all the migrant waves with my second try, the initial 2-4 waves were still quite small, only like 2 dwarves apiece. This kept me struggling a bit with not enough dwarves to do everything I felt needed to be done. (Of course, after things really took off, I had more dwarves than I knew what to do with, lol -- thus letting them spend time hauling barrels around. Even with that, I'd say there was easily a third of my population hanging out in the tavern with those mist generators most of the time). I think I made some relatively unwise requests from the dwarven caravans early on that took up their weight so I didn't get enough other things to help bring up my wealth faster (or maybe I was just unlucky with what they chose to bring). I maybe also should've gifted those first caravans more so they reported better 'profit'.
Secondly, I probably should've had more workshops going (once I had dwarves for them). I stuck to just 2 metalsmiths and 2 stills (and even then, I only went up to 2 each after I was halfway through).
Thirdly, I screwed up my stockpiles for brewable plants (accidentally allowed barrels and never got up the motivation to delete the stockpiles, clear them out, and set the stockpiles properly) which meant I frequently had cancelled brewing jobs because they couldn't access the barrels (because they were in use by dwarves delivering more plants into them). So there were definitely times when the stills were idle that they didn't need to be and required too much micro management. I also should've set up better orders for brewing. (Though, irrelevant to the challenge, I am *very* pleased at how my gem cutting orders worked out this fort, I experimented with a new strategy there and will be using that plan again. xD)
Fourthly, I let coal use get ahead of me a time or two, stopping the smiths while I dug out more. If I'd kept on top of it better, I could've had more continuous production there too.
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Even running the game for another season or so netted me a good 100 more barrels of drink, so if it'd gone longer I think there'd have been quite a difference, though still not enough to improve my spot, I'm sure. xD Although maybe it was just as well the challenge ended when it did, because barely one month later, with the Mid-Spring 103 full moon, we got a visitor...
And then the goblin sieges started. xDD (And I dunno about you guys but my 'militia' was thoroughly untrained and 'equipped' only with that starting copper stuff... let's just say I added a few more tombs.)
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Topic: Dwarf Fortress brewing contest - ended (Read 2014 times)