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[Apani]

So, new fort once again, this time using the Rat Warren custom region on an pretty easy (resource-wise, at least) map. I embarked with nothing but 3 minimum-skilled bolabolds (2 owls and a kestrel), some basic crafters, 14 pieces of meat, 5 giant jack rats, 5 shalswars, 2 drakes and a pair of changelings. I let TWO Kobolds do all non military jobs, they were a badger and a salamander, one a chopper, the other a shovel. The others were an additional kestrel (I was going to draft him too, but in the end I just made a bowyer and a thief) and a lizard which has no place in an archer squad.
So, I wanted to build a town with bricks, making them sounds tricky doesn't it...
My steps are basically the do it yourself version of Kobold camp, where, as long as you have the natural resources, you can even start with nothing: stockpile the food, destroy the wagon, gather plants (duh, all the plants in this area are useful stuff like woodstalks, prickle berries, kobold bulbs ect...), build carpenter-> make wooden training chopper-> chop more trees, make wooden armor stand-> set barracks-> make squad and organize equipment-> train, build butchery-> slaughter wagon puller water buffalo bull, build tannery -> make thin suede (x3), build leatherworker-> make thin suede quiver (x3), build bowyer-> make bone bola throwers (because wooden ones are for the poor...) (x3), build kitchen-> forbid cooking of tallow once it's rendered, cook meat and bull's various products (will last longer this way, so I hope), make wooden block (x3), make craftbold's workshop-> make wooden bolas (6x) and wooden nest boxes (x4) and craft candle from tallow (x2), build thieves tunnel, steal a boulder from a fortress R-> build mason workshop-> make rock blocks and make rock grate, build boneyard, send military to hunt coyotes-> butcher coyotes, make bone blocks (x3), make bone grate (x3), build woodcarver, make wooden shovel, dig to clay, build clay oven, gather clay, build firepit, make charcoal from wood, build batch kiln, repeat the second and third to last. Now you can make everything out of (fire) clay.
My camp so far:

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The building on the north center will be the entrance of my future town, it has only a Finished Goods stockpile underneath and the barracks above, you can see the various workshops, one bridge crossing-trap which caught many nymphs (I had no idea on how to execute a genocide on them, so I just released them), and some gnolls. There's also a thief trap with a food stockpile which hasn't caught anything yet. You can see I pitted a gnoll in a fortification-enclosure. I told my marksbolds to shoot him for target practice, but when sent to duty they just started firing at the cave beetles and gremlins across the river, so I just left him in there. Later I see his rotten body, and check who killed him. Turns out it was a pet kea of an immigrant, who just passed by and killed him.

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So, I got two more gnolls in the cages and I am open to suggestions. They're perfectly butcherable, and I wonder if their bones are valuable...

[silentdeth]

They need to be, proficient, I think to shoot through distance fortifications. You would have to get them to stand right next to them to shoot through it with no skill, which would defeat the purpose of the fortification. 

[Apani]

They were more than proficient, I am sure. The point is that they didn't even try to hit him, they were all like "Oh, look, lots of gremlins and beetles across the river, let's just target practice on them and leave this guy alone". The funniest thing is that all the beetles and gremlins always stay on the other bank of the river without ever crossing, just looking at kobold who come drinking, so everytime a bolabold goes to drink, he sees these folks spying at him and shoots a few bolas. It's a good thing wooden bolas can severe limbs.
Anyway, who's in for a Kobold succession fort?

[silentdeth]

Might want to wait 'till the upcoming update. Maybe he will fix the caps thing.

[Apani]

Sure, I'd almost forgotten about that. I guess I'll just read The banners of Heart and perphaps some other above ground succession fort, figuring out a good design for buildings until then. Has anyone got pics of towns to share?

[Meph]

Check the isoworld thread for pics of towns. Its in the utilities section of the forum.

I can fix the caps, yeah.

[Apani]

I've been looking on it, but all I see are satellitar-like images of pre-gen towns. The Stonesense thread gave me more inspiration for fancy houses. But you know what? Those lazily-built up communal shacks where all the people of the village are packed like sardines probably fit a Kobold "town" more than those villas, or inns, or elaborated houses made of bricks and with a triangular wooden roof. Let's just build wooden huts with a flat roof, put a workshop in there, and make a stockpile of the same size of the house in the cellar.
For the caps, are you going to replace them or give them full head coverage and no wear? I could armor a Kobold with an helmet in the arena, why not enable them for production?

PS: If only building in Dwarf Fortress was this simple: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djAVxgQm1qM
Look at all these little folks, chopping trees and getting more wood than just one log per tree, then building all the house from the ground up using up less than one log per wall piece, placing scaffolding and pathing over the already placed walls to place more with no need for ramps to climb from one level to an higher one.

[Meph]

Falconnes plugin allows you to place constructions (walls/floors) even if they are inaccessable, making this progress a lot easier.

You can also make 4 wooden planks from a single log, so each tree gives you 4 walls/floors.

[Apani]

Falconnes plugin allows you to place constructions (walls/floors) even if they are inaccessable.

How do I do that? The only thing I could do was placing cubes by dragging from one corner to another, and I couldn't even just tell it to use clay boulders or whatever for the entire cube and leave it to be. No, I had to tell it what material to use for every single piece of wall, and when I run out of materials, I have to cancel the rest of the cube wait to have more bricks, then drag the cube again from one corner to another and restart from where I left. What I am missing?

[Apani]

New embark, looks like the game is already laughing at me for bringing just an ogre.

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*that's actually a female donkey, but it's still funny
Actually, It's the first time I get a donkey, usually it's one water buffalo bull and one drowspider.
Anyway, I can't bring myself to kill her. I guess I'll have to renounce to leather.
EDIT: so, I decided to abandon the "build everything out of blocks/planks/bricks policy and just build out of the first materials I found.
Here are the results.

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The ground floor houses a fishery, a raw fish stockpile and a prepared fish stockpile (that is a shell, it was just abandoned there, it's not stockpiled).

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On the first floor (european counting , of course) there's the office. Yeah, that's right, the fisherman is the freakin' bookkeper. I might perphaps free more space for a dining room.

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Its quarters on the second floor. There's space for a family, should he ever get one (and I hope so, more people in the same house are better, but it seems children claim their own rooms while wife and husband share them).

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The roof.
If you are wondering the time this took, we are at the first migrant wave, perphaps less than the time needed to make an artifact.
And, dulcis in fondo (or was it "fundo"? ):

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This is a Palm Log House. All Boldchitecture is of the highest quality. All the furniture is of the lowest quality. It is encrusted with Willow logs, Palm Door, -Palm Door- and +Palm Door+. This object menaces with spikes of Palm Log Upward Slope Roof. It is decorated with +Palm Door+, -Palm Door-, Palm Hatch Cover, Willow, *Palm Table*, -Palm Chair-, -Palm Hatch Cover-, -Alder Bed-, Palm Chest, Palm Cabinet. It is paved with Willow Log Floor, Palm Log Floor, Food Stockpile, Food Stockpile, Willow Fishery and...

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Open Space?

In the item is an Office of Shimpsebi Ompsenoebonins the Kobold. The Kobold is Updating Stockpile Records. In the item is a Quarters of Shimpsebi Ompsenoebonins the Kobold. The item is encircled with Kobolds, Stray Yak Calf ♂, Stray Goat Kid ♀, Stray War Ogre ♂, Stray Donkey ♀. The Kobolds are idling. The Stray Yak Calf ♂ is idling. The Stray Goat Kid ♀ is idling. The Stray War Ogre ♂ is idling. The Stray Donkey ♀ is chatting with the Stray War Ogre ♂. The item is encircled with Food Stockpile, Wood Stockpile, Palm Butcher's shop, Willow Carpenter's shop, Palm Craftbold's Workshop and Palm Bowyer's Workshop.

UPDATE: A carpenter longhouse, with little housing and long longing and little stockpiling.
From top to bottom.

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[00112]

One of my starting dwarves, a woodworker, was possessed by a demon. Knowing the possibility of them being cursed from the get-go from earlier embarks, I've embarked with a ward. In seconds of being near it, he was freed from the possession. I assumed this is normal as nothing else have ever happened after transforming back to a dwarf. Everything was going as planned with the metal and stone industry booming. It wasn't long before a dwarf with an amazing gift of science immigrated and gifted the fort with magical breakthroughs.

Days after the first winter had passed, the same woodworker flew into a berserk rage. This is when I regret of not having a military ready right then. It took bucket loads of bolts, a rookie unarmored wrestler, and constant move orders to fully free him from his curse. Now I'm in a fight to save the new expedition leader, the now almost legendary researcher, from going insane.

Spoiler: 'Spoilers' (click to show/hide)

There was no flavor text (read:warning) of how fond of pentagrams he was. I knew something was up, but I ignored that seeing that he was cured until he went berserk. Looking at the weapon he have used only confirmed some of my suspicions.



Seeing this makes me want to ask more questions like 'How was he able to fake being unpossessed?' The only possible explanation I can think of is that blood beasts can mimic dwarves perfectly by being able to transform to a dwarf as if it was being free of possession while throwing a red herring. Just one more thing I can blame warlocks on, considering that their magic can curse dwarves too.

[Apani]

I chopped down the entire eastern side of the river, but palm saplings look identical to grown palms so it's like nothing really happened.

[Meph]

Apani, that looks awesome (btw, you can collect palm saplings using herablists/collect plants)

00112: When you say that he turned berserk, was that without any outside cause? Did he transform into a bloodbeast, or did he only get crazed? That might be a bug you discovered.

[Apani]

Awesome, but impratical. If ramps could directly connect to an higher tile while still blocking passage where there is supposed to be a support, I would have spared half of the wood in the roof. Also, Stairs actually work as ladders, and ramps work as, well, wheelchair ramps, to be exact. If only there were a tileset with ladders... Also, workshops eat a lot of space. Take for example the tanner's shop. It actually needs to block just 3 tiles with something that looks like a pair of nest boxes and a wall, wasting a 3x3 space that could be used for stairs wheelchair ramps, stockpiles and other workshops for what reason? We don't know. And on stonesense this looks even uglier. We can just guess Dwarves and Kobs and Orcs need to be sorrounded by astract tiles to do their work rather than having a concrete workbench furnited with tools and anything that makes sense.
[/polemic]
Could you make resized, compressed vanilla workshops, maybe turning them into workbenches that do the same jobs? I'd like that a lot.

[Meph]

Nope. Not even close. And I only have 256 tiles to work with, the 3x3 workshops are hard enough to make interesting. Thats why I usually do 3x5 or 5x5, to allow greater flexibility in design.