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[Broken Bolt]

Maybe this is a mod question, but I am lazy or burned out on entering 2 pieces of  each meat 50 times over and over.
Is there a way to alter the start in init or data or somewhere so I get the skills/items I want without having to deal with the opening menus?

[Helmaroc]

*cough* *cough* http://www.bay12games.com/cgi-local/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=11&t=001376

[Karlito]

I always get a proficient siege engineer.  Makes it easier to get decent quality balista parts later on.

[Veroule]

I tend to sell off the anvil so I end up with a huge stock of points.  This leads to making each of the starting 7 dwarves have 2 high skill values.  If you didn't know you may only spend points into the dwarves to make 2 competent level skills, or an equal number of lesser spends.  Before I actually set any of them I take the time to look through the personailites for the one that will be the leader, and the one that will be the bookkeeper.

The leader also works as my broker, so he gets a few points into appraisal, a few in one of the talky skills, and the rest that he is allowed goes to masonry.

My book keeper generally gets set with a point in one of talky skills becuase he is also my manager, competent masonry, and the highest carpentry allowed for the rest of his points.

Those 2 guys get architecture turned on for them on arrival.

Of the 5 remaining the skill combos I use are:
miner/weaponsmith
miner/armorsmith
Neither uses that smithing until after the first year giving plenty of time for them to legendary mining.

planter/brewer
Brewing speed is critical to be able to get seeds back in the ground, and this is the only guy that will always have time without micro-managing.  I also only bring 1 planter, and work him with only planters harvest until he reaches legendary.  After that all dwarves may harvest, but still only 1 guy plants.

woodcutter/carpenter
Again a natural integration of skills, make the wood and use it.  If I really need something made immediately the bookkeeper can pick up the slack.  It usually takes 2-3 years to get to legendary in woodcutting, and at that point smithing is up so I can make axes for apprentices.

mechanic/stonecrafter
Mech takes a really long time to get to a decent skill level.  Starting with a mechanic is a big plus.  The stone crafter on him is to ensure we have plenty of trading supplies in the first 2 years.  Generally after that immigrants are churing out stone crafts continuously and the volume produced makes up for the lower quality.  Also by that point many workshops are active and segrated based on skill level, allowing the order for stone shortswords to only be done by my master crafter.

Of course that leaves a huge number of points available.  I tend to spend those into 15 dogs and then food.  The dogs provide a reasonable defense for the first year, so I really don't have to rush any specific constructions.

[Emperor Bob]

1 proficient miner / (no name) appraiser / novice social skills: my mayor/miner/broker
1 proficient miner / proficient building designer
1 proficient woodcutter / proficient carpenter
1 proficient weaponsmith / brewer / herbalist
1 proficient armorsmith / cook / herbalist
1 proficient grower / proficient metalsmith
1 proficient mason / proficient siege engineer

some of those turned out to be useless in the end as I got two immigrants turning into my legendary weapon and armorsmith due to fey moods.

edit: Oh, and I keep the anvil. Always.

[ January 13, 2008: Message edited by: Emperor Bob ]

[Skanky]

I specialise heavily, generally any secondary skills are only going to be used until the first immigrants turn up.

2 miners
1 carpenter / woodcutter*
1 mason / architect**
1 crafter so I can buy stuff from the caravan
1 grower / brewer ***
1 leader

* I rarely spend points on this person, as he trains up woodcutting quite fast. When the first round of immigrants arrive, one of them will either have some carpenting skill or will soon have some carpenting skill...
** The mason / architect combo is one of the few that I keep. For building workshops and supports, this works well. For road building, not so much. Still, I don't build many roads and by the time I do, efficiency isn't high on my priority list.
*** When the first immigrants arrive, he becomes a dedicated brewer and two immigrants become the growers for the fortress.

I also give a single point of armorcrafting, weaponcrafting, metalworking and metalcrafting to each dwarf where possible to increase the liklihood of getting a legendary metalworker. No luck with the current attempt. I am still experimenting with different jobs for the mayor to do in addition to his broker / manager roles.

[Eagle of Fire]

I usually dump the starting anvil to spend on skills and items.

2 miners,
1 maxed masson,
1 maxed carpenter,
1 leader (one in as much social skills as possible),
1 maxed farmer (planter),
1 maxed out mechanic.

Then, I purchase as much different meat and booze as possible, keep the two starting axes (for chopping wood and then to use for defense) and (usualy) two dogs and of course the starting seeds. The rest is just filler but I often take up a lot of wood (just in case) and sometimes take some of each possible seeds.

The two miners are there to dig an entryway, workshop space and food stockpile as soon as possible. The farmer and mechanic are usually sent to cut down some trees until I can set up some kind of farm area and workshop space. The masson and carpenter set up a temporary workshop outside as soon as the first two stones are dug out, and the leader haul stuff and wait for a good moment to build a craftdwarf workshop. He usually ultimatly become legendary crafter in everything as well as keeping all his leader posts.

I hardly ever have trouble in the first year. It's a lot of digging, planning and crafting trinkets for the dwarven caravan (and possibly an anvil) until the second year in which I am ready do to pretty much anything I need or like.

[Shadowslasher]

I like to start out with some Negotiator and the skill to take care of tantrumming dwarves. It's hard to build up those skills but they are important.

[Greiger]

2 miners
1 carpenter/woodcutter
1 Mason/engraver
1 Admin/Stonecrafter
1 Grower or Fisherman
1 Grower or Fish Cleaner

Since I sometimes use a custom race with the carnivore tag, the last two tend to be dependent on the race.  A fisherman and fish cleaner if [CARNIVORE], 2 growers otherwise. The admin has all the beginning administrator duties and makes crafts when he's not doing that. And one of the miners usually ends up doing mechanics or brewing if I don't get one by the first migrant wave.

[Untelligent]

I usually start with this:

2 Miners
1 Woodcutter/Woodcrafter
1 Mason/Mechanic
1 Grower/Herbalist
1 Grower/Cook/Brewer
1 Bookkeeper/Trader

2 picks, 1 axe, the anvil, 2 dogs, 2 cats, 30 plump helmets, 20 plump helmet spawn, and then some other food crap.

[ January 13, 2008: Message edited by: Untelligent ]

[Scotty]

my latest fort i started out with 4 miners which also had the grower skill, that way i can clear out the farm section plus a few stockpiles really quick and then plant quick as well.
the other 3 dwarves was a woodcutter/carpenter, a cook/brewer and then my trader.
for items i dropped an axe, bought 2 more picks, 36 of each plump helmet spawn, pig tail seed, cave wheat seed and sweet pod seed. a bunch of turtles and 1 of each 2g meats and some extra plump helmet, though i forgot to bring any extra animals with me but i don't see that being much of an issue right now.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Ohs well...

• Two Stoneworkers (novice: miner, engraver, stone crafter, mechanic, building designer; proficent mason)
  
• One Woodworker (novice: wood cutter, wood crafter, bowyer, wood burner, potash maker; proficent carpenter)
  
• One Smith (Furnace Operator, Weaponsmith, Armorsmith, Metalsmith, Metal Crafter)
  
• One Jeweler (Proficent Gem Cutter, Proficent Gem Setter)
  
• One Farmer (novice miller, novice thresher, remaining points in grower and herbalist)
  
• One Barkeep (Brewer, Cook, Novice: Appraiser, Comedian, Conversationalist, Judge of Intent, Pacifier, Consoler)
  

I'm sure I'll think of something clever another time...

The stoneworkers are quite handy when putting up surface walls as I often do first year, especially since the bottleneck is stone transport. If I send some food, booze and bed with them, they can mine out the depths and convert the insignificant stones to blocks or crafts. I'm also not likely to be inconvenienced building bridges because one of my dwarves decides not to work. I haven't seen yet whether I need more mechanics points yet, but I'll find out my fort develops. A short time with my stone stockpiles and they've produced enough for me to buy that first caravan's food and booze. Important.

The woodworker? Somehow I manage to keep up with demand and maintain surplus wood. I think its because I've had trouble geting up farms, and have been customizing my stockpile's contents and bin usage, and saving crafting for later. Even with wood being a good walk away, I've got about 25 logs in stock in Autumn. Enough for the immigrant bed panic, I believe.

The Smith? Hasn't been useful yet, except as a hauler. I'd expected to find lots more metal in the area. Besides, forging's been a low priority.

The Jeweler? More of the same... I bought some gems off the caravan, but I can't figure out how to encrust the toy oven I made (big demand for them back in civilization, i hear). There are a few gems I see around, but none that have been in the direct vincinity of my outpost digging. I took the jeweler because I want a jeweler. No master plan.

The Farmer was a little experiment, and I like the way it turned out. He/She's a lot more productive than your farmer/cook/brewer combo. Once you've got your crops planted (and a small fields all that is needed with proficent grower and potash and plots that allow fertilization) you've got a lot of spare time to bring in random plants for booze, and herbalism skyrockets. Growing on the surface is better than underground soil because you can fertilize without flooding first. I brew all my prickleberries and then cook the seeds (a prickleberry seed roast can make 200* easy for trading if you cook just before the caravan is likely to appear) getting booze AND a meal from the same batch without having to wait for a newly planted crop to grow. Prickleberry seed roasts can buy you a lot more meat than you're giving up, but the crafts handle the meat. I trade the roasts for booze, and gems.

The barkeep is inspired by one of the dwarves submitted in my community shipwreck. I made some changes for versatility, but its still the same dwarf, same role. Enough gets done with plain Brewer and Cook.Helps with hauling meanwhile, assumes leadership roles.

Uhmm, what with my early construction of walls on the surface, and the need to multitask my stoneworkers, and forgetting to turn off hauling on them, and the lack of soil + low mining skill... my cave fortress doesn't expand as fast as usual. As well, legendary is quite a ways away. But it works out fine thanks to my walling off surface area, and ignoring fishing/hunting. The lack of butchers/tanners/fisherys leads to a smaller and more efficent fortress with fewer stockpiles to manage and workshops to place.

Is this build perfect? No. Once I got the dwarfs somewhat setup, I accidentally embarked without checking my point total and inventories. The only change was one less axe, and no pets, unfortunately. But it is a pretty comfortable setup, and I haven't been plagued by a single vermin for some reason, even into late autumn. If I had been, my smith or jeweler would have started making animal traps.

[ January 14, 2008: Message edited by: Lazy_Perfectionist ]

[SmileyMan]

I quite often can't be bothered to skill up my dwarves before embarking, because they level up so quickly anyway it seems a waste of points, especially to get the higher levels.

I always give one dwarf Appraiser and Judge of Intent so that he can be the broker/leader and will keep getting re-elected, and one Cook/Brewer

If there are going to be animals on the map, I'll have a Marksdwarf/Ambusher to the max, and because (s)he'll quicly start making the vegetarians weep, I'll need a Butcher and a Tanner/Leatherworker/Bonecrafter to deal with the mountains of dead animals.

Now that fired shots are autoforbidden, hunting is much safer.  If your hunter is good enough, then bone bolts will be sufficient, and you can make leather armor to sell to the caravan.

The key to starting out with an unskilled miner is to take, say, five copper picks, but just have one dedicated miner to start with.  Your miner can dig though loam/sand quick enough to build your farms and skill up at the same time.  If you really need to expand fast, just draft a few extra miners for a while.  If you come across any metal/gem deposits, undesignate them for now, and when your miner has acuqired high skill by the end of year 2, you'll be ready to set up metal and gem production, without risking wasting any of the ore.

I like the suggestion above about the prickle berry surface farms.  I'm quite tempted to challenge myself to building an enclosed citadel, complete with farms, out on the plains.

[Sularus]

On my current map i'm using an odd skill set for me

2x (10) Miner/ (10) Engraver
2x (10) Mason/ (10) Building Designer
1x (10) Planter/ (10) Cook
1x (10) Brewer/(10) Thresher
1x Uber mayor. Starts with 1 point in every mayor skill except organizing, record keeping and judge of intent.

The point behind this build was to expand my fortress fast, as it was designed to be build half above ground and half below ground. The miners worked on the below ground part while my masons churned out rock block after rock block for my above ground Castle. I was using rock blocks to increase to fortress value.  I have found that as long as you get farms up by mid spring, which isnt hard, 1 parttime planter is usually more than enough to feed 7 dwarves and build up a stockpile of 1k food before any migrants arrive. The first thing i plant when get my farms set up is Sweet pod seeds. I turn off brewing for them and i turn it all into dwarven syrup, i proceed to make stacks of (60) dwarven syrup roasts, and i find that one or two of them is usually enough to buy out an entire caravan, saving most of my food for eating at home. My uber mayor fills in odd jobs such as creating 7 beds from 4 imported logs (+3 from the wagon), creating a few mechanizms for my early drawbridge, ect. He also surves as my primary hauler untill i recive more immigrants.

[Freddybear]

2 Proficient miners
1 Proficient Carpenter, basic woodcutter
1 Proficient Mason, basic Mechanic, make him Architect after arrival
1 Proficient Grower, basic Herbologist
1 Proficient Grower, basic brewer, basic cook
1 Proficient crafter (either stone or metal), basic bowmaker

Drop one axe to make enough points available for the above. Keep the anvil.

If I'm setting out to do a metalworking fort in an area with Limestone or other flux mineral, I'll make the crafter basic level in metalcraft, bowmaking, armorsmithing and metalsmithing.

Then I choose one dwarf for leader, usually one of the miners or the mason, and give him one level ('novice') each of Negotiator, Appraiser, Organizer and Record Keeping.