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[Arkansan]

I am wanting to get back into the grove of playing fortress mode and I had an idea for a fortress. Basically what I want to do is a dwarven Sparta, all males being members of the militia. I figured I would armor most of the militia with leather armor, leather cloaks, metal headgear, wooden shield, and a spear with a few squads armored in metal. Also I was thinking no individual rooms, just dormitories for all! So the questions I have are

1. What are some possible pitfalls of this approach?  I am more familiar with adventure mode and haven't played that many forts.

2. What is the most reliable way to come up with the amounts of leather needed? Dog farming maybe?

3. Just how feasible is leather armor as actual protection? I seem to remember it being so so in adventure mode when combined with a cloak.

I figure there will be lots of !!FUN!! had.

[sal880612m]

1-Dwarves get unhappy thoughts from not having a proper room. So you will need to boost this by making sure that the rooms available are of high enough quality to give them happy thoughts to balance it out.

2-I would suggest turkey farming. The have a clutch size of 10-14 and cost 6 embark points.

3-What I hear is that it isn't very good. My experience with it in adventure mode says that it's effectiveness varies based on your opponent. Against a weapon lord it is probably useless but against a novice it would work well enough. How you stack it would have some affect as well. If you go for realism as opposed to 6 clocks it obviously is going to be less effective. Your dwarves skills will probably make a big difference too.

[Bwint]

1: As mentioned, unhappy thoughts will be an issue. In addition to valuable dormitories, high-quality food and statuaries will help keep your dwarves happy.

2: I think trading for the bulk of the leather will be a little easier, but if you do farm, turkeys or other egg-layers will work well.

3: My experience in fort mode is that it's close to useless. That said, you will have a large militia, so you can afford a few losses

[doublestrafe]

If you request leather from the mountainhome liaison, they will bring one bin full of leather for every type of animal you request. That comes out to a couple hundred pieces of leather a year. I don't know if you get more bins if you move the slider more than one notch. I've never had to try.

[GavJ]

Actual Spartan hoplites would have all had a large wooden shield and standardized weapons (spear and sword), since this sort of conformity was relevant to unit strategy.

Beyond that, armor was not necessarily as strategically relevant, and since you had to provide your own as well, it would likely vary from person to person.
Based on one's economic status, they might have anywhere from no armor up to bronze breastplate, helmet, greaves, and maybe even other pieces.

It is very unlikely that anybody would have had full metal armor no matter how ripped or rich they were, though, merely because the shield covered so much already that too much metal would just weigh you down and not really accomplish much in return.

[joeclark77]

Your dwarves will need pants, too, or they'll get a bad thought.  I think a skirt might work as a substitute, but IIRC it's not a dwarven article of clothing usually.

[Panando]

w/ Dormitories, if you make the beds (overlapping) bedrooms then dwarves will claim them, and this will get rid of the unhappy thought for sleeping in the dirt, and for not sleeping in a proper bedroom (by which the dwarf means, he slept in a bed which he hadn't claimed - that's all it means). Nobles wont like this arrangement (they have a different unhappy thought, about how shite the bedroom they slept in was), but commoners expect nothing at all in terms of room value. If you want to boost room value (and it does give positive happy thoughts "slept in a good bedroom") a highly effective and thematically appropriate way is to install high-value weapons in weapon traps, especially things like steel spiked balls (which can fetch 10000 dwarfbucks), even shared over 40 beds it provides 250 value per room, which is quite decent. So allow dwarves to claim beds in your dorms, install some decorative weapon traps and upright spikes, and they'll be happy little spartans.

On leather armor, it's pretty bad but it's better than nothing. One nice thing is that it's pretty easy to train up leatherworker (by bulk-ordering leather from the liaison and mass producing waterskins (best) or foot or handwear (second best)) so you can make masterwork leather easily enough. Also, it has the advantage of being very light.

edit: I should also note, if you want to be viable in combat, you'll really want some serious training. Weapon skill provides parrying, and shield provides blocking, between parrying and blocking, a legendary-level military dwarf can eliminate a great deal of incoming damage. Without that kind of skill level you will suffer awful attrition.

[joeclark77]

The reason the Spartans were so fearsome was that they had a captive slave nation, the Helots, who did all of their farming and other necessities, so they could train year-round for war. Other citizen-soldiers of that era could only spare a few months a year for campaigning.

From this point of view, most of my forts are organized like Spartan society. I let my warriors train year round and never give them any other labors.

[Arkansan]

Cool thanks for the tips guys. I didn't know that about dormitories and bedrooms. As to the training I figured I would set up a danger room, as I think thematically it is somewhat consistent.

Another question not related to theme but fortress design in general, anyone have any tips on farming? I still run up against the odd food shortage and I only ever manage to have just enough food and booze, never really a surplus.

[sal880612m]

Use potash. A single farmer at legendary +5 skill can apparently take care of 30 farms squares by himself and that is enough for a 150-200 ish dwarf fortress. Use plots sizes such that plot size mod 4 equals 3 so as not to waste fertilizer. consider some above ground farming as every plant that provides seeds can grow year round.

Edit: Somewhat off-topic but still sort of fits. I was wondering how likely a dwarf with novice military skills is to kill a lion or tiger. I was thinking I might eventually try to make it part of my drafting process. Every dwarf needs a backpack and flask so the backpack can be made out of their first kill's hide. If they have no chance how high would their skill need to be to have about a 50% chance.

[Arkansan]

Use potash. A single farmer at legendary +5 skill can apparently take care of 30 farms squares by himself and that is enough for a 150-200 ish dwarf fortress. Use plots sizes such that plot size mod 4 equals 3 so as not to waste fertilizer. consider some above ground farming as every plant that provides seeds can grow year round.

Edit: Somewhat off-topic but still sort of fits. I was wondering how likely a dwarf with novice military skills is to kill a lion or tiger. I was thinking I might eventually try to make it part of my drafting process. Every dwarf needs a backpack and flask so the backpack can be made out of their first kill's hide. If they have no chance how high would their skill need to be to have about a 50% chance.

You mean use Potash as fertilizer? I have never done that before but it can't be that much more difficult.

As to having recruits kills some sort of beast, yeah that sounds really cool. Might be a bit of a hassle though, but likely doable depending on your embarks availability of tough critters. 

[sal880612m]

If you can catch I wild female I think you can continue to produce wild offspring if you have a tame male so long as you never try to tame the female. Not sure though, it may cause a loyalty cascade if you make the prospect attack the animal and it is consider belonging to your fort. Seems somewhat ridiculous to me as you can still order it butchered without causing one.

[Zammer990]

As has been said, leather armour on its own is all but useless. 7 cloaks however, and you've got something that can deflect, or certainly cushion, copper though steel swords.
You'd probably be better off giving everyone a bronze mail shirt, for protection's sake

[krenshala]

If you can catch I wild female I think you can continue to produce wild offspring if you have a tame male so long as you never try to tame the female. Not sure though, it may cause a loyalty cascade if you make the prospect attack the animal and it is consider belonging to your fort. Seems somewhat ridiculous to me as you can still order it butchered without causing one.

From what i've read on taming and breeding, yes, this would work.  As long as the mother is "wild" the children should not be part of the fort as they inheret the tamed-ness of their mother.

[Panando]

Cool thanks for the tips guys. I didn't know that about dormitories and bedrooms. As to the training I figured I would set up a danger room, as I think thematically it is somewhat consistent.

Another question not related to theme but fortress design in general, anyone have any tips on farming? I still run up against the odd food shortage and I only ever manage to have just enough food and booze, never really a surplus.

I typically use plants for booze and animals for food. However, if you do want to be vegetarian, then the way to get lots of food from plants is to exploit quarry bushes and sweet pods which, once gone through the processing and cooking process, provide 5 food per plant. Booze cooking is equally effective but some consider it bit of an exploit. The other thing which quite dramatically increases plant food output is seed cooking (dfhack seedwatch is very helpful here), cooking seeds will more than double food output for many plant types such as plump helments (assuming you are not using booze cooking, but you can combine seed and booze cooking) and even lets you extract food from unedible and unbrewable plants like dye plants. Aboveground plants are also good in many ways because most are edible uncooked, they grow all year round, and although there are no special quantity multipliers like quarry bushes/sweet pods, you can still use seed and booze cooking.
Herbalism is also a very effective way to get emergency food, combine herbalism with seed and booze cooking to create a lot of food in little time without needing to worry about seeds for planting.