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[topper]

I have been playing DF for a couple of months now and while the fort design/management is great, the Fun moments are awesome.

A bit of background on my first two forts:
My first fort currently stands at about 200 dwarfs at the beginning of year 4, it just became a barony. A flying fire-breathing desert titan visited after a siege. I closed up my front drawbridge and then it flew over my wall, destroyed my gear assembly attached to my waterwheels, and slowly worked its way up my access path destroying axles one at a time while my dwarfs inside frantically constructed walls on the inside to cut off that path of access. The titan then pathed back out to the surface and took pot shots at my grazing stock (most of which burned to death), eventually lighting a lot of the surface on fire. Amazingly, a marksdwarf took it out of the air in one shot and then my melee troops beat it to death with only one additional casualty. I put this fortress aside for the moment since it has some huge inefficiencies, a very disorganized layout, and basically no trained military, well-planned defenses or source of iron despite a lot of wealth.

My second fort is doing well (122 adult dwarfs currently). This time I ensured that there was iron and flux present on the map, but I also took a more wild surrounding. I knew it would be fun when "The dead walk!" in my first year. In the third year, I had a 4 necromancer siege which brought along about 75 dwarf corpses and 25 goblin corpses. I retreated everyone and then cycled in small groups of corpses to run past my marksdwarf gauntlet. I was about halfway done with this when "A vile force of darkness has arrived!". It was 8 bowgoblins. Amazingly, they spawned almost right next to 3 of the necromancers and proceeded to kill them and then mow through the remaining zombies. For some reason, even though my melee dwarfs were content to wait at the end of the entrance tunnel while I was processing zombies, they suddenly decided they wanted to abandon their stations and run out the front door as the goblins approached. Conveniently, one of the first hits took out the leader and the rest fled off the map only leaving a couple dead dwarfs. I am currently cleaning up the result and have some questions. Point me towards the wiki or mantis or forum if there is a good explanation elsewhere. Thanks!

1. I made the mistake of allowing my sole initial military dwarf be the expedition leader, which resulted in an angry dwarf liaison since I had to interrupt their meeting (by switching leaders) to deal with the walking dead problem. I think this led to much smaller immigration waves, which was actually pretty nice. I think my largest was about 30 despite much greater fortress wealth than my first fort. Is this possibly a good way to control migrant waves without messing with population cap?

2. Since the siege was mostly dwarf corpses, I need coffins for all of them. Unfortunately, many are missing body parts and cause "cannot place item in tomb" spam. My workaround is to build a 2x1 tomb with a door, deconstruct the offending tomb so that the body gets moved to the new one. When the body is moved I remove the job and then forbid the door. This seems to stop them from trying to put a missing body part in it.

3. On a related note, I have a ghost haunting my fortress that I cannot carve a slab for, yet my dwarfs are constantly looking for one of his teeth to bury unless I use the trick in #2. I think he is from a dwarven caravan that decided to exit through the caverns and may have gotten this dwarf killed in the process. If the tooth/body is in an unexplored part of the cavern could that account for what is happening? Any ideas to fix it?

4. I finally have a "safe" well. I did this by adding a vertical U-bend with a floodgate on the upward part. But why does a U-bend drop the pressure level of the water by 1 level? This makes no sense to me physics-wise.

5. My current status: I have only gone 1 cavern layer down so far, I don't really know what is down farther except i hear it is more fun stuff. I am getting an itch to try these "magma forges" I hear about, so finding magma would be nice. Also, I have a dwarf necromancer from the siege in a cage which I think could be used for fun stuff. I have about 20 full-time military in metal armor but only about 5 who are highly trained (all marksdwarfs). Any advice or ideas for what I should do next? sorry for the wall of text.

[greycat]

4. I finally have a "safe" well. I did this by adding a vertical U-bend with a floodgate on the upward part. But why does a U-bend drop the pressure level of the water by 1 level? This makes no sense to me physics-wise.

http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Pressure#Summary

"When a liquid is moved (or created) with pressure, it attempts to locate the nearest tile on the same Z-level as its destination tile (for falling water, this is 1 Z-level beneath its original location) ...."

[BrisoS]

I have been playing DF for a couple of months now and while the fort design/management is great, the Fun moments are awesome.

A bit of background on my first two forts:
My first fort currently stands at about 200 dwarfs at the beginning of year 4, it just became a barony. A flying fire-breathing desert titan visited after a siege. I closed up my front drawbridge and then it flew over my wall, destroyed my gear assembly attached to my waterwheels, and slowly worked its way up my access path destroying axles one at a time while my dwarfs inside frantically constructed walls on the inside to cut off that path of access. The titan then pathed back out to the surface and took pot shots at my grazing stock (most of which burned to death), eventually lighting a lot of the surface on fire. Amazingly, a marksdwarf took it out of the air in one shot and then my melee troops beat it to death with only one additional casualty. I put this fortress aside for the moment since it has some huge inefficiencies, a very disorganized layout, and basically no trained military, well-planned defenses or source of iron despite a lot of wealth.

My second fort is doing well (122 adult dwarfs currently). This time I ensured that there was iron and flux present on the map, but I also took a more wild surrounding. I knew it would be fun when "The dead walk!" in my first year. In the third year, I had a 4 necromancer siege which brought along about 75 dwarf corpses and 25 goblin corpses. I retreated everyone and then cycled in small groups of corpses to run past my marksdwarf gauntlet. I was about halfway done with this when "A vile force of darkness has arrived!". It was 8 bowgoblins. Amazingly, they spawned almost right next to 3 of the necromancers and proceeded to kill them and then mow through the remaining zombies. For some reason, even though my melee dwarfs were content to wait at the end of the entrance tunnel while I was processing zombies, they suddenly decided they wanted to abandon their stations and run out the front door as the goblins approached. Conveniently, one of the first hits took out the leader and the rest fled off the map only leaving a couple dead dwarfs. I am currently cleaning up the result and have some questions. Point me towards the wiki or mantis or forum if there is a good explanation elsewhere. Thanks!

1. I made the mistake of allowing my sole initial military dwarf be the expedition leader, which resulted in an angry dwarf liaison since I had to interrupt their meeting (by switching leaders) to deal with the walking dead problem. I think this led to much smaller immigration waves, which was actually pretty nice. I think my largest was about 30 despite much greater fortress wealth than my first fort. Is this possibly a good way to control migrant waves without messing with population cap?

2. Since the siege was mostly dwarf corpses, I need coffins for all of them. Unfortunately, many are missing body parts and cause "cannot place item in tomb" spam. My workaround is to build a 2x1 tomb with a door, deconstruct the offending tomb so that the body gets moved to the new one. When the body is moved I remove the job and then forbid the door. This seems to stop them from trying to put a missing body part in it.

3. On a related note, I have a ghost haunting my fortress that I cannot carve a slab for, yet my dwarfs are constantly looking for one of his teeth to bury unless I use the trick in #2. I think he is from a dwarven caravan that decided to exit through the caverns and may have gotten this dwarf killed in the process. If the tooth/body is in an unexplored part of the cavern could that account for what is happening? Any ideas to fix it?

4. I finally have a "safe" well. I did this by adding a vertical U-bend with a floodgate on the upward part. But why does a U-bend drop the pressure level of the water by 1 level? This makes no sense to me physics-wise.

5. My current status: I have only gone 1 cavern layer down so far, I don't really know what is down farther except i hear it is more fun stuff. I am getting an itch to try these "magma forges" I hear about, so finding magma would be nice. Also, I have a dwarf necromancer from the siege in a cage which I think could be used for fun stuff. I have about 20 full-time military in metal armor but only about 5 who are highly trained (all marksdwarfs). Any advice or ideas for what I should do next? sorry for the wall of text.

#2 - Not sure how that works. Anytime I get trouble with burying people due to missing corpses or parts I use memorial slabs.

#3 - Oh. I thought you could slab for any ghost.

#4 - Working as intended, even if not realistic. Make sure you put a floor grate somewhere in the u-bend. Some building destroyers can swim and break that floodgate. I believe floor grates are safe though. Also the grate cannot be on the same z-level as the top of the water that feeds the well.

5# - That is the point in time where I usually get overwhelmed as well. A lot of dwarf a decent military and feeling ready to pump some magma. My plan would be like this (1, 2 and 3 can all happen at the same time)

1)I would focus on equipping your military in all steel, as opposed to any lesser metal, if you can. The jump in defense from iron to steel is quite huge. And that will occupy a few of your dwarves for a while (making steel is a lengthy process for furnace operators, miners and smiths).

2)While that's going on train your military in at least strength (steel is heavy) - I recommend building a gym. Or a danger room if you are OK with the idea.

3)While that is going on I would get my glass maker to build parts for the magma pumps (green glass is magma safe AFAIR). I have a map with a lot of metals but it still takes too freakin long to make anything when you are still trying to make steel. Get some dwarves focused on item hauling (I believe that is the labor for sand collecting), get a lot of bags in a stockpile near the sand area and get your glass furnace working. I don't recall if all parts of a pump can be made of glass. You may need some made of metal.

Your idea to get magma forges is very good. It actually would speed up the steel production if you can get the pumps ready before you are done equipping every soldier. Delving deeper to find the magma sea also increases your chances of finding adamantine I think.

[i2amroy]

3)If you are on windows check out DFHack's "clear-missing" and "clear-ghostly" commands. The first one could potentially make the ghost slab-able, with the second one being a last attempt that should remove the ghost completely (same as if you slab him). Also yes, a tooth or other body part in an unexplored part of the caverns could cause this.

5)Dig down. Beneath the first cavern level is a second cavern level, then beneath the second is a third, and then beneath that is the magma sea (which is usually when you start seeing adamantine), and beneath that is SMR and HFS. Don't worry about the adamantine, you won't have any problems with HFS until you start mining it. My suggestion would be to dig down to the top of the magma ocean and then set up some magma forges and glassmaking workshops. After that steel and training your military is a good goal. (And don't worry too much about the cavern levels, sure things get slightly more !!FUN!! as you go down, but there isn't actually that much of an increase in difficulty from cavern level 1 to 2 to 3. Really all you do is allow access to more useful plants. After you set up a very powerful military, then I say go for the HFS. Start mining adamantine and making it into armor and weapons. You will know when you hit the HFS.

[thiosk]

Is there any positive benefit to breaching HFS?  (Assuming FUN! is not the nature of the goal at the time)
Besides having the adamantine, of course.

[i2amroy]

Is there any positive benefit to breaching HFS?  (Assuming FUN! is not the nature of the goal at the time)
Besides having the adamantine, of course.

Being able to mine as much adamantine you want without releasing further !!FUN!! is really the only benefit. Plus witht eh exception of constructing some giant megaproject beating HFS is about the dwarfiest thing that a fort can do. (So yeah, !!FUN!! tends to be the main goal in most cases.)

[topper]

1)I would focus on equipping your military in all steel, as opposed to any lesser metal, if you can. The jump in defense from iron to steel is quite huge. And that will occupy a few of your dwarves for a while (making steel is a lengthy process for furnace operators, miners and smiths).

2)While that's going on train your military in at least strength (steel is heavy) - I recommend building a gym. Or a danger room if you are OK with the idea.

3)While that is going on I would get my glass maker to build parts for the magma pumps (green glass is magma safe AFAIR). I have a map with a lot of metals but it still takes too freakin long to make anything when you are still trying to make steel. Get some dwarves focused on item hauling (I believe that is the labor for sand collecting), get a lot of bags in a stockpile near the sand area and get your glass furnace working. I don't recall if all parts of a pump can be made of glass. You may need some made of metal.

Your idea to get magma forges is very good. It actually would speed up the steel production if you can get the pumps ready before you are done equipping every soldier. Delving deeper to find the magma sea also increases your chances of finding adamantine I think.

Thanks for the comments.
I already have a decent iron industry going (and a legendary weaponsmith but noob armorsmith), but from what I remember of my prospect prior to embark, the marble layers are down pretty deep, so steel might be a pain to get to quickly.

Unfortunately, I think there is no sand on this map. I might prospect again just to make sure, but I have not seen any yet (forest biome with a river). Am I out of luck for glassmaking except for what I can buy from traders? I have about 20 bags of sand so far.

edit: Also, about the U-bend, I mispoke in my OP, there actually is a floor grate in the vertical shaft.

[topper]

3)If you are on windows check out DFHack's "clear-missing" and "clear-ghostly" commands. The first one could potentially make the ghost slab-able, with the second one being a last attempt that should remove the ghost completely (same as if you slab him). Also yes, a tooth or other body part in an unexplored part of the caverns could cause this.

5)Dig down. Beneath the first cavern level is a second cavern level, then beneath the second is a third, and then beneath that is the magma sea (which is usually when you start seeing adamantine), and beneath that is SMR and HFS. Don't worry about the adamantine, you won't have any problems with HFS until you start mining it. My suggestion would be to dig down to the top of the magma ocean and then set up some magma forges and glassmaking workshops. After that steel and training your military is a good goal. (And don't worry too much about the cavern levels, sure things get slightly more !!FUN!! as you go down, but there isn't actually that much of an increase in difficulty from cavern level 1 to 2 to 3. Really all you do is allow access to more useful plants. After you set up a very powerful military, then I say go for the HFS. Start mining adamantine and making it into armor and weapons. You will know when you hit the HFS.

Thanks for these, I will probably try to do the hack to get rid of the ghost. I hope the surface Fun gives me enough of a rest in order to focus on the caverns for a bit.

Next steps:
1) Dig deeper!
2) Minecarts!
3) Reanimating necromancer fueled training arena!
4) Fun!

[thiosk]

Just a note, I no longer use Z levels to equalize pressure.  I have flooded myself too many times.  I now build a "pressure regulator" at the bottom of a cistern, with a floodgate hooked to a lever in a control room.  Its important to sandwitch the floodgate with fortifications, because you don't want debris stuck in your floodgate.

Anyhoo, once you dig the bottom of the cistern, dig the regulators: the regulator takes a straight line flow, and then forces it through a diagonal channel.  I divert flow through two diagonally mined blocks, then back to the straight channel.  That sets a "new top" for the flow, infinitely fed by the cistern.  This is much safer.  Then take that line out to where you want it.  I call that a pipe.  Channel to the next layer, and the pipe will fill.  Close the floodgate, and you have an utterly safe and pressure equalized pipe, into which you can channel from above and install wells.  If it empties out, the pressure regulators inhibit further leakage.  My system is expandable, because I install floodgates at the bottom of the cistern, then I can dig up to those to install new pipeworks.

Heres an image:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 
Note that you do not need pressure regulation for MAGMA.  I just thought the red showed up prettier than the blue.  The tube up top, labeled magma tube here, is my water pipe.  No more flooding despite being fed by a practically infinite supply of liquid on a higher level.  The water comes down the stairwell and then smacks into the pressure regulator with immense force.  It then stops in its tracks and gives you a nice leisurely supply.

[knutor]

1. I made the mistake of allowing my sole initial military dwarf be the expedition leader, which resulted in an angry dwarf liaison since I had to interrupt their meeting (by switching leaders) to deal with the walking dead problem. I think this led to much smaller immigration waves, which was actually pretty nice. I think my largest was about 30 despite much greater fortress wealth than my first fort. Is this possibly a good way to control migrant waves without messing with population cap?

From what I read about Expedition Leader choice, its a good idea to set it to a dwarf who is capable of lying.  High lying skill will prevent a coup d'état.  Changing the leader, noble stymies the liaison.  *shrug*  I don't know if this lowers migrant numbers, as long as the liaison is able to leave the map, alive.  I think a dead liaison is only thing that lowers migrants, but I could be wrong. 

I prefer idle jobless nobles, or ones with high social traits and only the Architect skill.  With the exception being the military and justice nobles.  Those have certain military jobs, teaching and leading and will eventually blank out all the labor skills when they master their fighting skills.  One thing I like to do is keep um separated.  One dwarf for each noble job.  Once my miners hit Legendary 20 in Mining and stop gaining xp; I like to reassign them elsewhere, usually as nobles or soldiers.  Sincerely, Knutor

[walberg]

In my experience, the "Dwarf corpse"s that come in necro sieges don't need to be buried/memorialized. Only the (named) dwarves that are part of your civ, or merchants/guards/etc. will haunt you if not memorialized in some way. The unnamed "Dwarf corpse"s (and my current 50-year fort has seen many of these) just go down the garbage chute...

[wuphonsreach]

Unfortunately, while true, that means you have to micromanage your peasant graves by assigning graves to specific dwarves in your fort rather then just letting the cemetery fill automatically.

However, if you don't do that micromanagement, then you'll have to plan on having 200-400 peasant coffins placed and ready to be used for burial by year 5-10 in a necromancer area if they start bringing undead dwarves to the party.

[topper]

In my experience, the "Dwarf corpse"s that come in necro sieges don't need to be buried/memorialized. Only the (named) dwarves that are part of your civ, or merchants/guards/etc. will haunt you if not memorialized in some way. The unnamed "Dwarf corpse"s (and my current 50-year fort has seen many of these) just go down the garbage chute...

Most are already in coffins now, but I might consider this for future undead sieges. Do I simply have to mark them for dumping before they get retrieved for burial? How do I force the corpses to get dumped down a shaft as opposed to the dump where I reclaim goblinite from disarmed caged prisoners?

Also, I have an additional question that I forgot to put in the OP. Soon after embark I made my first squad with my sole skilled axedwarf and manually equipped the metal axe I had brought along (as opposed to the wooden training axe for the woodcutter). However, in the list of available weapons it shows something like a dozen wooden spears and bows and blowguns (and maybe shields too). None of these are visible on the surface and I had not breached any caverns. Also, I think that they do not show up on my stocks inventory even with the most precise accounting. I searched the forum for this, but the only suggestions I found related to a possible underground civilization? Has anyone seen this before, or have some advice for locating listed weapons and their owners? Thanks!

[greycat]

Do I simply have to mark them for dumping before they get retrieved for burial? How do I force the corpses to get dumped down a shaft as opposed to the dump where I reclaim goblinite from disarmed caged prisoners?

If you're dumping, unfortunately you have to manage it by hand.  Dwarves will take an item to the "nearest" garbage zone, however they happen to measure that.  In some cases you may be able to get away with having multiple garbage zones, but generally you should delete all but one, do a bunch of dumping, wait until it's done, then delete that zone and create the next one.

[knutor]

None of these are visible on the surface and I had not breached any caverns. Also, I think that they do not show up on my stocks inventory even with the most precise accounting. I searched the forum for this, but the only suggestions I found related to a possible underground civilization? Has anyone seen this before, or have some advice for locating listed weapons and their owners? Thanks!

I see it often, like you.  Like you've mention, Topper, the items are undiscovered cavern items.  And sometimes, gear dropped on the border of the map, from migrants.  Most often, however, I see this phenomenon, as the items the Traders bring on their oxen and carts.  Those unsold Depot items show up our bookie's stock list as well.

Your militia will upgrade their weaponry, as it becomes available, based on the squad's position top most, being highest, in the militia priority listings.  I try and keep my marksdwarf squads all on the very top of that priority list, as they have two weapons.. ammo AND a wpn, to upgrade. 

Not sure if this matters to you, it does to me.  I'd sooner the melee grunts in melee squads dueling and training, in the danger rooms, get passed over more often, than my ranged squads.  As squads using danger rooms chew up their gear.  When I get one decently trained, and effective melee squad, I up its priority.  But it usually takes me awhile to get one of those. 

The danger rooms I make are not very efficient.  I'm still learning this game.