Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[NoneOfTheAbove]

First of all, first post, hi all and all that.

I have been watching DF for a while now, and finally decided to give it a go. I'm doing all right, but there's one thing I can't figure out.

I look at all the elaboate designs on DFMA and the wiki, and I want to try them, but if I do, then I waste too much time rather than actually surviving right off the bat. If I just try to survive first, it's hard to later make it all look good.

How do you balance making things look cool with actual useful bits early on?

[Smew]

A simple answer would just to build a smaller design then what your final plans are, this way when the time comes to expand, you already have most of the blueprints laid out for you.

[Demonic Spoon]

What I do is I complete just the more neccesary parts of the larger design, leaving space for the rest to be completed. I start with farms first, underground farm storage and food processing, then move on to dining area, barracks and finally underground workshops( usually by this point already have workshops outside) then move workshops inside.

[Albedo]

Couple approaches.

I like to dive into soil, which digs out about 3-4x faster than stone.  It's just as strong against invaders. The three disadvantages are that it can't be smoothed/improved, and (obviously), it doesn't produce stones for other uses.  Also, if you want value, you have to move, which can be a pain.  (For me, the improved speed of training a legendary miner - by about mid-Summer - is worth it.)

On the plus side, you can later completely abandon the sand-scrape for solid stone far away.

The simple alternative is to start with 2 miners.

A more sophisticated addition to either approach is to view excavations as having flexible purposes.   If you dig your entry hall, use it as your meeting hall/barracks/store room to start with - only needs a 1-tile entryway until the Autumn caravan.  Digging out some workshop areas for front-stuff (carpenter, woodburner, ashery) doesn't mean you have to start out with those there- drop a mason's shop and mechanics in there, or in the hall itself, and let them crank out what you "need" - then deconstruct once you have permanent locations for them.

A series of early 3x3 workshop areas can be dug out to create a grand 3x__ hallway. 

I also don't worry about digging out the "entirety" of large rooms until I need them - my Dining Hall always starts about 4x4 with VERY thick walls - they get pared back when I have the time/need, not before.

[loopoo]

I just go with the flow. I tend to be an aboveground type too, so...

I usually just have my top most layer of soil, which is soil :p and that has my barracks, farm plots and a small food stockpile. This is where everyone eats in the first year.

Next layer down is usually soil, this is my decentralized workshop layer. I smack all my workshops here.

Then, depending on where the magma is, ill make the smelter level at least 2 z-levels down, if the magma pool is far away (I hate magma pipes, I only go on maps with pools) so the magma doesn't get to like 1 deep then evaporate. It happened before, that's why I always take this precaution.

Then, I go 4 z levels down, into solid rock, this is my dining room / noble quarter. The layers above this, and the layers below the smelting rooms are used for gathering stone and exploring, nothing else.

The layer below the dining room is my peon sleeping areas, this is a nice place The layer below that is my tomb.

Then, around the 2nd year or so, I get building elaborately on the surface. Defenses are erected by mid-summer of the first year, finished late autumn. Then, I brave the siege of Orcs. After that, I build when I get loads of migrants and I can put loads as masons, usually 5 for the 2nd year, and 8 for the 3rd.

I just start building big towers for defence, usually 5 z levels. I also build an arena. I love my arenas Then I start working on aboveground noble rooms and stuff. Before all that though, I gotta build walls to defend my base, and I always make it extra large to accomodate for the future. Then I get working on my above ground barracks, which has archery ranges, beds, everything a soldier could need. The sparring room has no roof, this is to avoid cave adaptation. To be honest, soldiers should never need to go down, unless it's to go to the dining room. They spent most of the time above ground.

EDIT: I basically do what Albedo does. But I don't move far away when I become bigger. I just dig down and kinda scrap the top layer of soil for a big storage area above my workshop rooms.

[Xinael]

A lot of he complex designs on the wiki can be repurposed or extended later. For example, when a start building my bedrooms, i'll designate 100 or so of them but leave a lot of them disconnected. When I want them, I'll dig them out.

In the same vein, if I know later I'm going to make a large storage area, I'll build my early workshops in that area and then just level everything later. You can fit 3x1 bedrooms in pretty much anywhere as well, and then dig the space out and use it for something else later. The negative thought from noise isn't severe enough to worry about at the start.

Finally, if you've not got enough soil to fit everything in that you'd like you can set up some workshops in your stone-filled room and have them churn out some stuff, even if it's just blocks.