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[Hamek McEisenfaust]

I have a five wide square moat completely surrounding my surface fort entrance. I built waterwheels powering some millstones, up until a month ago, they worked fine. now, they are all un powered and even if i rebuild, they do not power anything anymore. I really hope i am not missing anything stupid, but i am unable to figure out why i no longer have a mill. Thanks folks.

[Lich180]

Your water in your moat is probably not "flowing" as it should anymore. Get a dwarf to pull a bucket of water out of the moat, and see if the waterwheels start spinning again.

That, or something in your power chain is missing, check for broken linkages there, too.

[Cobbler89]

And if you want that to be maintained automatically, build a pump that takes water out of the moat at one point and lets it flow back in at another (I don't know if the wheels need to be in between these two points, but you can find out by trying) and power this pump by the wheels. Yes, it's terribly unrealistic -- but less so than leaving waterwheels on standing water and wondering why there's no movement to power them. ;^)

Alternatively, if this moat was filled from a river or brook, make sure that the source can continue filling it and dig out a drain, so the moat's water is realistically flowing from the river through the moat down the drain. (Drain can be simply another channel back into the river, or can be an underground tunnel leading to someplace where the edge of the map is stone -- smooth that stone and carve a fortification in it to let the water flow out off the edge of the map underground, without dealing with, say, flooding the caverns; I don't know what happens if you come to this fort as an adventurer where the game might care where that water goes instead of only caring about the embark boundary, but I know in strictly fortress mode play this method will work for the foreseeable future.)

[nbp]

And if you want that to be maintained automatically, build a pump that takes water out of the moat at one point and lets it flow back in at another (I don't know if the wheels need to be in between these two points, but you can find out by trying) and power this pump by the wheels. Yes, it's terribly unrealistic -- but less so than leaving waterwheels on standing water and wondering why there's no movement to power them. ;^)

You don't even need to have that pump be continuously powered.  Just have one of your dwarves pump it by hand for a few minutes to churn up the moat.  If you're lucky, that'll get the moat moving and you'll be all set afterwards.

I have a big collection of water wheels in an aquifer underground.  They're still running off of the agitation caused by one dwarf pumping the water around for a few minutes.  He did that several decades ago.

[mdqp]

Sorry about the dumb question, but is it worth having the water wheels power your millstones? Querns do the same job, and I believe the speed difference is negligible, especially since dwarves aren't in short supply, unless you decide to strictly regulate their immigration and reproduction.

[RickiusMaximus]

Sorry about the dumb question, but is it worth having the water wheels power your millstones? Querns do the same job, and I believe the speed difference is negligible, especially since dwarves aren't in short supply, unless you decide to strictly regulate their immigration and reproduction.

Dwarfs get tired when using millstones.

Plus its more dwarfy to construct a massive elaborate wheel and axle system

[MasterShizzle]

Indeed. Making an elaborate system of gears, axles, and waterwheels to replace the labor of a single peasant is the essence of dwarfiness.

[mdqp]

Indeed. Making an elaborate system of gears, axles, and waterwheels to replace the labor of a single peasant is the essence of dwarfiness.

I just developed this habit of trying to go for the optimal solution, since my PC is utter crap, and FPS death visits me always too soon (and I don't like turning down features, because while it's cool to have dwarves swim in magma, I can't help but feel like a lousy cheater when I see them), so I guess I have become an hill dwarf...