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[Sutremaine]

First winter, the caravan's just leaving, and how does my fortress look?

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Okay then.

And what is its status?

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That's better I guess. When I embarked I thought I was bringing enough malachite, cassiterite, and coal for three full suits of armour plus a couple of spares in case of low quality helms or weapons. ~200 bars of bronze later...

[ledgekindred]

Less kids, moar booze.

Y U No Dig?

* ledgekindred looks suspiciously at Sutremaine for pointy ears...

[Sutremaine]

I like to do it properly. Trying to juggle essential production, time management, and job and military assignments invariably means scraping out rooms in an untidy mess because I don't have enough focus to make it a good job.

If living out in the open is good enough for Boatmurdered, it's good enough for me!

[Pan]

Well, getting everything inside is a good idea after some time.

[Shmo]

I usually also camp outside for quite a long time, too. However, right on embark, I take the (quite decent bit of) time (possibly spanning more than one game session) to create a master excavation plan and send in my miner work on that right from the start. The stone it brings up is also nice, since I can have my mason create furniture in advance. Also rock pots - I try to divest myself of all barrels in my possession by year two.

In some sense making the excavation plan is the most interesting part, so I think a reluctance to dig too quickly is natural. So many things to try, so many variables to optimize.

[Sutremaine]

Ha, yes, I've already had kobold thieves and goblin snatchers turn up (bronze-loving dwarf starting at Proficient = valuble bronze items. Also, of the 94 armour items he's made, only three of them are +quality+ or worse. Dude really loves his bronze). The hardest part for me is setting up a starter fortress in such a way that it can be both dug out quickly and incorporated into the final fortress. The new digging directions will help with digging speed, but I was doing it fairly quickly in-game before by designating in straight lines in order to force the left-loving miners into taking as few steps as possible.

I'm wondering now if it's possible to set up a mine track in such a way that dwarves will push it one way and either guide it the other or take the minecart away once it hits the bottom. Maybe have the track end in derailment?

[CaptainArchmage]

OK you've got yourself a fortress... out of curiosity, I seem to remember you being around here for a while. Did you just switch from adventure mode?

The smelting thing recently changed. You used to get one bar of metal from an ore. Now you get four. The multiplication rates have also changed for the raw-reactions in the smelter, so when you smelt bronze from ore you get yourself eight bars. As far as I know this has counterbalanced most or all of the bugfixes regarding bar requirements in terms of ore requirements; smelting bronze from ore now gives you enough for 2 breastplates or 3 mail shirts. Ore occurrence is down though, so it kind of drops back again...

Also carving stone into blocks gives you 4 blocks per boulder.

Watch out, once your wealth hits 100,000 you'll start getting ambushes. If you don't have picks, I'd suggest you make some and dig down. You can also use your overabundance of bronze to build yourself a wall around your settlement (not necessarily the whole embark) and then dig down.

[Finn]

Watch out, once your wealth hits 100,000 you'll start getting ambushes. If you don't have picks, I'd suggest you make some and dig down. You can also use your overabundance of bronze to build yourself a wall around your settlement (not necessarily the whole embark) and then dig down.

I get ambushes at 50k

[Loud Whispers]

Hmm. I'd say the lack of your fortress growth could be attributed to having more armour than most forts would have by the third year.

[Sutremaine]

OK you've got yourself a fortress... out of curiosity, I seem to remember you being around here for a while. Did you just switch from adventure mode?

No, I'm mostly a Fortress Mode player and have been since 2008. I've just been taking a break recently from burnout.

The new reaction rates for raw stone are pretty nice, and make stone on trade and embark much more attractive. I guess I just didn't make the connection between '1/4 dig rate -> x4 smelt rate' and '1x buy rate -> x4 smelt rate'.

Once I have some planning done I'll dive underground and use a retracting bridge to seal off the ramp leading to the fortress. Since I have so much bronze and such a good armourer I can afford to keep churning the stuff out in an attempt to rack up the quality modifiers, which will make the relatively untrained soldiers' first ambush go much more smoothly. Maybe I can build a little mine track to lug all that armour into the fortress once it's dug. 

[CaptainArchmage]

The new reaction rates for raw stone are pretty nice, and make stone on trade and embark much more attractive. I guess I just didn't make the connection between '1/4 dig rate -> x4 smelt rate' and '1x buy rate -> x4 smelt rate'.

Once I have some planning done I'll dive underground and use a retracting bridge to seal off the ramp leading to the fortress. Since I have so much bronze and such a good armourer I can afford to keep churning the stuff out in an attempt to rack up the quality modifiers, which will make the relatively untrained soldiers' first ambush go much more smoothly. Maybe I can build a little mine track to lug all that armour into the fortress once it's dug. 

The increased yield from ore now means importing ore produces a lot more bars. It also deals with the balance issue where it was more efficient to make statues from native gold than from gold bars because of pricing.

You should probably start walling off now.