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[NordicNooob]

A bit more progress tonight. Zombie-dropping is mostly complete, just a few more left to transport and traps to reset.

One of the legendary miners has been drafted into the militia. I feel like I must be falling into a noob-trap, but the wiki says picks do make effective weapons so maybe not. The "off duty" axe lords continue their combat drills. I guess the champion system from the old days is still here in a slightly less obvious way; oh well.

At the start of the fort's third year, a pack of wild boars decided to wander in. That's why there's a line of traps just inside, so no harm done (not sure boars are all that dangerous in DF anyway). If I'm reading the wiki correctly, they won't starve in cages since they don't have the grazer tag, so I can just put the caged boars aside and forget about them until I have a use for them. Weird development though, it doesn't make a great deal of sense for them to just wander into this tunnel into the ground...

A legendary miner will be a quite fine soldier, but I suggest only using them as emergency soldiers. While they'll be extremely effective with their legendary skill and pickaxe, they have no skill at using other equipment, and it's a waste to train miners extra because mining skill doesn't train past 20. So unless you're in a pinch and/or don't normally have soldiers live to become legendary, you'll want to use regular militiadwarves. If you've got really deep soil on your map a squad of legendary miners might be a good way to tide yourself over until your real soldiers train, after which you'll still have a large amount of good miners (miners always die, so it's good to have backups) and a pile of halfway competent soldiers should you need them.

Soldiers will do combat drills in their free time, if you want them to stop those drills you have to unassign the barracks. Still, military training is really good for stress, so I don't see much need to give soldiers off time. It can be a problem with civilian militias though, since they'll often train instead of praying and socializing, which is a problem when the only training they get is relatively slow individual combat drills on off-time.

And yeah, most wildlife isn't that dangerous. Basically any dwarf with a weapon can hold their own against most non-giant wildlife. It is odd for wildlife to wander underground, although most of my experience in that regards is on flat embarks where going underground requires going down. Cavern wildlife is much more prone to leaving the caverns than surface wildlife is to leaving the surface. Spoiler wildlife (past the first wave, of course) is also not very prone to leaving spoiler land, which is interesting.

[spectan]

Just started a new fort, and I wanted to try something new as usually i am rather meticulous in how I design my fort. This time I rushed straight to cavern 3, and built my fortress fluidily. Shortly after getting a migrant wave, my 19 dwarves were beset upon by a blind cave ogre. The cave ogre immediately bit the head off of one dwarf, then punched the head in Oberyn Martell vs The Mountain style before passing out seemingly right after a dwarf hit him so hard in the chest it bruised his lung. He's been passed out for three days, while 17 dwarves are literally just going to town on him with fists.

Really setting the tone of Boatpages with this engagement.

[Pvt. Pirate]

the third fort now in flat lands that have been promised as having at least lvl3 cliffs.
flatland forts have a tendency of never finishing their aboveground defenses and being overrun

[TheFlame52]

the third fort now in flat lands that have been promised as having at least lvl3 cliffs.
flatland forts have a tendency of never finishing their aboveground defenses and being overrun

I prefer flat land. I build nice tall walls around my fort, protecting me from all sides. They usually get finished around year 3.

[Pvt. Pirate]

the third fort now in flat lands that have been promised as having at least lvl3 cliffs.
flatland forts have a tendency of never finishing their aboveground defenses and being overrun

I prefer flat land. I build nice tall walls around my fort, protecting me from all sides. They usually get finished around year 3.

i never survive past year 1 that way.

[Superdorf]

If you need rudimentary defense fast, something like this is quickly dug and provides an impregnable airlock against anything short of a dragon:

Spoiler: Z-level 0 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Z-level -1 (click to show/hide)

Early necromancer siege? Pull the lever! Dangerous wildlife? Pull the lever! It's just as secure as a mountainside would be, easy to expand later on, and the spiralling tunnels give you a nice time window for when trouble comes-- and they're easy to line with traps!

[NordicNooob]

I normally just dig a staircase down right next to the wagon and stick some hatches over it.

[Superdorf]

Hatches are great for starting out with. This thing's for when you're starting to worry about building destroyers and whatnot.

[Worblehat]

A legendary miner will be a quite fine soldier, but I suggest only using them as emergency soldiers. While they'll be extremely effective with their legendary skill and pickaxe, they have no skill at using other equipment, and it's a waste to train miners extra because mining skill doesn't train past 20. So unless you're in a pinch and/or don't normally have soldiers live to become legendary, you'll want to use regular militiadwarves. If you've got really deep soil on your map a squad of legendary miners might be a good way to tide yourself over until your real soldiers train, after which you'll still have a large amount of good miners (miners always die, so it's good to have backups) and a pile of halfway competent soldiers should you need them.

Soldiers will do combat drills in their free time, if you want them to stop those drills you have to unassign the barracks. Still, military training is really good for stress, so I don't see much need to give soldiers off time. It can be a problem with civilian militias though, since they'll often train instead of praying and socializing, which is a problem when the only training they get is relatively slow individual combat drills on off-time.

The miner-recruit has mining 19, so she's just training to get dodge, armor use, discipline, fighter, wrestling, and base stats. Then I guess she can join those "off duty" axe lords. I tried unassigning their squad from the barracks as suggested, but they're still in there doing their drills... Stress isn't a concern for them (the four axe lords are by far the happiest dwarfs in the fort, at -30k to -55k stress, happy or ecstatic), I'm just trying for a bit of natural population growth rather than raising the pop cap to get a migrant wave.

Re: flat-terrain defense discussion: I don't see how defending a flat-terrain fort is different in any way whatsoever from defending one built into a slope...  Whether the path inside starts as a ramp or a horizontal corridor, either way you'll want the same drawbridges, traps, etc. (something like Superdorf's design, for example). Could be some difference if people build above-ground structures, but people who do that will probably do so on either type of map.

---

On topic: A caravan arrived! First in 18 months, thanks to that annoying zombie siege. It's only elves, but still nice to see. Saves going outside to resupply on wood. And since worn clothing is bizarrely valuable, I picked up more musical instruments on the off-chance that any dwarf will ever want to play one. Still tons more zombinite (is that the term for this particular type of "ore"? ) to sell in the fall, or summer if humans start showing up. No sign of an elven diplomat yet; probably triggered by a population threshold I haven't reached yet.

One of the zombies was a lasher, so I now have a copper whip. Are those still absurdly OP? The bug linked from the wiki says "Probable Quick Fix", was posted in 2010, last updated in 2014... 

My efforts to keep weather-related bad thoughts away by burrowing the children failed. One of the kids and one adult somehow experienced rain in the past week, even though nobody has gone outside in over a year (or at least I haven't told anyone to do so, there's no reason for anyone to do so, and I haven't seen anyone do so). I've checked the entire top level of the fort tile by tile looking for any Light Above Ground indicating a hole in the ceiling, but there are none. Is this a known bug of some sort? Can rain somehow happen indoors?

[Superdorf]

Whips are indeed still ridiculously overpowered, as far as I am aware. Few things in the game can stand up to a skilled lasher; whips have such a high attack velocity that they just pass through most anything, be it adamantine helm or steel titan.

Also, I propose "zombite".

[nickbii]

the third fort now in flat lands that have been promised as having at least lvl3 cliffs.
flatland forts have a tendency of never finishing their aboveground defenses and being overrun

I prefer flat land. I build nice tall walls around my fort, protecting me from all sides. They usually get finished around year 3.

i never survive past year 1 that way.

I like flat land better. Especially if it's dirt.

Dig straight down three z-levels, put up  draw-bridge that is connected to a level in the tavern, you now have a fort that is penetrable only by enemies who a) beat you to the lever-pull, b) are flyers, or c) make 3 climbing checks (I usually end up using the bottom for something, so it's usually possible to get in after you've made it all the way to the bottom). That's easily achievable in the first couple seasons. Then I build a stockade so that gobbo siegers with crossbows can't fuck with me. So far the biggest problem is that if the top of the fort includes the Trade Depot you can't close the drawbridge, but if it does not you can't let your guys trade in peace.

For dug into-the-mountainside forts figuring out all the ways one guy enemy path-find into your fort, or get above your fort and shoot your guys from a tricky angle, is a problem. I generally end up declaring some bit of the mountainside to be mine, and that bit gets an even deeper trench (the entire bottom should be on the same z-level, with ramps removed, and paving of some sort to prevent trees). Then there's an airlock system so that if the caravan/immigrants/etc. make it past the first gate house I can protect them from come-what-may, and a multi-z-level stockade to hopefully thwart archers.

My current fort does not include particularly elaborate defenses. The trench is only 3X3, the Depot and stream are outside of the entrance, the stockade is only one high and has a nice wide path to the bottom for those times one of my little dorks does the "dodged through a solid wall into empty space" thing and has to be rescued, but my squads train right by all entrances. I did do that gamey thing where multiple sides of the map are covered by a cage trap line because I want to domesticate animals with this fort, so even with mediocre turtling abilities the lone gobbo siege (which was like 7 guys) has been extremely underwhelming. A hard-core enemy with trapavoid (like a weremammoth), or a larger siege would probably overwhelm me and kill everyone, tho.

[Worblehat]

Also, I propose "zombite".

Of course, because when you fight a zombie, that's what you're going to get, one way or the other. Well punned!

---
Not a lot of further progress. The dig towards magma has resumed, now below the third cavern layer. Pop cap bumped up to 35, so a wave of four migrants arrived - married couple, brother, and child. All have useless skills, and as usual the ones who might make decent soldiers are the married couple, not the expendable single guy.  And I need to micromanage their moodable skills to get them to do something vaguely useful if they're hit by a mood, but I didn't get to that yet.

Expanded the dining room/tavern, and made a new smaller pasture to separate the ungelded male yaks and reindeer from the rest. I could just geld them all and be done with it, but this way if somehow I need a bone/leather/meat industry later that will still be possible.

I think I figured out my "indoor rain" problem: Dwarf Therapist summarizes "dwelled on being caught in the rain" down to "caught in the rain", so what I'm seeing is dwarves thinking about past bad weather (in one case, a two year old pondering a snow storm that happened when he was a few months old, because that makes sense...), not actual bad weather. Likewise the odd bad thoughts about "lack of chairs" even though the dining hall has a couple dozen of them.

Random note of interest: poking around in relationships screens, I found that two of the starting seven are "Lovers". They're only three years different in age, so apparently it's possible they might get married at some point. I've never seen that before.

[MoonstoneFace]

I have just dropped a large plug of rock through the ocean and into a deep pit, in which were several demons were waiting. The ocean has drained quite quickly, and the water reached hell in a few seconds. It appears it was pressurised through the mineshaft. Luckily for me, most of the demons are flimsily made of snow and ash, so my soldiers should be able to end their lives easily. This is all part of my master plan; the colonization of hell itself.

[NordicNooob]

Luckily for me, most of the demons are flimsily made of snow and ash, so my soldiers should be able to end their lives easily.

Top ten things said just before disaster. Be careful, if you're fighting even like one type that has webs your soldiers will get rekt between the webs and the extremely skilled demons wailing at them. Demons are commonly made of fragile materials, it's just that they don't get hit easily.

[MoonstoneFace]

So far a Sleet Fiend has been slain by the merchants and a Snow Demon has been killed by one of my soldiers. Five Ember Brutes and three more Sleet Fiends died when the large chunk of rock dropped on them.

My crossbow squad seem to be effective against the fragile demons. They rarely hit, but when they do bits get knocked off. The demons shredded my war dogs, in retaliation, as well as several merchants and guards. The fight seems to be evenly matched so far.

A nice result of the demons making it to the surface is that they were able to slay all the albatrosses who were stuck in mid-air. For the first time in three years new wildlife has entered the map.