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[AutomataKittay]

WARNING -- PREPARE FOR WALL OF TEXT!

(oof!)
I abandoned the fortress. Why? Like all the other (about 30-40) fortresses. All my dwarfs stop doing the stuff they need to do, and start doing other things. Like "On break..." Bull shit sir. It takes literally 40 & 1/2 years for my damn Mason/Architect to get started on building a bridge. After my only working and trust worthy miners channel out a moat. My farmers and planters are awesome as well. BUT my carpenter is stupid, my mason is stupid, and every other sod I get from migrant waves are useless. (soap makers? Really?) I've made so many fortress that end up like that. "start mining, build up crafting rooms, build ROOMS, build farms, build storage rooms, make dining hall, make other stuff, then attempt to make walls leading out of the mountain entrance, which takes literally 3 seasons to build. And still, nobody is doing anything. I'm not really good at this game, and I seriously need help. I've watched/read over 4 tutorials. They all teach you the basics. I got the basics DOWN. I searched for advanced tutorials, and a play through tutorial. None of them get past that. I've read so many wiki pages. I need someone to teach me, while I play. Or somebody to just give me goals. I've never gotten a second caravan. I've never gotten 3 waves of migrants. I've never started a military and I've never gotten to metal crafting. Please help me some one!

With many Thanks--
AlwayzL3git

I hope you're making enough alcohol for your dwarves. I was running a sober fort recently and it takes forever to do anything even without the normal dwarven laziness and distraction ( around five or six times slower, at least when it comes to workshop jobs ). At least one full barrel for each dwarf ( or roughly estimating 1/20 of your total alcohol stock ).

And you don't really have to worry about attending to every whims of theirs, outside of public beds and food/alcohol, if you have decent dining room even without enough tables and chairs. I've done forts without dining rooms and as long as there're no deaths, they're happy enough just with food and drinks

[Sutremaine]

When you say meeting areas, do you mean the zones or the rooms? Don't designate a meeting area from a table or statue or whatever, just use the i menu to form a hangout place. The general advice on this forum is to stop dwarves from making friends because other dwarves get sad when they die (sad in a way that makes them break objects and each other), but allowing dwarves to gather and talk to friends makes them really really happy and provides a bit of a buffer in case of death. Good social skills are also important for dwarves to feel better after crying on / yelling at someone in charge, but it can be difficult to get a meeting set up as both parties are very easily distracted.

Eight tables and chairs will supply a lot of dwarves. I have a fortress of 55 and at any one time only a couple of dwarves are eating. Long mass hauling jobs can result in rushes, but that's rare. One bed and a smooth stone floor will do for keeping dwarves from sleeping wherever they get tired, though it's better to have as many beds in the dormitory as there are sleepers.

[AlwayzL3git]

WARNING -- PREPARE FOR WALL OF TEXT!

(oof!)
I abandoned the fortress. Why? Like all the other (about 30-40) fortresses. All my dwarfs stop doing the stuff they need to do, and start doing other things. Like "On break..." Bull shit sir. It takes literally 40 & 1/2 years for my damn Mason/Architect to get started on building a bridge. After my only working and trust worthy miners channel out a moat. My farmers and planters are awesome as well. BUT my carpenter is stupid, my mason is stupid, and every other sod I get from migrant waves are useless. (soap makers? Really?) I've made so many fortress that end up like that. "start mining, build up crafting rooms, build ROOMS, build farms, build storage rooms, make dining hall, make other stuff, then attempt to make walls leading out of the mountain entrance, which takes literally 3 seasons to build. And still, nobody is doing anything. I'm not really good at this game, and I seriously need help. I've watched/read over 4 tutorials. They all teach you the basics. I got the basics DOWN. I searched for advanced tutorials, and a play through tutorial. None of them get past that. I've read so many wiki pages. I need someone to teach me, while I play. Or somebody to just give me goals. I've never gotten a second caravan. I've never gotten 3 waves of migrants. I've never started a military and I've never gotten to metal crafting. Please help me some one!

With many Thanks--
AlwayzL3git

I hope you're making enough alcohol for your dwarves. I was running a sober fort recently and it takes forever to do anything even without the normal dwarven laziness and distraction ( around five or six times slower, at least when it comes to workshop jobs ). At least one full barrel for each dwarf ( or roughly estimating 1/20 of your total alcohol stock ).

And you don't really have to worry about attending to every whims of theirs, outside of public beds and food/alcohol, if you have decent dining room even without enough tables and chairs. I've done forts without dining rooms and as long as there're no deaths, they're happy enough just with food and drinks

Believe me... 3 Stills running constantly almost... We have alcohol... Barrel production barely keeps up with it.

[mastahcheese]

If you want to avoid making dining rooms and meeting halls, you could always increase the room size of the individual dwarves. Without a meeting hall, dwarves will automatically go to their rooms in their idle time, and placing a table and chair in there will make them more than happy, as it can't get crowded because only they can use it, and they get happier thoughts from stuff they personally own. This also keeps them from talking to each other and forming relationships, as not even a building destroyer can break down solid walls. I personally prefer to make 3 x 3 rooms for them, it's more than enough space to fit a bed, coffer, cabnet, table, and chair, with room to spare.

Of course there's the problem of the homeless possibly wandering outside and standing around vulnerable because there's no meeting hall to waste time in, but you could always just put them to work building the stuff you need to put in their future rooms, or simply not care.

[Starver]

<snip my text...  probably easier on everyone's eyes not to see everything I said, twice.  Once is bad enough. >

I think you just broke my nose. When I said 40 years, I wasn't serious. But it does take a considerate amount of time.

Sorry, looked very literal.  But couldn't understand it.

I never have time to make crafts, simply because my dwarfs are always bitching about how "THERE'S NOT ENOUGH CHAIRS TO PUT MY ARSE IN!" or "MAKE ME TABLES AND DOORS! NOW!" so time is hard to find :|

Perhaps just dedicate one of your starting seven to stonecrafting[1], don't let him do anything else (that you can control), sit him in a corner workshop of his own building and churn out crafts.  (Get a 7x7 or bigger room dug out, put the workshop in the centre and surround with a crafts-only stockpile, initially set to no bins (until you know you have bins to spare, a separate job)  It'll fill pretty quickly, if any other dwarf is hauling[5].

And that's without minecarts/barrows involved.  Right now I'm not using them to full potential, because I had a nice design plan before they came in and I've not worked out if/how I need to change it.

However, you will raise your fortress wealth (encouraging immigration) and you will get goods to trade with[6], and you may be 14% down on your initial labour-force (for other things), but by the years' end you'll have more spare hands than you'll know what to do with and have to invent jobs for them, or enjoy dwarfly idleness from a position of not being too bothered.

Potentially, at least.  There's probably a fine point or two that I'm forgetting, but this should send you in the right direction, at least.

(YMMV.  Your fortress may be subject to repossession if you do not keep up the interest on your loan.  Warning: Hot magma may be hot.  Always remove infant before collapsing child buggies or floors.  E&OE.)


[1] On embark, see if one of the guys (that you don't think has another job nailed) has something like creativity, and possibly a listed psychological like for a stone you think you'll have in abundance[2] and ideally a craft-type[3] object.  They'd be a shoe-in.  So (to make things simple and quick) give them as much stonecrafting skill as you can (if you want to speed the process up), and either nothing else or add in auxilliary skills that aren't vital but that you might want to dabble with when you've got everything else sorted out[4].

[2] There used to be explicit information on this, at embark, but this part probably doesn't work too well any more

[3] Earrings, rings, etc, there are seven of them but I'm missing one in my mental checklist...

[4] I sometimes double up with more vital things, but that's based on what I know I might want to juggle.  And since I know that I'm going to be flooded with stone crafts, I often don't even put any stonecrafting skills on the 'spare dwarf', and build him up from scratch anyway.  But in the above I'm giving the head-start.

[5] If not, then he'll clutter his workshop up, so a god idea to have a Finished Goods Hauler (not necessarily dedicated, but included in other hauling duties), or whatever class of job it actually is again.

[6] The trader job can be doubled up with the craftsdwarf, because by the time any trading happens, he should have accumulated things he can sell (and you can de-stonecraft him for the duration, and he's already dedicated to nothing else that you can control).

[Garath]

your dwarfs can get by without enough chairs and tables for a long time as long as you keep the booze flowing. Just because they are unhappy about something doesn't mean you have to do something about it. Sometimes you have to act quickly, others can be put off untill it's convenient, others can be ignored completely.