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[Mokkun]

Hi all, as a rather newish Dwarf Fortress player, I think I could use some good advice for future forts. My current fort http://mkv25.net/dfma/map-10854-tiptheater Have grown somewhat organically, from needs at the time.
Strangely, they have mainly been content, 1 Loss of it was due to the fact that all water was salt, and not enough plants for brewing (The walls around the entrance was atleast up). Second, I probably should have had a military, ups gobbs. The rest before last I do not remember, but probably related to ambush X3-4 at same time, and tantrums from lost hunters. exept last one, where a lost beast did it..

Next one, will probably be from me being stuck in a siege for a few years even whit all Gobbos/trolls dead, and slow depopulation from military losses.

I migth do one more reclamation if I dont finish the magma pumpstack to try out working whit magma. If not, what tips and improvements should I do towards my next fortress?

Thanks in advance for advice.

[MagmaMcFry]

We're missing a situation we can advise you in. And general advice generally spoils the fun. But you seem to have done a lot of experimenting and testing in Tiptheater, well done!
So... Do you have any detail questions?

[FuzzyZergling]

My advice is to always bring at least 15 seeds of each type, and have at least one dedicated Grower at embark. This way you should rarely be running out of alchohol.

[i2amroy]

My advice is to always bring at least 15 seeds of each type, and have at least one dedicated Grower at embark. This way you should rarely be running out of alchohol.

I definitely agree with having a dedicated grower at embark. For the seed idea though, I often instead go the route of brining like 50 seeds of one particular plant (plump helmets work well in vanilla) that can be ate/brewed and then mass producing it for what my dwarves need to survive. You can then later expand with other types of plants to provide variety, but having a massive amount of one useful plant at least insures that your dwarves will have something to eat and drink.

[proxn_punkd]

- I use numerous small plots for farming, rather than a few large plots. That way, I don't need a whole lot of seeds of any single kind to start, and if something goes out of season at the wrong time I haven't lost all my seeds and can plant them again when they are in-season.

- I make sure I know which plants have what uses. It'd be useless trying to grow dye plants for booze or food! aside from dimple spawn biscuits which I like to imagine turn my dwarves' teeth blue

- I restrict plants from being cooked directly unless I have lots of their non-cooking byproducts and seeds. I restrict the cooking of seeds unless I have a good supply of them, and if the number dips to twenty-ish I restrict them again so I always have something to plant.

- I do use aboveground plants whenever and wherever I can. Unless modded otherwise, they grow in all four seasons!

- I try to have a way to seal the fort against unmanageable attacks, and farming areas within the sealed areas, both on the surface and underground. This way, even under heavy siege, my dwarves are unlikely to starve out.

- Size isn't coded the best at present, so cage traps will work on darned near anything that isn't a kobold (racial TRAPAVOID), human (can avoid traps their diplomat's seen and told them about), titan, FB, or *spoiler*. This includes, among other things, goblins, goblin mounts, elves, elf mounts, dragons, and bronze colossi. Some players see exploiting this as cheating, but my usual early-game fortress defenses include a bottleneck entrance lined with cage traps.

- I also make dishonest use of danger rooms to train an army. This backfired in my latest fort, where I had a lot of danger-room-trained dwarves, but forgot to get them equipment before sending them into battle, so they all went as wrestlers against armed goblins, with predictable results.

[Mokkun]

Thanks for the advices, quite a few usefull ones for me so far.
One main point for me seem to be that I could use some advice on effectivity on the fort. They somehow feel a bit loopy in production speed, sometimes they rush it in almost a instant, sometimes they seem to use forever to make the same, (thats whitout clutter).

One tip I have found out is, If you want to promote a dwarf to baron, make sure he have a wood type as prefeared material, No fun getting orders for Trifle pewter Beds, Shields, tables, etc.

Also, I am currently trying to do some work in preparation for magmapump stack ca 102 floors below my fort, They seem higly reluctant whit doing the work down there, even if no other work avavible for them.

[Garath]

for losing hunters:

hunters are not really effective untill they get some proficiency n using that crossbow, and by that time they're more useful in your militairy what i usually do is making trap barriers. Put some traps at the furthest point you can, put 2x max lenght wall, another few traps, another 2x max length wall and again some traps

most animals follow the edge and when detouring the wall will get trapped/ killed at the place closest to the edge, trying to cross halfway or at the end

as far as your organic fort is concerned, keep in mind that going down beats going out, and this is mostly your dwarf's preference. If they have to walk to the stairs and then walk out to a stockpile.... but in any case, close to stairs is better than mining out more space in an existing floor

[NonconsensualSurgery]

Salt water problems can be solved with pumps or wells, both of which have strange purifying properties.

Hunters who survive long enough to get crossbow skill have merely passed the first test in joining your Stormtroopers. It helps if you pick dwarves with high agility, kinesthetic sense and focus - this maximizes the odds of them shooting a charging ice wolf in the throat on day one.

[proxn_punkd]

Wells don't purify salt water, but dwarves will drink salt water from a well if there isn't enough booze to go 'round.

@ OP: Don't always trust the numbers when it comes to booze! Dwarves can only drink from one keg each at a time, and if there aren't enough kegs for everyone who needs a drink, you'll get dwarves complaining of thirst or going for water.

[Lordraymond]

My advice so that the gobbo-death doesn't happen: Get a small, elite military EARLY!

The biggest mistake of many new people is trying to conscript a beard-load of dwarves to the military and then watching the enthusiastic but sadly lacking in talent recruits get slaughtered. Organize squads of two, training at the barracks nonstop when you have a free migrants, preferably with different weapons for dwarves sharing a squad so they don't waste time demonstrating and only spar.

Organize maybe three or four of these squads, so six-eight dwarves. The should train up quickly, and if you need more assign one of the experienced dwarves to a new squad to train a new recruit in a similar format to before. Get iron, or even better steel, or even better-er, CANDY, to armor and arm them (With silver weapons in the case of blunt), then half a happy goblin christmas: Just one of my squads trained and equipped like this can kill a FB or siege practically on their own.

[Delta Foxtrot]

One tip I have found out is, If you want to promote a dwarf to baron, make sure he have a wood type as prefeared material, No fun getting orders for Trifle pewter Beds, Shields, tables, etc.

It's not that it has to be wood, it has to be something that you can produce easily and don't want to sell to the caravans. If the noble likes a metal that you can produce locally, it shouldn't be a problem for you to accommodate him. In my experience, the nobles in this version never demand impossible items (no metal beds, rock spears or elfskin togas). Even so, you can survive with a noble who likes hard to get stuff. I had a mayor who liked aluminum even though I had none in the map. I requested every bit of raw aluminum and aluminum goods from the liaison, smelted them into aluminum bars and had enough to keep him happy.

As for production efficiency. Good use of stockpiles and enough haulers helps a long way. Having the raw materials as close to the workshop as possible increases the workshop's productivity. Sometimes your dwarves seem to decide that it's a good idea for everyone to get a drink/break/some sleep/etc. at the same time, maybe that's why you get varying production speeds for similar work orders. But if your workshop dwarf has to walk many tiles to get the raw material(s), and then back to the workshop before he can begin his work, no wonder you can get lag in production.

[Garath]

it only gets annoying when your noble loves crowns (well, sounds logically), asks you to make 3 each month and then puts a ban on exporting crowns

before you hit 80 or 100 dwarf (forgot which one) look through your people to see who has skills you dont need and a preference for things like doors, shields, copper, iron if you have it, things like that. you'll be making them anyway, might as well make your noble happy

[Mokkun]

One tip I have found out is, If you want to promote a dwarf to baron, make sure he have a wood type as prefeared material, No fun getting orders for Trifle pewter Beds, Shields, tables, etc.

It's not that it has to be wood, it has to be something that you can produce easily and don't want to sell to the caravans. If the noble likes a metal that you can produce locally, it shouldn't be a problem for you to accommodate him. In my experience, the nobles in this version never demand impossible items (no metal beds, rock spears or elfskin togas). Even so, you can survive with a noble who likes hard to get stuff. I had a mayor who liked aluminum even though I had none in the map. I requested every bit of raw aluminum and aluminum goods from the liaison, smelted them into aluminum bars and had enough to keep him happy.

Grin. He did not order it made, He wanted to have a trifle pewter bed in his bedroom. His orders to have things made is much better, usually he wants one or two bucklers.

Response to other helpfull posts:
Metal ordering, Very usefull, buying items to melt too. I have gotten that down. As my little place only have silver in the upper layer. (when I finally dug a bit deeper, I found some other lesser ores, no iron, but flux). Gotten quite a bit of trading training.

Jupp, learned the dont trust the booze stock count, divide it by 10.

Making a cistern whit waterpurifier, not so easy untill you learn the tricks ,Like getting rid of every pice of natural stone, before letting in the water.

Yes, I tougth back that hunters would be good for a militia, hunt untill something attacks, then turn into crossbowdwarfs, sigh, uniform trubbles. So much for having hunting as crossbow practise.

Yes, Smaller farmplots is good, In Tiptoe, I started whit 2 smaller underground, then got a big for strawberries above, and the below grounds seemed more productive. Might stick to mainly smaller.

Traps, Heh, Been abusing cages and weapon traps (whit 10 Spiked Silver Balls) what surives the weapon trap, is rather well tenderised.. 

Thanks, Lot to think about, and integrate into further forts.

[Garath]

hunters have their own "uniform" which clashes with archer militia uniform. You can use the hunter for a while and later on just assign a new hunter, unassign the old one and dump him/her in the militia

when you buy items to melt, try melting only at 1 smelter. Sometimes the item melted doesnt give a full bar, and it remembers how much was smelted. Having 3 smelters each with 0.9 bars of all metals from smelting down items will quickly become annoying. On that, apparently, anvils always give a full bar

[Delta Foxtrot]

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Melting#Buying_items_to_melt

Assuming you can just buy out the caravans, the relative cost can be largely ignored. Keep in mind that if you melt items with a non-magma smelter each item will consume one unit of fuel. Fuel spent/bars gained ratio may not be pretty if you focus on low absolute return products like crafts. Of course if you have plenty of fuel ores or wood it won't be problem. Still something to keep in mind.