Congratulations on rescuing your migrants, and congratulations on getting your first fort into its third year without any deaths or real problems, especially with constructing that cistern from the river. Those can be tricky sometimes.
Thanks
The cistern was tricky and it took me lots of time to plan as well as to built it. My Fortress is in the south-east corner of my 3*3 map, the rivers runs in the north-west corner, so the channel was dug across the whole map. From the river level z-1 the water flows down to z-4 and with pressure up again to z-3 through an out channeled floortile that is of course secured with a floorgrate. From there the water filled a channel with a diagonally opening to neutralize the pressure and a floodgate in the free tile to controll the input to the cistern on the other side. But nevertheless I made some mistakes and forgot to smooth the walls and the floor of the cistern, and first I built it only one z-level deep, so there was a dust of mud on the water. So I built a second cistern, pumped the water from the first into the new built one.
However, when I finally pulled the lever to open the floodgate to refill the first cistern, now 2 z-levels deep and finely cleaned and smoothed, only the water that was allready pressured up to z-3 ran into my cistern. No more water was push up, leaving the channel next to the cistern dry. As if the game forgot about the pressure from the other side of the map
Allready i read that is can happen and then suddenly when the channel is dug further the water will rise again. Now i'm looking for a careful and safe way to dig down, i want no drowning accidents.
I'm annoyed by those migrants who are hunters. I can't keep them from performing their hunting job even after i disabled the labor. I wonder when the right moment to disable hunting labors is. It seems to me that if I forbid hunting labors too early, while the migrant is still approaching to my Fortress he may drop crossbow and quiver, so another dwarf has to leave the Fortress and haul these things. But if I wait too long, the new arrived hunters has entered my Fortress and in the same moment he turns on the threshold to move out into the woods, and then he wants to perform and accomplish this one hunting job he just begun, even if hunting is disabled. Maybe I'll wait next time until he is near my entrance and when he turns to start hunting I will not only change their labors but I'll tell them to dump crossbow and quiver. Or I forbid the items.
My dwarves appointed a Mayor. To my suprise, it is not my choosen leader, a female dwarf who has been expedition leader, brooker, bookkepper and manager since the Founding of my Fortress. Lucky for him, his mandate was only the prohibition of the export of metal chains. Alltough i'm new to the game i allready understood the mechanics of brigdes and levers...