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[genuis101]

All right so first time here on the forums, I have two questions:

1) Can I flood the cave system down there? I've redirected a river to waterfall down into it

2) I can not seem to stablize farm -> Plump Helmets -> Storage -> Brewery -> Beer
By this I mean I can create rock pots till the cows come home, but farming most of the time almost wont happen, and then when it does, it goes into storage and that of then the last hear of it.  On those times that I get a represting brew command at the still it will run for a while then cancel itself and thats that.  I am missing something here or I am not being micro enough?

[Darkweave]

If the caverns are connected to the map edge you won't be able to flood them without walling them off.

Disable all labours bar farming on two to three of your dwarves. With a 6x6 plump helmet farm you should never run out of booze. Are your brew commands being cancelled due to lack of plump helmets? Queue up booze in the manager screen. Do you have plenty of seeds?

[genuis101]

I thought I did, but then as a new player I may very not.  I put a seed reposity right next to my 6*9 farm plot for plump helmets.  At first the helmets grew then withered, but I was able to turn on a farmer.  but never more than about 3-5 plots were ever used.  Checking my storehousre revealed ~10 plump helmet seeds.  so I would get 2-4 helmets into storage which would then brew and the whole process would stop.  Hmm I'll try being more specific with the therapist.  Beyond that I'm actually in a restart at this moment (tantrum spiral destroyed what little I had left after winter), so I can provide up to the minute pics if you want.

[Darkweave]

Embark with 20 or so plump helmet seeds.

Make sure you're not cooking them if you're making meals.

Have two dwarves with all labours but farming turned off.

Create a 6x6 farm set to plump helmets every season.

Continuously produce rock pots and queue up 10 or so brew x30 orders in the manager screen.

[RAKninja]

for farming for booze -

i build two 3*3 plump helmet farms early on, most likely before i even have the "food level" dug out.

on your standing (o)rders menu, make sure "dwarves all harvest" is set to "dwarves all harvest" and not "only farmers harvest".  you can change it later, but right at first you cannot afford to let crops wither in the field.

i embark with enough booze to last me a season or two.

also, rock pots/barrels are used to store both plants and seeds/seed bags.  you may need two craftsdwarves' workshops to fill the demand for both plant/seed and booze storage.

in the "z -> kitchen" menu, make sure that your crops are all set to brew only. for that matter, make sure your booze is not set to "cook".  again, you can change it later, but for the critical first year or two, i find it best this way.

assuming you have a competent or better planter with no other labors enabled, you should be swimming in plump helmets within a season of getting the farms set up.

then it's only a matter of having a brewer with nothing else to do, and a whole lot of empty barrels/rock pots.

by year two you should be able to expand and diversify your crops, as well as set up a better micromanagement system.

oh yea, i think dwarves drink twice a season.  you'll want n*4 or n*6 barrels of booze, where n is the current population of your fort.  this is so that if you get an early siege or ambush, you can "hole up" without thirsting to death.  you can safely reduce this number once you have a military (or traps) capable of defeating such events.

[genuis101]

Okay,  that did seem to work, on game 5 now.  Is there wany way to block a water flow?  The waterfall I made down the sair to flood the caverns didnt work out and blocked off most of my fortress it was eariser to restart.  I now have hundreds of beer, and food is doing ok I guess.  I will post how this fortress ends.  Wish me luck.

[Stormfeather]

Good luck!

And yeah, to block a water flow (before it gets too deep anyhow) you can a) build a door (I can't remember which setting you need it on though, if any specific setting), b) build a floodgate, c) wall it off, d) probably tons of other stuff I'm not thinking of right now.

If you've already got a water flow going though, good luck blocking it off. :/ Your best bet is to try to block off some place ahead of the flow, and hope whatever it is gets constructed in time.

[Jacos]

Wow, all you people build tiny farms! All my farms are giant ones made of four 10x10 ones, each a quarter of a giant one.
With it I grow all sorts o' stuff.

[Tierre]

do your farmers plant all of the tiles of your plots or half is always empty? I make 3*1 plots and do like 10-20 of them. Only 1 farmer can plant on 1 plot at a time - so big plots - most of it isn't used.

[Ethnar]

On the topic of recurring orders for brewers I wonder: do drinks rot when underground and not on a stockpile tile?
If they don't, would it be possible to do the following?
- prepare farming big enough never to run out of plump helmets (easy)
- create enough barrels (or pots? sorry, I'm a bit old fashioned) I think 200 would do?
- have 2-4 stills work on repeat in producing booze
- no stockpile for drinks, so the booze stays there and clutters workshop
The more booze you have in reserve, the slower it goes to produce more. With proper numbers, it should be possible to reach a point where amount produced is equal to amount drunk. And if more dwarves come, then brewers will start working faster (since booze will be drunk, reducing clutter). If some die, more will be left untouched, creating more clutter, slowing down production.

With enough barrels (and plants) those jobs on repeat will never cancel and you never should worry about drink anymore.

Would this work?
And if drinks rot - how fast and what's the result? Is barrel simply empty and re-usable?

Think I'll do some testing as soon as I manage to reclaim that fortress of mine...

[Quietust]

Wow, all you people build tiny farms! All my farms are giant ones made of four 10x10 ones, each a quarter of a giant one.

My fortresses typically have eight 5x5 farm plots (4 surface, 4 subterranean) and spend most of their time fallow, and they're more than enough to keep 200 dwarves fed and boozed.

Only 1 farmer can plant on 1 plot at a time - so big plots - most of it isn't used.

Wrong - multiple farmers can plant seeds in the same farm plot at the same time, and the same is true for harvesting.

[Kon]

Wow, all you people build tiny farms! All my farms are giant ones made of four 10x10 ones, each a quarter of a giant one.

My fortresses typically have eight 5x5 farm plots (4 surface, 4 subterranean) and spend most of their time fallow, and they're more than enough to keep 200 dwarves fed and boozed.

When I first started playing, I did 10x10. Sizes have gotten smaller and smaller. Now I mostly use lots of 2x3 plots.

[i2amroy]

I tend to run like 10 5x5 plots (5 running below ground plants, 5 above) that way I can control the plants that are grown more easily. Combine that with 1 nearby room for with a seed-only stockpile and I find that the only thing limiting my farming ability is the number of farmers that I have. As for pots vs. barrels, I tend to stay away from pots and only use barrels since they are still kind of a little buggy right now (storing food in the furniture stockpile, things like that). Also something that can help a lot is if you go to the stock'p'ile menu and look for the number of reserved barrels. IF you set this to like 5 or so then it should only cancel the brew task when all of your barrels are filled with something, greatly limiting the amount of times when you need to re-add the task.