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[94dima94]

I've played Fort mode for a while now, I know all the basics, and I can successfully start a starting fortress, but every game ends in the same way:
as soon as the first "big" migration wave hits, everything just starts going down: not enough beds for everybody, people sleeping on the floor, not enough food, projects are abandoned to try to fix the problems, bad thoughts, ambushes, tantrums... you know the drill.

I never manage to establish a good base in the (short?) time I have. Is there something I'm missing that could help to survive the gigantic migration waves if you are not prepared?

(By the way, I don't want to kill every new dwarf: usually when they arrive, I'm still missing a bunch of important jobs, and I pick the better ones to fill the gaps; and anyway, at this point, I probably didn't have time to build any kind of death machine, with the exception of an atom smasher)

[smurfingtonthethird]

That's good old fashioned rookie !!FUN!!, enjoy it while it lasts.

Food shouldn't be a problem though, just lay down a few plump helmet fields and all your problems will be semi-solved. If you don't have enough beds, set up temporary dormitories until you can get your dwarves beds. Finally, get Dwarf Therapist. It saves you a lot of time when giving those fucking little useless leeches dwarves with skills that aren't very useful new jobs.

[neblime]

a few tips:
remember you can gather and brew/eat many above ground plants using designations (d-p)
engrave every wall you can for good thoughts.  Place valuable furniture in the meeting area/other areas dwarves frequent. 
make lots of barrels in advance so you don't get brewing cancellations
if you DO have excess alcohol make lavish meals for dwarf happiness
you probably know this one, but if you have ghosts giving unhappy thoughts and they can't be entombed, make a slab (at mason's workshop) and engrave a memorial (craftsdwarf's) then place the slab to eliminate the ghost.

[Reelya]

Brewing booze frees up more seeds in case your farmers aren't fully utilizing the fields you have. You need to keep a steady supply of seeds going, and your starting crew might not chow down on plump helmets fast enough to replant.

Cooking plants directly destroys the seeds, you don't really want that. Especially since booze can be used in cooking and has a food value 5 times the original stack of plants used in the brewery. And you can also use seeds as a cooking ingredient once you have excess seeds. This gives you extra food.

For beds, go with a communal bunk room at first, which becomes your barracks, make individual bedrooms later on. That way you don't need a bed per person right away.

[Foxite]

These problems probably originate from before your first immigrants. So, you might want to hurry a bit - make beds before your migrants show up, and do you have plump helmet farms set for every season?

The tantrums - these are the result of failing to keep your dwarves happy. This is an important job. See here for advice.

As for the ambushes, however, youre not supposed to get any attackers until the second year, iirc. That might be one of the many, many bugs in the game.

[Skorp]

You should make two stockpiles, one for food with a few barrels and another for booze with all the possible barrels. With this I never worry about not having enough barrels for drinks anymore.

[94dima94]

As for the ambushes, however, youre not supposed to get any attackers until the second year, iirc. That might be one of the many, many bugs in the game.

Yeah, that happened only twice in two different games. The other times it's just a group of thieves or snatchers, and those are easier to deal with. I though the ambushes arrived because I settled near goblins, without noticing.

[Foxite]

As for the ambushes, however, youre not supposed to get any attackers until the second year, iirc. That might be one of the many, many bugs in the game.

Yeah, that happened only twice in two different games. The other times it's just a group of thieves or snatchers, and those are easier to deal with. I though the ambushes arrived because I settled near goblins, without noticing.

I looked this up, and the wiki says that you will not get any attackers unless you have a population of 80 dwarves or higher. So it does not depend on the proximity of goblin civs, nor the age of the fort, but apparently on the population. I think you also have a higher chance of getting a siege/ambush if you have a huge amount of Created wealth(not sure about imported wealth).

Also, a note on the beds. In the early game, a dormitory will suffice - that, and around 1 out of 10 dwarves will be sleeping at any time, meaning that you dont need lots of beds. Quoted from the wiki, "In a fortress of around 50 dwarves, around 5 will be sleeping at a given time on average." So just create about 5 beds and that will last you for a while.

[Panando]

I find one of the best ways of learning is to devote games to gameplay elements. If you have food issues, I assume you're neither skilled at farming nor butchery (or for that matter, trading). So start a new game, devoted to mastering butchery. Bring some dogs, chickens and turkeys, figure out nest boxes, raise some chicks, slaughter some dogs. Try and tan the hides as well but it's kind of optional, figure out cooking to make prepared meals, sell the prepared meals to the caravan for all the stuff you ever wanted to buy. Devote a game to above-ground farming (it's in many ways superior to below ground because the plants grow all year round and seven above ground plants are edible as-is, compared with one below ground - plump helmets). Try to learn game aspects in this way, you don't need to play the games out, just abandon after a year or two, once you've figured that aspect of the game.
Once you're comfortable with the basic economics, devote some games to learning military (in these games, make 2 or 4 of your starting 7 career military). You can get Legendary military dwarves in 3 or 4 seasons if you know what you're doing and you'll find well-trained military dwarves are much less resource-intensive than traps.

The other useful thing, is smart embarking. The play now embark choices are um, terrible. I mean it's okay for learning the game, and better than a 1 pick embark, but if you want to get rapid fortress growth then focus on production skills (like mason and carpenter) and bring LOTS of raw materials, heaps of logs especially, but stones can also be very good. This will give a great bootstrap to your industries. Totally strip your dependence on embark food and drink (i.e. don't bring anything more than 10 plump helmets), I can't stress this enough, you can slaughter your pack animals for enough food for a couple of seasons, and quickly brew up some embarked-with plump helmets, or gathered surface plants. The advantage this way, is you'll either sink or swim MUCH earlier in the game, if you can provide all the needs for seven dwarves, starting with only raw materials, you'll be able to do the same for seventy dwarves, being self-sufficient from the start of the game is just better.

[greycat]

Everyone plays differently; no two Dwarf Fortress players will ever give you the same advice.

I carve individual 2x3 bedrooms for each dwarf (or married pair), with a bed, a door, and a rope restraint.  I may not have enough cloth for each dwarf to get a restraint right away, but I put them in as time permits.  I also have a hospital with half a dozen beds in it, which the dwarves will sometimes use as an overflow dormitory, if I get a huge migrant wave and don't have enough bedrooms set up yet.

I generally have 10 extra beds sitting in the carpenter's shop, and 10 or more extra doors in the mason's shop, waiting for deployment.  If a huge migrant wave comes in, I start carving rooms, start making beds, start making doors, and just do the best I can.  If you have enough wood stockpiled, you should be able to make all the bedrooms before the migrant wave gets sleepy enough to need them.

I have a medium-large dining hall, with a bunch of good quality tables and chairs in it, and 2 good quality doors at the entrance.  I smooth the floor.  This helps generate nice thoughts for eating in a fancy dining room.

I have a statue garden (generally about 16x16, sometimes larger, sometimes smaller), which is where most idle dwarves will hang out.  It's designated from a single high quality statue in the center of the room.  I also put in a few random pieces of high quality furniture for dwarves to admire (a restraint, a table, a cabinet, extra statues, etc.).  (Did I mention that dwarves love restraints?)  I smooth the floor, but only in sections, because I generally don't have enough engravers to go around.

I grow the widest possible variety of crops, and brew everything that can be brewed except pig tails.  Pig tails are too important for my cloth industries.  I import all the booze that each civilization can bring.  I basically try to have every different kind of booze possible, so every dwarf can have their favorite drink.  My farm plots are 2x2, and I have a modest number of them.  It doesn't take very many tiles of farmland to support a fortress; dwarven farming is ludicrously efficient.  But having a bunch of different crops growing is important to me -- so, lots of small farms, rather than one big farm.

Every piece of furniture that I install is -well-crafted- or higher.  No newbie furniture gets installed, ever.  Any no-quality beds or doors or tables or chairs get atom-smashed.  Any no-quality metal furniture (typically statues) gets melted back down.  I embark with a skilled mason and a skilled carpenter, and try to avoid letting unskilled immigrants make furniture until they're at least up to Adequate from carving stone blocks.  With carpenters it's harder, because there's no analogous job to "make stone blocks"; they have to practice with valuable wood.  So I rarely designate a new unskilled carpenter; I more typically only let skilled carpenter immigrants continue their professions.  This keeps the number of atom-smashed wooden beds to a minimum.

Edit: Oh, I just realized that for some folks, the analogous carpentry training job would be "make wooden barrels", but I make wooden pots instead, because they are lighter and hold more.  And wooden pots use woodcrafting, not carpentry.  "Make wooden bins" is another job that a newbie carpenter could do, because I generally don't care about bin quality.

[joeclark77]

If you aren't dealing with an aquifer, the first few things you should build (after the initial stockpile and a 4x3 helmet plot) are a nice big meeting hall and a nice big dormitory.  Set somebody to making stone tables and chairs, another somebody to making beds, and another somebody to smoothing and engraving both of those rooms.  As long as the booze and food don't run out, those two rooms should keep the dwarves sufficiently happy for at least 3 or 4 years.

[Panando]

Oh yes, speaking of bedrooms. They are highly optional. Actually, dwarves are happy with simple beds, you can just stick 50 beds in one room and make them all bedrooms (i.e. a dormitory except the dwarves can claim a bed), because dwarves are simple, they're happy to simply have a bed to call their own. The bedrooms people like to dig out? Terribly indulgent, totally unnecessary. Just shove 50 beds in one room and so something more worthy with your attention span. It's what I used to do while learning the military side of things and it works extremely well. If you want to boost room value (it's not necessary) you can install an artifact (furniture or weapon in a weapon trap) in the middle of the room, and even divided over all the beds, it'll give a pretty decent room value.

[jcochran]

Heck, I don't even bother with beds until the second year starts and I haven't had any tantrums. My embark profile is generally as follows

1. Enough seeds to fill a 3x3 field of each plant type (9 each of plump helmet spawn, cave wheat, etc).
2. Enough food and booze to last a fair time (30 each of two different meats, 30 each of plump helmet and each drink type wine, rum, etc).
3. Metal and coal for initial industries (about 24 each of cassiterite, malachite, and bituminous coal, plus 1 bar of coke to start things up)
A few more miscellaneous things

Upon embark
1. Build smelter and forge, pasture animals where I'll be constructing fortress.
2. Start making more coke and bronze.
3. Make picks and axes. (I don't embark with a pick or axe. After all, they're quite expensive and ore is cheap).
4. Dig out farms, have woodcutter start clearing immediately around fortress. Afterwards, clear trees at defensive perimeter.
5. Built temporary mason, mechanic, and carpenters' workshops on surface using lumber cut down by woodcutter.
6. Start planting seeds as soon as farms available.
7. Dig out food stockpiles. This is generally available about the time the above mentioned farms are ready for harvesting.
8. Dig out areas for permanent kitchens, stills, bowyer, carpenter, etc. Pretty much one of every workshop except mason, mechanic, forge, smelter, glassmaker, kiln. Those workshops are for later. Build workshops as each room is made available.

----- By this point, summer is just about to start, or has just recently started. Basic support infrastructure is now in place, but no housing is available yet. The dwarves are fed, but still sleep in the dirt. The forge made in the beginning after making the picks and axes switched production to trap components such as bronze spiked balls, giant axe blades, etc. 3 of each (15 trap components) plus an extra 10 spiked balls for initial trade caravans. The mechanics and mason workshops have been busy constructing rock blocks, hatch covers, and mechanisms. The rock blocks are used for the construction of the various workshops and other buildings. The mechanisms and hatch covers will be used in the construction of the future "welcome center"

9. Miners trench defensive perimeter plus dig out "welcome center"
10. Traps, pressure plates, hatch covers, etc are installed in the "welcome center" to make it minimally functional (able to handle ambushes, but not enough capacity to handle a full blown siege, that will come later over a period of a few years).

--- At this point, it is usually winter of the 1st year ----

11. Miners start to dig out living quarters, hospital, stone working areas, metal working areas, etc. At this time, beds are starting to be installed in the hospital and housing areas.

[joeclark77]

One important thing about the dorm and meeting hall -- don't skimp on "bigness". If the dining hall is huge (HUGE) the dwarfs won't care that the furniture is all crudely made or the engravings are rudimentary. Having a great big 20x30 hall will blow their minds regardless of what's in it.

[joeclark77]

Heck, I don't even bother with beds until the second year starts and I haven't had any tantrums. My embark profile is generally as follows

1. Enough seeds to fill a 3x3 field of each plant type (9 each of plump helmet spawn, cave wheat, etc).
2. Enough food and booze to last a fair time (30 each of two different meats, 30 each of plump helmet and each drink type wine, rum, etc).
3. Metal and coal for initial industries (about 24 each of cassiterite, malachite, and bituminous coal, plus 1 bar of coke to start things up)
A few more miscellaneous things

Upon embark
1. Build smelter and forge, pasture animals where I'll be constructing fortress.
2. Start making more coke and bronze.
3. Make picks and axes. (I don't embark with a pick or axe. After all, they're quite expensive and ore is cheap).
4. Dig out farms, have woodcutter start clearing immediately around fortress. Afterwards, clear trees at defensive perimeter.
5. Built temporary mason, mechanic, and carpenters' workshops on surface using lumber cut down by woodcutter.
6. Start planting seeds as soon as farms available.
7. Dig out food stockpiles. This is generally available about the time the above mentioned farms are ready for harvesting.
8. Dig out areas for permanent kitchens, stills, bowyer, carpenter, etc. Pretty much one of every workshop except mason, mechanic, forge, smelter, glassmaker, kiln. Those workshops are for later. Build workshops as each room is made available.

----- By this point, summer is just about to start, or has just recently started. Basic support infrastructure is now in place, but no housing is available yet. The dwarves are fed, but still sleep in the dirt. The forge made in the beginning after making the picks and axes switched production to trap components such as bronze spiked balls, giant axe blades, etc. 3 of each (15 trap components) plus an extra 10 spiked balls for initial trade caravans. The mechanics and mason workshops have been busy constructing rock blocks, hatch covers, and mechanisms. The rock blocks are used for the construction of the various workshops and other buildings. The mechanisms and hatch covers will be used in the construction of the future "welcome center"

9. Miners trench defensive perimeter plus dig out "welcome center"
10. Traps, pressure plates, hatch covers, etc are installed in the "welcome center" to make it minimally functional (able to handle ambushes, but not enough capacity to handle a full blown siege, that will come later over a period of a few years).

--- At this point, it is usually winter of the 1st year ----

11. Miners start to dig out living quarters, hospital, stone working areas, metal working areas, etc. At this time, beds are starting to be installed in the hospital and housing areas.

I usually do almost all of this same stuff, but since I tend to play on maps with aquifers, I do all of this in a big area dug out of the dirt layers, then I turn to the aquifer breach process.  Eventually this area will be my indoor tree farm and lumber storage. A side benefit of doing it this way is I never have any "temporary" old architecture that's obvious later.