Good to hear from you, Pseudo! This is your hell hole, after all
Farms: I actually build a lot of 1*1 farms. In my normal games I use this to cut down on the over production of food by disabling them gradually. Here I use it to balance the two crops during a dual crop season.
Brewing is not that critical. You can wait well into the summer, but yes, getting it going is good.
I build a permanent butchery (there are peafowl after all, and immigrant animals if you go that way). A short distance away from the butchery I dig a hole (with a staircase two tiles away, connected at the bottom only, unless the digger climbs out, in which case I have to dig a hole to let the digging continue).
At the bottom of the hole I build an atom smasher, with a wall behind it for good measure (hence 2 tiles to the stair). Immediately after butchering I order the dumping of all 3 garbage items (although it's probably safer to dump the hair first, and take the cartilage and whatever the last thing was after the hair is done). All dorfs are given the tanner profession, as well as the spinner one, and I don't butcher unless most of the dorfs are idling to do tanning and dumping immediately. I've spun immigrant alpaca foal wool without incident.
I've done one axe and two beds, but I've considered a cage instead of the second bed.
Caverns: I only venture out when there are reasonably benign creatures about. To increase my view, I've carved a fortification in the tile I'll dig away when I open my entrance tunnel.
Killing baddies: I've managed to kill titans without problem using cave-ins of built constructions. The immigration/trade tunnels i dig are deep enough to allow first a natural cave-in, and later on engineered ones.
Given the scarce access to metal, I'd use cobaltite for a hard floor, but I don't really care. My garbage smasher hole ought to keep the garbage down long enough for the bridge to do its magic.
Personally I won't do melting exploit, but you're going to be limited by fuel anyway...
You can't dig enough to let the caravan/immigrants in immediately: you're having to hope you're lucky enough to enter the map close to one of your entrances or get through without rain (I used 4 entrances the last time, and that's the maximum number I'm going to risk, given miners will take every chance to channel from the surface [I think I stopped such a suicide venture when the bugger rushed north towards the entrance at the north end of the map to dig down on the tile opening up the entrance at the extreme south end. There was a straight shorter path below ground, and the only reason the bugger could try that was that everyone was too busy to pull the lever to close the north entrance off]).
Provided you entrance tunnels are long enough for bleeding to show up and you can seal them, I think they're worth the risk.
You've missed something regarding butchering: There are no plump helmets (probably intentionally), so you'll have to rely on eggs and dwarven sugar for solid food unless you butcher.
I'm eventually going to secure the caverns, unless I get undead campers there first. If I can get in 2 or 3 good runs it should be possible to cut down all the trees, and that would open up for a cave-in divide-and-conquer approach, should sealing during safe periods not be sufficient. Also note that there is enough soil for a tree farm.
My approach is to use wood when I can (cages), glass when I can use that, and thereafter the best metal I can get for my future militia, using leather/bone initially for the single untrained "militia" early on (used to scout the remote corner of the cavern, and try to kill of any undead small things that make it through the pressure plates, which hopefully should not be needed when the tunnels are covered by bridges that can be activated by a lever as well as the plate).
I've never had a caravan caged creature die on the way in to the depot. I suspect their starvation meter only starts ticking when you buy them. I'm quite sure the death (and the tallow) was caused by the hellish weather.
I think you should set up a "hospital" zone, get them hauled there (I actually did get someone stitched up!), and then remove the zone. Those who wander off will hopefully recover, while those who remain should be moved to an atom smashing "hospital" for observation and probable disposal. I didn't think of removing the feed/water job. Thanks for that!
vjek came in while I wrote:
My thought on cavern access is to build an airlock with doors to slow critters down, a lever controlled atom smasher instead of the cages I usually use, and engineer a cave-in only when needed (I can take my time, since the victim is trapped in the airlock). The problem with a gremlin stun trap is that you don't have any cages to trap the critter in (until you get more wood), and FB's are stun immune anyway. I don't think stone drop traps are of much use, and that's about the only thing available without metal, glass, or wood.
A surface structure is rather useless, and probably deadly. It's a lot better with underground tunnels with surface access, and that's quite dangerous as it is. I've tried to build an umbrella cover in a 3*3 embark with the NE tile being neutral savage ocean (the rest sinister glacier). The goo raining down wasn't lethal (blisters all over), but it's still impossible to get the morons to path through the safe areas and stand in safe areas while building. I built a 12 (I think) tile high tower and built bridges out, with new bridges built from lower towers under the cover of the higher ones. Might have worked if I hadn't built under the edge of the cover, but one tile in from that (builders insisted on standing outside the burrow on high cost traffic tiles to build more often than not). However, on this embark it seems getting hit doesn't matter. What matters is the temperature calculation that hits everything on a "surface" tile while it's raining if I've understood your description correctly. A tile covered by a roof is still surface...
I've never encountered a wild troll using any equipment, only goblin siege weapon type named trolls [i.e. Snodub, Lasher troll, etc.] (metal weapons, but no metal armor, probably metal shields when appropriate). No cavern dwelling animal people I've encountered have used metal (wood usually. Don't remember if they wore clothes, nor if they used bone weapons). This means metal comes from caravans and occasional miner, woodcutter, or hunter immigrants. Also note that caravan guards tend to have both metal weapons AND armor...