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[mrnoun]

I've retired Begu Nobleaged, the Brilliant Rose of Justices, from Adventurer Mode for the time being and decided to start a new fortress.  In the interest of hopefully helping both the developer and other players, I'm going to be keeping a log of my progress in this thread.  I hope it will be a useful, enjoyable read.

For my start, I decided to try something a little different.  With wood being the big early limiting factor on growth, I've decided to bring lots of wooden items, along with some extra seeds.  I've also given everyone a level of Marksman, in case of emergency.

My start:

7 Novice Marksdwarves (having 7 dwarves was a nice touch.  Here's a silly bloat: a small random chance of an 8th settler, called Snow White, joining them)

-3 iron picks (without a high-food start, reaching the river quickly is important)
-1 iron battle axe (chopping trees quickly is a low priority)
-25 plump helmet spawn
-20 pig tail seeds (if I remember my agriculture right, rotating crops by planting different things is good for the soil.  Is that implemented yet?)
-20 fox meat
-20 plump helmet (should easily last until the first harvest)
-10 mangrove barrels (should limit the amount of wood needed for barrels nicely)

The Youthful Honest Spike:
Scorching
Woodlands
Moderate plant life
Protected Wilds

Our new mountain home is called Likotdodok, "Inkclasp".  There's a ford in the river not too far to the north, which is worrying, but there's no sign of trouble as yet.

The first order of business will be to clear room for the bare essentials: a three-wide entranceway, a trade depot, a fortifiable hallway from depot to the depths, and a mineshaft to the river.  While the miners dig, I will assign a carpenter and mason to build temporary workshops outside to start preparing furniture.  The remaining two will be a hauler and a wood-cutter.

More when I hit the river.

[mrnoun]

Bad news: my current location is apparently infested with unicorns and elephants.  This may end up being a short thread after all.  The elephants are, thankfully, at the far northern edge of the map, and will hopefully stay there.   But one of the two unicorn herds may be in a threatening position, not far south of my entrance.  For now, I'm going to do my best not to bother them, as I don't have any crossbows for my marksmen.

21st Granite: struck water.  We can commence farming as soon as the flood recedes.  Thankfully, the miner caught in the flood survived the incident, though he did reach "Winded" status.

With the mine flooded, I temporarily set my miners to detailing stone.  I could have had them gather plants, but why risk attracting unicorns?

By the 24th, the flood had receded.  I made plans for a food-storage area, a well, kitchens, and a communal dining area.  The wood-cutter was taken off-duty to concentrate on farming.  Everyone else had farming set as their secondary profession.

The farm was built, and plump helmet planting began.  Then everyone decided they'd rather eat now than eat later, and abandoned the job to go have lunch.  Finally, having eaten, they returned to planting.  For about three seconds, before deciding it was time to dash down to the river for a nice, long drink.

Next would be naptime, of course.  And indeed, the first sleeper dropped what he was doing on the 12th of Slate, right in the middle of the muddy farm area, seed in hand.  Total so far: 7 food eaten, 3 squares planted.  Not an auspicious beginning.

[Zanfib]

Looks good so far. Would you mind posting screanshots of your fortress layout? Layout is some thing I have trouble with.

[mrnoun]

On the 5th of Felsite, the first plump helmet sprouted.  The communal dining room was about half-built, and the food storage area was firmly underway.  The well room was barely started, though, and the expanded farming area was a mess.

A mechanic was hard at work preparing the mechanisms for the flood gates, and ample beds were available for the eventual sleeping area, which was next on the list of chores.

[mrnoun]

Sure, just let me find a site to upload them.  My layout isn't great, though; I miscalculated slightly and made my farming area 7 squares wide, meaning I'm desperately screaming at my dwarves to get the support beams in place before the inevitable cave-in.  It looked like I was going to make it, as the most important beam was in the middle of construction, when the dwarf doing the job decided he'd rather take a nap than, you know, survive.  So now I'm hoping another dwarf will miraculously beat the "deep rumbling coming from the cavern".

[mrnoun]

First cave-in hit; thankfully, the dwarves sleeping in the cave-in area weren't killed, thereby proving Darwin wrong.

Let's try this screen-shot thing.  Here was my start:

And the current, caved-in situation:

[mrnoun]

Final count: two dead, one unconscious.  That will teach me to play late at night.

[bbb]

are barrels necessary? food comes with barrels automatically anyway

[Grue]

If you started in Woodlands, there was probably a lot of wood?

Why didn't you build a proper bedroom for your dwarves?

What was the point of giving everybody crossbow skill when there were no crossbows? (I think only one crossbow can be generated for free and  you gotta have a trapper dwarf for that)

[Aquillion]

quote:Originally posted by bbb:
<STRONG>are barrels necessary? food comes with barrels automatically anyway</STRONG>

Worse than that.  Currently, buying empty barrels at the start is just throwing points away...  A barrel costs 10 points, while a barrel filled with wine costs 2 points.  That's on the list of things to be fixed somewhere.

...but, really, where on earth have you been building your fortresses that wood has been such a big deal?  I always kept my carpenter running 24/7 on all my fortresses, and the only time I've ever run out of wood is when I forget to mark trees.

The keys are to have a 'calm' location, so animals won't disturb you; to mark trees on your side of the river as much as possible; to build a bridge directly across from your fortress when you do need to go to the other side of the river, so as to minimize wandering time; and to make one of your first constructions when you get your forge running an extra axe or two.  Given that, wood shouldn't be a major issue on a heavily forested map...  I almost always have a surplus of beds.

Oh, and build everything you can out of stone, of course, especially doors.  Tables work, too...  can you substitute thrones for chairs in a dining hall?  I never tried, but if that works you can save a little wood on that.

You'll use up wood much faster once you have a furnace, but then you can forge axes, so it shouldn't be a problem.

...and if wood somehow really is still a problem for you early on, why not buy a single extra axe instead of all those little wooden items that you're going to run through pretty quickly anyway?

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I've yet to build a single wooden chair in my fortress, with over 35 dwarves now. Thrones do work fine for me in all contexts I've used them in so far, including the dining room.

[karnot]

quote:...but, really, where on earth have you been building your fortresses that wood has been such a big deal? I always kept my carpenter running 24/7 on all my fortresses, and the only time I've ever run out of wood is when I forget to mark trees.  

Are you kidding ? I started in Calm Woodland, and currently have 50 dwarves. that means 50 beds with few extras, about 20 barrels, 15 or so bins, 5 buckets.
Stone you can use, but what about giant amounts of ore ? You cant get rid of it without lots and lots of wood. And each coin requires wood. I am in 3rd year and have half map outside deforested.
Under these conditions, for example, using wood for fertilizer seems to be somewhat of a waste. And it takes a tree 3 years to regrow. And a number of saplings each year is quite small...
Well, it certainly is a balance issue.

[ August 15, 2006: Message edited by: karnot ]

[mrnoun]

I wasn't aware that wine came in barrels and was cheaper than empty barrels.  That's definitely something that should be fixed, but until it is, I fully intend to take advantage of it.

Dwarves apparently WILL use thrones in place of wooden chairs; I have no idea if they like them as much, though.

Wood becomes the limiting factor when you find metal and need charcoal.

The point of starting with crossbow skill is that I've reached the point where my dwarves tend to get killed rather than dying of starvation, and crossbows are:

A) the "safest" weapon, being long-range;
B) fairly cheap and easy to make by spring of Year 2, when you have Craftsman, Fishery, Bowery, and immigrants to use them.

Having a squad of dwarves who already have some skill means the next time a herd of unicorns decides to follow the caravan into the trade depot, they'll pay the price in blood.

The sleeping area was planned for right next to the dining area.  It isn't marked on the screenshots because my general plan is to dig to the river, then fill in to the left.  Food therefore gets preference over sleep, as it shortens the travel time for dwarves running back and forth from the food depot to the farm plot.  Making the farm area 7 wide was just a careless mistake on my part, one that killed two dwarves needlessly.

With two dwarves already dead and morale down for the rest, I'm skipping the communal sleeping area and going straight to proper bedrooms, and also digging out more of them than are actually neccessary, in hopes of finally hitting a metal vein.

When the bedrooms are dug out, it will be time to set up the indoor workshops, and move the supply stockpiles inside as well--right now, only food is indoors.  

On the plus side, we've hit turquoise.

[mrnoun]

The autumn caravan has come and gone; I traded the clothes of the dead dwarves for all their plump helmets, as well as some leather and silk.  They didn't want my spare +felsite throne+ because it was too heavy.

Eight migrants arrived, bringing the population to 14.  This is just about perfect; I'm pretty confident I can feed 14, and the extra workers will make expansion faster.

The immigrants:
1 mason
1 craftsdwarf
1 fisherdwarf
2 farmers
1 mechanic
2 peasants

Rampaging elephants are starting to worry me (one seriously injured a merchant bodyguard), so I've accelerated the process of moving industry indoors.  The mason, carpenter, furniture stockpile, wood stockpile, and stone stockpile will move inside for starters.  In addition, it's time to add a jeweler and a gem stockpile for the gems that are accumulating on the floor.

The only metal I've seen so far is a tiny bit of copper on the cave river bank to the north, and some copper and silver on the far bank to the south.  Neither is easily accessible, so I'll bide my time and continue to clear out the closer areas.

Come winter, the most important task will be adjusting my floodgates to (hopefully) set up a reliable farming system.

[mrnoun]

The winter has come and gone, and we're still alive.

I botched the floodgates pretty badly, even managing to drown a dwarf.  But the river flooded just right, and we have plenty of workable soil--more than double what we had last spring, and more once the stones are cleared out.  I'll tinker with the gates again next winter.

We struck malachite in mid-winter, and have started work producing charcoal for smelting.  Copper weapons aren't my preference, but we caught exactly zero fish last year, so we lack bones.  Hunting for elephants and unicorns is hard enough WITH crossbows, so they're not a practical source of bone.

Our mason is producing + quality furniture now, and everyone is in a pretty good mood.  Assuming they don't get piggy and eat our leftover winter supplies before the harvest, things look good.

I haven't yet risked the elephants' wrath by building a road to the west, so no human caravan.  We'll wait for the autumn dwarves.