Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Btwilley]

When planning your for what do you generally go for more of?

When I started I always brought the highest level miners, cooks, ect. I have never (not even my first game) failed to survive the 1st winter so I guess thats a valid build. But lately I have been assigning 1 level in the basic skills and just bringing seeds, assorted brew, and turtles in bulk. The only realy difference that I have found is that things take a bit longer in the beggining, but my dwarves get attribute levels by the time that their up to where they would be normally had I bought their skills. And because of the ammt of food that I brought I generally don't have to farm till later.

[LordBucket]

There are a bunch of posts on this topic, and you'll probably get more answers than people responding...but honestly after you play for a while it really stops mattering. Dwarves rarely last you throughout the game, and once you're comfortable with the early game it really doesn't matter how you start.

As a beginning player, just do whatever you need to survive...but the reality is that no matter what you start with, you're going to die if you don't know how to keep going.

For example, a little food and　no alochol comined with skilled herbalist and brewer is a perfectly good way to start. But if you try it as a new player you're just going to die senselessly.

During the moderately early part of my Dwarf Fortress career...right as I was starting to consistently be able to survive past winter, lots of food, and everything else invested in skills worked ratehr well for me. But again, initial investment doesn't make much difference once you know how to play. Your real priorities should be learning how to irrigate your farms, how to brew alcohol, and turn it into meals. Once you can consitenly do those things, you should be able to make it past winter more or less regardless of how you start.

So...to answer the question, personally I invest points in skills of convenience. Carpentry. Masonry. Detailing. A pair of miners to speed up digging past the chasm, and then usually a pair of farmers to simply farming later on. I don't usually take much gear. Never any animals. Usually no alcohol. I find that it's unneccesary for the first year of gameplay. And I usually play on heavily forested map so I don't need the barrels.

[ October 24, 2007: Message edited by: LordBucket ]

[Jaqie Fox]

A couple of things.

I personally find that I dont need an abundance of either, but having a 10 skill miner and farmer makes things go veeeeeeeery smoothly the first year and progress is amazing.  Give me an axe, a pick, a good miner and farmer, and some seeds, and I can make a great fortress almost anywhere.
I am the type that doesnt enjoy very tough conditions, I enjoy having things easy, so this suits me greatly.

[jester]

I agree with the good lord bucket on most points.  Once you know what you are doing you can survive with no skills and bugger all stuff (with herbs).  Things have pretty much evened out after a year and a half anyway.
 Personally I put points on things that I dont want to spend the time/resources/hauling on raising.  A good stonecrafter for the obsidian swords,  Classy engineer for the seige weapons and good armour and weaponsmiths.  I havent tried it but a bowyer could be a good buy.
 I find that most of the important work that happens in the first year is mining, so if you want to get set up fast go that way (most of my miners start out unskilled now, they learn fast enough).
The military implications of taking 6 dogs with you to your new fortress cannot be denied, taking 20 almost empty barrels is ok but not really a big deal unless you are short on trees.
 At the end of the day its Dwarf fortress, take the stuff you think will suit your fortress, a kitten factroy will need cats and butchers.  want booze from day one? heralist, brewer and plants.  Undead groundhogs expected? wood cutter gets axe skill.  Dig the thing any way you please.

[ October 24, 2007: Message edited by: jester ]

[Pacho]

I guess I'm leaning completely on the gear side lately.  I don't give any of my dwarves any skills at all.  All the points are spent on food, drink, seeds, and leather.  Herbalism and fishing holds up my dwarves for the first few years.  Farming isn't done until I reach the cave river, and then I just nile farm all the way.  After that it isn't much of an issue until the economy starts and dwarves prefer cooked meals for some reason.

[Jaqie Fox]

That's the very reason I bring max skill farmer and miner. I get farming going during early spring and have more food then I can handle by my first winter, along with plenty of space thanks to the miner.

[Jusal]

All gear. No skills. They'll learn eventually.

[Turgid Bolk]

I go the other way. I find 200 points to be more than I need to survive, so I just dump them into mining skill or extra booze. If it's in a challenging location or a no-trade location (i.e. no immigrants) I'll bring a swordsdwarf or give everyone some wrestling. Once you know how to get food you might as well train up skills to save time.

[SnowWhite]

A max skill miner and max skill grower are very helpful the first year.

My next fortress, I'm going to bring a max skill siege engineer because in my current fortress it is taking for-expletive-ever to get an engineer skilled up enough to make high-quality ballista arrows.  

And if I can easily afford the point, a max-skill building designer.  In the past few fortresses I've tried to keep only one or two dwarves with the architect labor on, but I still haven't gotten anyone to be a particularly good building designer and think it would be fun.

So, after all the rambling, I guess what I'm trying to say is that part of the fun is to try something different from last time.  :-)

[Fedor]

I tend to go *very* light on gear, no animals, and huge on skills (unless I want a a low-skills challenge).  With experience, you can make a little starting food and drink go a long, long way - at least on most maps.  I used to bring along dogs but found that I really didn't have a use for more than a few and could easily wait for them.

quote:Originally posted by SnowWhite:
<STRONG>My next fortress, I'm going to bring a max skill siege engineer because in my current fortress it is taking for-expletive-ever to get an engineer skilled up enough to make high-quality ballista arrows. </STRONG>

Many skills, including engineering, are very expensive in materials to train up (unless you get lucky with strange moods) and are excellent starting purchases if you have the points.  Nothing makes a fort like some really good metalbashers.

[BurnedToast]

quote:Originally posted by Fedor:
<STRONG>Many skills, including engineering, are very expensive in materials to train up (unless you get lucky with strange moods) and are excellent starting purchases if you have the points.  Nothing makes a fort like some really good metalbashers.</STRONG>

who really cares about engineering though? other then loading stonefall traps (which get replaced with weapon traps eventually) nothing they do takes very long anyway, and (right now, next version is different) mechanism quality does not matter.

as for the metalsmithing skills (the only one where materials really matter, to be honest) starting at max (proficient) saves you only 117 metal out of the needed 600, or about 20% (actually, you can melt the finished products which changes this but i'm too lazy to figure out how). nice? yeah, I guess. worth a huge chunk of starting points? not really IMO, I never run out of metal anyway. bronze is not good for much else besides burning on training.

I usually go for 2 maxed miners (so it doesn't take so damn long to dig out rooms) and a max grower or 2 depending on my plans for the fort. other then that, meh, quality does not matter for any of the typical starts skills anyway. Max mason is nice for getting blocks out (and thus a road up) quicker, but that's not really super important.

Edit: ok I forgot siege engineering, I thought you meant mechanics. The materials matter ALOT for siege engineering. IMO  it's really not worth it to build siege engines anyway considering the huge mass of wood you need to train the engineer. if you are dead set on using them though, starting with a max skill engineer can be very helpful.

[ October 24, 2007: Message edited by: BurnedToast ]

[ October 24, 2007: Message edited by: BurnedToast ]

[Earthquake Damage]

BT, by "engineering" he meant siege engineer, not mechanic.

EDIT:  In other news, I didn't read your edit...

[ October 24, 2007: Message edited by: Earthquake Damage ]

[jester]

For me taking good weapon/armour smiths is not about saving 117 bars of bronze, its not having to melt 300 crap fortress made helmets.  having a decent stock of + level weapons and armour is a good place to start,  chocking up another 150 build, 150 haul and then another 150 melt just to get to this level takes too damn long for me.  The challange is keeping your star smith alive and happy until the magma forges get running.
I like to take an engineer just because I like seige weapons.  The reality of the thing is they will probably never kill more than half a dozen gobs per seige even with 4 pults with legendary operators.  Ballitae at short range do much more damage and at those ranges they dont need to be all that good.

 Rather than taking weapon skills giving 2 trapper skills to all your dwarves will give you 7 iron crossbows, ammo and leather armour.  Probably more usefull than a few novice chokers.  A serious mandrill attack early on will get half of your food with unagile dwarves trying to run them down.  2 unskilled marksdwarves can guard the pile quite nicely.  (4 war dogs will take on all comers).

[Karlito]

The fortress I'm playing now I started with no equipment or skills except for a pick since otherwise its just boring.  I was on a map with a lot of vegetation though so it was pretty easy to stay alive.
Bringing an engineer along sounds like a good idea because those guys just take FOREVER to train up.  I think I'll try it next time.

[Mu.]

My treeslayer gets proficient siege engineer.  My workdwarf gets proficient mechanic and proficient building designer.  My smith gets proficient armorsmith and proficient weaponsmith.  Supplies are: one axe, one pick; two dogs; six of every seed, six of every booze, six of every 2-point meat, and every other point in to turtles and rum.

Edit:  A dwarf with no mining skill and a pick will, if made to mine constantly, hit proficient miner by mid-summer.  Putting points in to it is a gigantic waste in my opinion.

[ October 25, 2007: Message edited by: Mu. ]