Elves are so hard to play ;-;
I was really looking forward to just building a castle out of wood, and using a ton of cage traps to get some exotic stuff and train them.
However gaining wood is nearly impossible so far.
Edit: I dunno what seeds they're using but I'm finally making logs....However the plants I gathered are withering since no barrels.
Edit 2: After whatever seeds are needed to convert to wood were collected, my wood began to boom. Welp time for a tree fort. This is still quite de the challenge.
edit 3: Weregila got my army while they were training. Their bows, their swords, their spears. No match for the weregila! When it turns back into a human mid way and runs off. Infecting 3 of my people and leaving half the pop dead.
Here's a few tips I've found playing them:
Elves don't need specific seeds unless you want to grow featherwood. Embark with two plant gatherers, a carpenter, and two woodcrafters and you'll be churning out wood before you know it.
Being unable to change the terrain makes traps ineffective for fortress defence but Elves have relatively few industries which means they can field a larger military than other races and constantly churning out logs gets your woodcrafters to legendary fast, you should be able to field two squads equipped with masterpiece wood before the end of the second year.
Dump excess plants, you'll need to gather the whole map fairly regularly for rope reed/hemp and you'll end up with a few thousand asparagus.
Counter-intuitively, Forests are a bad embark for Elves. You need to build tall and trees get in the way of that. Forest edges and flat valleys are recommended.
Always embark somewhere savage, creatures don't attack you so you can focus on capturing and weaponising those giant dingos
