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[conein]

So i've been trying to play a fortress and i have a lot of dogs and i already trained some to be war dogs but... i dont know how to use them and i need them because some langurs have been stealing my stuff. Yep, i suck.

[PatrikLundell]

Haven't done it myself, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

What I think you're trying to do is to assign the dogs to soldiers, which I think is done via 'v'iew-'p'rf-'e'work animals. I think you can assign animals to squads as well.
The other alternative is to pasture the dogs by the entrance and they'll chase the monkeys as they come close. I won't guarantee the dogs will win the fights, though.

[skyte100]

I won't guarantee the dogs will win the fights, though.

If the langur kills a dog, just catch it and make it replace the dog it killed.

[PatrikLundell]

Doesn't quite work, as Langurs cannot be war trained. Also, animals caught cannot be tamed, just trained.

[skyte100]

Doesn't quite work, as Langurs cannot be war trained. Also, animals caught cannot be tamed, just trained.

Never said to train them.

[Skuggen]

I generally just create a pasture zone by every entrance to the fort and put one or more dogs in each. Works quite well for chasing off thieves.

[PatrikLundell]

Just build a single tile room with a floor grate over the entrance to deal with thieves. The dog inside will detect any sneakers, and thieves flee as soon as they're detected. That won't do anything about Langurs, though. For that kind of trouble I build cage traps.

[Shonai_Dweller]

You can assign hunting (and war) dogs to civilian dwarves too. Assigning them to hunters, herbalists, rangers, woodcutters and such gets them out and about regularly and should help keep the langur population down.
Then station a couple at the entrance to detect and scare off kobolds.

My last fort, dogs kept getting stuck for weeks ineffectively shaking elephants about by the head until I could send in the military to help them out. Well, kept everyone busy at least.

[conein]

Tanks to the dogs we've managed to deal with kobold thieves, more kobold thieves, then we had to wrestle some undead horse hair, and i finally built a small wall. And i'm running short on food and my 4 2x2 farms are being useless. And i dug huge rooms without any support and somehow no cave-ins. And in only year 2 with around 60 people half of them is idling the whole time. AND there is no water to be found. not even a little aquifer.

Great.

[PatrikLundell]

Something is probably wrong if you're failing to produce food for your fortress on 16 tiles. I'm currently using 3 for a 50 dorf fortress (although that's for booze production only, food is primarily from slaughtered dogs, cats, sheep, and 3 kinds of fowl, plus eggs). So, what's wrong with your farming? Are all seeds locked up in food, or are the plants withering in the fields? Cooking plants (and thereby their seeds) is a rather effective way of running out of seeds to plant. Are you sure you've designated crops for each of the 4 seasons on each of your plots?
The DF support concept is that anything is supported as long as it is connected to something else horizontally or vertically (but not diagonally) regardless of weight provided the support is transitive to something that's "fixed" [two walls connected to each other, but not something else thus fails]. Thus, you can suspend a 100*100*100 massive cube of rock by a single floor of soap or ice. Note that bridges do not provide support, since you cannot attach anything to a bridge. You can order building of e.g. a wall by a bridge, but unless the wall is supported by something else by the time it's finished, it will collapse immediately.
Have you explored all the cavern in your quest for water?
I have to more or less actively give my dorfs some idle time, since I'm running them full time on errands otherwise. Lots of rock and large rock stockpiles will tie up a fair number of them hauling rock, for instance, and running workshops nonstop will generate more hauling jobs than can be filled (since the workshops get cluttered with produced goods eventually).

[conein]

It's spring and they are planting dimple cups i think.

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Could it be because i made all the "Lavish meals" i could do? Do they cook seeds or something?

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for some reason it bugged and double posted, sorry

[conein]

It's spring and they are planting dimple cups i think.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Could it be because i made all the "Lavish meals" i could do? Do they cook seeds or something?

[PatrikLundell]

Dimple Cups are a REALLY bad choice, because it cannot be eaten, only used as a dye. Also, yes, cooking destroys seeds when the plant is used. This is the reason I change all brewable plants not to be cookable on the kitchen screen.

Edit: Plump Helmet is the standard starting crop, because it can both be eaten raw, brewed, and cooked, as well as providing a good yield.

[conein]

I checked my stuff and i had seeds. I couldn't find out why the fuck they weren't farming, and then i found out...

For the whole goddamn time i discovered this game i thought that when you create a farm plot your dwarves with "Farming" would start planting seeds AUTOMATICALLY. No, you have to select the stuff you want to plant.

Now that's embarassing...

Now there is another problem: My 10 axedwarves went full retard and when i tell them to kill some stuff, they dont give a fuck and keep training. They should be equipped with steel axes, shields and helms. Maybe the problem is with the helmets, because they arent wearing them. And maybe somehow this causes them to get retarded, i dont know.

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Also looks like there is some water there. Is there any good use?

[PatrikLundell]

Dorfs are generally close to delirium due to alcohol intake

Farming: If it's any consolation, you're not the only one who's made the assumption that creating a farm plot will also cause it to be used. Some hindsight logic shows why you need to: There are several kinds of seeds, so you need to select what to plant. Also, planting selection is per season, so you'll need to make four selections per plot (or use the "all seasons" selection, which I think is vanilla, but might be DFHack). Illogically, underground crops are available only during certain seasons, while overground crops can be planted all seasons (given that the biome permits them at all).

The reason your militia isn't using helmets is probably because you haven't selected "replace clothing". Clothing and armor exist as "shaped" and unshaped items, and the usage of a "shaped" item blocks the usage of other items according to some rules (probably that nothing can be worn on top of shaped stuff). Caps are "shaped" and block the usage of helmets. Check the wiki page on "armor" to find out what goes where.

I assume you order the dorfs to kill using 's'quad-'a'(first team)-'k'ill and then select the target? One mistake is to fail to complete the order, in particular "all in a box", by pressing enter an "extra" time so you actually abort the order (happens to me from time to time). Also, if you order them to kill something and they think they can't reach it, they'll sneak off for training instead, without any notice. When checking the unit list you'll see something about ordered to kill unreachable target.

Water isn't drunk by dorfs normally, but when wounded to hospitalization they ONLY drink water, and will die of dehydration if they don't get it. Also, water is used to clean wounds (preferably clean water that's neither from a murky pool [infection risk] or muddy [lower infection risk, from water of a single tile depth with mud at the bottom, which essentially is all water tiles], although water can be cleaned with a screw pump). "Flowing" water can also power water wheel, be used in water falls for the pleasure of dorfs (yes, it gives pleasant thoughts), clean contaminants (2/7 depth. Deeper (3/7 might be OK as well) and they won't path through it, shallower and it will evaporate), and is essential for obsidianization (which is virtually required to reach the HFS and candy extraction).