I still have a fort that I enjoy, but I've tried starting a few others. I always end up charging down and breaching the caverns, letting things in, and getting brought low by trolls, blind cave ogres, etc.
So this time I'm going to put a ban on any deep exploration for at least the first year and a half. Early game, I'm going to be putting a major focus into prepping for said exploration. At the same time, I'm going to be trying to make as bad-ass a tavern as I can, and gonna be trying to put a heavy focus on my metal industry.
TL:DR--I'mma make a fort, I hope to make last as long as Archcrystal. There will be at least 2 separate bunkers, that will be (mostly) separate from the rest of the fort.
Bunker 1) Farms, Plant Stockpile, Brewery (position for Brewmaster currently open for a Migrant)
Bunker 2) Metalworking Complex: will be populated by a pair of dorfs who WILL get married and will be a husband/wife weapon/armorsmith team, and whom I plan to have brith all of the metal workers for the future of the fort. Also a woodburner and a furnace operator.
Main Fort: a little bit of everything. Will have relatively safe cavern farms, eventually, trapped entrance(s), etc. Will also be home to a Tavern, a Temple, and a Library. Unless we die horribly before I get the bunkers finished.
If I last long enough I'd like to get Magma Showers set up so that, if necessary, the entire fort can be cleansed with magma from the top down. in case of FB extracts getting tracked all over, a siege we cannot break, or I get bored one day.
Also caches of picks, axes, and booze sequestered from everyone in every bunker (even from the bunker's inhabitants) in case of extreme emergency, or I fuck up the Magma showers and the entire fort is perpetually flooded with Magma.
Metal packing list:
Anvil (x1)
Magnetite (x10)
Marble (x22)
Tetrahedrite (x4)
Cassiterite (x3)
Sphalerite (x2)
Gold Nugget (x1)
Platinum Nugget (x1)
Full set of seeds [Except no plump helmet seeds]
x9 Plump Helmets
x6 Gypsum Plaster
x20 Cave Silk Spider Thread
For food and drink we only have 15 Plump Helmet and 20 Dwarven Beer.
And that's literally all we're bringing.
Dwarves each have exactly one specialty brought up to +5:
Bomrek: Woodcutter
Thob: Grower [Will marry a suitable Migrant, and will be the family that mans the Brewery Bunker]
Morul: Weaponsmith [Intended (by me) to marry Dumed and birth the smiths, furnace operators, wood burners I will use for the next 300 years)
Sibrek: Wood Burner
Ingiz: Carpenter [Intended (by me) to marry Bomrek, and be the parents of the Crafters of the Fortress)
Etur: Furnace Operator (Melt non-Artifacts/Masterworks)
Dumed: Armorsmith (Lots and lots of Charcoal!)
Etur, Sibrek, and Thob are all girls, so no matches for them (yet).
Decided to go this route because I normally split things up a bit more, and I have trouble making sure I have enough charcoal, people to melt things, and I usually only get weapons, not armor.
So this time I'm going to be trying to focus on fundamentals, now, and get myself into the groove of a playstyle that will keep me from messing up too badly--like letting in trolls and ogres in before we're ready.
Gonna be relying on migrants to fill the role of miners, et al.
Like I said, my focus is gonna be on getting a tavern up within a year, and a fully armed/armored militia of at least two members within another 6 months after that, and ONLY breaching the caverns once I'm actually ready, not when I'm feeling impatient.
In the meantime, my grower is going to gather a few plants, brew them up, and then farm the crap out of them on the surface. I may make a greenhouse for the farm, kinda like Daris is doing with his orchard.
We've also got 4 dogs (3 female), a pair of cats, 3 pigs (2 female), and 3 Turkeys (2 female).
The plan is to make lots of coins, melt them down, and try to get as many bars as possible.
Also, inspired by Archcrystal, gonna try to keep population down as low as possible, keep animal counts down, and keep animals that aren't scheduled to be butchered in cages (also have a cage near the butcher's for those scheduled to be butchered).
So puppies get caged until they're adults, trained for war, and most of them put away into a war cage.
Also see if I can last as long as Archcrystal (lol). Maybe have most of the fort bunkered down, with all the metals, etc, the masterworks transferred up to the depot through an airlock, with a handful of surface dwarves keeping the booze in the tavern well stocked, while farms, further below, serve all the needs of the Bunker.
Also, just for fun, gonna try to pair up the weaponsmith and the armorsmith, see if I can get a smith family going. And all of them will be in charge of fulfilling the metalwork. Maybe try to get 4 kids from them--one for each discipline.
Also, maybe, carpenter/woodcutter.
I've got a 30 population cap/strict cap of 50. Again, inspired by Archcrystal.
Once I get migrants, I'm gonna find a decent guy to marry my Grower, and their descendants shall have the perilous honor of guarding the upper reaches, and making sure we have enough beer, and plants from which to brew them, to serve our tavern's guests. Until that time I plan on locking her away by herself, with a booze/plant stockpile airlocked from the rest of the fort.
If both they and the fort last long enough, I may let them retire in 60+ years or so, and tend the well-defended cavern farms far, far below.
Right now I only have 2 guys, and one's going to marry the smith, and the other is going to marry the carpenter.
And to make things even easier for me, I embarked on a waterfall river split. Meaning water goes down a waterfall, then below that the river splits. So I have three distinct areas of land. I like these because of the mist you can get from clearing out spaces behind the waterfall, as well as the ease of trapping animals and/or invaders by bridging the divide, and then places a few rows of traps around the bridges.
And we've got clay AND sand.
Perfect.
I did a quick Prospect without touching anything else, and we have Gypsum and Lignite, along with Galena and Malachite. And that's just what's visible on the surface, baby. On top of that, we're in a good biome, so Sun Berries, and Featherwood. Featherwood will be relegated to special "do not touch" areas until we get a Legendary Carpenter to make first shields, then bins.
Daddy's also gonna want a Hemp farm, because ever since that one time that I played a cloth-focused fort, I've come to love the clothing industry. Maybe try to grow garlic as an anti-vampiric attempt.
Only way this would have been more ideal for me would have been to swap out the lignite for bituminous coal.
But I'm not complaining.
Long-term goal:
Cut down every tree that does not produce fruit. Is there any research that has been done as to how long a tree has to grow before it hits its max height?
I realize that this would be one hell of a boring research project, especially given the lack of violence (barring an ending that stars magma)
EDIT:
10 bars of Pig Iron, the "greenhouse" walls have been constructed, and we are now roofing it off with floors on the floor above. a 3x2 bridge has been constructed but we don't have any gears, so no levers to retract it yet.
Running into Charcoal bottlenecks, because up until just now I had my Wood Burner building the floor, and the smiths are currently grabbing every wood log they can and bringing them to a central stockpile near where we are going to put the entrance.
I'm going to eventually have to build another bunker, topside, where I have the bunker. The current garden building will probably end up becoming the Depot building. It has a 3x1 downramp filled with water atm, and we'll probably build an airlock in there and get the Masterworks to the Depot through there.
Migrant Wave as I was typing up this reply, letting it run.
One of them has Rank 7 Discipline, Dodging, Fighter and Armor User, Rank 6 Wrestler, and Rank 1 Swordsdwarf.
Looks like we have our first Swordsman!
Looking at Dwarf Therapist, the Carpenter is a lesbian. Fortunately, no asexuals so far.
We have a Butcher (no skills in it, but Rank 6 in tanning) who moonlights in Clothesmaking (Rank 10), someone to spin out Hemp (Rank 11 Spinning), a woman I'm going to draft into the military to marry the Swordsdwarf, and Brewer husband for the resident Grower.
Time to make a couple of picks, and get stuff inside.