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[Emperor_Nero]

So I recently picked up DF after several failed attempts over the last couple of year and I absolutely love the depth and complexity of the game and I find it a shame I haven't picked it up later. I have watched several tutorials and probably 20 hours of Let's Plays so far. I know the basics and I can build a decent starting fort but the only thing is that my fortress seems so very inefficient. I try my best to keep the efficiency by keeping the relevant stockpiles near the relevant industries (Usually right across a 2 or 3 block hall) but when I queue up work with my manager and he verifies the orders it takes ages and ages for my workers to come get to work. This mostly happens with Masons but the weird thing is that the fort has 5 masons 2 of which are very skilled. It still takes them ages to put out the doors, coffers, blocks or whatever even with all the hauling jobs unticked on them. What is the remedy to this?

Next is the starting build and the build order. I start with a pretty standard embark: 2 miners (1 a negotiator/appraiser), a mason, a woodcutter/carpenter, a planter/brewer, a craftsdwarf, and a mechanic/general skills dwarf. What do you guys prefer to start with? The areas I am focusing on now are your pretty standard beginner areas wooded, plants, some soil, deep and shallow metals, some clay, and usually a river. I start off by getting a wood stockpile going and some wood cutting, then I start pumping out some beds (usually about 5), all the while my miners are building the starting area and going down usually 10 - 20 zlevels to see what I can see. I get a temporary bedroom up and running and usually a place to start farming. I go down a couple of levels and start getting my basic industries up and running which consists of a masons shop, an underground carpenter's shop, a craftsdwarf shop, and a mechanics shop. Then after I get that done I usually dig out a large area for industry relevant stockpiles and then get everything else going from there. What is the most efficient way to go about this?

Finally, on my current fortress I am right at the start of my 3rd year I think and I don't have a military yet. Every time I start trying to get a military up and running something else comes up or I am having to wait long times to get the supplies to build the barracks. When should the military be started. (Peaceful area.)

Much thanks in advanced.

[Trif]

Welcome to the forums!

Regarding slow working speed: masons work with stones, and stones are some of the most heavy objects in the game, so the hauling takes a while. The weight was changed in a recent update, so the tutorials you watch might use a few outdated strategies.
A workaround is using stone stockpiles and wheelbarrows. Place the stockpiles close to your workshops, and the masons get the stone quickly, while the haulers can use the wheelbarrows to transport the stone. Be careful to disable non-economic stone in the stockpile, or sooner or later they will be filled with unusable rocks.

Regarding starting build and build order: your embark seems okay for learning the basic strategies. There really is no definitive best starting build, it depends on how you like to start out. I for one like to embark with a hunter, a bone carver and a doctor, but you have to find your own style in these regards.
The same goes for the build order. Yours reminds me of my own tutorial days, so it's fine for starting out. You'll refine it in your own tastes before long.

And finally, regarding your military: if you're in a peaceful area, the third year should be a good starting point for a military. If you like to expand and gather wealth quickly, you should start a bit earlier. And if you embark in the vicinity of necromancers, you should embark with military dwarfs to be sure.
Starting the military is easy. You don't even need a big setup, just assign a few dwarfs to a squad, let them choose their weapons (if available) and make the old temporary community bedroom their barracks. A bed is all they need. You don't even need armor or weapons (even though it helps), if they just punch each other they already train wrestling and dodging - two very important skills.
And one final tip: military training is slow if none of your dwarfs has the teacher skill. If you have good teachers, make use of them, and you'll notice it. You could even consider embarking with a few points in teacher for your next fortress. And let them train in small squads: two dwarfs per squad get more sparring done and live combat training is better than the best demonstration.

[Triaxx2]

Warning: Woodcutter and carpenter should NOT be the same dwarf. This means that in order for anything to get made, the cutter has to complete all his tree cutting and then go build things.

The Craftsdwarf is already going to be making things so make that one the carpenter instead. Don't give him any particular skill, since it'll skill up pretty quickly on it's own, but that keeps the line moving. Unless you intend to cut only a small swath of trees at a time. I find that can get annoying to do, and now you'll want wheelbarrows as well as beds.

[Emperor_Nero]

Welcome to the forums!

Regarding slow working speed: masons work with stones, and stones are some of the most heavy objects in the game, so the hauling takes a while. The weight was changed in a recent update, so the tutorials you watch might use a few outdated strategies.
A workaround is using stone stockpiles and wheelbarrows. Place the stockpiles close to your workshops, and the masons get the stone quickly, while the haulers can use the wheelbarrows to transport the stone. Be careful to disable non-economic stone in the stockpile, or sooner or later they will be filled with unusable rocks.

Regarding starting build and build order: your embark seems okay for learning the basic strategies. There really is no definitive best starting build, it depends on how you like to start out. I for one like to embark with a hunter, a bone carver and a doctor, but you have to find your own style in these regards.
The same goes for the build order. Yours reminds me of my own tutorial days, so it's fine for starting out. You'll refine it in your own tastes before long.

And finally, regarding your military: if you're in a peaceful area, the third year should be a good starting point for a military. If you like to expand and gather wealth quickly, you should start a bit earlier. And if you embark in the vicinity of necromancers, you should embark with military dwarfs to be sure.
Starting the military is easy. You don't even need a big setup, just assign a few dwarfs to a squad, let them choose their weapons (if available) and make the old temporary community bedroom their barracks. A bed is all they need. You don't even need armor or weapons (even though it helps), if they just punch each other they already train wrestling and dodging - two very important skills.
And one final tip: military training is slow if none of your dwarfs has the teacher skill. If you have good teachers, make use of them, and you'll notice it. You could even consider embarking with a few points in teacher for your next fortress. And let them train in small squads: two dwarfs per squad get more sparring done and live combat training is better than the best demonstration.

So the tutorials I have been watching are out of date then because most of them have been made 6 months to 1 year or more ago, as well as most of the Let's Plays I have been watching. None of them even mention the use of wheelbarrows, so I guess I will have to maybr adapt my current fortress to reflect that.

[WealthyRadish]

Low skill managers take quite a bit of time to assign a large number of jobs. One trick is to have them put out an order for only a few jobs, something like 3-5, and then do the larger 30 jobs immediately after that. That'll mean that there'll be something for the dwarves to do while the manager is working on the large orders. That, or you could manually assign a few jobs at the workshop to get the ball rolling.

For embark strategy, I'd say that it's very beneficial to bring raw materials instead of any completed goods (except for an anvil). It's much, MUCH cheaper to bring a lump of copper and a fire safe stone for smelting your own tools than it is to bring copper picks and what not. This applies to all of the items, including food/booze. Assuming your site has vegetation and trees, there's not really any reason to bring food or booze. 2 draft animals are always included with the wagon, giving enough meat for several seasons, and above ground plants can be easily gathered and made into booze. With the points that you save, you can bring tons of ore and coal and start churning out armor/weapons from the start, allowing for a fully equipped military within the first spring. I'd recommend either bismuth bronze or steel, depending on how many points you have.

As for starting skills, it really comes down to playstyle. I always bring a protonoble with the fewest number of personality traits and judge of intent/appraiser (with the other 8 points in random social skills). Negotiator doesn't seem to have any more of an impact than other social skills in trading, whereas novice appraiser and judge of intent are needed for gauging value and trader mood. The rest should be balanced between immediate need and long term unavailability. Skills that are easily trained could be replaced with ones that aren't, such as getting military dwarves with teaching/student skill and military skills like armor user and shield user. A skilled weapon/armorsmith is also a common choice.
Then again, I also train permanent positions based on a dwarf's preferences to improve quality, which may not be something you're interested in... so getting a leg up in immediate skills may be more beneficial. Just keep in mind that every dwarf can do any labor, so an embark with only peasants is just as viable as one with skilled carpenters and such.

As for the military, I'd rely on traps until the sieges start getting ridiculous. Start some dwarves in squads of two with training weapons early on, so they'll spar and gain skill quickly for when you do have weapons and armor available. Putting them in squads without weapons is actually kind of a terrible idea, unless you're deliberately training wrestlers... they'll often end up chucking each other around and may cause some deaths in the process if unarmored, and won't really learn anything useful, aside from wrestling.

[Sutremaine]

They also learn dodging, and if you give them a bit of armour to wear (helms and body armour will cut down on fatal wrestling accidents, but greaves or leggings will always go over civilian clothes) they get a headstart on armour skill. If you then give them a shield, they learn shield defence and shield attacks. After all that they should be able to defend themselves well enough that you can hand out their first weapons when they're on their way out to attack something, though deliberately keeping them weaponless most of the time is risky.

[Triaxx2]

Liar is also an important skill for your trader. He or she will essentially be trying to bluff them to get the best deal possible so they might as well be capable of lying. As far as I can tell it makes it easier for them to convince the other traders that they're getting a good deal taking a smaller profit.

[Emperor_Nero]

I haven't really had a problem with trading any. Mostly just my Masons taking their slow sweet time and not pumping out doors, tables, and other needed items in a reasonable time frame.

[greycat]

Regarding slow working speed: masons work with stones, and stones are some of the most heavy objects in the game, so the hauling takes a while. The weight was changed in a recent update, so the tutorials you watch might use a few outdated strategies.
A workaround is using stone stockpiles and wheelbarrows. Place the stockpiles close to your workshops, and the masons get the stone quickly, while the haulers can use the wheelbarrows to transport the stone. Be careful to disable non-economic stone in the stockpile, or sooner or later they will be filled with unusable rocks.

And don't forget to tell the stone stockpile to "give" to the mason's workshop.  That forces the workshop to use stones only from the stockpile and nowhere else.  (I know, it's backwards -- you're controlling the workshop through a totally different place.)

If you don't do that, then when you request a stone door, your mason will grab the nearest stone to wherever he is standing instead of the nearest stone to the workshop.  That's precisely what you want to avoid.

[Emperor_Nero]

So I have ran into another huge problem. I can't find a source of iron or any other metal besides gold. I have so much gold that I don't want to see gold anymore. Gold is by and large useless to me because I am trying to get some armor production and I have just enough copper to helm and chainmail my troops. I have done a map wide exploratory mine of 3 levels, 1 in sedimentary and the other two in the igneous level and I have not found any source of iron.

[WealthyRadish]

If you need iron, I'd recommend getting a functioning trap system that can be safely left open permanently, and then melting down the armor/weapons that the goblin ambushers and sieges drop. You can also request weapons, armor, ore, bars, and other stuff from the caravans to melt down. If things get desperate, forging and melting giant axe blades and leggings will give a 150% yield, creating metal infinitely. That's obviously an exploit, though.