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[Zachski]

I want to create a fort that's both aboveground and belowground.  Best of both worlds.  Idea is that I start underground but with some features aboveground, but then expand *up* instead of down.  I could use some advice with this.  I know that I'm gonna want my soldiers to train aboveground to avoid cave adaptation.

I dunno, maybe I should stick with an aboveground town and slowly turn it into an actual castle with a castle town.  I'm definitely gonna wanna build a wall as soon as I can.

Another thing I wanna do is build a temple or church with an explicit "priest caste".  The priests would have their own "dormitory" (really a line of rooms).  But what would I have a priest actually *do*?  I want them to be useful for something as well.  I'll probably have them be my doctors and nurses.  But what else?  I probably won't have them help with hauling unless I really need to, and I doubt I'll designate a lot of them to begin with.  Should I just have them be my social dwarves?

Oh, and for fun, I'll have a statue in the temple so that it can serve as a place for a "party".

Is it a bad idea for my miners to be a part of their own militia of pick-wielding bad-asses?  ... Why would that be a bad idea?

It's been a long time since I played, and unfortunately I'm on a laptop that doesn't have a number pad, so I'm stuck using arrow keys for stuff.  Bleh.  Any tips for navigating the game world easier without one?  Worst comes to shove, I have a full keyboard I can plug into the USB port, but I don't have that much room on my desk.

And, uh... anything else.  Like I said, it's been a long time, and I've got time to kill while waiting for my world to generate... I probably won't get around to playing tonight.

[Skuggen]

You could have a few priests visiting all the workers and such by giving them a patrol route (and putting them in a squad will also let you decide on their 'vestments'). Baptismal ceremonies where a priest pulls a lever to douse the converted dwarf with water (or magma, if it's a heretic). You can use burrows and alerts to have all the dwarves go attend sermons, and so on.

Don't see a particular reason for not having a miner militia, though be aware that the effectiveness of whips and picks as weapons is considered a bug.

[PatrikLundell]

- Fliers will be a nuisance. From Kea stealing things to flying Titans slaughtering population. A medieval castle doesn't really work when fliers are around. Walls properly constructed will keep siegers out, though (I've read about goblins using mounts (including fliers), but never experienced it). Latest I've heard you ought to jut out two tiles on top of a wall that's at least two tiles high to block climbers (or use a floor one tile out, but that looks silly).
- If you want to connect your "priests" to medieval reality, they were heavily into booze and also produced medical herbs, so you could have them man (dwarf?) the still and perform the work of producing dye.
- Miner militia is probably a bad idea, because the miner (and hunter and woodcutter) "uniform" clashes with military uniforms, so the general advice is not to mix these groups with militia (or each other).

[utunnels]

Ex-miner militia.
You don't need to let them mine after recruiting them. And fighting with a pick trains mining skill as well. So they'll still be good miners if you choose to retire them.

[Zachski]

So underground fort it will be.

As far as the priests go, I like that idea of having them as sort of a "pacifistic militia" that wanders around other workers... though I'm not sure that would actually do anything for anybody.  Not gonna bother with baptisms, I'm going for dwarven fantasy priests, not human medieval real priests.

That being said, problem is, they're gonna rush every kobold they encounter if they're on patrol... and I don't want them to be my robe-wearing police.  As hilarious as that sounds.  I might still throw them into a militia or two so I can dictate their clothing, though.

I'm not gonna confine booze-making to priests, but I might do something like "All priests have farming and brewing enabled and there are stills and a farm near the temple"  Maybe I'll somehow simulate them blessing weapons for the military, too... without actually forging them.  Can you decorate weapons?

I think their primary role will be that they're the healers of my fortress.  And since I plan to have a militia of wrestlers, they'll be getting some of their practice in.  It's a pity "Therapist" isn't a profession for dwarves, it would be nice to have dwarves whose sole purpose is to try to improve the mood of other dwarves.  I could even have them do prison visits.

I'll probably want a hierarchy, too.  The "Bishop" would be the head doctor, someone will have to be the Book Keeper (which position would be best for that?), the Monks are the ones who do the farming and brewing and also the nursing, the Priests are the other doctors.  Maybe?  Or am I over-complicating things?

Incidentally, is there anything useful you can do with raising children that doesn't involve psychologically torturing them until they're broken and numb to everything?  And I don't mean "feeding them to things", I want to do something productive with them as they grow up and have them *survive*

[PatrikLundell]

- If your fortress is secured you can let your "priests" patrol inside without any risk of them throwing themselves into battle.
- Wrestlers will probably have a significant problem with undead, so you may want to keep out of range of black towers.
- I believe you can encrust weapons as a Gem Setter.
- Manager/Mayor is the therapist role. It's the character dorfs go to yell at or whose shoulder they cry on when they have problems.
- I guess you may want to do some minor modding to change the names of the noble roles (I don't know how you do it, but it's probably just a matter of changing a string in a file).
- I just leave children to their own devices (not that I get many children as I consistently fail to get dorfs to come together to produce them). They sometimes harvest, they sometimes bring stuff to stockpiles.
- My fortresses have an overground courtyard that's completely decked over. I later on tend to expand this with an orchard (multiple tile high walls, but also decked over) for safe access to fruit bearing trees. The over/under ground is not a clear "either or" issue. You can even create a medieval castle type overground construction that's decked over.

[Corona688]

Don't see a particular reason for not having a miner militia, though be aware that the effectiveness of whips and picks as weapons is considered a bug.

Uniforms with miners and woodcutters is still bugged, though perhaps in a predictable enough way that it can be worked around.  I accidentally still had my militia commander as a woodcutter, and the 'replace clothing' setting worked backwards on him.

[Zachski]

- If your fortress is secured you can let your "priests" patrol inside without any risk of them throwing themselves into battle.

Sure, but is there really a point to it, though?  Do patrolling dwarves socialize with each other?

Also, I didn't know that about mayors and managers.  Huh.

[PatrikLundell]

I don't think patrolling soldiers socialize. However, I didn't think you were trying to primarily do useful things.

[Zachski]

Hey, just because something is flavorful doesn't mean it has to be useless

Besides it seems weird to have them actually visit workers.  Usually it's the other way around.

ADDENDUM:

I just thought about building houses underground.  That is, instead of carving out rooms, like an ant, actually clearing out parts of the underground and building houses in them.

It sorta defeats the purpose of building houses with roofs when everyone already has a giant roof over their heads, though.  Still, it might make for an interesting project...

[PatrikLundell]

Well, a giant cavernous excavation with houses with roofs in it does make sense in that a roof would allow the houses to be heated, would keep dripping moisture at bay, and keep flying pests out, so it's not completely useless.

[callisto8413]

Building a underground society is easier but does mean most of your Dwarfs will find the sun harsh.  Don't forget allowing your militia some areas to train in the sun or maybe making a statue garden on the surface for the general populace.  Or just put a dome on it.

[Zachski]

I just had a far more sane idea.

Creating "two" forts.  "Stonetown" and "Skytown".  Stonetown is built first, and lives underground, carving out a living under there.  Skytown is built second and lives above ground.  Symbiotic communities - Stonetown contains mining and forges and underground farms, Skytown contains hunting and woodworking and all that jazz.

The end goal is to eventually build a literal fortress using Skytown as the "foundation", and at that moment, Skytown and Stonetown will have merged into a single community.  Dwarves are moved from Stonetown into the fort, and what was previously Stonetown eventually becomes something used for !!science!!

How's that sound?

[Corona688]

Now that DF has minecarts, the costs of distributed living can be made manageable.  I have a split fort with most living above and a few living by the magma sea, and a minecart which regularly carries down ore and kalenite, and returns bearing tools, weapons, armor, and pottery.  I don't know how to balance food stockpiles by cart, so that's still being hauled by hand.  Eventually they'll have their own farms there.

They still haven't fixed the burrow-spam, though.

You mentioned building houses underground.  If you reclaim a pregenned fort, you find the dwarves will do the exact opposite -- they move in directly beneath the caverns, tile for tile.

[Corona688]

The pregenned forts can be interesting actually.  Aboveground, they have nothing but an immense depot area, something like an 80x80 roof and walls, easily sealable and defensible, a perfect battleground for sun-hating dwarves.  If it was a rich fort, this entire structure could be solid gold, though I saw that only once -- want to guess which one I then permaflooded?

...In the center is a 5x5 shaft that goes all the way down to at least the caverns, and often enough the magma sea.  The cavern levels are sealed off, but their badly-designed smelters let in the magma crabs like a sieve.

Beneath each cavern layer, homes and stockpiles and forges will be strewn without rhyme or reason.  What did they ever do with 200 forges, I wonder.  Sometimes there's nothing at all, sometimes there's a clutter of weird-sized clothing, sometimes there's dwarven treasure, iron weapons, stone furniture, and even intact beds!  There will be intact-looking food in the stockpiles, with the occasional impossible oddity like prepared gorlak brain, but if you unforbid them they will rot in moments and disappear.

All my attempts to reclaim them have been hampered by lack of good water supplies and the extreme distances which must be travelled by that unsafe little ramp.  Until I figured out I could just dump straight down that shaft, I'd usually lose 2-3 dwarves and all my animals just hauling in supplies.