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[Hauwke]

How to Fortress mode:
So I can get a fort up and running sure, I can start a militia, Farms? Yeah sure those are easy to start.

But the problem arises with things like my dwarves running out of seeds, or simple things like that, when it shouldnt be the case.

Basically what tips would you guys give on making a long lasting fort, how do I micromanage the things to prevent silly things like running out of seeds because dwarves are dumb.

[NullForceOmega]

Here are a couple of tips:

1 ) disable cooking of seeds

2 ) disable brewing of textile plants

3 ) set death items to 'forbidden' in the orders menu so your dwarves don't go rushing out in the middle of a siege to grab socks (unless you like that kind of fun, if so, disregard)

4 ) if you are still having problems with seeds even after disabling cooking, set a higher number of seeds to store in DF_init

5 ) Don't make everything piles, due to a rework of refuse piles circa .34, items left in refuse pile will degrade while in the pile, even being deleted entirely if left for an extended period (this appears to hold true for 'soft' items of all types, including wood furniture, but hard items have been reported to remain)

6 ) set your military to 'r'eplace their clothes with their uniform, this can help prevent equipment mismatch spam and help ensure that your soldiers are actually wearing their armor

Those are the obvious ones I can think of right now.

[Hauwke]

Honestly I havent made a 'decent' militia yet, its been a rag tag band of dorfs with wooden swords training each other and that was it. Since I usually run out of food before I can get them outfitted properly.

I didnt know that about the seeds, I will take a look at it when I get the chance.

Thank you for the suggestions.

[Urist McShire]

Another method for not running out of seeds would be to ensure that you have several types of food available, so that when you're running out of your standard plump helmet spawn or your favourite above-ground crop, is to immediately start brewing it. When you use the plants for anything other than cooking you will get seeds from them, so if you're low on plump helmet spawn, cave wheat seeds, or even blackberry seeds, just brew up more alcohol! Sure, this could give you more booze than you need, but I'm running forts of 120 dorfs and with total booze stockpiles of over 1500 units of alcohol spread between 11 types. I've got the dwarf ones of wine, ale, rum, and beer, then strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, pineapple (modded so they're any land because dangit, I want pineapples!), potato, and carrot wines, and rye beer. Add in cotton for my textiles and I'm growing 12 types of plants, which is really giving me over 2k plants in storage, plus I've got turkeys giving me eggs and meat, pigs and animals my military hunts giving me more meat, and fisherdwarves bringing home the fish from the brook on the map.

At this point, I don't have any problem with food or seeds for my crops.

[PatrikLundell]

Your problem is probably that you're "wasting" your greenery by cooking it into food (which destroys the seeds), rather than using it for the dwarfy purpose of producing booze (which preserves seeds) or the less dwarfy, but rather useful one of producing clothing (threshing preserves seeds).
I only produce green stuff for the purpose of producing booze and thread, and never cook them (except plants that produce both, such as amaranths, that produces one brewable and one non brewable part). Seed cooking is turned off by default, but cooking of plants has to be disabled manually for each plant, and they only show up in the list until you've got them. Basically, I go through this list and disable cooking for everything that has a brew entry, and then I also disable brewing of pig tails (because I use them for thread). The new manager system might allow me to actually produce both booze and thread from pig tails without micro management, but I haven't shifted to those versions yet.
I start my embark with collecting all herbalistable stuff on the surface, produce booze out of the stuff that can be brewed, and plant each of those types in my surface farm plots. In contradiction to what I said above, I DO cook all the "junk" greenery collected in this initial phase...
I feed my dorfs mainly on meat from sheep (wool producers), dogs, cats, turkeys (eggs), and peafowl (eggs), which I bring on embark.

[ManaUser]

And for that matter, eating raw plants produces seeds too, so you might want to just hold off on cooking initially. As long as you grew food that's edible raw (e.g. plump helmets), there's really no need for it. (Though prepared meals do make a great trade good.)

[Urist McShire]

I know that a lot of the time I use prepared meal pots and barrels as great trade items to just buy up whatever I want, especially when I have loads of food lying around from butchering dragons or half a herd's worth of cows or my domesticated grizzly bear population.

[Hauwke]

Alright, I think I have fixed that issue,  Now whats with the trade caravans,  I dont understand all those menus. One is what I want and the other is what im giving or something?

[Urist McShire]

Which menus are you referring to?

[NullForceOmega]

In the trade menu:

The left side is the items the traders have brought, and any items that you have traded to them.  On the right hand is the items you have brought to the depot to exchange for their goods.  Generally traders will want a reasonable profit (many Bay12ers like to make a few small transactions to get the traders mood up, then buy out the majority of the goods they want for a lower profit margin).

On this screen you can also 'gift' some of your goods to the traders nation of origin, this used to be taken into account when determining whether your fort would become 'landed' (i.e. having one of your fort dwarves become a noble), and it also used to be part of the equation used to decide if the monarch would migrate to your fort, causing it to become the capitol.

Up at the top of the screen is a section that will give you an indicator of the traders mood (keep this high, or the trader may decide to leave prematurely.)

I'm sure I missed some things, but I am sure that there are people who will be along shortly to fill in the blanks.

[Urist McShire]

In addition, if you so choose to trade with those tree-hugging elves, if you offer them anything made of wood, clear glass, or crystal glass either as an offering or in trade, the merchants will immediately become offended and leave without further trading. It's a good first step towards fostering hostile relations between yourselves and the elves if you want them to attack, but on its own it may not be enough.

[PopTart]

If you're growing crops for fabric, dye, booze, or other non-food purposes, you have to process them in order to get the seeds. You'll probably run out of seeds early on, unless you process the plants immediately. That's why I build the farmer's workshop and querns early on.

No matter how careful I think I am being with seeds (not cooking, processing plants and milling immediately), I always run out at the beginning. That's why I embark with lots and lots of seeds. Like 40 of each type that I want to grow. Since I don't usually need to farm for food, and I want to start my textile industry early, I start with only pig tail seeds and dimple cup spawn, 40 of each.

[PopTart]

I also change the initial supplies so that there's no wooden items: no stepladders, crutches, splints, buckets etc. Your carpenter can make those immediately and build their skill. But you have to remember to make them! Make your own checklist for finished goods when you start a game, because there are usually too many to keep track of, and you'll always forget something.

Use the extra embark points on 5-10 turkey hens. Build rock nestboxes for the turkeys immediately. Never have to worry about food.

[ManaUser]

Another simple trick for saving a few embark points is to replace all the pigtail stuff with cave spider silk, it's a little cheaper.

[Purdurabo]

Unless you asre in a desert or tundra you should have very little reason to need to farm. If you are in an embark with some trees and vegetaion you can make a plant picking zone with i-g and easily live off the land.