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[Girlinhat]

As stated in title.  Decided I should get back into the game, and looking a bit over the learning/writing/thinking system, as well as the taverns, and how to make it the most... scientific~.  Anyone have suggestions/challenges?

[Immortal-D]

Currently, Taverns do not have reputation or otherwise any external effect.  Therefore, you can build a Tavern in front of the main Fortress to act as a buffer zone against hostiles.  Any surviving Bards will have plenty to sing about.

[Salmeuk]

You can hire mercenaries now. Attract soldiers to your tavern, then wait for them to petition for residence. They can then be assigned to squads and ordered about like normal soldiers, though I think the squad leader needs to be one of your own dwarves.

A fun challenge might be to only use these soldiers-for-hire in fortress defense. You would need to build an early tavern (not that difficult) and then hopefully amass a large enough squad to be effective (potentially very difficult).

As for writing and libraries, I just like collecting books. Buy them from caravans, have your visitors write new ones, and if your permanent residents bring them you can store those too.

Temples are also new, and are nice excuses to build thematically. God of gems? store large gems and build flashing gem windows. God of death? Store corpses and refuse in the back room, or order statues of fighting and dismemberment with the new manager system.

[Girlinhat]

I meant to ask about that last bit.  I'm having trouble finding info about how to make like, customized statues...

[PatrikLundell]

I haven't made any detailed statues, but with other things, such as clothing, you can add specifications through 'd'etail after the job. Similarly, you can specify that a door intended to keep magma on the other side should be made out of e.g. Gabbro. You'd find the key to hit in the info panel when you set up the job.

[CaptainArchmage]

As stated in title.  Decided I should get back into the game, and looking a bit over the learning/writing/thinking system, as well as the taverns, and how to make it the most... scientific~.  Anyone have suggestions/challenges?

To create an inn, you should have a dining hall, so literally just a table. You can also place a meeting zone and assign it to a tavern or inn. Libraries can be created in the exact same way, but you are encouraged to have some bookcases, chests, and of course tables and chairs so dwarves can sit down and read comfortably (but dwarves will also stand and read books).

In general you'll attract a lot of visitors, generally bards, mercenaries, and so on to taverns, or you can attract scholars to libraries, but that's just a generalisation. If you want a multi-racial fort you need to have one or the other. In Firecastle, a succession game that started recently, I started to get residency petitions close to the end of the first year, so you can actually expand your population quite quickly.

It takes a few years after that to get a citizenship petition, and once you get that the residents can be assigned labours like other dwarfs.

The fact is the mercenaries hang around the tavern, and I think you can actually make a barracks part of the tavern (since it technically is a bedroom; I know I managed to make a dormitory part of a library in Firecastle early on). This means you can strategically place your taverns where the mercenaries will actually play a useful defence role.

There's a lot of research that can be done in a library and you can probably collect a lot of books there by buying them off caravans to get through the tech tree. You can also put necromancer's books in the library and the dwarves reading them will learn necromancy.

[Urist McVoyager]

Books have three main purposes right now:

1. The aforementioned necromancy texts can make everyone into neophyte necromancers.

2. Medical texts and discussion can help boost medical skills, so definitely get those on hand.

3. Well written persuasive texts can change a reader's values, so getting your eloquent hard working dwarves to write can help boost productivity in your fort.

Most other books are just there for entertainment value right now.

[SebasMarolo]

Books have three main purposes right now:
[...]
3. Well written persuasive texts can change a reader's values, so getting your eloquent hard working dwarves to write can help boost productivity in your fort.
[...]

So, I should assign someone with "unfetered by being occupied/not taking it easy" thing as a scribe?

[Fleeting Frames]

Note that you can set the locations to be citizen-only if you desire not to deal with visitors (they're trapavoid, uncaring of traffic designations and typically friendly on arrival but may not necessarily stay so.)

This allows you to still satisfy relevant needs while not being troubled by internal defence considerations.

Of course, this cuts you off from visitorite as well as the specific advantages of human, dwarf, goblin citizens and necromancer scholars.

[Urist McVoyager]

Books have three main purposes right now:
[...]
3. Well written persuasive texts can change a reader's values, so getting your eloquent hard working dwarves to write can help boost productivity in your fort.
[...]

So, I should assign someone with "unfetered by being occupied/not taking it easy" thing as a scribe?

A scribe's not the same thing as a scholar. A scholar makes new books. Far as I know, a scribe just copies books that were already made. Setting such a person to any job, including scribe, is a good idea, but it isn't going to get you any new books for persuading people to do more.

[Gwolfski]

Also note that dwarves need to respect knowledge to write books,

[Girlinhat]

Can a dwarf be persuaded to respect knowledge?

[PatrikLundell]

Given that books can change values, it's probably possible for a book on the value of knowledge to spread that value, but you'd have to be extremely lucky to find such a book or get a scribe to write one.

[Gwolfski]

Given that books can change values, it's probably possible for a book on the value of knowledge to spread that value, but you'd have to be extremely lucky to find such a book or get a scribe to write one.

Now this is a very important difference I found out the hard way.

Scribes copy books.
Scholars write books.

[Eric Blank]

You can tell dwarves what to make a statue of from the workshop. With the job selected in the menu, there's a details option available, which will let you define what its supposed to be made of, what the image should reference, etc. Really useful when none of your metalsmiths worship the god you're trying to make an image of.

Also, libraries for necromancy are quite awesome. Just limit the number of books overall, and eventually most or all dwarves will end up reading it. Plus visitors. Oh, and might want to make the library containing said book citizens only, because visitors have a habit of checking out a book and forgetting to return it... Getting paper for scribes is a pain in the arse I've found.

Mercenaries aren't especially well trained or equipped, usually. Just a quick distraction. Bards will certainly keep your dwarves entertained with new artistic forms. Dwarves will learn them from listening and can then repeat them. Can't really acquire foreign musical instruments if the civ a form originates from isnt one of those showing up to trade.