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[Bromor Neckbeard]

Number two, ... Where's the skeletal piranha and zombie clams? Some Lake of Evil.

As has already been said, getting a nicely challenging Evil biome is very hit-or-miss.  I'm on a Sinister Mountain now, and all I've ever seen are Hoary Marmots and Mountain Goats.  But on the previous attempt on a Terrifying Mountain, I had a rush of Harpies and Werewolves rip my dwarves apart in the first month.

Number three. I've actually tapped into this lake to fill a cistern for my fortress, but it's taking forever to fill. Granted that the channel goes over half-way across the map, but I broke into the lake a good 12 game-hours ago and the cistern (relatively small) is still only half-full. Barely enough for my dwarves to use the well.

Well, evaporation plays a part in this as has already been discussed.  It's worse in Hot/Scorching biomes.  What is the temperature in your fortress?

Going along with that, pressure also seems to be a factor.  Contrary to what you'd expect, the depth of a square of water determines if/when/how fast adjacent squares fill from that square.

This doesn't necessarily help you in your current situation, but for next time, you should build your channel at least a z-level down from the lake that you are draining.  Water that falls a z-level has more pressure and will fill channels MUCH faster than water flowing from the same level.

Number five. Framerate. At the beginning of the second year framerate dropped very noticebly. It's been getting slowly better since. I'm informed that large water areas and magma slow down framerate, but those things were on the map from the start. I can't recall anything that happened that would have caused this.

Well, pathfinding issues would be my first guess.  Are there any chokepoints in your fortress?   Any high-traffic hallways that are only 1 tile wide?  If thirty or forty dwarves have to pathfind through a narrow hallway, it can cause midrange machines to chug heavily.  What are your computer specs?

(If you're playing 40d, Partial Print is a GODSEND.  Playing with it literally DOUBLED the amount of dwarves I can have in my fortress, at no visible cost to the graphics.)

My next guess would be animals.  Are your cats out of control or something?  Check your Unit List.  Are there two dozen Groundhogs milling around on some corner of the map?

Six: Friends and neighbours. To date we've had no Humans, no Goblins, and only two Kobold thieves. I want some conflict. Is it usual to take this long before the the Goblins and the Humans find us? Is it possible that they're all dead?

I usually start seeing Goblin Snatchers midway through my second year, and get my first ambush within a month of the end of my second year.  If you get all the way through the third year without seeing a Goblin, then they are all dead or can't reach your fortress.

(My advice assumes that you haven't modded the game.)

You might consider taking a screenshot before you embark just in case you want to refer to things later.

This is brilliant, and I'm going to do this from now on.

[Marlowe]

Whoa, lots of responses. Let's go to work:

1, Since the last post I've had Goblins turn up (just snatchers, mostly dead. One made the mistake of snatching a baby from a woodcutter mother in the middle of a crowd of woodcutters. I swear. They can't be very GOOD woodcutters. They had to cut off every limb he had before one of them actually killed him). No humans. The Goblin civ is called "The Incest of Phantoms". And no, civs don't appear in the menu until after you make contact.

2, Does evaporation occur underground? I know I said "channel" but it is a tunnel. I didn't breach the lake diagonally. BTW it's a cold Biome. Water freezes in winter.

3, THE BIG ISSUE: FPS

I turned on my FPS counter and discovered that my little laptops' performance really is abysmal. FPS 9-10. Reducing G-FPS had no effect beyond making it more jumpy.

The really funny thing is that when I loaded my old fortress ("Oartraded") I discovered that that game was running at PS 14-17. I know that's not GOOD, but it's a huge improvement in real terms over FPS 9-10. Need I mention that Oartraded has a population of 205 (the newer one "Spinescudgels", is at 88), crosses 10 Z-levels (though most of them are just exploratory mining) has the economy going and a lot more animals?

So what's causing this? Why is a fortress running at half the FPS of a fortress more than twice the size and three times the value?

It's not narrow corridors. I didn't spend ages turning every exploratory shaft into a three-wide corridor so I could be accused of "narrow corridors". The layout of Spinescudgels is a lot less efficient than I'd like, but that's because of surface lakes getting in the way and unexpected changes from soil to rock and back again.

I doubt it's animals. Oartraded has more. As for wild animals, there's been nothing but  a few deer,wolves,and foxes. And a couple of nervous Fire imps.

Oartraded has a brook. Spinescudgels has a lake and a volcano. I'm not sure if this is relevant.

It's, for reasons that should be obvious considering the first of my complaints, not Goblins.

I would like to believe it's the cistern. I would like to ignore what my memory is telling me about the slowdown occuring before we breached the lake (I can't remember). I've closed the floodgate, even though the cistern's not asfull as I would like.Trouble is, with the speed the water is moving, it will be days (REAL LIFE DAYS) before the water in the tunnel equalises with that in the cistern, and only then will we be able to tell if it made any difference.
I don't know if I have the patience.

4, No monsters? I have 4 hunters now exterminating the local wildlife. No skeleton Perch? .
   
I've started a new fortress in a new world; on a mixed Haunted Mountain/Wilderness Forest Biome. There are skeleton Mountain Goats and Hoary Marmots. I'll keep you posted how that goes.

Oh, and off-subject, but I have 2 worlds generated now where an actual MAJORITY of sites have aquifers. I have no idea how to deal with these. Any tips?

[Gorjo MacGrymm]

Interesting, I have about given up on sinister and terrifying and haunted biomes for my current challenge (the above ground humie challenge) due to the last 123,434,379,237,398,473,289,576,892 worlds I have generated (ok, not THAT many, buz jeez, a LOT) had my dwarves dead in under....ohhh.......1 hour real time in 4/5 games.  That odd game out had them dead in 1 minute.  I HAVE NEVER SEEN A "MISS" on one of these biomes.  Would love to see one.  Last one I tried, went through 14 harpies and 9 ogres and 5 werewolves.  I killed off 2 harpies, 3 would appear.  I kill off an ogre, 3 would appear.  I swear.  Every time I read about someone complaining about not enough danger i scratch my head and ask myself, "what f'king game are THEY playing?!" and "WTF cant I get a f'king break one day on embark!?"

oh well, just my path thru the universe i suppose.

ps:  yes, i start a new world everytime my fort fails.  I dont like re-embarking to the site or adv mode (yeah, i know, i am missing out im sure) and building a new fort in the same world i lost the old one seems, i dunno, kinda.....dirty *invisible shrug*.

edit:  damn, he slipped that big post in underneath me. wait.  I mean, he wrote that article concerning his adventures and and got it online right before mine.  there, better.  that didnt sound quite so gay.

edit:  I just realized this post is meaningless.  sorry

[inaluct]

I just turned the FPS counter on, and depressingly enough, mine never goes over 20.

I blame the hundreds and hundreds of stacks of elephant meat and bones lying around my fortress.

[Dr_Dungeon]

Trouble is, with the speed the water is moving, it will be days (REAL LIFE DAYS) before the water in the tunnel equalises with that in the cistern, and only then will we be able to tell if it made any difference.
I don't know if I have the patience.

You should try Gibbed's Dwarf Fortress Tweak - module For Each Tile. Tweak can be found here: http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/User:Rick/Tweak  , For Each Tile can be found here: http://dwarf.lendemaindeveille.com/index.php/User:Exponent/For_Each_Tile .
When you get them up and running create new operation set:

Code: (condition) [Select]

get_water_level > 0

Code: (operations) [Select]

set_water_level(7)Or if you want just to raise water level in view:

Code: (condition) [Select]

get_water_level > 0 and in_viewportin the latter example you have to be in view mode (k) in DF.

Yes, I know, it's cheating... but it's cheating for greater sake.

[Osmosis Jones]

Does evaporation occur underground? I know I said "channel" but it is a tunnel. I didn't breach the lake diagonally. BTW it's a cold Biome. Water freezes in winter.

Evaporation will occur underground if the water level is less than 7/7.

THE BIG ISSUE: FPS

What's the elevation range like on your map? Extra Z levels chew through FPS like crazy. Also, I'm not sure if this works in the latest version (I haven't had to do it) but back in the 38 series, I swear I used to get pretty good improvements just by forbidding all the stones on the ground I wasn't using.

I've started a new fortress in a new world; on a mixed Haunted Mountain/Wilderness Forest Biome. There are skeleton Mountain Goats and Hoary Marmots. I'll keep you posted how that goes.

That's very close to what I have now. Keep an eye out for skeletal and zombie eagles, they will eat most units for breakfast; I had, before he eventually fell, a skilled woodcutter/plain axedwarf/novice wrestler in full steel armor, shield and steel battleaxe get torn to bits by a skeagle. This same skeagle went on to kill a miner, a cheesemaker and wound the dwarven liason before getting dogpiled by caravan guards.

Skeagles and Zeagles are bad.

[Derakon]

Evaporation underground only occurs if the depth is at 1/7. If you had an underground cistern with a consistent depth of 2/7, it would never evaporate.

Evaporation aboveground follows the same rules, with the caveat that in sufficiently hot climates, water will evaporate at any depth.

[Marlowe]

Quick update concerning framerate on the Haunted Mountain fortress:

With the original 7 dwarfs it began with an average in the high 60s, occasionally reaching into the 70s. Subsequent migrations reduced this more or less as expected and average now, with about 50 Dwarves, is around 45-50. Noticably, it drops when new migrants are being generated and when there are merchants entering the map. Opening a water channel to a brook to create an indoor fishing area (in my Dining Hall) didn't seem to effect things much.

 SO, it looks like a gradual reduction in framerate is the norm with an increasing population. Like we knew that already. It does leave a mystery as to why Spinescudgels' FPS dropped into the sewer at the start of the second year and pretty much stayed that way.