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[mixtrak]

I'm writing a strategy guide, which is currently undergoing playtesting. This thread will document the playtesting process, along with resulting adjustments and extensions. There is also a story thread story thread discontinued due to fortress retirement - stay tuned for replacement...

All are welcome to contribute to the strategy on these forums, the strategy's discussion page(s) on the wiki, or by simply editing the guide directly. I'll edit or roll back as needed.

[overseer05-15]

Ptw
Seems interesting

[mikekchar]

Had a quick look at part 1.  Looks good.  If you are interested in some feedback:

- Bringing rock is really useful.  Instead of plaster, bring gypsum.  Also bringing metalic ore with you is super useful (especially if you are on an embark with trees).  You can also bring fuel.  All of this stuff is super cheap.
- You can bring leather for early armour/boots

For me some of the skills are not terribly useful. 

- brewing.  You will not run out of booze even with a completely untrained brewer.   I've tested this numerous times.
- cooking.  Whether or not a dwarf gets a good thought from food is not related to the quality of the food it seems, but rather their preference for the ingredients -- which you almost certainly won't have.  Just make easy meals and train up your completely untrained cook
- mechanics.  Higher quality mechanisms don't really provide much (if any... I seem to remember some reduction in delay) benefit.  Certainly for the early game, there is no need to train.
- architecture.  Yes, your dwarfs get good thoughts around well designed buildings, but you can destroy and rebuild your buildings later when you have a good architect.  No reason to spend points now.

What you are missing:

- diagnostic.  Your medical dwarf needs to have good diagnostic abilities or else they won't treat all of the injuries.  This will lead to infections/complications down the road.  Also, this is insanely hard to train (unless you are intentionally injuring your dwarfs).
- appraisal.  Depends on playing style, but I like to know how much value I'm generating even before the first caravan arrives.
- fighting skills.  For one dwarf, anyway.  Just in case.

My 2 cents :-)  Looking forward to reading the other parts.

[Montieth]

I'm 5 days into a new fort.

I use the jobs menu under the manger to work a bunch of things.

For example. I have a couple of underground pastures with sheep and llamas.

Next to that underground pasture location is a workshop that is set to autorepeat each season shearing the same number of critters that grow wool. That workshop only allows shearing and and milking labors.

Not far from that farmers workshop (across a 1 tile hall through 2 doors) is a refuse stockpile for wool 4x4 tiles wide. That has a workshop set to only spin thread in it's allowed labors. That workshop has a reseting labor to spin 4 threads if there are 4 threads available. This labor restarts each day.

Similarly, on the next level down and not far away there is an under ground farm plot for food growing that only grows pig tails or dimple cups (when pig tails are out of season). That has a food storage area that's set for JUST fibrous plants like pigtails, kenaf, jute, etc. That storage area feeds another Farmer's Workshop that's right next to it. That has the process plants labor set as it's only labor. This is also set with a job to process plants if such plants are available (I think I have it set for 10 non-rotton processable plants or what not). This will process 10 sets of threads.

This allows my various spinners and plant processing types to work on labors and not be interrupted by labors they don't do at 'their' workshops. I tend to also put their quarters nearby so that they're not walking far from their main work area.

Across the hall and up a set of stairs leads to the thread storage area. Above that, up another stair one then finds the looms, and clothier shops. They then have respective jobs with some buffer space to leave a bit of extra cloth to loom and sew clothes as needed based on conditional for if socks, or tunics or dresses fall below a certain amount.

I tend to have wool used for trousers, tunics and cloaks. Dresses and vests are made from silk. Socks, mittens, hoods and other stuff are made from plant fibers. Each with a standard order of 20 if the number available is below 40. I think that Hysteresis threshold works for things like plants with 3 clothiers.

[Thorfinn]

I agree with mikekchar (with the possible exception of diagnostician -- with the starting conditions you've specified, he's almost sure to go rusty as heck before he sees his first injury) but it's your tutorial.

No thread? Traction bench doesn't really take any longer to produce than thread does, and if you have broken bones, you've probably also got injuries to suture.

Is plaster better than splints? I ask because I've not been able to tell any difference, and splints are much easier to make.

What's the point of moving away from the wagon?

Be careful with floodgates. Any items in their path will prevent them from opening/closing. Something else, too, but I can't think of it right off-hand. Whatever it was, those are the reasons I use bridges instead.

Four farm plots 20 tiles big, plus more for surface crops is massive overkill, particularly at this point in the game, as well as risking algorithmical strangeness. And even if you start with a level 5 grower, she won't be able to handle all that anyway. You don't have to change the overall layout at all to convert each into five 1x4 farms, and she can start planting as soon as she finishes each plot, rather than having to wait to get the entire 20 tiles built.

Rather than writing down all the plants and doing a lot of wiki lookups, you might consider a stockpile with all plants enabled except the dwarven ones, then use the kitchen screens to choose which to brew or cook.

[avdpos]

Interesting to see another ones strategy.

my comments:
I have never seen any need to place skillpoints in "woodcutting" and "herbalist" - only useless do those things and all time it takes is running around.

I second placing those skills in something militaristic, or maybe teacher/Adept to make the military train up faster.

I usally place a single point in weapon smith on everybody without a modable skill to give them something useful and modable.


You also do not mention seeds. I usally bring some extra seeds for every dfarwen thing as I do think itīs boring to trade for them if I for some mysterious reason get to few. A few sandbags is also good if you havenīt sand on your embark, just as a secure thing for coming modes (got use my prepared sandbags in my fort yesterday, which had "sandproblem")

[Dunamisdeos]

I am 99% sure that diagnostician skill only affects the speed by which injuries are diagnosed, not whether or not they actually diagnose each injury.

[Werdna]

I have never seen any need to place skillpoints in "woodcutting" and "herbalist" - only useless do those things and all time it takes is running around.

Points in Herbalist increases the stack size of the plants they collect, so it can make a difference in the average amount of brew (or food) created per job.  Not terribly useful given the ubiquity of food, drink, and labor, but not useless either.

[Dunamisdeos]

Son this is a place where you can generate 20 replies in two days regarding the best way to build a 3x3 bedroom.

I'm surprised this isn't 3 pages long yet.

Additionally, I recommend a section on the importance of water in the hospital, preferably a source INSIDE the hospital to ensure that all wounds are clean. Also included in this could be how to ensure that water is clean, and stays that way.

[Mostali]

Son this is a place where you can generate 20 replies in two days regarding the best way to build a 3x3 bedroom.

There must now be a section on the best way to build a 3x3 bedroom in this guide.  I recommend building them vertically.

[Dunamisdeos]

Vaulted ceilings make you feel like some kind of all-wealthy super architect.

[ldog]

My feedback (sorry a bit wordy):

Section 1 - As most others I'd find some of the skill choices questionable, especially on an easier embark, but it's pretty well geared for a noob friendly quickstart and while I don't have much experience with evil glaciers and the like, it'd probably let you get dug in PDQ so seems fairly versatile. I think you made a good case for why you chose and paired what skills though. Sometimes it isn't about the fact that the crafting results don't change, but about how fast you can get stuff done. I'd suggest a point of swimming and discipline on the miners at least. I tend to give everyone that, as it can be a lifesaver at times. I'd at least give the brewer & cook a point of armor or weaponsmith for mood potential.

Gypsum plaster, as someone said easy to make, but requires you to setup pottery and have a spare bag - honestly I wouldn't even bother, if you need it that early you're probably screwed anyway. I usually just trade for a bag of it first caravan. Have never really seemed to need it or traction benches - splints FTW. Also noteworthy about gypsum, it makes decent rock pots at 11u, if you've got gypsum on the map you've got tons of it. Initial thread for hospital easily gotten from butchering pack animals and spinning their hair. Ditto on tallow for soap. At any rate a single unit of each supply goes very far in the hospital, don't overdo it.

Never bothered with ropes, I tend to bring 1 male and 4 bitches and train them, it's very fast, doesn't require skill, everyone not a miner trains a dog while they're doing fuck-all waiting around for miners. Then just pasture them all in entryway. Cat-splosions don't seem to happen anymore, so I tend to bring a pair. Sheep an interesting idea - I tended to not like to bother with grazers, but I had some dipshit showup with a bunch of pet llamas (wish you could remove and butcher pets) and they honestly turned out to be pretty useful actually. I prefer geese, but peahens about the same - might bear mentioning to people about substitutes in case their civ doesn't have top pick. I like to bring a pair of pigs too - very low maintenance, and can be milked. Granted this pretty much guarantees you will need to use fix-ster, because you WILL get gay livestock, so it bears mentioning to bring an extra male and more than 1 female if no DFHack.

According to the wiki, only slade is dragon-fireproof as of 43.03. Since I can't remember the last time I had a dragon come wreck my shit, I think it's a bit of paranoia with the iron bridges (especially in the watersupply). I tend to just bring some magma-safe rocks to make blocks out of and call it a day. Granted I sometimes just let the FUN! happen where it may.

As a few have said, sandbags - If you've got embark points left and don't know what else to get, nobody has ever had too many bags early on. Even if the embark has sand (and glassmaking is awesome so worth looking for sand on embark) those extra bags will come in handy.

Section 2 & 3 -
As someone who long ago adopted quantum stockpiles and really (almost) never (hardly ever) looked back it's interesting for me to see stockpile designs that try to work around the games flaws without totally cheesing it. Seems pretty solid. I might actually give this a go, although I'd be very interested to see the rest of the plans, since I tend to go for metal industry sooner rather than later. I'd make Quickfort plans for all of this too.

The kitchen & dining layout in particular is interesting to me, since it addresses several faults I still haven't in my current setup. As others have said, farms WAY to big. Especially for 1 grower, and you'll need to let everyone harvest for sure or most of it is gonna rot. I tend to go with 3, 1x7 fertilized strips even for a fairly large fort. 2 seasons for each of the 6 crops, extra pigtails are an idea but I have found that QB for sure and even PH can get by with just 1 planting. Food is just never an issue and booze seldom is either, I will always have more dwarven wine than anything. That being said I do tend to buy all the fruit I can get from caravans for booze variety. I also tend to buy extra thread, dye and even cloth just because I can though, otherwise the 4 field rotation you use might be a necessity. I also don't tend to bother with surface farming.

If you're lucky enough to have a partial aquifier (and you'll need to cheat with DFHack to find and use it reliably) then that bears mention as an invader-proof water supply and is preferable to a river (or maybe you don't have a river...I haven't gone for river embarks since I was a noob). Speaking of rivers, I don't know if it's changed lately, but I've run entire forts off mussels alone - food plus shells for crafts. They just never seem to run out. So fishing bears mentioning as being either very viable or completely useless.

All in all looks like a very viable strategy. I'd love a sneak peak at the rest of your layout if you've already got it planned.

My own personal tips for metal industry, especially since most (bad) advice I've seen seems to be the opposite - If you've got steel making capability (and face it, life without steel isn't worth living) then smelters should go in the sedimentary layers (likely closer to the surface). Being close to the flux, iron and coal cuts down hauling. Magma ASAP, and if that means making a few magma-safe minecarts and hauling them up to dump magma into channels then don't fuck about, just get to it. That 100 level pumpstack (you'll wish you had sand & magma powered glassworks now!) can wait until you build an obsidianfarm or want/need weaponized magma. A single pump above the sea, going into a secured room where you dump the carts, pump it full, then drain it out and fetch the carts will get the job done.

Also if you're building a glass industry, then keeping 1 non-magma glassworks with orders for sand-collection only is handy (probably the same for pottery and clay gathering).

[SkeleBret]

I like the guide a lot! I left some feedback on Part 1's discussion page on the Wiki, I'll copy and paste it here for convenience.

Hello there, I like your guide, I've tested it in a world and it's working great! So far I have a few questions/points to bring up:

I noticed that iron bars are recommended for dragonfire-proof bridges and mechanisms, I wanted to point out that while metal is fire-safe, it is no longer immune to dragonfire and I'm pretty sure iron bridges will still melt under dragonfire.

About the gypsum plaster: is it necessary to bring gypsum plaster in particular? Splints serve the exact same purpose and can easily be made out of wood, and don't require a kiln on a map that might not have clay.

Pertaining to the recommended peafowls: Turkeys have much larger egg clutches on average and still live 7-10 years, which is plenty of time to learn how and successfully breed more, and also reach adulthood at the same age, so should turkeys be used instead?

Regarding the male cat: Is it necessary that the cat is specifically male, or can it be any gender?

Brewer skill: I've looked into the brewer skill and I can't find out what it affects, it doesn't seem to affect speed at all, so is the skill even necessary? Those points might be better invested elsewhere if it doesn't affect much.

Suggestion regarding dwarf skills and attributes: I barely bother with attributes in every world I do, except I try to make the strongest dwarf my mason, since otherwise hauling stone from the stockpile to the workshop takes absolutely forever. Should the guide recommend this? It's trivial, but it affects efficiency.

Loving the guide so far, I'm happy you decided to do it, it's perfect for players who have learned the ropes and don't quite know what to do yet. Keep it up!

[ldog]

For those interested in stories, I have created the story thread for this playtest with an initial post.

In addition, I have updated the Philosophy section of the guide to reflect my preference for core (vanilla) gameplay, minimal cheese and exploits.

Regarding Dragonfire, I want to make sure I understand. As you say, according to the wiki, dragonfire can now destroy buildings unless they're made from slade, which includes iron bridges and makes that strategy redundant. If I'm understanding correctly, however, bridges in general should still be impervious to dragonfire when raised, since buildings "...are affected by dragonfire on their tile, making non-dragonfire-safe doors immune as long as they remain closed."

Is that right? If so, that's good, because we can just use stone bridges and mechanisms, which notably simplifies embark and dig-in.

The whole thing seems complicated, but then dragons are kinda rare so I wouldn't worry overly much about it.
EDIT: To clarify, I imagine when closed the stone bridge is going to act the same as the stone block walls & roof; I believe it's safe, but if it isn't then the whole thing isn't. So yeah, I would ditch the iron.

I like the guide a lot! I left some feedback on Part 1's discussion page on the Wiki, I'll copy and paste it here for convenience.

Hello there, I like your guide, I've tested it in a world and it's working great! So far I have a few questions/points to bring up:

I noticed that iron bars are recommended for dragonfire-proof bridges and mechanisms, I wanted to point out that while metal is fire-safe, it is no longer immune to dragonfire and I'm pretty sure iron bridges will still melt under dragonfire.

About the gypsum plaster: is it necessary to bring gypsum plaster in particular? Splints serve the exact same purpose and can easily be made out of wood, and don't require a kiln on a map that might not have clay.

Pertaining to the recommended peafowls: Turkeys have much larger egg clutches on average and still live 7-10 years, which is plenty of time to learn how and successfully breed more, and also reach adulthood at the same age, so should turkeys be used instead?

Regarding the male cat: Is it necessary that the cat is specifically male, or can it be any gender?

Brewer skill: I've looked into the brewer skill and I can't find out what it affects, it doesn't seem to affect speed at all, so is the skill even necessary? Those points might be better invested elsewhere if it doesn't affect much.

Suggestion regarding dwarf skills and attributes: I barely bother with attributes in every world I do, except I try to make the strongest dwarf my mason, since otherwise hauling stone from the stockpile to the workshop takes absolutely forever. Should the guide recommend this? It's trivial, but it affects efficiency.

Loving the guide so far, I'm happy you decided to do it, it's perfect for players who have learned the ropes and don't quite know what to do yet. Keep it up!

Actually I just gave this start a go last night (although I only had time for about a month). So gypsum plaster costs 3, so really buying a bag on embark is no hardship. There are enough extra points for some flexibility (of course I forgot the sheep like a dumbass).

Turkeys take 2 years to mature. Peacocks and geese 1 year. That means faster time to butchering. You only get 1 unit of leather per animal, you'll get more meat in less time as well (even though the turkeys are bigger), and anyway food becomes trivial quickly so I wouldn't worry so much about the amount of eggs.

If a trade caravan has a male cat in stock, you might end up with kittens if you brought a female. Otherwise it doesn't matter. Also, pretty much any animal can be butchered so for some people an abundance of cats can be a food industry. If that offends your sensibilities (dogs are where I draw the line) you probably don't want 50 cats running around your fort.

I've never really sat down and compared if a skilled brewer brews faster or not. If not then it definitly is a waste of points. Most farming (other than planting) and other skills (pretty much anything non-moodable) that don't have a quality effect and aren't time sensitive I tend to let all the "peasants" do.

If you put the rock stockpiles around the masons (like the guide shows) then the mason isn't going to be hauling far. Wheelbarrows for the stockpile and set it to give to the shops so the crafters are never going halfway across the map for stone.

EDIT-
Oh, another personal recomendation on the seed pile: You're on the right track here but it's better to make 6 piles of 2 tiles, 1 for each. The issue I've seen otherwise is that it is possible to get more than 2 bags of each seed and then you'll get jammed up on something, because some dumbass goes and eats a PH and then someone runs off and bags the seed, in the meantime a 3rd bag shows up. Etc.

Very important: Upper main floodgate placement is a complete cockup. Water flows on diagonals. Move it over 1.

[ldog]

So I got to the end of the tutorial just as fall began. I don't have the roof on the outer fort yet, but otherwise done. Had to dig out a lot of a 2nd section to get quartzite, since I didn't want to waste the jet and chalk on the upper layers for blocks and mechanisms, so that probably added a few months.

Only major mishap was the floodgate (and I really know better about water mechanics but I followed the plan without thinking)
I usually do diagonal pressure reliefs on the intakes and always have an off map drain so that there is (almost) never a chance of flooding, but since I don't know what else you've got planned long-term I was sticking to the plan.

As for the items blocking floodgates, this is another one of those things that people just mindlessly parrot - there shouldn't ever be any items in this water supply to block them. That being said, I would always have the source controlled by a drawbridge (which you have done).

The brewing I've only casually observed, and of course it requires SCIENCE! but I'm not interested enough to do it. Maybe the other guy did some? Maybe just give him 1 pt for easy tasking. Also you didn't mention nobs, bookkeeper/manager are things people should do right away. The herbalist/brewer also is the perfect candidate for ALL the roles early on. Since this topic always seems to rear it's ugly head too, the CMD does NOT require any medical skills; director for administration is more like what it is. Build 1 chair for the dining room early, and assign it to this guy. Set accounting to full precision (because there is no reason to do otherwise ever)

Ed: Another thing I keep forgetting to mention. A tavern can be assigned to the dining hall location, so you can just pack a chest of mugs instead of the stockpile.

Kitchen stockpiles tip: Instead of all the tedious wiki checking, you can see in the kitchen stocks menu (get that bookkeeper!) what is cookable/brewable or not. Makes things a little easier.