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[Fuumin]

Hey, relatively new (a month or 2) DF addict seeking your aid here!
Firstly, love the game and look forward to the next update whenever it may arrive, secondly, i hate you for taking up all my time, i cant stop playing.
Thirdly, my many questions:

1.My current fortress is highly lacking in treelife, and after stumbling upon the tower cap entry in the dwarf wiki, i thought i was saved, however, i dont have an underground river. i had attempted creating a reasonably sized cave with a floodgated irrigation system, however i havn't had any tower caps grow, is this becuase the river isnt "tagged" as underground? and if this means i cant have tower caps, is there any way of improving the growth rate of the spare trees that i do have on the map?

2.My embark site is rather mountainous and as such, is fairly distant from the world (no human or elf caravans). having hit the population cap, i have only had 2 sieges, both by some (rather pathetic) hydra. Am i too far away from everything to be besieged? because its pretty dull without the occassional assault.

3.I have a magma pipe, is the magma within this infinite? can i safely flood the map with magma and not worry about my smiths running out of magma?

Thanks in advance, and im sorry, but i had more questions, i just forgot them!

--Fuumin--

[sunshaker]

1. To grow Tower-caps you need to have the water source tagged as underground (underground river, underground pool). Sorry you are out of luck on that one.

2. You might be to far away from every sieging civilization or your fortress might not have generated enough wealth. Also Hydras are viewed as the wimpiest of the mega beasts as they are very easy to kill.

3. Magma Pipes are infinite, magma pools are not. It is very hard to tell the difference once you are embarked.

[Valliant]

1: Unless it's a preexisting underground river/pool, the spores will not arrive. As far as improving the tree growth rate, make some herbalists and pick all of the shrubs that grow. They compete with the trees for growing space. Especially if you clearcut the trees, make sure the shrubs keep being harvested in order to give saplings room to root. If possible, set high-priority paths among the trees in order to keep your dwarves from trampling as many saplings, as any frequently used path will destroy plants along it.

2: On your embark screen, if you had hit tab a couple times, you'd have been able to see which civilizations could reach your location. If you have no human or elf caravans, you might also be outside the range of any goblin civs as well.

3: Magma pipes are infinite. I don't think you can ever "safely" flood the map with magma, but you could pump it all the way up to the highest z-level of your map and fill the whole thing without running out. Be warned, I've been told magma won't flow off the edge of the map, so you really will fill the whole place, wiping out everything.

[NecroRebel]

You can encourage tree growth by employing an herbalist and gathering every shrub on the map, or by burning the forest down (though the latter is much less efficient). You see, there's apparently a maximum number of plants that can be in a particular area of the map at any one time, where "plants" means tree saplings, shrubs, and dead varieties of those things.

If you just continuously cut trees without ever clearing the shrubs, eventually every possible plant slot will be taken by shrubs and no more trees will grow, but if you periodically clear the shrubs more trees will grow. If you don't have a lot of trees in the first place you still won't get terribly many, but clearing shrubs can make even a desert yield a couple dozen trees per year.



Also, the way to tell the difference between a magma pipe and pool is to look at the bottom level of the map once it is revealed. The magma pipe will reach that far down, the pool won't.

[Fuumin]

ok, thanks for the quick response, my fortress wealth is nearing 2 000 000, is it possible that the further you are from sieiging civs, the higher your wealth needs to be to lure them? and my magma whateveritis spans a good 18 z-levels, so i guess i'll give it a go and assume its a pipe.
 another question; im trying to hit enough road value to entice the king, but its going very slowly, is there some trick im missing? ive never seen any mention of people having trouble with this but it is always, without fail, the last requirement i achieve.

[Heliman]

1: Probly not, but check your (c)iv key to see if you have any to begin with
2:when making paved roads, the fastest method I found is making it out of the most expensive materials you can find. Adamantine wafer roads are not out of the question.

[pushy]

ok, thanks for the quick response, my fortress wealth is nearing 2 000 000, is it possible that the further you are from sieiging civs, the higher your wealth needs to be to lure them? and my magma whateveritis spans a good 18 z-levels, so i guess i'll give it a go and assume its a pipe.

If it's 18 z-levels then yes, that'll be a pipe. Pools are typically only a few z-levels deep. A pipe will extend right down to the very bottom z-level.

another question; im trying to hit enough road value to entice the king, but its going very slowly, is there some trick im missing? ive never seen any mention of people having trouble with this but it is always, without fail, the last requirement i achieve.

As Heliman said, use expensive materials to make the road, as the value of the road is dependant on the value of the materials it's made from. A plain old rock of granite or rhyolite (or the more annoying ones like alunite or microcline that you probably just want rid of) has a value of 3. A block of the same material has a value of 5. A bar of iron (melt goblin weapons/armour and this is something you'll have in abundance) has a value of 50. A bar of steel has a value of 150. An adamantine wafer, in case you're curious, has a value of 1,500. If you're at the point of trying to get the king, you probably have a small stockpile of goblin armour or iron bars already from sieges/ambushes over the preceding years, so that's probably your best bet, especially since you've said you're a bit low on wood and so won't be wanting to waste it on making charcoal for the steel-making process

[dragon0421]

If you embark in the mountains (not the edge), you don't get interaction with civs other than dwarves. I recommend restarting on a new site.

[gtmattz]

If you embark in the mountains (not the edge), you don't get interaction with civs other than dwarves. I recommend restarting on a new site.

Not entirely true.  If you can see the civs on the embark screen they can access you, and it is only in the deepest of deep mountains that the only civ accessible is dwarves.  Even normally inaccessible areas only accessed with the embark anywhere utility will get contact with the other civs as long as they are visible on the civ screen during embark.