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[Dain]

This is my first time i was able to keep a fortress running for more than a year, Right now I'm totally overwhelmed at the situation for different reason If some of my answers are in the wiki I couldn't found them, but I apologize in advances if they were.

Here is a overall overview of the situation. Version 47.03 We are the 16th limestone 251 early autumn, the fortress started in 250. The year when by with nothing happening at all. There is a total of 57 dwarves counting children too. I am 16 tiles away from a Necromancer tower "I". The environments is the best you could ask for, thick vegetation, woods etc. No aquafier, I disable it.

So here is my first question. I trade with the last caravan one of my artfact worth 17400 for meat, fish, cloth, leather, armor and weapon. The weapon and armor are of different type, leather and iron/other type of metal. I have a squad that is "supposed" to have leather uniform, but since I have different type of armor would it be possible for them to just equip what ever is available at the moment?

Second question. I am within the 20 tiles from a necromancer tower how is it that in a year I didn't got any hostile encounter?

Third question. Having 57 dwarf to deal with is a nightmare Dwarf therapist helps but i don't understand how to optimize it and many people on the internet provide little to no information. For example, I have many dwarf that aren't qualify in anything so I put them into stone detailing so they can smooth my final fortress, but some of them get angry because they don't have the time to pray, which i was under the assumption that dwarf do job at their own rate so they can full fill any desire they might have, but it doesn't seems like it. Because I had to remove them from their work to make them less stress. So overall I think my question would be how does dwarf work exactly and how do you veteran optimize them to keep everyone happy and get stuff done quickly and effectively?

Fourth question. I have a Dwarf farmer necromancer and i can't find any information on her on the legends. Her name is Kogsak Shemshoduk farmer necromancer I put him as a commander of the militia because it seems fitting. she is pretty old she was born in 77 but game says she 29 years old. She came from the necromancer tower that i wanted to raid. What is a necromancer doing in my fortress?

Fith question. Food it's pretty important aspect of dwarf fortress, I understand that it produce one unit which is worth much more than one meal, same thing for alcohol. I've been making booze and meal for a year straight but I do not understand how their making it. I supposed the meal comes from plant because i do not have any river to get fish and my animal i slaughter and get almost nothing from them plus it really is complicated sometimes they just don't even want to slaughter them. What I am asking more precisely is how can I produces more food if my first resources for making food is plant can I produce a sustainable way that would give me food to the point I don't need to check "z" all the time? Animal pens/pasture barely reproduces at a rate I could sustain of them so I killed most the "big" animal I had. Also prepared meal do not indicated which variant it is easy, fine, lavish. Also I do not know what is being used as a raw sources to create those meal which is really difficult to progress further in the game.

Thanks for reading and answering my complaints, I'll be responding as soon as i can. I will provide any additional information I can.

[janamdo]

Perhaps the videos of Captain Duck 2015 give you the answers ?..basic foodmaking in particular

[PatrikLundell]

Necro tower range is 10 tiles, so you're out of range of them, and even if you are in range, they're not guaranteed to attack you: they may go for somewhere else instead.

4. I think necro migrants is a bug. Necros don't age, so they "appear" to be of the age they had when they became immortal. You can't find her in legends because she's probably using a false identity.

5. I mainly use farm plots to produce food, and complement it with some livestock. Meals can be made from plant and animal food.
The type of meal is indicated by the name (biscuit, etc.), and if you've neither farmed nor gathered plants, I assume you must have used meat, but you should have run out of plants to brew booze out of, unless you bought it from the caravan.

[Shonai_Dweller]

1) Equipment can be set per dwarf in the military screen, yes. New uniforms can be set up and assigned to a dwarf too. Military screen is very versatile. But annoying.

2) Did it show as being one of your neighbors? Does it have any population? Is it an abandoned tower populated by a few kobolds? There are many reasons a site might not attack you. Might just be busy fending off an alliance.

3) No idea how people "optimize". I don't find micromanagement fun at all so I don't. Generally migrant waves will give you all the labours you need so you don't have to worry about it unless you want to (or all your cheese makers suddenly die and you really need some cheese). For micromanagement min-maxing or whatever that stuff is, you'll probably want a utility like Therapist. It's not needed to play the game though.

Needs are a little wonky though because, yes, as you noticed, dwarves often don't see to their free time needs. I hold a fortress-wide break every so often (suspend workshop jobs). That gets everyone praying in no time.

4) Necromancer visitor is a bug (new for 47.0x). If he's not in Legends it's because he's using a fake name. Play with necromancers at your own risk.

5) Brewing plump helmets produces plump helmet seeds, planting plump helmet seeds products plump helmets, etc, etc. A 5x5 plot is plenty to feed a fortress indefinitely. Also collect all those plants outside. Dorfs love to eat them.
(Be careful as cooking plump helmets doesn't produce plump helmet seeds).

Prepared meals are useful as incredibly expensive trade goods. Make lavish ones. Dorfs will eat lavish meals or raw plants, they'll still complain over near-impossible to meet food needs.

(Try playing with aquifers, light aquifers are a fun minor obstacle with benefits. Nothing like the old version which are now very rare).

(Note that with a population of 54, nobody is going to come to attack you besides necromancers - and they're too far away apparently. Vanilla DF has a trigger of 80 for other civs to come siege you. Attacking them first  with a raid will make them come play faster so long as they spot your raiders. I think it will make your necros ignore the distance limit too).

[Bumber]

[...] some of them get angry because they don't have the time to pray, which i was under the assumption that dwarf do job at their own rate so they can full fill any desire they might have, but it doesn't seems like it.

Have you created a temple zone yet? They need one to pray. Dedicate it to "No specific deity".

Also I do not know what is being used as a raw sources to create those meal which is really difficult to progress further in the game.

Go to the kitchen tab of the 'z' screen. You can see what is set to be allowed to make food or booze, and you can disable booze for cooking there if you want (under the booze category tab.)

[Hyndis]

One thing that has helped me tremendously with managing large numbers of dwarves is creating custom professions in Dwarf Therapist.

I generally only have four professions. Every dwarf is immediately given one of four custom professions, as appropriate.

Thanes: mining, stoneworking, metalworking, jewelcrafting, mechanics.
Woodworkers: woodcutting, carpentry, bowmaking
Commoners: farming, craftsdwarf jobs
Nobles: no labors assigned
(Everyone, regardless of profession, does all healthcare and hauling jobs.)

I'll try to have about 10 woodworkers, 20 thanes, and the rest commoners. Commoners are my generic dwarves who don't have any particularly useful skills, where their skill labor isn't that big of a deal. Commoners are also in the military.

Nobles would be actual nobles, as well as priests/scribes/scholars. These guys have no normal jobs enabled so they can be full time on their occupations.

With the new guilds feature its very easy to train up zero skill dwarves to be productive, highly trained experts without expending any resource. Just make sure you have the proper guild hall, set it to be accessible by everyone, and make sure your dwarves have enough idle time. One master armorsmith can train up an entire fortress of master armorsmiths in only a few years. Its impressive how fast full time training goes.

[Showbiz]

I might use that. Great concept!

[Stadfradt]

Keep it small.

I've only been doing this for about three months, and I've found I learn a lot more with small forts, i.e. less then twenty or even no more than ten. I give every dwarf a name that comprises his or her jobs, e.g. TrainDocArch, WASmithBrew (for weapon & armor smith plus brewer), and so on. I change the name every time I change jobs, and I name every new immigrant likewise, except children, since they don't work. See what jobs go with other jobs, what jobs get low priority and therefore need more dedicated workers, that sort of thing. The manager and the herbalist are the two most important dwarves; you can automate a lot with the manager and feed a fort with a herbalist or two -- unless you embark where there's no vegetation. (There's a thread on work orders that's amazing.)

Having recently started reclaiming worldgen forts, I understand why prepared meals are worth so much: My current reclaimed fort has 136 metal smith forges and not a single other workshop. Between menacing wooden spikes (carpenter) and prepared meals, you can be buying out entire caravans within three years and only ten dwarves. I've done it with nine dwarves. (Be sure to occasionally go to the kitchen menu, z-right arrow-enter-tab-tab to disallow booze from being cooked.)

Military? Make two squads. Watch a youtube video on military scheduling. Mess around with it until you're frustrated. Read the wiki page and re-watch the video. Then go mess with it again. Now I find it extremely intuitive and would be livid if it got changed around.

I'm taking it as a given that more experienced players will give better advice, so any contradictions are on me, not them ^_^

[Dain]

First thanks to all of you I've got pretty much every answers I needed. So I've tried the custom profession and it help A LOT. Beyond 30 dwarf I think custom profession make a lot more sense and prevent me from spending 12 hours managing my dwarf. Lower amount of dwarf also is extremely useful to manage but it prevent me from doing a lot, in terms of speed for example making floor or smoothing a fortress takes beyond a years and I don't have militia because of it too. If I was able to make "perfect" dwarf maybe this wouldn't so much of a problem because I could put like 5 dwarf as militia and I could be assure they would be strong enough to repel any invasion like goblin were beast or forgotten beast, but it still wouldn't be as optimize.

So after going into the kitchen and looking at my stuff I did see what was used to prepare the meals, I feel dumb because I disable myself in the beginning the plump helmet from being cook and never really thought "Hey this is was is being used". BUT I realize that the booze I was making was allowed to be cook like some of you pointed out. So I disable it and I couldn't make lavish meal anymore there was a job cancellation so i got a hint as to what was going on. The booze was used to make meals and it was making a the stock goes down but prevent job cancellation. I don't know if I am making myself clear but, it made the process of making food uninterrupted which is great but the booze was not being made as fast as the food was. Overall It's frustrate me but I don't think there is anything to do about it, it's just a tedious process that cannot be automatically done once your settle in.

About the military. The menu did indeed have the option of changing the armor of the dwarf individually. I would of hope that there could be an option "Just take what is available". I know I bought some armor and weapon from the last caravan I just don't know how much of each I have and the military menu doesn't make it easy.

Thank to all of you for your insight I deeply appreciate it. As I suspected the problem was between the screen and the chair, I've got to mess around with it a little bit to get used to but I am getting there. I still will read/respond if there anything some people want to help me with

[...] some of them get angry because they don't have the time to pray, which i was under the assumption that dwarf do job at their own rate so they can full fill any desire they might have, but it doesn't seems like it.

Have you created a temple zone yet? They need one to pray. Dedicate it to "No specific deity".

Also I do not know what is being used as a raw sources to create those meal which is really difficult to progress further in the game.

Go to the kitchen tab of the 'z' screen. You can see what is set to be allowed to make food or booze, and you can disable booze for cooking there if you want (under the booze category tab.)

I did yes, the problem was that the dwarf didn't seems to stop smoothing the fortress and didn't have enough time to pray. When I made him stop he prayed non-stop. That kinda of the reason I though their was a way to optimize your dwarf once and never touch it ever again.

Necro tower range is 10 tiles, so you're out of range of them, and even if you are in range, they're not guaranteed to attack you: they may go for somewhere else instead.

4. I think necro migrants is a bug. Necros don't age, so they "appear" to be of the age they had when they became immortal. You can't find her in legends because she's probably using a false identity.

5. I mainly use farm plots to produce food, and complement it with some livestock. Meals can be made from plant and animal food.
The type of meal is indicated by the name (biscuit, etc.), and if you've neither farmed nor gathered plants, I assume you must have used meat, but you should have run out of plants to brew booze out of, unless you bought it from the caravan.

You use farm plot to produce food? except from the plump helmet that could be considered food I don't have anything else to farm. I indeed used meat but I might had 50 meat unit in total with all my animal slaughter until i bought some at the caravan. That why I was thinking that my food was made out of the plants but I got to manually select it every time, It's tedious and i could use this time to do something else which is why I was thinking veteran probably don't select plants to be gather every couple of months to get their foods. I must have missed something.

[Hyndis]

About the military. The menu did indeed have the option of changing the armor of the dwarf individually. I would of hope that there could be an option "Just take what is available". I know I bought some armor and weapon from the last caravan I just don't know how much of each I have and the military menu doesn't make it easy.

You can indeed do this!

Make a new uniform. Give it a new name. Call it "anything" or "random stuff" or something like that. This is your hodgepodge uniform.

Set the uniform to equip 1 piece of armor, 2 mail shirts, 1 leg gear, 1 set of foot gear, 1 set of hand gear, 1 set of headgear, 1 shield, and 1 melee weapon individual choice.

The broad categories of "armor" could mean anything. This could be a mail shirt, a leather chest piece, or a metal breastplate. Note that dwarves can equip up to 3 mail shirts at the same time, so this allows for a dwarf to equip any combination of 2 mail shirts plus another piece of armor.

Leg gear could be greaves or leggings. Could be made out of metal or leather. The dwarf picks whatever is available.

When using broad categories like this your dwarves will prefer to equip the highest value item in that slot. Highest value is typically better. Adamantine costs a lot more than copper.

For mature fortresses if you want to very specifically choose what your dwarves equip, make a new uniform with specific gear. Have your dwarf equip 1 steel breastplate, 2 steel mail shirts, 1 steel helmet, 1 steel greaves, 1 steel gauntlets, 1 steel high boots, 1 steel shield, and 1 steel battleaxe. Note that you do need to set the specific material for this uniform so its not just a random breastplate, its a steel breastplate. This will force dwarves to load up on all the same gear while excluding everything else. This is useful once you're mass producing steel.

However for early fortresses its better to go with an anything goes uniform, where its not picky on armor type or material. Dwarves pick up whatever they can find.