Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Thisfox]

I'm experimenting with refusing all guild petitions in the current fort. Refused 2 so far and there are some bad thoughts of course, but the fort is still young. We'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile I've started making guild halls for guilds I don't have requests for. Metalsmiths of the Fortress and the World Unite! Not sure how effective it's been, but all the kids of the fort moved into the new guildhalls, so perhaps the next generation shall all work with metal.

[A_Curious_Cat]

I think I may have a problem...  My miners have asked for a grand guildhall, and I'm trying to oblige them.  The problem is that the place has been smoothed and engraved and now has at least 20 different statues installed and it's still nowhere near the required room value...  It's been nearly a year (there's a bunch of red d's in the hallway, slowing everyone down) and I'm afraid the agreement is going to fall through.




Also, I've just received a request for an "Animal Caretaker" guildhall...

One or two masterwork gold statues should get you to 10k. If your metal crafters are just getting started it might take a few more.

Hmmm… I’ve just realized there might be a solution.  Two actually.  Not sure if I can get either to work in time.

The first is to have my metalcrafter (who’s legendary after a mood) forge the gold statues.  The problem is that, while I have a regular forge and smelter in my main (upper) industry level (moved there from the tavern level where they were hastily erected for the metalcrafter’s mood), I’ve recently setup a bunch of magma smelter, forges, kilns, and glass furnaces.  I think there might be a problem, as I seem to remember hearing somewhere that, once you build magma workshops, the dwarves will refuse to use the regular ones.  The problem is that the magma is still filling the space I dug out below the workshops so they aren’t powered yet.  Also, there’s the question of getting the ore down there from up near the surface in time in time (although I did have my carpenter make 20 wheelbarrows).  The magma workshops are near the magma sea.

The other option is to buy a couple of gold statues once the caravan comes again.  I think I have enough wooden spiked balls for that (the real question is whether the caravan will come before the agreement falls through…)

Which option do you think I should go for?

[orius]

Just put a work order in a forge that's already operational.  If necessary, set labor options on the magma forges that aren't ready yet so that no dwarf can do labor at them.

[Uthimienure]

I screwed up.  A web-spewing quadruped forgotten beast made of grime & filth appeared.  I followed it near the map edge for a while and it made no progress toward our cave entrance because there is a lot of water in between. It made several attempts to swim across, only to turn back each time. So I left it be and ordered the dwarves to go about their project, which was carving out a cavern section from floor to ceiling (6-8 z-levels above) into a huge open space, carefully leaving pillars to avoid cave-ins. 

Then all of a sudden I noticed the combat reports had rolled in... too late!  The beast had circled around and approached the cavern door from the opposite side of the map.  Thirty-one dwarves perished along its path into the door and up 2 levels of stairs, where it died.  I missed all the action!

The dead: 
7 military fully equipped with steel
23 civilians equipped with copper mail & weapons
1 baby

Well, I asked for !!FUN!! and I got it 

[A_Curious_Cat]

Looks like I’ll be starting up a new fortress…

Things I’ve learned this time:

1.  How to set up standing orders for meal and booze production (including how to adjust item amount requirements as my fortress grows).

Things to do next time:

1.  Set up and equip a five-dwarf military squad using only non-magma-powered smelters and forges (it seems that if you wait until you have magma ones ready, then by that time it’s too late -the long pole isn’t really finding the magma, but waiting for it to fill up the magma reservoirs with enough magma to power the forges and smelters-).

2.  Get textiles and clothing industries set up (including setting up standing orders).

3.  Get soap production set up (I meant to due it this time and even had a reservoir and aqueduct all mines out below a a well room next to what would have become my hospital, but I lost the fortress before that could happen).

4.  Set up some sort of industry to produce trade goods other than wooden spiked balls (I.e. something I can sell to the elves).

5. Get a library and paper industry set up (including standing orders -I actually mined out and smoothed a library in this last fortress, but never actually set it up-).

6.  ??

7.  PROFIT!!

[orius]

Magma smelters don't take too long to set up if you embark on a volcano.  I can usually get them done by the end of the first year if I don't fart around.

If you want to sell trash to elves, then just make stone junk, you'll have plenty to work with in any fort.  If you have sand, you can also crank out green glass that you can stick all over the stuff to make it a bit more valuable.  Elves don't get pissed at basic green glass.  Also, sell them all your old worn out clothing.  It's not like they bring much of anything useful, just a bunch of wood.

You won't need a lot of soap unless you're using it to build a really asinine megaproject.

[Thisfox]

Also, sell them all your old worn out clothing.  It's not like they bring much of anything useful, just a bunch of wood.

...My Giant Wolf for War Breeding Project disagrees with you. Elves can bring some useful stuff.

Also, if you sell them worn out clothing, make sure it hasn't been decorated with wood before you got it. Same for bags: I tried to sell them a bag of tree seeds recently, and found out that the bag in question had been decorated with wooden decorations before it arrived at my fort.

[Schmaven]

In an attempt to reroute the main fortress entryway through a waterfall, the fort began to very slowly fill with water from all the splashing once the drawbridge construction began.  The new entry tunnel is now sealed off and gradually filling with water while a drain is dug to the map edge.  It looks like I will have to go with the original plan of pumps and flood gates to temporarily stop the river in order to get the new entryway fixed.  In hindsight, maybe this was a bit too ambitious a project for the first year.

[A_Curious_Cat]

In an attempt to reroute the main fortress entryway through a waterfall, the fort began to very slowly fill with water from all the splashing once the drawbridge construction began.  The new entry tunnel is now sealed off and gradually filling with water while a drain is dug to the map edge.  It looks like I will have to go with the original plan of pumps and flood gates to temporarily stop the river in order to get the new entryway fixed.  In hindsight, maybe this was a bit too ambitious a project for the first year.

I setup the waterfall entrance on my last fort before I dug the entrance tunnel.  The trick is to put the drawbridge beside the bottom of the waterfall and not under it.  That way creatures crossing the drawbridge experience mist and happy thoughts without the fortress being flooded.  See the first picture I posted here.

Hope that helps.

[Schmaven]

That definitely works for happy mist thoughts, but how do you divert your waterfall flow to wash everyone off your bridge to a watery grave with that setup?

[orius]

Also, sell them all your old worn out clothing.  It's not like they bring much of anything useful, just a bunch of wood.

...My Giant Wolf for War Breeding Project disagrees with you. Elves can bring some useful stuff.

Also, if you sell them worn out clothing, make sure it hasn't been decorated with wood before you got it. Same for bags: I tried to sell them a bag of tree seeds recently, and found out that the bag in question had been decorated with wooden decorations before it arrived at my fort.

Yeah, they can bring useful animals, but they're really unreliable about it IME.  Still, getting wolves, big cats, or bears that can be be bred as war beasts is always good.

I don't waste wood on decorations, and I get annoyed when my dwarves decorate stuff like clothes and storage items.  That always ends up being a PITA to micromanage.

[A_Curious_Cat]

That definitely works for happy mist thoughts, but how do you divert your waterfall flow to wash everyone off your bridge to a watery grave with that setup?

You don’t.  For that, I’d suggest a water cannon (or ballista).

My plan is to lure them inside to a “Hall of !!FUN!!”.

[Uthimienure]

Don't forget to include at least one Comfy Chair in the Hall of !!FUN!!.

[Thisfox]

I don't use decorating items because of the fact you can't directly specify what you want decorated, which is annoying since my dwarves do end up decorating useless barrels and bags. I know there are ways of making them decorate a specific item, but still

Decorating is easy: Make the barrels and boxes storage stacks for trade goods only take stuff of lower quality, and put the decoration area far away from the rest of the fort (I tend to put the decorating chambers east of the main staircase, down a long wide corridor, while the rest of the fort is west, or vice versa. Then fill that wide corridor with glass and gems and other good things. The far end gets a storage area for stuff you want decorated, bin and barrel free, and a jewellers and so on. Then that stuff will get decorated, and the bins and barrels won't. And when it comes time to sell it all, it's not hard for a bunch of dorfs to come pick up the good stuff and take it to the trade depot, enjoying beautiful long wide halls of decorations while they do it, giving them happiness.

Stuff often arrives decorated, too. The stuff with wooden decorations is the worst: Somedorf keeps putting the tree seeds (apple, pear, bayberry) in bags that were purchased pre-decorated with hanging wooden rings and the like, making it really dangerous to trade bags of seeds to the elves.

[Dunamisdeos]

You can also have say, a dedicated decoration jeweler shop who only takes materials from a linked stockpile. Set it to not accept manager-generated jobs as well.

That way you can just set the linked stockpile to only accept masterwork gold rings or whatever you're after for encrusting, etc. They get put in the stockpile, and only those are used.