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[Caz]

How?! I do fine for the first year. Making food from farms is a little harder, sure, but it generally goes well. Opening the first cavern almost ensures death. Invaders quickly come and ensure death. My rag-tag militia can't stand up to three squads of goblin aim-for-ya-throats. Or worse - everything seems fine. I'm finally getting tree farms going, and bedrooms hollowed and smoothed. Then "Your fortress has crumbled to it's end" by some creature that killed everyone within about half a minute of me failing to notice.

Masterwork is just ridiculously hard compared to Vanilla DF, to me. Are there any options that make it easier - or better still, some "must do" strategies for surviving? i.e getting a metal industry up and running immediately, and putting half of your dwarves into the military? I don't want to go to the extreme of walling off my fortress with bridges and wall grates, because it feels a little cheaty. Though lately it seems like this is the only way to survive as dwarves fall like wheat before a scythe and the resultant tantrum spirals destroy what's left of the fortress.

Halp.

[Repseki]

How are you organizing your military?
What type invaders are you having trouble with?
How soon are you hitting the caverns? It doesn't have to be right away.

Masterwork can be a bit harder, but you can control most of that through the settings you turn on or off, even if you only do so to get used to the mod before upping the challenge again.

If the military is your main problem, having 2-3 of the starting seven with points in a weap, armor, dodge, and teaching, can be something to try. You can have them start training pretty much right away and they should skill up pretty fast. They will then become the ones you use as squad leaders later, so they can use their higher teaching skill to speed up everyone else. They also add a bit of security against wildlife in the beginning.

Or if you want to avoid the military all together you can always make an overly complicated method of dealing with any invaders to keep yourself safe.

[Parhelion]

I love the difficulty because it always has me trying to learn a different strategy.

Something I'm trying out now that is working out quite well for me is to have multiple, smaller squads (3-4 dwarves each).  I also assign my miners to their own awesome squad where they are told to wield death-dealing battle picks. 

That way, when something nasty comes onto the map, I can send out a Sacrificial Lamb squad to test its strength.  I know if they are immediately slaughtered, then its time to seal off the entrance and hide until the enemy moves on.

Masterwork makes you choose how you want to balance defense and income (although cooking is definitely still OP).

[Meph]

If you truly have problems with the difficulty, either learn more tricks, or use the scripts that are included. Before you press 'e' to embark on the map, type "dwarves x" and "points x", and you get that many dwarves and embark points. 30 dwarves and 50000 points, full armor for all... that should get you safe and sound through a few years and give you enough time to check out all the buildings.

Poisons are very powerful, as are well contructed traps (magma, water, dodge-pits), and half of all invaders can be defeated by archerytowers and ranged units.

Very powerful are mazes. Seperate the invaders into 1-3 units and kill them, or collect all invaders in a room and drop a hellfire landmine on them.

Btw, if you put landmines into cages, then use the catapult-aim script you can load these cages as custom ammo into them and fire landmines into enemy groups.

[Etherdrinker]

The main problem is you rush and pump the Fort Value, Hi Fort value = more commonly ambushes.

Donīt rely in your militias they gonna suck when the first ambush comes, unless they are nearly "legendary" in the skills you already read and you are covered in Steel armor. lesser metals as Copper and bronze are good for random savagery.

You should wall yourself ASAP. And your main gate (and the only one ) should be with some short of trap system, the most commonly used is the "Minecart goblin grinder" and relatively "cheap and fast to build", but a well cage-trapping  in a narrow spots, should do the trick at the start (just avoid the dwarves goes to pick the cages too soon before the danger ends).

Your fort door should have some security double or tripple retracting bridge setting.

You can chain a moleweasel or any animal there for lure the ambush, but your dwarves are safe behind the second retracting bridge. force then to walk for a 1 tile narrow path put some traps there like weapon traps, sawblades etc. They for sure are going to dodge, and after they dodge they gonna fall at sides. The stuff under that pit is up to you, fill this hole with deep water and no spot to climb back. If you wish retrieve the goblinite after, you will need do a smart pump system. Other people uses magma for sake of fast cleaning an effectiveness, yo will lose the low melting point goblinite.

The minecart method is a double edge weapon, cause it can hit your dwarves too. So you need a lever to shut off the trap when there is not danger.

Other way is fill this pit with a dangerous animal, likely an trained one than donīt need grass. Like drow spiders or Forrest spiders (you need to buy then from elves-drows).

MWDF have a ton methods to get metals for easy, so gearing your militia plus the guilds, let you stay training fast inside your fort till your have the armor and the training for fight nearly anything. Also poisons, spells...

Btw, if you put landmines into cages, then use the catapult-aim script you can load these cages as custom ammo into them and fire landmines into enemy groups.

This is pretty fancy method to defend yourself but is pretty fun :>

[Meph]

Oh yeah, maybe keeping fort value down and disabling a few of the invaders would be ok. Warlocks, Automatons for example. That should still leave you with plenty.

The first cavern should be pretty easy btw, the second one is a bit harded, and the third one is really hard. Just saying.

[Etherdrinker]

Warlocks are unbalanced because the rotting touch spell and no one can survive this at least in my forts, dwarves than get hit by this spell, he will face a slow painful dead.

btw Mep, can you check my post of the CLA tileset error?

[hera35]

Instead of slaughtering your starting oxen, pasture them near your fort entrance ensuring they have an area large enough for grazing. I kid you not, those motherfuckers almost always end up being named after their kill count raises to insane levels. The wildlife is also much more dangerous and plentiful (though I think the update reduced the number of deadliest predators) than before so you'd be better off disabling most outdoor labors, or regularly check out what type of mooks currently inhabit the surface to prevent sudden "Urist McDeadInASecond cancels fishing, being mauled by a Drake" messages from appearing.

Warlocks are unbalanced because the rotting touch spell and no one can survive this at least in my forts, dwarves than get hit by this spell, he will face a slow painful dead.

I'm considering turning Warlocks off for this reason. I can handle everything else they throw at me but since there's no way to force dwarves into hospital for external rotten tissue removal (as far as I know) they just tend to slowly bleed to death. Warlocks just discouraged me from using melee units altogether, save for cleanup operations after my elite marksdwarf squad crippled the foes.

[Etherdrinker]

Well exist some methods to remove the rotten tissue, like force a transformation in some short. Your dwarf will get a "full heal" after the transformation, this can recover lost limbs any missing part. Is a glitch/or limitation of this feature. If you donīt feel like exploiting you can remove the warlocks.

[Another]

Can any of armor engravings help vs. that rot spell? If not - one should be changed to resistance/immunity to rot.

[Etherdrinker]

Reading the manual, no engraving, rune etc can protect vs rotting touch spell.

Basically AVOID fight vs Warlocks with Dwarves directly, use long range attacks from Siege weapons or traps.

[urmane]

Ignore all these experts, Caz - wall yourself in.  There are too many dangers to have an Open House Fortress serving tea and ladyfingers.

Gather enough plants for brew until the farms get up to speed, and enough wood to make some beds and bins.  Slaughter those oxen for meat until the first caravan shows up - they'll get killed by the first monsters anyway.  Make sure you have very separate paths to get to the Trading Depot and the rest of your fortress, so you can seal them off with bridges and so you can lay down a lot of traps.  Remember your dwarves and friendlies ignore traps - use that to your advantage.

Build out in sections of walls and gates, expanding as you are able.  Make a protected path to the fishing hole.  Don't let your beards wander outside, keep your outer gate closed.  Remember that you have a short amount of time after "The caravan has passed by your inaccessible site." to open the path, and they'll come to the Depot anyway.

Put a bunch of levers next to your drink pile, and when the invaders come let your drunken dwarves randomly pull trap levers while they laugh.

[Panopticon]

Don't go for the caverns in the first year and honestly you should survive pretty well. But yeah, those Tuskoxes will beat the hell out of random enemies early on, really big +hooves, good times.

Basically what everyone else has said, get a wall and drawbridge up first, failing that at least a door you can lock.

Goblins are basically the worst of the invaders for me, they tend to outshoot my archers, and the melee guys can't close fast enough to survive the hail of arrows, I actually have been turning goblins off in my latest games.

With a little effort, you can get a Temple set up and please Armok with a massive offering to get some Guardians pretty quickly, station a few of those by your gates and defense suddenly becomes a lot easier. They don't rot so they are great against warlocks too, let them engage the enemy first and send the military on their heels, most of the worst attacks will be absorbed by the Guardians.

[BoffoDorf]

Mole weasels are as fast a critters can get in DF, are friendly to nature and breed fast even after the nerf. Instead of chaining the lil guys, pasture them in a nice large area out front as spotters. They will run around at warp speed revealing everything and, if you leave a breeding pair out there, they soon become legion. Lots of vermin remains as well.

[Etherdrinker]

Lots of sausages as well.

Fixed.