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[Tormy]

Ive had to abandon 2 fortress now. Im messed up still. Where should I start my fort to make farming easy? Also what if theres no stone materials on the map? .. or wood?

[Teldin]

The best spot:

* No aquifer. An aquifer is an underground level of water that makes it hard to dig any deeper than that. You can spot them with ~~~ levels on your settlement location map, like 'Dolomite    ~~~~~~~' means there's an aquifer at that level and when you try to get under that your dwarves will go 'Miner stops digging: damp earth' or something.

* Lots of trees. You can build all kinds of crazy stuff out of lumber and it's handy all around. Either that or bring lots of logs with you.

* Somewhere with sand, peat, loam. You can dig out a one-floor fortress and plant farms anywhere, no need for mud, no need to haul stone out, no nothing. Just dig a hole and put a farm in. It's incredibly easy to farm now.

That's it! That's all you need, really. If you want stuff made of stone, dig down until you hit stone instead of dirt. You can build crafts and all the buildings made of lumber though and don't have to put it in a stockpile first.. so I tend to use a ton of it.

[Tormy]

Oh, thanks..well yeah until now, Ive tried to start my forst near hills or mountains...never had any trees nearby, even tough the map description said that there are trees...probably because of the z-levels its hard to spot trees now, basically 70% of the map was open space on the staring level.

[Skeeblix]

I've had the same trouble getting trees starting near a mountain. The map shows plenty of trees right nearby my starting point, but when I actually start the game I have all this nice clear grass space below them mountain. I can't get a single friggin' tree to spawn when I want to live in a damn cave in the side of a big rock.

[pushy]

quote:Originally posted by Tormy:
<STRONG>basically 70% of the map was open space on the staring level.</STRONG>

Go down a level or two. As you get nearer to sea level you should find plenty trees  

What annoyed me in the place I'd left my fortress in was that at the bottom of my mountain was a crevasse leading right down to the chasm...with about 8 troglodytes, 15 batmen and a few giant rats wandering around outside. Although my dwarves were two levels above them further up the mountain, the damn vile things were between my dwarves and both the tree and water supply  

[cliffjeff]

yeah, I too got a treeless start in a 'forested' area.  Nice to hear that farming is easy under the right conditions now... though at the same time, designing elaborate floodgate farms is one of the biggest joys of DF =p

[ October 30, 2007: Message edited by: cliffjeff ]

[Eruonen]

quote:Originally posted by cliffjeff:
<STRONG>yeah, I too got a treeless start in a 'forested' area.  Nice to hear that farming is easy under the right conditions now... though at the same time, designing elaborate floodgate farms is one of the biggest joys of DF =p

[ October 30, 2007: Message edited by: cliffjeff ]</STRONG>

You can still try using floodgates as a personal challenge. It's just not required.

[Lightning4]

Yup. I was too lazy to mine out a soil section so I made a traditional floodgate farm. Opened a wall into a swamp with an open floodgate placed, then let it drain until a thin layer of 1/7 water was everywhere. Worked perfectly.

Though unfortunately it seems swamps in my biome dry out during some seasons :/

But I have heard mud is permenant anyway so I should no longer need to spread water.

[ October 30, 2007: Message edited by: Lightning4 ]