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[Leonidas00]

I need some advice, just started playing, had a nice little fortress going, 14 dwarves, room for 25, food for about 30... 48 immigrants arrive at once, 26 of which are children, now i am WAY overcrowded, low on food. Then one of my pheasants went beserk and put three of my farmers in the hospital, ive got a large crop to be harvested in fall, but i need an immediate food solution, and help?

[toomanysecrets]

Immediate food solution: Slaughter animals, and designate outside plants to be gathered. Plant quarry bushes, they are great for making large stacks of meals. The have to be processed (to bag) at a farmer's workshop first.  Turn on fishing and/or hunting (if you have the supplies) for a few dorfs.

One good farmer is a million times better than a few crummy ones. Hopefully your best farmer can still work. Try to just have a couple farmers enabled. Turn off their other labors if they can't keep up.

If you think youre low on bedrooms just build a few beds but don't make them a bedroom. Anyone can crash there.

Always set your population cap to something manageable before you start a fort. Setting population to 40 or 50 and setting kids to 0:0 from the get-go usually works, but certainly not all the time.

[Fredd]

If there is native wildlife on the map, create some quivers, cbows and bolts, assign some dwarves the hunting labor. If you have a military, send them out on kill orders against wildlife.(Make sure a tannery and butchers shop exist). Once rendered, the animal fat can be cooked. Assign several dwarves plant gathering skill, put them to work

[weenog]

You have pheasants?  Make awesome meals out of 'em.  Should keep dwarves fed and happy.

Alternatively, farm fast and/or high yield stuff (nothing you can't eat like pig tails), butcher anything you can get your hands on and gather plants from the surface, and make stuff you can trade away to merchants for food when they come.  Hunting is good too, and fast, but not reliable depending on the quality of your units available for hunting, and the wild game available.

If you survive, try to build up a large reserve of consumables, and then cook and brew to maintain it, not to replace it after you let it get consumed.  Something like 10 booze per dwarf and half that many prepared meals is okay, but more won't hurt.  Having a big buffer between you and starvation is good, it helps you deal with surprises like giant migrant waves, or having to bisect your fortress because a forgotten beast got in and the only way to stop it is to build a wall where you really don't want one.  If you really wind up with too much, you can always trade away they excess to help pay for your imports.

I don't know what size your farm plot is, but it sounds like it needs to be bigger, and/or there needs to be more of them.  I've tried six 3x9 plots (three subterranean, three surface) a few times and that turned out to be excessive, that much farm can easily keep a fortress of 200+ dwarves drowning in booze, and of a wide variety to keep away the same old booze bad thoughts.  If you can get them, try to grow some wild strawberries.  Like plump helmets they can be cooked, brewed, or even eaten raw, so they can help avoid starvation, and they provide some variety in booze when you're not eating them.

If you can get them, have some large birds around, and build nest boxes for them.  You only need females for egg production if you're just going to eat them, and egg production can go a long way to meeting a fortress' food needs, but if you get a male of the same species and stop the eggs from being collected so they stay in the nest box with the female on them, some may hatch.  It doesn't take too long to go from one blue peacock and four blue peahens to 20 blue peahens, lots of eggs to cook, and a cage full of spare birds waiting to be disassembled for meat, bones and leather.

[Leonidas00]

How do i set my army to kill wildlife, and i dont have phesants, i have pesants (Dwarves) misspelled, only been at this fort for a year or so... and i have one 5*7 or 8 plot, need more, and some outside...

[weenog]

Create a new squad through the (m)ilitary menu, assign dwarves to it and equip them, then give the squad a kill order and select something that looks meat-laden and not too dangerous as the target of the kill order.

[Garath]

If this is your 3rd migrant wave: it's usually much bigger than anything before, it'll pretty much always be, as will the next migrant waves be, so plan ahead on receiving more around that time. Mine tend to be around 24 though

[Leonidas00]

thanks for the help

this is only my second, my third just arrived and it was only like 8 dwarves... funny...

[Snaake]

If you can get them, try to grow some wild strawberries.  Like plump helmets they can be cooked, brewed, or even eaten raw, so they can help avoid starvation, and they provide some variety in booze when you're not eating them.

Fisher berries are just as good as wild strawberries. Prickle berries are also similar, but lower value. Sunberries also have the full trio of cookable/brewable/edible raw, but you can only get them in good biomes, or possibly by trading (from the elves). I don't think any aboveground crops will grow on a glacier, though.