Right off the start to get your men inside. set that initial pasture as a meeting area. your dwarves will attempt to move inside for the most part.
I've seen them ignore a meeting area for far too long and wanted some way to get the animals indoors even faster. Anything that surface lingered was going to die...
Instead of using military order, setup a burrow that only contains your underground area and use a civilian alert to force them inside, this helps avoid the draft badthought and is just as quick. If you also set the burrow so it does not include the tile on the far side of the wall(but includes the wall tile) it should help prevent some moron from going and standing on the far side just as your carpenter gets to work.
(facepalm) Quite true.
To the pierce itself I kinda prefer diging over closer to a map edge or corner when possible to help avoid flyers. If you start in the center wherevery the flyers path they can end up geting close to you very quicly and you have to wait till they leave the map. Near the edge however you can try and get some work done while they are on the far side and use a civ alert to call your workers back inside if they get close. However this tactic is somewhat riskier with deadly dust/smoke as that is more likely to flow into your tunnles if it happens to spawn close to your chosen edge.
Actually, my concern was having fliers spawn up on the edge I was working on, though the dust was a consideration, I was afraid of having no warning about inbound death. There's pros and cons to both sides.
dispite what you mentioned during the aquifer pierce claystone cant suport an aquifer just FYI.
Yeah, I couldn't remember at the time and I believe I put in an annotation on the YouTube video to that effect as a retcon to the voiceover. It was a 'crap, I don't remember' moment and I didn't want to go digging around in the wiki right then.
I'm curious why you made a dump pit down in the stone layers instead of useing that one you made up in the soil layers for your first butchering. It would have saved you some time with the dwarves being hungry and that one up top would have made an exelent one use dump pit. pick a spot dig 1 square and 1 downstair, dig an upstair below the down and dig out below the slot the level above, back up top channle out both squares. This is a single use dump pit. Once you butcher the first animal all reanimating parts go in the pit and then you seal the area off at a later date (cause your dwarves wont approach it otherwise due to the undead inside.
Partially because I wanted to test out the multi-Z dump pit. I'd used a shorter one on IvyLashes and that short 2Z one started a cascade of problems, so I was loathe to have an 'accident' in regards to the butchering in any way. I didn't want to use up one of my precious logs to seal off a one-use and once I hit stone it was easy enough to dig out the multi-Z.
If you butcher the first animal before they get hungry they wont stop to eat before doing the dumping, also dont designate the food stockpile till after the dumping happens so they prioritize dumping over hauling food back so you dont risk a reanimation any longer than needed. alternitively turn off food hauling on a dwarf not assigned to other tasks so he does the dumping first. food wont rot in a stockpile even without pots although you'll start loosing food to vermin without pots. its a judgment call on if that is worth it to you.
Good call, hadn't thought of that.
When that titan arived you probably should have tried to trap him right away. I would have pulled the miner off room diging imediatly although you probably could have used your initial cubby hole as the trap in a pinch. To trap a building destroyer you need a 1x5 hallway. At the far end you need a raising bridge, at the near end you want a door and a wall(dont build the wall till the last step). final setup should be something like bridge openspace openspace door wall. Once the bridge is ready have the miner channle up to the surface just past the bridge. as soon as he breaches get him back inside, forbid the door, and get that wall built. the titan will path to destroy the door. while he's breaking that close the bridge. the titan will finish breaking the door and then be stuck between the wall and the bridge and unable to leave. you can make a longer coridor with more doors in it to make this procedure a bit safer but this is the minimum.
My titan/FB traps tend to end up a rediculous amount more elaborate than that... and you're right. I most likely could have pretty easily gotten him down to somewhere. Not sure how well the surface would fare either way at that point but that's an excellent emergency titan trap.
Asumeing you hadnt traped the titan before the migrant wave arived I would have assigned a burro to the meeting area in that first room with the lever, set citizen alert to that burrow and then opend the bridge. Any of your dwarves above ground that got out of sight range of the titan would have belined inside imediatly. the reason for useing a civ alert over military station is with a civ alert they will try to keep runing away vs trying to fight like you had with that station order. Some might run off in the wrong direction but they may lead the threat away from the others so some can make it inside. You probably could have goten the majority of that first migrant wave in if you'd done this.
Agreed. I just HATE the burrow system with a passion. I need to get more friendly with it.
I also personaly would have goten at least 1 dwarf choping wood and or harvesting plants ASAP after breaching the caverns. even before going off and exploring for a caravan accessable edge. the thought behind this is you really want some wood for beds if no other reason and at least a few plants to start makeing booze and to get a farm going.
I wanted more visibility before I started leaving dwarves to their own devices to collect things down there. I had water and food, I wasn't in a rush. Rushing had taken out a previous fort in this series and I wanted to have a very controlled pace towards doing anything. You're right, I could have sped things up, but I was erring deeply on the side of caution at this point since I wanted to get the walls up for the caravan... which was useless in the long run but that was my thinking at the time.