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[Xen0n]

Since the OP seems to be bringing up the idea that food production is currently imbalanced in that it's too easy, I'll throw in my two Dwarfbucks.

I'm still on my first fortress, with about a 100 dwarves and several thousand of both food and drinks.  The first few years I set up a couple 4x4 farm plots and bought any interesting sounding food from caravans.  For the last 7 years or so, I have halted all forms of food (or craft) production and buy no food from caravans, but just my butchering to keep the cat and cavy population down seems to be increasing my stockpiles.  I was interested in the whole farming aspect but it's really just not an option when it overproduces like this. 

With that said, I found the old Seasonal Crops mod by RavingManiac http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=61293.0
and have hopes it may somewhat alleviate that problem.  It makes all crops only produce one per year.  (I believe the raws for quarry bushes need to be toyed with a little to make it compatible with 0.31.25 ?)

[Starver]

On the seasonality of crops, it bears mentioning once more that it is strange that underground crops are (two-thirds of them, at least) governed and by the changing seasons, in that some will only plant at certain times, and yet aboveground crops have no such limitations in that regard, despite actually having to weather the weather, whether they like it or not...

[Malarauko]

My current fort has farms off for the moment because I got to 15k food and drink but the hunters on their own are maintaining that level with 200 dwarves to feed. I was quite impressed. They've taken down Giant Toads, Cave Crocodiles and hordes of wolves to feed the place. The fishing is a bit meh but they pull in about 200 fish a year which is alright for variety.

15k food. food is the fps killer.

i like what Jurph did with his cylindrical/vertical fort, where he always has just enough food rather than stores of 3 billion steaks. i tend to end up with a bajillion stuff in my forts anyway and i am a hoard monkey. if it wasnt for the fps i'd probably have layers upon layers of storage for everything.

Thats why I cut back all farms. I really can't be bothered with micromanaging farms constantly so you have JUST enough. I'm gonna run my stockpile down to 5k of each then just riff off of that. Probably repurpose my hunters into a militia unit and use that crossbow training to pin cushion some elves.

[Varnifane]

i think it also has to do with the skill of your dwarves in brewing and cooking.

It has to do with the skill of the farmer. The higher the farming skill, the higher the yield. I take one competent grower (I think it is called) with me on embark. Plant one 5x5 farm, do plump helmets only year one and then alternate crops for booze year two and onward. I set up a still in the summer of year one and set constantly brew.

Between the one small farm and butchering all non-pet animals (for FPS) I end up a large surplus food and booze from the winter of the first year onward.

Delay this whole process by a season if you embark anywhere you need to dig deep to get to farmable soil, etc.

[Shades]

Back in the 2D version I starved the first game, before I understood how the floods worked. I think I avoided lots of the that kind of Fun due to browsing the wiki at work before I could get home to try it though. Probably a mistake in retrospect.

[Xen0n]

Back in the 2D version I starved the first game, before I understood how the floods worked. I think I avoided lots of the that kind of Fun due to browsing the wiki at work before I could get home to try it though. Probably a mistake in retrospect.

Yeah I've been wondering what sorts of FUN I've deprived myself with my ravenous wiki-reading.  Sure, I've had Fire Breathing Flies spew frozen filth all through my stockpiles, spent half a year draining a flood out of my dining area, been all but wiped out by a goblin siege, and unleashed

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hell itself

while totally unprepared...

But I'm still on my first fort.   (With the thousands of previously mentioned meals)

It seems like the glories of Boatmurdered, which first drew me to these Dwarven Fortresses, are beyond the grasp of my now tutorial-laden hand.  I feel like the monkeys which, upon grabbing the nut placed inside a hollowed out coconut, are unable to escape the waiting hunter.  Only in this case it is lavish success which I cannot seem to avoid.

Granted, with the steep learning curve of DF, it's tough to walk the fine line between "Enough info to know how to even TRY doing things" and "Knowing so much that failure is not likely."

[Eric Blank]

Starvation and thirst was a huge problem for me in the first dozen or so fortresses. As soon as I figured out that I needed to set up food production immediately I had no problems, though.
Was a little more pressing issue in 40d, when there were no caverns and your only other option besides plump helmets early on was the small amount of plant material to be gathered from outside. Sure, dogs made great snacks, but they didn't provide quite as much as they do now nor were there any other options for drink besides plump helmet wine or surface water.
I came VERY close to losing a lot of dwarves to thirst in my last 40d fort because I didn't start my farms early enough and hadn't found the cave river. all the pools had dried up and there was no other ground water at that point. got lucky and hit it at the last minute to save many of the dwarves, and then lost a few to the river's inhabitants. Had to prepare special defenses against them after that...

[Starver]

Eric, you just remind me why my 40D farming was slow to get up off the ground...  The extensive aqueducts for flooding then draining rock-space for the underground farms.  These days, of course, just find some soil layer (present, as near-surface, even in the glacial embarks that I've recently been playing on, although of course there's cavern soil as well, always) and you're laughing.