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[ImagoDeo]

I've got one little teensy problem with fortress mode.

I start a fortress. Things go well the first year. I get a migrant wave of six or seven, another of four or five. Population is around twenty. Then BOOM! A wave of twenty. Doubled. BOOM! A wave of thirty. Up to seventy. BOOM! A wave of five! Childbirth! Seventy-six! Soon enough, BOOM! Another wave of eight or nine. Over eighty in under two years.

Then the sieges start. And I'm apparently not skilled enough to get a military going by the time the first wave hits (one squad, leader on a Rutherer), so I turtle in my fortress. They all go away after half a year or so; I start doing stuff outside again, and only a few weeks after the previous siege left, another one shows up. They bring cave dragons and they're all mounted on Rutherers. THEY go away after a half a year, and ANOTHER WAVE SHOWS UP RIGHT ON THE HEELS OF THE LAST ONE, with TWO WAVES OF CAVE DRAGONS, A DEMON GENERAL, AND FOUR SQUADS ALL ON RUTHERERS.

This time I said f it - bum rushed the wave with everything I had. Conscripted every civvie (didn't have any military) and sent them charging after the damn gobboes. Everyone died. My strength was broken.

How the f am I expected to get a fully functioning military capable of clearing entire waves of goblins in under two years without using danger rooms?! Especially when I have no native iron ore, and every civvie for the first two waves is needed for some kind of masonry or farming. ESPECIALLY when my most promising military dwarves get wrecked by a giant bat in the caverns on the first year.

I'm having waaaaaaaay too much fun...

[VerdantSF]

AAAARGH!  I just got my first wagon traffic jam  .  I've been really good about using a wagon blocking lever, but this time around, I timed things wrong and the dwarven caravan ran right into the human caravan as it was leaving.  I've searched the forums and saw a reference to wagons eventually pathing around each other.  I'm currently digging more space for them to maneuver.  If anyone has any tips to ending wagon jams without magma or slaughtering the merchants, please share them!

I start a fortress. Things go well the first year. I get a migrant wave of six or seven, another of four or five. Population is around twenty. Then BOOM! A wave of twenty. Doubled. BOOM! A wave of thirty. Up to seventy. BOOM! A wave of five! Childbirth! Seventy-six! Soon enough, BOOM! Another wave of eight or nine. Over eighty in under two years.

It helps to set your population limit lower at the very start.  You'll still get the 2 hardcoded immigrant waves, but that's still an easy number to manage for the first few years while you build up your infrastructure.

[Splint]

How the f am I expected to get a fully functioning military capable of clearing entire waves of goblins in under two years without using danger rooms?! Especially when I have no native iron ore, and every civvie for the first two waves is needed for some kind of masonry or farming. ESPECIALLY when my most promising military dwarves get wrecked by a giant bat in the caverns on the first year.

Up point to around 2000, bring coal, lots of it. Bring a weapon/armor smith and a minimum of one soldier, with a weapon. I personally go for dodge, armor, shield, and novice with the weapon so they can train recruits in these important areas while until recruits arrive they should be able to face most early threats if provided with a wooden shield (wood shields do the same job and are a hell of alot lighter, keeping this currently unarmored dwarf light on their feet.)

Most important factor here with arms and armor production is be willing to settle on copper and bronze until goblinite starts rolling in. Copper weapons work just as well on most things, though megabeasts may have skulls to thick to slice or stab through with copper, bronze, or even iron. I personally eschew melting of items simply because I need the coal for more important things and just jam the weapons in traps at certain chokepoints. Makes a world of difference when the enemy officers get mulched when they try to take a corner. One last thing to note is enemies tend to prefer only the bare minimum of protection, meaning copper weapons will often take off limbs in skilled hands. Plus the surplus of old weaponry means in a pinch, everyone can be armed with something, which is a hell of a lot better than going into battle barehanded.

Make sure your military dwarves are training constantly as well; for those legendary melee goblin grinders, their training must be unending and unmerciful. Just provide good food, booze, a nice dining room to eat in and good bedrooms and that will mitigate unhappiness. Squads of 3 are my personal preference, and often times 3-9 legendary soldiers are all you need to chew through most threats like they don't exist. Backing this up with part-timers (lightly armored speardwarves seem to excel in supporting more heavily armored swordsdwarves for instance, though the light gear does mean they have shit staying power in a major battle,) or a massive crossbow levy can result in the enemy's assault falling apart before your eyes as soldiers and mounts get pegged with bolt after bolt, resulting in incapacitation.

If your best candidates drop, bear in mind any dwarf if given a year or two can go from a weak, piddling fish cleaner to a sword or axe wielding boogeyman that haunts the dreams of goblin soldiers everywhere.

[BlackFlyme]

Personally, I try to start off with some ores on embark. They are much cheaper than buying weaponry or armour, and if I'm lucky I can buy tetrahedrite, which is quite cheap and lets me make silver war hammers to go with the copper armour I forge.

You likely won't come across anything that can't be stopped with a good smack from a silver war hammer within your first year or two, unless you get really unlucky and embark on a lair, or have a titan come visit earlier than usual, both of which have happened to me before.

As Splint recommended, wood shields are an easy and unbelievably useful investment, since blocking capabilities do not rely on material. The only negative effect the wood will have is when the dwarf bashes their enemy with the shield, since it will do less damage because it is lighter. But it won't happen too often, since dwarves will prefer what's in their main hand over what's in their off-hand.

Don't make leather armour, it's very weak. Bone and shell is probably better, but still too brittle for combat.

[VerdantSF]

The traffic jam finally cleared out!  There was nothing happening at all, but when I set the haulers to remove all the junk from the wagons that broke down, the jam finally ended.  Not sure if it was a coincidence or not.  Items on the ground shouldn't block wagon movement, but as soon as my haulers began removing items, everything got moving.

[Splint]

The beakwolves came astride mighty giant gila monsters for the fortress of Savageford.

As limbs and corpses litter the hills above the fortress entrance, some miracle allowed the underequipped militia to drive the enemy back. With the Heroes Col. Ashmon and Cpl. Cuggan was a very young boy by the name and rank of Private Zas Ferrymeans, who despite being but a small boy and effectively a child soldier, slew a giant gila and its rider, decapitating both. While his family tried to get him to abandon his dreams of being a legendary hero mere months after he was deemed old enough to enter the workforce, Col. Asmon welcomed him within the ranks of the bladesdwarves with open arms, and it appears that was the right choice.

We'll likely have a meat and bone surplus for some time, as camels and giant gilas are big bastards. I think I'll need to get additional woodcutters fielded and clearcut the forests however to make enough barrels so we can finally produce more booze, as for several months now cleanup from the past two sieges has resulted in all barrels being marked for meat products, forcing use to rely on the nearby stream for water, something that's nearly cost us several lives already. The fact we have many fisherdwarves keeping fish stocks high doesn't help on the barrel front.

[VerdantSF]

With the Heroes Col. Ashmon and Cpl. Cuggan was a very young boy by the name and rank of Private Zas Ferrymeans, who despite being but a small boy and effectively a child soldier, slew a giant gila and its rider, decapitating both.

Very nice.  I wonder what he'll name his weapon?

[Splint]

With the Heroes Col. Ashmon and Cpl. Cuggan was a very young boy by the name and rank of Private Zas Ferrymeans, who despite being but a small boy and effectively a child soldier, slew a giant gila and its rider, decapitating both.

Very nice.  I wonder what he'll name his weapon?

Only time will tell, as he only has the two kills. Ashmon and Cuggan both have blades driven by magic aiding them in battle and they've killed several, meaning it'll take some time for him to score enough kills for a title, much less a named blade.

EDIT: A dwarf made many other uneasy, and it was quickly found he was a murderer-in-waiting, his unnerving behavior resulting in him being clearly a threat to the populous. He's been locked in an isolation chamber to be "removed." A casket will be forged and slab readied. As sad  as it may be, I am not willing to risk lives over one psychologically unsound dwarf.

[Myrkky100]

My hubris nearly spelled doom for Lovelymountain. I was pleased as Punch to finally have a proper marksdwarf squad with a elite leader plus two melee squads in full steel armor. They had even got the basics of combat down massacring prisoners in the Pit. And then no enemies came for a year. And the soldiers were training so slowly. And I got bored. And finally, when a bunch of chinchillas showed up, I sent everyone out to get some more combat practice, believing that they could handle anything they might encounter during their brief foray.

Turns out, the furry little bastards had been sent by the goblins to lure my soldiers out. A hail of arrows cut down most of the axedwarf squad and while the hammerers charged the bowmen, two more groups with spears and swords outflanked them and began to slaughter the marksdwarfs and civilians fleeing to the gates. The situation was pretty grim for a moment but finally most of the gobbos broke and ran and the few that had gotten inside had their skulls hammered in. Our losses were about a dozen dead civilians plus 80% of the militia.

I didn't have nearly enough tombs ready so there was a mad scramble to enlarge the catacombs before the miasma began to spread. And just then a beekeeper threw a tantrum because he hadn't had any pants for Armok knows how long (I had built a clothier's workshop way back and then just happily forgotten about the whole issue.) He punched someone in the gut but luckily that didn't lead to a spiral and he calmed down.

So a bit of Fun all in all, but the situation seems to be stabilizing with the mass production of pants, shoes and lead sarcophagi. The tombs just have to be engraved and fitted with statues later. All of the steel weapons and armor were recovered and we still have a bit of an excess of population so the squads can be reformed. But for the foreseeable future I'm going to lock the front gate at the first sign of trouble.

[Larix]

The traffic jam finally cleared out!  There was nothing happening at all, but when I set the haulers to remove all the junk from the wagons that broke down, the jam finally ended.  Not sure if it was a coincidence or not.  Items on the ground shouldn't block wagon movement, but as soon as my haulers began removing items, everything got moving.

It was the fact that a wagon (or several wagons) broke that un-sticked the caravans. Only wagons fully wedged into opposing wagons seem to break in traffic jams, and the loss of a wagon is counted as a death by the caravan, causing them to "flee" and thus re-path. They can still take a while to actually start moving again. What did your depot show after the event? If it still had the "bring items to depot/request trader" display, you got lucky and no wagon from the entering caravan broke. If a caravan loses a wagon on their way to the depot, they instantly turn around and cancel all trade for the year.

Once caravans managed to get stuck, they appear largely unresponsive to attempts to un-stick them. You can deliberately break a wagon by channelling away the floor under it and you can force a re-pathing of a wagon train by offering them a different depot to go to while forbidding their original target (although this'll screw up traders on foot and usually messes up the post-trade item pickup as well); these and other methods are either directly destructive or cause new and exciting problems.

The most reliable method of dealing with traffic jams is still preventing their occurrence, by keeping the human caravan's haul either small or large enough that they're certain not to try to leave between 5 and 25 Timber. In an aged fort, keeping their haul _large_ enough is the easier choice.

[aiseant]

A dragon. I'm glad he came, because I had the chance to witness the whole surface to progressively turn into ashes, while the fire breathe propagated. It was awesome ! (and we survived !)

[the1337doofus]

A dragon. I'm glad he came, because I had the chance to witness the whole surface to progressively turn into ashes, while the fire breathe propagated. It was awesome ! (and we survived !)

Some dwarves just want to watch the world burn....

[ImagoDeo]

Apparently it's possible to generate a world entirely without Flux Stone...

[ImagoDeo]

Oop, double-post... hate that glitch.

[Larix]

Eh, if you don't actually remove flux stones from the raws, "fluxless" worlds have all the flux you need, it's just that the site finder gets thrown for a loop when any veins or clusters of anything else are present in a flux layer.

I had a dwarf caravan suddenly up and leave. Turns out a wagon crawled over the bridge (retracting over solid floor) operated by my sweet pod to signal converter. The minor throw caused by the bridge (which stuns passing dwarfs without causing so much as a combat report) was enough to break the wagon. This should make it possible to break up a traffic jam by selective wagon-destruction without the problems invoked by issuing kill orders...
And keeping the bridge on the repeat would of course turn the trader tunnel into a coinstar, or rather logstar.